Shang

Note: Shang closed in October 2011. As of April 2012, the space is Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya.

*

New York is often unkind to imported chefs. New York’s Adam Platt, the city’s most clueless critic, once declared, “If I were them, and I had a successful restaurant elsewhere, I would not come.”

True enough, there have been some well publicized flops, especially where the itinerant chef is not in permanent residence: Lonesome Dove, anyone? Alain Ducasse has failed twice here, and at two current restaurants (Adour and Benoit) he has brought in new chefs after less than a year in business. Yet, had Thomas Keller and Joël Robuchon followed Platt’s advice, we would not have the exquisite Per Se or the sublime L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.

Still, these are tough waters to navigate. So it took a dash of audacity for Susur Lee to close his internationally acclaimed Toronto restaurant, Susur, and open Shang on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Like those other chefs, Lee won’t be here full time (he still has another restaurant in Toronto), though he is a partner at Shang and presumably has a lot riding on its success.

In Toronto, Lee was best known for his “reverse degustation” tasting menu, which “began with robust, heavier dishes and grew progressively lighter as the evening went on.” At Shang, he wisely chooses not to demand that kind of commitment. He offers instead an à la carte menu of tasting plates, most of them (except the soups) suitable for sharing.

The menu has 35 items in various categories, priced $3–29, but most are from $13–20. The “small plates” format is notoriously prone to upselling and over-ordering, but the server’s recommendation of four to six dishes for two people was exactly right—we settled on five, plus a half-order of bread, for a total of $88.50, which is remarkable for food this good.

Shang avoids other pitfalls often encountered at this type of restaurant. Sometimes, plates advertised for sharing are actually difficult to share—e.g., three sliders for two people. Here, every dish was evenly divisible by two. (One eGullet poster, though, was annoyed when Shang served six lamb chops for a party of seven. A server ought to have noticed that.)

The other pitfall is timing. At some restaurants, the plates come out in crashing waves, drowning you in food you’re not yet ready to eat. You often wonder if the kitchen’s convenience has trumped the diner’s. Here too, the staff got it just right. We started with a salad—the immense Singapore Slaw ($16; right)—then two appetizers, and finally two main courses, all paced appropriately.

The service impressed us in other ways. Our first half-bottle of wine was slow to arrive. That shouldn’t happen, but the server handled it the right way: by telling the kitchen to slow down, so that we wouldn’t be drinking water with our appetizers.

We asked for an order of the Whole Wheat Manto Bread ($3; left). Without prompting, the server offered to cut it down to a half-order, as a full portion is more than two people would normally eat. We certainly had no way of knowing this, and many servers wouldn’t be alert enough (or honest enough) to point it out.

That Singapore Slaw comes in a volcano shape (there’s a photo on Gael Greene’s blog) before a server tosses its 19 ingredients tableside. I won’t try to describe the blizzard of flavors; you have to try it. The menu describes it as a portion for two, though four could easily share it.

The Mantou Bread is roasted to order, and the server warned it wouldn’t come out for about 20 minutes. It’s absolutely wonderful, but given that it’s only 37½ cents a slice, I wonder why the restaurant doesn’t just send out an order at the front end of every meal?

Chef Lee’s cuisine has been described as Chinese fusion. Everything we tasted was ablaze in flavor and impeccably prepared. Most of it you would find in no other restaurant.

Vegetable Potato Dumplings ($13; above left) wore a crusty cloak—yes, there are four individual dumplings on that plate. Lobster and Shrimp Croquettes ($18; above right) were in a delicate puffy jacket, each resting on a slow-cooked wedge of daikon.

Mongolian Lamb Chops ($20; above left) were as tender and flavorful as I’ve experienced in any restaurant lately, along with glazed bananas and a chili mint sauce. A cold carrot cardamom chutney would have been better omitted. A Young Garlic Chicken ($20; above right) yielded six pieces of plump meat, cooked perfectly.

I was pleased to see an ample selection of half-bottles of wine, an option far more restaurants should offer. It gave us the chance to sample two halves for a total of $41, less than we normally pay for a full bottle. (Now that I look back on it, I think they charged us less for the wine than the prices listed.)

Though Shang is a casual restaurant, the service team would be at home in a more formal setting. Fresh plates and silverware, and extra serving utensils, are provided for each course. Chopsticks are enamel, rather than the disposable wood most places use. Even the starched white napkins are delivered with a flourish.

