Bistro Le Midi

 

Note: At the time of this review, Chip Smith was the chef. He has since moved onto The Simone. We’ve not been back to Le Midi since he left.

*

French cuisine is making a small comeback. It never really went away, but for a long time in the mid-aughts, new French restaurants were more dreamt of than seen.

I’ll believe France is really back when a French restaurant like Ai Fiori or The NoMad opens, and gets three stars. Otherwise, chefs are just doodling around the margins of excellence, fearful of critic backlash.

But there is plenty to enjoy in the meantime. Enter Le Midi, a new casual bistro near Union Square. It offers the sort of hearty, rustic French menu that I love. The space is modern-looking, and a bit austere, despite the white tablecloths. Old movies play silently on a screen above the bar.

The menu offers bistro standards, with a few announced specials. Soups and starters are $8–14, mains $18–28, sides $5–6, plus the obligatory burger at $14. Fries didn’t come with any of the dishes we had, but should you order them, the portion size is ample, and they looked irresistible.

The wine list is better than it has to be. We were surprised to find a 2005 Médoc for $48 (above left). New places in this restaurant’s price range tend to have very little older than 2009, or so. We ordered that, and were quite pleased with it.

The bread service (above right) was humble, but at least served warm.

 

My fiancée nominated a warm Frisée aux Lardons ($12; above right) as an early candidate for Salad of the Year, with a luscious poached egg and a musky bacon flavor. A duck terrine ($12; above right) was fine, but not as memorable.

 

Duck Leg Confit ($21; above left) and Coq au Vin ($21; above right) were good renditions of classic dishes—not the best you’ve had, but at this price well worth your trouble.

We ordered dessert (a rarity for us), a perfectly respectable Strawberry Shortcake ($9; left).

I didn’t make note of the cocktails we ordered at the bar before our meal, and there isn’t an online list, but my recollection is they were a good deal better than you’d expect at such a place. They wouldn’t transfer the tab, a lapse I’ll forgive at Le Midi’s price range. Once at the table, the server was attentive, his ordering advice dependable.

The restaurant, doing comfortable business but not full on a Wednesday evening, attracts what appears to be a neighborhood crowd. So far, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice is the only professional critic to have noticed it. He departed a happy man. So did we.

Le Midi (11 E. 13th Street between University Place & Fifth Avenue, Union Square)

Food: French bistro standards
Service: Casual, but just fine at the price range
Ambiance: An austere, modern space, where tablecloths don’t feel old-school

Rating: ★

Jo's

 

Note: Jo’s closed in May 2013.

*

Over three years ago, I wrote a mostly favorable review of Jo’s in NoLIta, which soon became obsolete after the owners fired the chef. The restaurant soldiered on for a couple of years with cooks, but apparently without a named chef, before Andrew Pressler (formerly of the Fatty Crab empire) was appointed executive chef late last year.

The owners recently invited my family and me to pay a return visit. We paid for our drinks, but the food was comped.

The space remains as I described it last time. The bar business is brisk; the cocktails are a strength, and at $11 a bargain by Manhattan standards. The new menu is dotted with Southeast Asian accents, although it’s not as provocative as the “Fatty” menus. But if you like that style, you’ll like this place, and it is less expensive.

On the current online menu, starters (dubbed “small plates”) are $7–16, entrées and house specialties $14–23, side dishes $3.50–6.00, desserts $7.50–11.00.

 

Our first quartet of dishes was:

1) Mussels with spicy garlic and butter ($12; above left)

2) House-made mushroom and cabbage dumplings ($6; above right)

3) Spicy shrimp with curry ($14; below left)

4) Deep-fried ork ribs ($16; below right)

 

The ribs were the highlight of this course, as luscious and plump as I’ve had anywhere.

 

Whole red snapper ($34 for two; above left) with curry and banana was the highlight of the evening, beautifully prepared, and easily separated with no bones to speak of. Shrimp fried rice with chili peppers ($14; above right) had an intense, fiery finish.

 

Fried chicken with butternut squash ($18; above left) was coated in a memorable plum sauce. Vietnamese Lamb Pho ($12; above right) in fish oil received nods of approval at our table, though I found it less compelling than the other entrées.

 

Fried chicken & waffle ice cream with maple syrup ($9; above left) is one of those gimmick desserts you have to order, but it really didn’t need shards of fried chicken skin protruding at odd angles. Peanut butter s’mores ($7.50; above right) is a much raved-about dessert, and deservedly so: a must-order.

 

Lime panna cotta with coconut (above left; not on current published menu) was a bit rubbery, but there were no complaints with a simple bowl of three house-made ice creams ($7.50; above right).

I’ve listed the prices above, where the items correspond to the current on-line menu. At the current rates, and compared to similar places, the food struck us as very good, with perhaps just one or two items slightly disappointing, among the dozen we tried. The chicken, the fish, the fried ribs, the fried rice, and the peanut butter s’mores are all highly recommended.

It’s hard to re-launch a restaurant under the same name: to the critics, it’s not considered a novelty. If you haven’t been to Jo’s lately, you haven’t been to Jo’s. I’m a big fan of the “Fatty Crab” style of cooking; I know it’s not for everyone. If you like the style—you know who you are—Jo’s is worth a try.

Jo’s (264 Elizabeth Street, south of Houston Street, NoLIta)

Sirio Ristorante

Note: Sirio closed in February 2015. A French–American restaurant called Perrine replaced it.

*

Sirio Ristorante is the latest offering from the Maccioni family, the clan behind Le Cirque and Circo in New York, and half-a-dozen similar places in Las Vegas, India, and the Dominican Republic.

The patriarch, Sirio Maccioni, was once the top maitre d’ in the city. He still holds court at the mother ship, but day-to-day management of the company is now in the hands of his three sons.

There is some evidence that the empire is not what it used to be: last year, Pete Wells knocked Le Cirque all the way down from three stars to one, whereupon they fired the chef. He has not yet been replaced, to my knowledge; his name still appears on the website.

Still, in multiple visits to Le Cirque and Circo, particularly the former, I’ve found that they can certainly dazzle you on occasion. (This would be the case, even if you discount a comped visit to Le Cirque last year at the restaurant’s invitation.) We were dazzled again at Sirio last week. As far as I can tell, we weren’t recognized. None of Sirio’s sons, nor the maitre d’, visited our table; nothing was comped. The food was simply superb.

Our experience does not square with either Adam Platt of New York, nor Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post, both who gave it just one star. Even Gael Greene, who is recognized everywhere she goes, filed a negative review.

Most of the critics—Platt in particular—are predictably hostile to restaurants that cater to the affluent, as an Upper East Side restaurant in The Pierre hotel, facing Central Park, is inevitably expected to do. To criticize the mission is absurd. Review it on its own terms, or don’t go. Nevertheless, the conclusion on reading those reviews is that you can have a bad meal here. We had an excellent one.

The city would be a poorer place without restaurants like Sirio. How nice is it to walk into a beautiful dining room, be served by a professional staff, sit in comfortable chairs, order from a wine list with real depth, and carry on a conversation in a normal speaking voice? Even if they served nothing but twinkies, there’d be value in that. Yes, it’s expensive—unavoidable in this location. You don’t have to go every day.

This is the space formerly occupied by Le Caprice, which flopped a year ago after a short stint. It too was panned by nearly everyone. The guts of the long, narrow space have the same layout as before. The Maccionis’ favorite designer, Adam Tihany, has given the dining room a colorful upgrade. There are no tablecloths, the restaurant’s lone concession to fashion.

The menu, I understand, has scaled back some of the opening prices. Still, you can spend a lot here. Antipasti are $14–36 (average about $20), primi $24–33, secondi $28–59 (most in the $30s), contorni $9.

 

Bread service (above left) was the lone disappointment: by the time we arrived for our late meal, most of the bread was stale.

Carpaccio di Manzo ($21; above right) was a wonderful starter: thinly sliced beef, quail eggs, baby bok choy, lemongrass, and shaved truffles. I wondered if the truffles could possibly be real at this price, but they certainly seemed to be.

 

Sea bass ($36; above left) came with delicious potato and artichoke chips, with a luscious caper cream sauce (above right).

 

Salmon ($34; above left) belied the myth that restaurant salmon has to be boring. Roasted with Brussels sprouts and served with a caviar sauce, it was rich and deeply satisfying.

The wine list went on for many pages and had the usual trophy wines you’d expect at such an establishment, but a 2003 Loire valley white at the back of the volume (photo of the label at the top of this post), at just $55, was magical, with a deep, musky, mature flavor that wowed us immediately.

Service was polished and correct. I would not call it elegant: by the standards of the neighborhood, it’s upscale but not luxuriious. Downtown, it would be impossible. Our reservation was at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. It was not full at that hour, but there were a couple of parties that arrived after us.