Some glitches still need to be worked out. The large bar area was practically deserted. Yet, when I asked for a cocktail list, the inattentive and seemingly bored bartender gave me the bottle service list instead, which listed only two cocktails. Only when we got to the table did we realize the restaurant offers a dozen others. Our bar tab was not transferrable to the dining room.

The dining room itself was about 25 percent full when we arrived at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, and about 75 percent full when we left. That’s probably not as good as they’d like, though not bad in a neighborhood that doesn’t come alive till late.

Shang is located in a luxury boutique hotel, the Thompson LES. The space is as gorgeous as it is comfortable. If you’ve been around a while, you have to pinch yourself before you believe you’re at the formerly desolate corner of Houston and Allen Streets. The restaurant’s advertised address—a separate entrance on Orchard Street—is not yet open. You get there via the hotel entrance on Allen Street.

No restaurant opening today can be assured of success, but if Chef Lee keeps his eye on the kitchen, Shang should do very well indeed.

Shang (187 Orchard Street between Houston & Stanton Streets, Lower East Side)

Food: **
Service: **
Ambiance: **
Overall: **

New Year's Eve at Tailor

Note: Tailor closed in late 2009, after Chef Sam Mason left the restaurant. The space re-opened as the Hawaiian-themed restaurant Lani Kai.

*

Those who spend New Year’s Eve in restaurants, rather than at parties or bars, face a dilemma. Most places charge crazily-inflated prices for dumbed-down versions of their regular menus. I don’t mind paying a little extra, but I want to at least enjoy the food. Three years ago, we were appalled by what Picholine passed off as dinner for $400 a person. We vowed never again to patronize a luxury restaurant on the last night of the year.

I have two criteria for a New Year’s Eve restaurant. First, the price needs to be reasonably close to what you’d pay on any other night. And second, the chef needs to be serving the same kind of food he normally serves. WD~50 passed the test two years ago, so I decided on Tailor—in many ways a similar restaurant.

A nine-course tasting menu was $100 a person (it’s normally $90 for seven courses). Wine pairings were $45 (normally $35). And chef Sam Mason, one of the city’s enfants terribles of molecular gastronomy, wasn’t about to start serving catering-hall food.

(Someone at Tailor can’t count. Though described as a “7 course tasting menu,” nine courses were listed, and nine were served. Click on the image for a larger version.)

I’ve written about Tailor in earlier reviews (here, here). The restaurant had a nearly disastrous opening in late 2007 and took a critical beating. Mason continued to fine-tune the menu, and a popular downstairs bar brought in plenty of customers. I’ve no idea how the 60-seat dining room does on a typical night, but it was full for New Year’s Eve.

Mason is a cross between a classically-trained chef and a mad chemist. He tosses ingredients together in wild combinations. Some of his experiments end in disaster, but everything he serves is perfectly cooked and beautifully plated. Even where we thought he failed (in two of the nine dishes), the technical quality was first-rate.

Mason’s avant garde plates aren’t for everyone. It’s not hearty comfort food; that’s for sure. Although Tailor has improved since Frank Bruni awarded one star in late 2007, I am still not sure the Times critic would be a fan. At WD~50, Wylie Dufresne had to rein in his wilder flights of fancy before getting an upgrade to three stars. Mason just does what he wants, sometimes with reckless disregard for common sense.

I didn’t use the flash last night (though I probably could have gotten away with it), and the low-light dining room is not camera friendly. I’m including the photos anyway, though they’re not as good as I’d like.

1. An oyster (above left) was paired beautifully with kiwi and Thai peppers.

2. Rye-Cured Char (above center), served warm, was balanced by a cool dill cream and slivers of radish.

3. Tiny cubes of warm tongue (above right) shared a plate with beets, pistachio and horseradish.

4. A deconstructed “Baked Potato” (above left) misfired. A crisp curly french fry was positioned like a toast rack for a bacon chip sliced as thin as a human hair, a potato chip, and I believe a parsnip chip. These little chips were lovely, but the potato itself needed more help. A schmear of sour cream underneath it was almost undetectable.

5. “Bouillabaisse” (above center) was another deconstructed classic, but it worked. I think there were five or six different kinds of seafood in it (char, monkfish, razor clam, etc.), along with a small cube of French toast. There was nothing complicated about it, but every piece of fish was cooked perfectly.