My isolated voice probably won’t persuade very many people that Sirio is wonderful. Platt, Cuozzo, et al, have much larger megaphones than we. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Sirio Ristorante (795 Fifth Avenue at 61st Street, Pierre Hotel, Upper East Side)

Food: Modern Italian with French technique
Service: Upscale but not luxurious
Ambiance: A comfortable dining room in a five-star hotel

Rating: ★★
Why? Sirio won’t be for everyone, but it fulfills its mission almost perfectly 

Jezebel

Note: After I wrote this post, the restaurant’s owner wrote a couple of nasty tweets about my reviewing qualifications. Turns out, I wasn’t so far off. About a month after our visit, the restaurant hired a new chef, Chris Mitchell, and changed its kosher supervision to the Orthodox Union, in order to broaden its appeal among kosher diners. The OU insisted that the restaurant change its name to “The J Soho,” since Jezebel (as noted below) is “a clearly wicked person” in the Bible. That strategy didn’t work. The J Soho closed in late 2013.

*

Do you remember the TV series Chicken Soup, a 1989 sitcom that starred Jackie Mason in an improbable interfaith relationship with Lynne Redgrave? It was canceled after eight episodes.

If you apply the same idea to restaurants, you wind up with Jezebel, an expensive Glatt Kosher restaurant in Soho that looks like it was helicoptered in from the Meatpacking District.

In the Book of Kings, Jezebel is a Phoenician princess who was murdered by being thown out a window. She is also sometimes associated with false prophets and prostitution. Why they chose this name for the restaurant is beyond me. Perhaps there is a Talmudic connection I have missed.

Jezebel has a very clubby look. If I learned that the folks behind Lavo and Tao consulted on the design—to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t—I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. It occupies a bi-level century-old townhouse, with a plush lounge on the ground floor and a beautifully-appointed 100-seat dining room upstairs. It’s provocatively decorated with a Last Supper parody painting, with Woody Allen in the center chair. A loud Latin sound track seems out of place.

The host, hostess, and cocktail waitresses are all quite attractive. Cocktails are $16 apiece, and many entrées soar above the $40 mark, but they won’t transfer your tab. The staff hurry you to leave the bar and head for your table, even though neither space is full.

Jezebel was packed and exclusive for about three months, but it’s now on OpenTable and bookable most evenings, any time you want. (They’re closed Fridays, of course.) I can’t compare Jezebel to other kosher restaurants, but as a glam restaurant that just happens to keep kosher, Jezebel has very little appeal.

The website credits Bradford Thompson, the former Lever House chef, though the extent of his day-to-day involvement is unclear. The website also claims “extraordinary” and “innovative” cuisine. It is neither. Most of the dishes, in fact, are snoozers. Almost all are very expensive. A $110 steak for two headlined the menu, with no mention of quality or aging, whcih probably means it was unaged choice. (Do the laws of Kashrut even allow aging?)

I didn’t photograph the bread course, but there was hardly any need: unimpressive onion rolls. The Daily News review mentioned a carrot-and-chickpea spread that’s supposed to come with it, but our server seems to have forgotten it, and we didn’t know to ask.

An order of veal meatballs (above right) was priced in the high teens. You’ll eat them and quickly forget them. Another restaurant would put cream in the sauce, but Jezebel can’t.

 

Much the same is true of Salmon (above left) and Braised Short Ribs (above right): just fine, but you’ve had better, for less money. The short ribs, I believe, were $46.

In a new restaurant, I usually ask a server what he recommends. This one went straight to the most expensive item, that $110 steak, strictly an amateur-hour move. He also pushed the side dishes, which we skipped, as they would have been entirely unnecessary. All the other staff were friendly and helpful.

The wine list is better than the restaurant deserves. Some of the prices are just crazy, but there are good bottles under $60, like the 2007 Rioja we had. The rebbe who poured it was a real mensch, one of the highlights of the evening. There’s a cohort of Israeli wines, as you’d expect, but at the prices they’re asking I wasn’t about to risk trying one.

If your beliefs do not require you to eat this way, you’ll find this food very boring. There was, to be fair, nothing specifically wrong with it, except that, for what it is, it ought to cost a lot less.

Food: Boring and very expensive kosher steak and fish
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Reminds you of a restaurant connected to a nightclub

Rating: Not recommended, except for affluent machers.

The Marrow

Note: The Marrow closed in October 2014 after two years in business. Reviews were mixed, and the public never fell in love with the restaurant’s bifurcated Italian/German concept.

*

Either Harold Dieterle is an ace restaurateur, or he has some terrific advisers. The former Top Chef winner now has three NYC restaurants, and by my reckoning they’re all hits, which seems to be the public verdict, as well. That kind of success doesn’t happen by accident.

Welcome to The Marrow, which opened in late December, joining a brood that now includes Perilla (opened 2007) and Kin Shop (2010).

Admittedly, he’s not aiming high at any of these places: they straddle the line between neighborhood spots and minor destinations. They’re all basically casual, two-star places when they’re on their game.

You’ve got to give the guy credit for taking some risks. After the generic, New American Perilla, he opened a Thai restaurant, of all things, at Kin Shop. It could easily have flopped, but didn’t.

At The Marrow, there’s a bifurcated menu, with German dishes on the right and Italian ones on the left, reflecting the chef’s family heritage. (The menu is actually laid out like a family tree, which sounds more gimmicky than it is.) There’s no perceptible market demand for this odd combination, so you’ve got to assume that Dieterle is serving what he actually believes in.

The tightly edited menu offers six charcuterie options ($6–14), eight starters ($12–15), eight mains ($23–33) and four sides ($10–14), in each case split half-and-half between the German and Italian sides of a single sheet of paper. Some of the prices are a bit aggressive, including all of the sides and a $26 mushroom entrée. Main course portions are quite ample, and most seem to come with vegetables anyway, so I am not sure why you would even need those sides.

If we’re nitpicking, it must be noted that some of the assignments to the German or Italian side seem arbitrary. The chicken entrée is (supposedly) Italian, but Dieterle’s preparation of it—admittedly excellent—is generic enough to fit almost any menu in town.

The wine list isn’t online, which is a shame. It’s one of the deeper wine lists I’ve seen at a new, casual restaurant. You can do real (financial) damage here, or order the Fabrizio Iuli ($49; above left), as we did, and be very happy. A sommelier comes promptly to the table, knows the list well, and presents a bottle that has been kept at the proper temperature.

In relation to the price of the restaurant, the $12 cocktails could be considered a bargain. We can endorse the Marrow 75 (bitter truth pink gin, lemon, sage, blanc de blancs) and the Bank Robber (bulleit bourbon, punt e mes, Campari).

 

You’ll guess that Liverwurst ($10; above left) came from the German side of the menu. But how about the signature Bone Marrow, a trench of bone topped off with sea urchin, fried potatoes, meyer lemon aioli, and baby celery greens? It comes from the Italian side, though I’ve not seen it anywhere, and I doubt that Grandma Chiarelli served it at home either. But it’s terrific: surely a must-order. I’ll bet he sends out hundreds of them every week.

 

I’d skip the Duck Schnitzel ($29; above left), which was too dry. It needs more of the stewed wolfberries (upper left in the photo), to contrast with the bland, pan-fried duck. The quark spaetzle, hazelnuts, and cucumber-potato salad aren’t memorable either. But the aforementioned chicken ($24; above right) is a winner. The bird itself is beautifully done; hiding underneath is a warm medley of fennel, fried salami, and Brussels sprouts.

The service was attentive and professional. I thought we might have been recognized, as initially a host told us we could not be seated before our appointed time (though there clearly were many empty tables) at 7:00 pm), but then another host overruled her, and decided we could. The bar was packed, and by the time we finished up, 90 minutes later, so was the (fairly small) dining room.

The menu is evolving: the version on the website is not exactly what we had, and there were also a number of announced specials. Although there was one dud (the Duck Schnitzel), this is a restaurant well worth returning to.

The Marrow (99 Bank Street at Greenwich Street, West Village)

Food: Half Italian, Half German, very liberally interpreted
Service: Very good, especially for such a new place
Ambiance: Upscale West Village Casual

Rating: ★★
Why? Dieterle is an excellent chef, never boring, and usually terrific

Louro

Note: Louro closed abruptly in June 2015, after being hit with a steep rent increase. I had thought that Louro would be the place where chef David Santos finally had the stage he deserved, after several rounds of bad luck. But Pete Wells criminally underrated it, at one star—remarkable, given the number of unimpressive places that received two stars from him. And after just two and a half years in business, the rent went up, and Louro had to close.