6. Waylon Braised Brisket (above right) with sweet potato and cranberry was probably the evening’s straightforward dish, but no less successful for it.

7. A small, delicate sphere of Foie Gras (above left) was decorated with dulce de leche, apple and cashews.

8. Brown Butter Cake (above center) was not so much deconstructed as detonated. Instead of a cake, we got a pile of crumbs with a bitter squash sorbet and a so-called “maple caviar.”

9. Hazelnut Parfait (above right) ended the evening on a strong note.

For a final surprise—a play on the traditional petits-fours—we had a chocolate truffle filled with cotton candy.

The wine pairings were pedestrian, as they often are. Of the seven glasses served, the two most successful weren’t wine: a champagne-and-gin cocktail called a “French 75,” served with the oyster; and a nut brown ale served with the “Baked Potato.” The others were generic and mostly forgettable. Several of the wines were served long before the food they were meant to pair with, and the “Bouillabaisse” was served with no wine at all.

Aside from that, service was very good. I loved the bread service, with two different fresh breads and soft butter. Servers did a good job of explaining Mason’s unorthodox creations. Plates and glasses were promptly cleared. There were some long pauses between courses, which I assume was by design, as the ninth plate came out a shade before midnight. In all, the meal lasted just over 2½ hours.

The tasting menu format works to Mason’s benefit. Some of his crazier ideas are fun when they last for just a few bites, but they might not sustain interest when served in larger portions. Over a nine-course menu, you won’t mind if a few courses aren’t successful. In a standard three-course meal, even one dud is unacceptable, and there’s a decent chance of that happening, especially as it’s hard to guess what you’re getting from the printed descriptions.

We find Tailor unique and indispensable. If you have your doubts, the regular menu offers several ways to sample Mason’s cuisine without committing to a full meal. For instance, a three-course dessert tasting, which two can easily share, is just $28. Pair it with Eben Freeman’s excellent cocktails, and you’ve got avant-garde cuisine on a recession budget.

Tailor (525 Broome Street between Sixth Avenue & Thompson Street, SoHo)

Food: **
Service: **
Ambiance: **
Overall: **

A. J. Maxwell's Steakhouse

A. J. Maxwell’s Steakhouse arrived during the steakhouse glut of 2006, when new entries in the genre were opening every other week. Critics ignored the place, as there was no celebrity or concept to distinguish it from all of the others.

The location has a bit of history. In the 1960s and ’70s, it housed Forum of the 12 Caesars, where waiters donned togas, and praetorian helmets served as ice buckets. Elaborate faux Roman mosaics, which more recent restaurants had covered over, were rediscovered during the renovation. At A. J. Maxwell’s, you can see them again, in all their glory.

A few months ago, we dropped in for a pre-theater meal. It’s an attractive, comfortable space, and service is better than in most classic steakhouses. The menu is expensive, even by steakhouse standards, no doubt reflecting midtown rents. There are nearly a dozen seafood and fish entrées, and they don’t seem to be afterthoughts, unlike, say, the salmon at Peter Luger.

Thick-cut Canadian Bacon in the Peter Luger mold ($3.50; above left) was just fine. Dry-aged ribeye wasn’t bad, but at $47 it needed to be terrific. I suspect it was USDA choice (the default assumption when “prime” isn’t stated), as I didn’t feel or taste the marbling a first-class ribeye ought to have.

A. J. Maxwell’s offers a civilized midtown meal, but steak conoisseurs won’t be putting it on their regular rotation.

A. J. Maxwell’s Steakhouse (57 W. 48th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

Food: *
Service: *½
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *

Eleven Madison Park

We had an excellent meal at Eleven Madison Park in early August. I didn’t note every dish, and it’s obviously too late to remember them all, so I’ll keep this brief.

This is a controversial restaurant. In May of this year, Danyelle Freeman gave it five stars in the Daily News (the only restaurant so honored during her brief tenure there). And Frank Bruni said that the new restaurant Corton “joins the constantly improving Eleven Madison Park as a restaurant hovering just below the very summit of fine dining in New York.” If Bruni promotes any restaurant to four stars in 2009, as I believe he is itching to do, I have to think EMP is one of the few real candidates.

But Eleven Madison Park has no Michelin stars, probably the most glaring omission from the French guide’s otherwise very sensible advice. Michelin skeptics cite the snub as evidence that the guide should be disregarded. Still, it’s a fact that this restaurant lacks the near-universal acclaim of, say, Le Bernardin or Jean Georges. Even Bruni, in a year-end blog post, noted that he had an uneven meal there in the fall.

Public adoration seems to be undimmed. Eleven Madison is one of the few restaurants that has continued to raise prices, and get away with it. The prix fixe is now $88 for three courses, and the two tasting menus are now $125 and $175, the latter being one of the most expensive of its kind in the city.

You can count us as fans of Eleven Madison Park. After three visits, we have never yet been disappointed. In August, we had the prix fixe. I was especially eager to try the duck for two. It was wonderful, but I do prefer to have it carved tableside, as they did at Le Périgord. When they whisk it away to the kitchen, the plates that come back never quite seem to add up to a whole bird.

As our meal was five months ago, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Canapés (left); Amuse-bouche (center); Burgundy (right)

Appetizers

The duck as presented (left), and served (center), with leg confit on the side (right)

Cheese course

Palate cleanser and petits-fours

Eleven Madison Park (11 Madison Avenue at 24th Street, Flatiron District)

Food: ***½
Service: ***½
Ambiance: ***½
Overall: ***½

BarBao

[Savory Cities]

Note: BarBao closed in March 2010, the latest restaurant the love-’em-and leave-’em chef has abandoned. It will become a second branch of Marc Murphy’s Ditch Plains.

*

BarBao is the latest production of Vietnamese chef Michael Bao Huynh. He has made the rounds, to put it charitably, but he is a partner here, so perhaps he’ll finally stay put. I loved his cooking at Mai House, and there is certainly no doubt about his talent.

The space that was formerly Rain has been gutted and beautifully renovated. There’s a large bar, a spacious dining room, yet another bar, and a quiet space in the back with seating so comfortable that you’ll want to take it home with you.

The major critics haven’t made it here yet, but Cuozzo in the Post, DiGregorio in the Village Voice, and Gael Greene at Insatiable all liked it. Andrea Strong had a muted reaction by her standards, though she found the décor—get this!—sexy. I’ll alert the media.

Instead of appetizers and entrées, the menu offers “Small Plates” ($8–14) and “Big Plates” ($16–27), all served family style. The plates of whatever size are designed for sharing, which is the way to go. The cuisine, though nominally Vietnamese, is very liberally interpreted.

Most reviewers have mentioned the Daikon Duck Hash ($14; above left). The concept is beguiling: what’s not to love about duck fat and a fried egg? But we found the duck fat cloying, and the few slices of real duck meat seemed too skimpy.

An Octopus special ($14; above right) was the star of the evening.

Mashima Sirloin ($24; above left) got a mixed reaction. I considered it a success, but my girlfriend found the meat a bit too tough. The accompanying salad, to our surprise, was served cold (by design).

Lemongrass Guinea Hen ($17; above right), another special, was terrific. It had enough red pepper for a three-alarm fire, but we were also impressed by the tenderness of the meat.

Had the server told us that the Guinea Hen came with rice, we probably wouldn’t have ordered a side of Duck Fried Rice ($9; below left). Still, it was very good fried rice, and had more duck in it than the Daikon Duck Hash we had earlier.

The wine list isn’t lengthy, but we were pleased with a 2000 Valdrinal Tempranillo, which at $44 was one of the better wine deals we’ve seen this year.

Like most restaurants these days, BarBao needs to work hard for its customers’ affections. It was about half full on a Friday night, which probably covered the rent, but isn’t good enough to stay in business. Service was attentive, if perhaps a bit ingratiating, and there must have been three or four manager types who kept dropping by, along with the chef himself, to make sure we were enjoying ourselves—which we were.

The two best items we had were specials, which tells me that chef Huynh is still experimenting, and that return visits will be rewarded with new things to try. The food wasn’t perfect, but much of it was very good, and the bill for two was a very reasonable $120 before tax and tip.

Bar Bao (100 W. 82nd Street at Columbus Avenue, Upper West Side)

Food: *½
Service: *½
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *½

Keens Steakhouse

I had an errand to run near Herald Square yesterday. Keens Steakhouse is the only decent restaurant nearby, so I dropped in for a light supper. A bit before 6:00 p.m., they were already nearly full, which is remarkable for a restaurant this enormous that is not in the theater district. Had I arrived just a few minutes later, I would have had to wait for a table.