*

It’s a pleasure to cheer when good things happen to great people. The chef David Santos certainly deserved better than his last two NYC restaurant gigs, both fatally flawed for reasons not his fault: 5 & Diamond (wrong location) and Hotel Griffou (wrong crowd).

It’s fair to say that the former sous chef at Bouley and Per Se might have known he’d be a fish out of water at those two spots, but I suppose he had to give them a shot. After he left Griffou, he ran an acclaimed private supper club (Um Segredo) out of his apartment for a while, then launched a project on Kickstarter to open his own restaurant—finally on his terms.

Louro (Portuguese for “bay leaf”) occupies the space that was Lowcountry, and before that Bar Blanc and Bar Blanc Bistro. It’s still under the same owners, but the Kickstarter funds paid for a new décor (nearly as blanc as Bar Blanc was) and upgraded kitchen equipment.

Santos refers to Louro as a causal restaurant (no tablecloths, low-end glassware), but by today’s standards the staff is smart, attentive, and polished. An OpenTable spot-check shows that it is usually full at prime times; we pulled strings to get in at 7 pm on a Thursday evening.

The quasi-American, quasi-Portuguese menu is divided into four categories: Bites ($6–8), Small Plates ($12–16), Eggs & Grains ($12–18), and Large Plates ($22–28). Portions are generous. A five-course tasting menju is $65. We ordered that and paid full price, but we were known to the house and received an extra course or two.

 

Bread (above left) was served warm, with a “butter” (more like a dipping sauce) made from pork and duck fat, along with black pepper, caramelized onions, and scallions. The amuse-bouche (above right) was a lighter-than-air seafood fritter with smoked paprika aioli, and a very spicy piri-piri shrimp (both from the “bites” section of the menu).

 

The main menu started with a Puntarelle salad (a bitter green vegetable in the chicory family) on a large crouton with parmesan and bottarga (above left).

I especially liked the soft/crunchy contrast in kampachi (above right) with purple carrots and carrot purée.

 

Gnocchi (above left) were terrific, with a poached duck egg and a creamed truffle sauce. There was a vague taste of bacon in there too, though I don’t recall any mention of it from the wait staff. Cobia (above right) was beautifully done, with a curried mussel emulsion and sun-dried tomatoes.

 

Duck (above left), on a bed of roasted beans and plantain sauce, offered simple pleasure. Dessert, also simple but effective, was pain perdu (above right), served warm, with cinnamon toast ice cream and huckleberries.

I tried two cocktails from the house list: both were excellent, but I neglected to take notes, so I’ll leave the critique to others. The wine list is brief, but good enough. It is something to build on.

In short: every dish was skillfully prepared; none fell back on obvious clichés. At the price point, Santos is doing a remarkable job. After two restaurant jobs that misfired, he finally has the right location, a strong supporting staff, and a customer base that appreciates what he is doing.

Let’s hope that Louro is around for a long time to come.

Louro (142 W. 10th St. between Waverly Pl. & Greenwich Ave., West Village)

Food: Excellent Portuguese-inspired cuisine
Service: Remarkably assured for a new restaurant
Ambiance: Upscale casual

Rating: ★★
Why? Wonderful, especially at this price point

Willow Road

Note: Willow Road closed in November 2014. It turned into a private event space for Toro, its nearby sister restaurant.

*

Willow Road has been open since early December in the old John Dory space, sandwiched between Colicchio & Sons and Del Posto. Why the Dory failed here remains a mystery to me, but the venue stood vacant for more than three years.

The new owners, coming from a nightlife background, have decidedly modest ambitions. They brought in Todd Macdonald, a former chef at Cru, and Grayson Schmitz, a former Top Cheftestant, to serve a bunch of comfort-food dishes that look like Quick Fire challenges. Open till 3:00 am, it’s a boozier, less elaborate Stanton Social.

The menu is organized around “Bites” ($6–9), Small Plates ($12–18), Large Plates ($15–34), and Side Dishes ($8). The server pushed us to over-order, but we held firm at two small and two large plates, which was enough for us, but might not be for you. I suspect many of the guests here will be visiting more than one dining/boozing location in an evening. Two plates a person is probably enough.

 

The Spiced Lamb Burger Bites ($12; above left) are excellent, and were gone far too quickly. As always, these sharing establishments send out three pieces for a party of two. I’d much rather have a second order of those than the very dull Duck Confit Salad ($16; above right).