There’s a casual “pub” at Keens that doesn’t take reservations. You can order from the over-priced dining room menu, but the pub also has its own menu that, if not cheap, is at least reasonable. I’ve written about Keens a number of times, so I’ll get right to the beef.

Prime Rib Hash ($16.50; left) caught my eye. It’s basically a play on corned beef hash, with diced prime rib as the main ingredient, and a fried egg replacing the usual gravy. In the interest of science, I had to try it.

The verdict? It’s pretty good, though surely not meant to be dinner on its own. Four people could share it as an appetizer. It’s that big. So naturally, I ate the whole thing myself (and nothing else).

For its steaks, Keens charges premium prices for a second-tier product. The décor is one-of-a-kind, but you always have the feeling that the staff is thinking about the next thousand customers.

They do have a few dishes no one else is serving, especially the incomparable mutton chop, to which I can now add the Prime Rib Hash.

Keens Steakhouse (72 W. 36th Street, east of Sixth Avenue, West Midtown)

Food: *½
Service: *
Ambiance: **
Overall: *½

Belcourt

[Metromix]

Note: Matthew Hamilton left Belcourt in December 2011, and the restaurant closed in 2012. It was replaced by Calliope, by Waverly Inn chef Eric Korsh and his wife, Ginevra Iverson.

*

Matthew Hamilton is a chef you want to root for. His two previous gigs fell apart for reasons not his fault. At Uovo, he couldn’t get a liquor license. At Pair of 8’s, he arrived too late to save a restaurant already on life support.

Things are going better at Belcourt, where he’s into his second year and appears to have a solid East Village neighborhood following, supplemented by a few folks like me who are curious enough to make the trek.

He’s got a lovely space, with spectacular picture windows looking out on East 4th Street and Second Avenue. A striking old-fashioned bar, distressed mirrors, a pressed tin ceiling and an antique tile floor suggest the kind of unfancy bistro you dream about but seldom find any more.

Belcourt stayed off most of the critics’ radar. In the Times, Frank Bruni gave it the Dining Briefs treatment, noting that “this charming, happy restaurant…wants to hit your comfort-food sensors.” That’s accurate.

The menu notes with laconic modesty, “Everything that can be made in house, is.” That includes a variety of sausages, cured meats and pâtés. There’s also the usual comment about local organic farmers and organically-raised meats, which is a fixture on menus all over town.

We assume bread (served in a bucket) is home-made, along with the butter, which was soft the way we like it. A selection of the house charcuterie ($16; above right) was more than ample for two to share as an appetizer.

Prices are gentle on the pocketbook, with soups and salads at $7–9, starters $8–15, mains $12–24, and sides $5–6.

The pork chop ($24; above left) was as large as a truncheon and very good too, but the vegetables underneath it seemed dull and over-salted. My girlfriend thought the burger (above right) was one of the best she’s had in a long time. The bun, naturally, is house-made. It’s a bargain at $12 (cheese and onions $2 extra apiece), and the fries that come along with it are perfect.

The wine list is too expensive, with no reds I could trust below $50. I don’t care how high the list goes, but a restaurant at Belcourt’s overall price level needs to go a lot lower.

The food at Belcourt is very well made, service in hearty portions and at low prices. I can’t quite call it destination cuisine, but it’s a place I’m glad to have around. Our dinner here was one of the more enjoyable inexpensive meals we’ve had in a while.

“This,” my girlfriend said, “is what Secession should have been.”

*

Update: Belcourt has brought its wine list in line with the humble atmosphere. On a recent visit, a respectable Corbières was available at $31. That is much more like it. Bone marrow tacos ($10) are one of the strangest dishes I’ve had, but they were excellent. The pork chop (now $21) remains excellent.

Belcourt (84 E. 4th Street at Second Avenue, East Village)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *

Casa Mono

Owning the city’s most popular Italian restaurants wasn’t good enough for Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. So five years ago, they branched out into Spanish cuisine. Sure enough, they mastered that too.

Pig’s Feet Croquetas with Cranberries ($15)Casa Mono was an instant hit, winning two stars from Marian Burros in the Times and a 25 food rating on Zagat, the highest of any Spanish restaurant in the city. It has taken me a while to get here because the place is always packed at the times I want to eat. Finally, I landed a Friday night 7:00 p.m. reservation.

Our dinner was almost scuppered when my girlfriend got stuck on a train. The hostess wouldn’t seat an incomplete party, and there is no waiting space inside this cramped restaurant: nada. She not-so-gently suggested that I mosey over to Bar Jamón, the wine bar next door, “and we’ll call when your party arrives.” But I’d already spent an hour at Bar Jamón and knew there was no space there either. So I shuffled my feet at the doorway, checking my watch.

Sepia a la Plancha with Salsa Verde ($15)My girlfriend arrived at 7:19 p.m., four minutes too late, according to the hostess. “I can offer you a table until 8:30 or seats at the bar without a time limit.” We took the bar seats, which may be the best way to experience Casa Mono. Watching the open kitchen just a few feet away is a pleasure in itself: it runs like clockwork in an insanely small space. You get to see a much wider variety of the gorgeous plates coming out, and the craftsmanship that goes into them.

Skirt Steak with Onion Mermelada ($16)There are some cuisines that, inexplicably, seem to be found only in casual settings (at least in New York), and Spanish is one of them. Alex Ureña tried to serve three-star food at Ureña, but it never caught on, and he had to dial it down a notch, renaming the place Pamplona. Batali and Bastianich, blessed with a keener sense of the culinary moment, made Casa Mono casual from the beginning, and never looked back.

Fried Cauliflower ($9)The wine list, though, is a serious document. If there were a four-star Spanish restaurant, it could have the same list without changing a thing. You’ll find large-format bottles with four-digit prices, but also real value below $50. There was a slight hiccup when I ordered a 2004 at $45, and the server returned with an ’05, apparently not realizing the difference. Fear not, said the hastily summoned sommelier: the 2005’s are just as good, and according to some connoisseurs, maybe better.

Confit Goat with Saffron Honey ($19)On the all-tapas menu, you’ll pay anywhere from $5–25 a plate, with most in the teens. A selection of six plates plus a shared dessert brought our food tab to $102. You could probably get by with a little less than that, but not by much.

Batali has never worried about challenging the diner. You’ll find pig’s feet, lamb’s tongue, rabbit loin, cock’s combs, bone marrow, sweetbreads, duck hearts, and tripe. But you’ll also find safe choices like mussels, skirt steak, and lamb. Pork Belly Fabada with Horseradish ($19)We saw a lot of skirt steak going onto the griddle, but not one order of tripe. Even Marian Burros declined to try it. A fried cheese made of calves head and feet has been dropped since Burros visited, showing that even offal has its limits.

I’m not going to comment on most of the dishes individually, but they were all terrific, except for over-cooked pork belly. The photos don’t do the food justice, but they were the best I could manage in a low-light setting where flash wasn’t appropriate.

Mono Sundae ($9)

Desserts are sometimes a throwaway at this kind of restaurant, but we adored the Mono Sundae, a plum brandy ice cream with arrope and almonds. We observed other diners in phases of rapture over their desserts, so this is apparently not the only great one.

The food at Casa Mono arguably deserves a better setting. It is cramped and rushed. Although we sat at the bar, even the tables seemed small and tightly packed.

I’m not the type to spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine, but even if I were, this isn’t the place where I’d choose to do it. But for five years diners have either forgiven the setting or perhaps even embraced it. Food this good can make up for many an inconvenience.

Casa Mono (52 Irving Place at E. 17th Street, Union Square/Gramercy)

Food: **½
Service: *½
Ambiance: *
Overall: **

Bar Jamón

Bar Jamón — literally “Ham Bar” — is the front end of the Batali–Bastianich Spanish double-header, the other being the restaurant next door, Casa Mono. The two share a wine list and prep space, and some guides describe them as one restaurant. Even the owners have trouble deciding: some of their literature lists the two places separately, but they share a common website.

Anyhow, it’s a tiny space that holds about 25 people, including those standing at the bar, where there are no stools. There are light tapas, generally in the $7–11 range, along with the crazily expensive Spanish hams that give the place its name. These set you back $15 or $30 a portion.

The star is the 24-page all-Spanish wine list, probably the best of its kind in New York. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone would plunk down $1,950 for a magnum of 1989 Vega Sicilia and then drink it on bar stools. But if you want it, Bar Jamón has got it. Even for more modest budgets, Bar Jamón has plenty to choose from, with bottles as low as $30.