 

Buttermilk Fried Chicken ($18; above left) is coated in an appealing crust of jerk spices and orange blossom honey. The plate looks small in the photo, but there are three pieces there. Mac N’ Cheese ($15; above right) is deceptively named. The noodles are more like half-length penne tubes, with an appealing mix of sweet sausage, lemon, fennel pollen, and parsley. It’s probably too cloying to order for yourself, but very good to share.

Three out of four items were just fine, bearing in mind the restaurant’s low aims. The menu is fairly small, with just nine “bites” and small plates, and just eight of the larger ones. It’s not upscale, but it’s not entirely cliché either, as such places often can be.

They’ve redone the space admirably, with reclaimed wood, subway tile, and a terrific hand-painted mural depicting the neighborhood by James Gulliver Hancock. We were seated at a two-top, but there’s also an ample bar and at least one long communal table. The scene is louder than I’d like, but the oldies sound track was palatable.

The staff paid plenty of attention to us; coats were checked and reclaimed efficiently. Although the “sharing plates” meme feels outdated already, at least the food was sent out in a logical order, and not all at once. You can never take that for granted at these establishments.

I can’t imagine what would bring us back to Willow Road, but for its intended audience it’s pretty good. The space was hopping on a Wednesday evening. If the management can keep people coming back, they might have something going.

Willow Road (85 Tenth Ave between 15th & 16th Streets, Chelsea)

Food: Stoner cuisine, re-imagined
Service: Attentive and well managed
Ambiance: A gastro-bar, with the emphasis on “bar”

Rating: ★
Why? Satisfies a need for the area; not worth going out of the way

The Smith (Lincoln Center)

When The Smith opened in the East Village in 2007, I never imagined it would become a mini-chain. It seemed to us, at the time, an average neighborhood spot and NYU student cafeteria. But a Smith clone opened in East Midtown in late 2011, and a year later across from Lincoln Center, in the old Josephina space. I’m sure it’s not the last one.

The concept here is similar to the East Village: a boistrous, casual space, with subway tile walls and leaded glass windows. It looks like Keith McNally could have designed it, right down to the communal washrooms outside the loo. They take reservations, and the hostess checks coats, which I don’t remember them doing downtown.

menus are similar, but most of the entrées uptown are a couple of dollars more, and at Lincoln Center they serve some extra items: a $75 porterhouse for two, a raw bar. But the core of the menu is the same, and one of the best items, a burger, is $15 at either establishment.

 

Trout Milanese ($25; above right) is an appealing entrée, served breaded in a mustard crust on a bed of lentils. I didn’t really taste the bacon or pear compote alleged to be in the dish, but it was fine for what it was. I would have liked a bit more kick from the mustard. My girlfriend loved the lobster roll ($29; above left; served only on Fridays), which comes with irresistible house-made chips, as it did when we had it in the East Village two years ago.

There are about fifteen well-thought-out cocktails ($13), and about two dozen over-priced wines by the bottle. But there’s another twenty wines by the glass, caraffe, or large caraffe. These are the way to go. We had the Pinotage ($25, the caraffe), which was the right amount of alcohol before an opera. Bur really, are they that hard up that they can only afford juice glasses to serve it in? C’mon guys!

I’d forgotten how much space there was at Josephina, the restaurant that was here before. The front room would make for a good size restaurant all by itself, but you pass through a corridor and there’s another dining room in back, which is a bit more sedate. This was pre-show, so the crowd was all ages—unlike downtown, which skews young. They did a brisk business, but weren’t full. The noise level was energetic, but not punishing.

My impression here was a bit more favorable than our visit to the original Smith two years ago. Downtown, there’s many more restaurants to charm you. The Lincoln Center scene has improved, but it’s no East Village. There isn’t really any other good spot quite like this one, serving elevated pub food, and doing it pretty well. We’ll be back.

The Smith (1900 Broadway between 63rd & 64th Streets, Upper West Side)

Food: Elevated American pub food
Service: Good for this sort of place
Ambiance: McNally Lite

Rating: ★
Why? Lincoln Center needed a restaurant like this 

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select

There’s a mini-boomlet in ski-themed bars and restaurants, including the Haven Rooftop in the Sanctuary Hotel, and the Hudson Lodge at the Hudson Hotel, both in midtown. The Minus 5 Ice Bar is scheduled to open in the Hilton in March 2013—odd timing, to say the least.

The Après-ski Chalet at Café Select has less glitzy ambitions. It occupies a charmless back room behind the kitchen, gussied up rather sloppily with outdated ski equipment and old posters. The staff said it’s used as an oyster bar in the summertime, though it’s about the last place I’d go to eat oysters.

 

 

Three of us paid $22 per person, or a total of $66, for a fondue crock with melted cheese, a bowl of bread cubes for dipping, and some crudités.  In contrast, three of you could share the Grande Fondue at Artisanal, which I’m pretty sure is no smaller than Café Select’s version, and is almost certainly better, at $42.

You can add to the basic fondue package, and you should, with plates of meats and sausages, which are more sensibly priced. Still, it’s a lot of money for what felt like about eight dollars worth of food, in a room that doesn’t feel like any kind of Chalet.

The fondue at Café Select won’t change your life. There’s nothing wrong with it either. But there’s a sense of romance implied in the name “Après-ski Chalet” that this spot doesn’t live up to. If you’re suddenly in that fondue mood, go uptown to Artisanal and grab a seat at the bar.

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select (212 Lafayette St & Kenmare St, Soho)

Food: Unmemorable but acceptable fondue and accouterments
Service: Fine, but cash-only
Ambiance: A storage room hurriedly re-decorated as a 1970s chalet

Rating: Not recommended
Why? If you want fondue, there are better and cheaper options

Thalassa

It almost felt like cheating to accept a publicist’s invitation to re-visit Thalassa, my favorite restaurant that no one writes about. I’ve reviewed it twice before (here, here), and visited at least two other times that I didn’t write about. The week after the publicist-arranged visit, I went on my own dime and spent almost $600 (albeit with a number of extra courses sent out).

Like many restaurants, Thalassa re-calibrated after the financial crisis. The “fish by the pound” program, which could seem daunting and confusing to customers, has been dropped. In 2006, I wrote that there were “many” fish entrées over $40. There’s now just one, the Dover Sole ($48), which is excellent. The staff no longer sends you home with a pastry for the next day’s breakfast.

The restaurant remains expensive, with appetizers $14–25 and entrées $29–47 (only one less than $32). But over six or more visits, across ten years, I’ve never had anything less than excellent. The space is refined, quiet, and comfortable—perfect for a business dinner or a romantic night out. I’ve used it for both.

The international wine list is outstanding, with over 12,000 bottles and more than 700 labels, but a list that strong ought to be available online—and it isn’t.

The account below is primarily of the publicist-arranged meal, as my visit the following week was a business event not suited to taking photos.

  

Both meals began with a light cod fritter (above left), served as an amuse. Zuchchini–Eggplant chips ($24; above center), are wonderful: incredibly light and not at all oily. However, it’s only a practical dish if several people are there to share it. There’s an assortment of dips ($10; above right) for spreading on house-made pita.

 

Octopodi ($25; above left) had a terrific, smoky flavor, served with a salad of sun-dried tomato, micro-organic greens, olive oil, and red wine vinaigrette.

Scallops ($22; above right) are a revelation, wrapped in filo dough, served with sheep’s milk butter and a balsamic reduction. I’ve had this dish before: it’s no wonder that it remains on the menu.

All of the whole fish are served basically the same way: lightly char-grilled, with a sprinkling of lemon and olive oil. The photo above is the Lavraki ($36), which appears as Branzino or Loup de Mer on some menus. The Dover Sole, the following week, was similar. The kitchen lets the quality of the ingredients speak for itself, with a minimum of interference.

  

 

The kitchen sent out practically the whole dessert menu (all $12). You won’t go wrong here, but my favorite was the Galaktobouriko–Citrus Custard layered in Filo and drizzled with honey (second row, left).

At ten years old, Thalassa is entering middle age by restaurant standards. It has survived and thrived, which is a tribute to good management. The dining room was not full for either of my mid-week visits, but there is always steady business. Thalassa is a shade less expensive than it used to be, but the quality of the food has not suffered, and the wine list is still first-rate.

I love Thalassa and always did. That none of the city’s professional critics reviewed it always puzzled me. Perhaps now, on its tenth anniversary, they’ll take a fresh look. Thalassa deserves it.

Thalassa (179 Franklin Street between Greenwich and Hudson Streets, TriBeCa)

Food: Greek, primarily seafood
Service: Elegant but understated
Ambiance: A quiet, serene room, reminiscent of the sea

Rating: ★★★
Why? Thalassa has never been less than excellent, over 6+ visits