Like all of the Mario Batali–Joe Bastianich restaurants, wine by the glass is served in a quartino or, in Spanish, a cuarto, which is good for about a glass and a half. In that context, the $12–25 price range is fair, and I was happy with both that I tried — the 2005 Mustiguillo ($15) and the 2006 Jiménez-Landi ($17).

As we had reservations at Casa Mono afterwards, I didn’t order any food, and the staff didn’t try to sell me any. The munchies here aren’t expensive, but unless you order some, you aren’t going to get anything extra—not even so much as a bowl of nuts. It appeared that about half the patrons ordered food, and half didn’t.

Bar Jamón serves as Casa Mono’s “waiting room,” though it’s too successful for its own good. By 6:00 p.m. on a snowy Friday evening, Bar Jamón was nearly full. I didn’t mind standing at the bar and admiring the bottles perched there. If you want a seat, expect to wait.

Bar Jamón (125 E. 17th Street east of Irving Place, Union Square/Gramercy)

Wine: ★★★
Service: ★
Ambiance: ★
Overall: ★★

Macao Trading Co.

[Horine via Eater]

Note: This is a review under chef David Waltuck, who is no longer at the restaurant. His replacement is Josh Blakely. We also note that Macao now has a prominent sign—which it didn’t when this review was written.

*

Most restaurants want to be found. Macao Trading Co. takes the opposite approach. It’s on a crazily obscure block in TriBeCa, without so much as a sign to let you know it’s there. The door looks like a service entrance. Even if you’re looking for Macao Trading Co., you’re liable to miss it—as I did the first time. If you just happen to be walking by, you’ll keep on walking.

That’s not stopping people from patronizing Macao Trading Co., which was doing a brisk bar business even at 6:00 p.m. last night. They serve food and drinks until 4:00 a.m. in an allegedly “semi-private lounge” downstairs called the Opium Den. There’s a built-in clientele, thanks to the same owners’ acclaimed cocktail bar cum restaurant, Employees Only, another peculiar place that makes virtue out of the perception of inaccessibility.

The story is completely different at the perpetually-empty Dennis Foy next door, as it was at Foy’s short-lived predecessor, Lo Scalco, which not even a star from the Michelin Guide could rescue. There aren’t any “bad blocks” in Manhattan, but some are bad for certain types of restaurants. In this place, Macao Trading Co. fits right in.

The restaurant is named for Macao, a former Portuguese colony on the Chinese mainland. The décor is tricked out like the 19th-century trading warehouse of our dreams. If Disney had a Macao ride, it would look like this. The spectacular back-lit bar is the visual highlight, and it’s the culinary highlight too. The cocktail list is impressive; the food feels like snacks that are meant to dilute the alcohol.

David Waltuck of Chanterelle is responsible for the fusion menu. Many dishes are shown in pairs, where you can choose either the Portuguese or the Chinese version of the same ingredient, such as meatballs, prawns, or ribs. Each table is set with a knife and fork, and chopsticks.

There are appetizers and entrées, but the menu seems to be evolving more towards small plates and snacks. The server steered me in that direction, suggesting I order two of the small plates. That wasn’t quite enough for a meal, so I later ordered a third, followed by dessert.

Mackerel Escabeche ($8; above left) was like a deconstructed ceviche, served cold. It tasted fresh and mildly tart, but slightly bland. Portuguese lamb balls filled with cheese ($8; above right) were tender, but overpowered by a flood of tomato sauce. The identical green-flecked leaves seem to be the default seasoning for both dishes.

Mushroom croquettes ($12; above left) benefited from a generous helping of truffle oil, but I thought the barren plate needed something to dip them in. Fried milk ($7; above right) was one dish that didn’t need any more help. A dusting of cinammon and a light honey citrus salad on the side worked perfectly together.

The cocktails are impressive, though expensive at $14 apiece. I’ll leave it to the cocktail specialists to describe them. The wine list seems to be an afterthought. There was just one token red available by the glass, and they served it in a water glass.

Service was attentive, though I was there quite early and had their mostly undivided attention. I especially appreciated the server’s modest ordering advice, as restaurants that specialize in small plates usually try to sell you more than you need.

All four of the items I tried struck me as enjoyable complements to the cocktail menu, but I wouldn’t come here for the food alone.

Macao Trading Co. (311 Church Street between Walker & Lispenard Sts., TriBeCa)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *