Gray Kunz and the Short Rib Derby

 
Left: Café Gray; Right: Grayz

Note: Café Gray and Grayz have both closed. Café Gray will be replaced by a clone of A Voce. Grayz re-opened in January 2009 as Atria, with Gray Kunz’s former chef de cuisine, Martin Brock, as executive chef. After four short months, it bit the dust.

Café Gray will shortly be closing, a victim of sky-high rents at the Time Warner Center. That will leave the talented chef, Gray Kunz, with just one restaurant, Grayz, which struggles with problems of its own.

Linking both restaurants is one of this town’s great chefs and his destination dish, the legendary braised short ribs. He served a version of the dish at the four-star Lespinasse, and it anchors the menus at both Café Gray and Grayz.

Recently, I tried the short ribs at both places. I wondered: how are they different? how are they alike? I also wanted to bid farewell to Café Gray, and to see if Grayz is as good as some message board enthusiasts say it is.

* * * 

At Café Gray, one can’t help escaping the glimmer of what might have been. In previous visits, I’ve never had the slightest doubt about the food: Kunz can cook rings around anyone. But the room: oh, the room! It’s noisy and ugly, and it interposes an open kitchen between diners and the world’s best view.

If you’re going to visit Café Gray, its final weeks are the best time. I found it mostly empty on a Wednesday evening. There’s no escaping the bone-headed design, but at least I had a pleasant supper without contracting a migraine.

 
Left: amuse-bouche; Right: petits-fours

Service was polished and seamless. The amuse-bouche was a small spoonful of chickpea yogurt, and there was a nice plate of petits-fours at the end.

I left Café Gray with a bit of sadness. This restaurant should have been, could have been, so much better.

* * *

Grayz is living proof of what happens when a promising restaurant botches its opening. The trouble here was that Kunz couldn’t decide if he was opening a bar that served snacks or a restaurant with a bar. The muddled concept was confusing, and early reviews weren’t favorable.

The menu has been revised, and it makes more sense now. The entrées, which numbered just three when I visited in the early days, have now been expanded to six. Whether you want a full meal or just to…well, “graze”—Grayz can accommodate you.

The interior design betrays indecision about the concept. You still feel like you’re in a bar that serves snacks, but the service is very good, and the food is first-class. Think of it as an elegant restaurant where the bar is closer than you’d like it to be, like a social misfit elbowing in on your privacy.

Despite its flaws, Grayz deserves your attention.

Unfortunately, it’s hard for a restaurant to get the word out after the early review cycle has concluded. The tables were less than half occupied on a Wednesday evening, and according to reports I’ve read elsewhere, that’s not unusual. The GM came over after my meal, greeted me warmly, and gave me his card. Grayz is still trying to cultivate a following.

 
Left: Bread service; Right: Weisswurst

To begin, Grayz offers the same wonderful spears of warm bread as before, with a Lebanese yogurt, spice, and olive oil dressing. I was better behaved this time: I stopped after only one.

I ordered the Weisswurst ($12), or German sausage, which comes with a homemade brown mustard. I’m not a connoisseur, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I loved the delicate casings, but the mustard was definitely needed, as the meat didn’t have enough flavor on its own. The bright-red cast-iron serving dish got in the way of my knife and fork.

To close, the petit-four was a hollow cylinder of crisp brown chocolate on a bed of sugar.

The cocktail menu here is a cut above the norm. I tried two of them, the Badminton Cup and the Aviation, both $14. My table was close enough to the bar that I could hear the conversation between the bartender and one of his customers—a post-modern meditation on the “art of cocktails.” I thought, “This is so 2008.”

* * * 

So, what about the short ribs?

 
Short ribs at Café Gray (left) and Grayz (right)

As you can see from the photos, they are quite similar. The manager at Grayz said he believes the meat is prepared identically. At Café Gray, it’s served on a bed of soft grits; at Grayz, it’s creamed spinach. The price is $41 at Café Gray, $39 at Grayz.

If I could have only one before I die, I’d choose the Grayz version. It was served on the bone; at Café Gray, there was no bone. At Grayz, it was slightly more tender, and spinach goes better with beef than grits. You could argue, though, that $39 is awfully dear for short ribs, even Gray Kunz’s.

* * * 

Kunz says that Café Gray will re-open at another location—rumored to be the current Oceana space.. He’s known to be a slow-poke, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for it. Wherever he goes, his first act should be to fire himself as an interior designer. But while we wait for Café Gray’s reincarnation, Grayz will be quietly chugging along.

Give Grayz a try. You could be pleasantly surprised.

Update: Grayz will close on August 10, 2008, for a facelift, re-opening on September 1. The downstairs catering space will become a proper restaurant, and the upstairs space—reviewed here—will presumably become what it was meant to be: a lounge.

Grayz (13–15 West 54th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Spitzer's Corner

When I heard that Wayne Nish was serving “three-star bar food” at a Lower East Side gastropub, I was a little skeptical.

Guess what? He has pulled it off.

Spitzer’s Corner, which opened in August 2007, had a tough first nine months, with a revolving door in the kitchen. Nish is the fourth chef. The early reviews found his predecessors’ menus underwhelming, and it’s tough get the critics back for a second look.

Wayne Nish

They should come back, because Nish’s menu at Spitzer’s corner is remarkable. Although Nish is billed only as a “consultant,” his hand-picked chef de cuisine, Sung Park, has serious credentials, with stints under Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Didier Virot, and Laurent Tourondel under his belt. He was also Nish’s chef de cuisine for the short-lived second act at Varietal.

And Park is no absentee chef: he was there on a Saturday night.

When I think about the food here, the closest comparison that comes to mind is Momofuku Ssäm Bar. Both restaurants offer sophisticated cooking with luxury ingredients in a laid-back, pared down environment. Park seemed taken aback when I mentioned the similarity, as David Chang’s food has an Asian tang, while Nish and Park come from the French tradition. But once I explained myself, he seemed to agree that the analogy was valid.

The foodies haven’t descended on Spitzer’s Corner as they’ve done at the Momofuku restaurants, but it’s not struggling either. The Saturday evening business was fairly brisk. The restaurant seats 130 and is open daily for lunch and dinner, with food served until 2:00 a.m. There is also Saturday and Sunday brunch.

The menu is inexpensive. A section called “Bar Snacks and Sides” features eight items priced from $4–10, while a section called “Plates,” corresponding roughly to appetizers and entrées, has fifteen selections from $9–17. Most items are suitable for sharing.

The aesthetic is pared down, with most of the seating at long communal tables. (There are a few two-tops.) The wood that lines the walls is alleged to have been made from reclaimed pickle barrels. There are broad picture windows, which on a warm evening are open to the outside.

The name, by the way, comes from a dress shop that formerly occupied the space. It has nothing to do with Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York.

They don’t have a hard liquor license, but there are 40 beers on tap and another 40 in bottles. They’re listed on the menu with brief tasting notes, as you’d find on a wine list (“Epic malts, spicy notes w/ hints of baker’s choc”).

They aren’t just the obvious beers, either. There couldn’t be many places in town serving Delirium Tremens, Victory Golden Monkey, Stone Arrogant Bastard, or Rogue Dead Guy Ale. The servers are like sommeliers, recommending beers that pair well with the food you’ve ordered.

The wine list is more modest, though the server insisted it should be taken seriously too: five reds and seven whites, all available by the bottle or the glass, with the most expensive bottles priced at $36 (not counting Veuve Clicquot Brut, $110).

Full disclosure: We dined at Spitzer’s Corner at a publicist’s invitation, and our meal was comped. We sampled considerably more food than any two sane people would order on their own. However, as I always do, I am calling the shots as I seem them.

I’ll be haunted for a long time by the “French Kisses” ($10), five luscious armagnac prunes filled with a liquified foie gras mousse. This was a dish that could come out of the kitchen at Per Se or Jean Georges, and it wouldn’t seem out of place. Prunes and foie gras make startling bedfellows, but we had the same observation several times during our long meal.

 

Nish works similar magic with a salad of warm Spinach and Shitake Mushrooms ($6), in which the startling extra ingredient is a white soy sauce.

I was eager to try the Duck Fat Potato Cake ($6), but it was the evening’s only dud. There’s plenty going on in this dish too, with confits of shallot, garlic, rosemary and thyme, but it was too dry. I expected the duck fat to be more flavorful, but I really couldn’t taste it.

  

We loved the bracing, bright flavors of a Red & Yellow Tomato Salad ($9), with goat cheese, marcona almonds, balsamic vinegar, and watermelon-chili dressing. Even better was Mac & Cheese ($9), which the menu says is made from local artisanal Saxelby cheese and topped with herbed duck cracklings.

A Sweetbread Po’ Boy was just fine, but the sandwiches that came next surpassed it.

We had the Roasted Pork Belly Sandwich ($11), the Warm Duck Confit Sandwich ($12) and the Soft-Shell Crab Po’ Boy ($15). We couldn’t agree with was the best, as all had their merits. They all benefited from Nish’s playful combination of unexpected ingredients. The pork belly was paired with a red wine sauerkraut, the duck with pickled daikon radish, the crab with housemade aioli. My girlfriend thought that the tempura batter on the crab was especially successful, while I was partial to the pork–sauerkraut combination.

 

Halibut, at $17, is the most expensive item on the menu. It was the second item we had (after the “French Kisses”) that could come out any three or four-star kitchen with no one batting an eyelash. It was certainly as good as the wonderful halibut we enjoyed the night before at Café Boulud. A lemon walnut crust imparts a tangy crispness to the perfectly roasted fish.

Our stomachs had by now reached our limit, so we barely tasted the Herbed Roast Chicken, but it seemed to be just about perfect, with (according to the menu) herbes de provence and jus roti. Once again, take note of the price: a half chicken for $12.

 

The last item we tried was the Kobe Burger ($16). There’s a bit of dishonesty here, as it’s actually American Kobe beef, and strictly speaking, that’s a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, where else is any kind of Kobe beef (even if it’s Wagyu) available for $16.

We aren’t the hamburger experts, but my girlfriend said, “This is the best hamburger ever.” A blogger on Serious Eats disagrees with us, but to our taste it was excellent: a nice charred exterior, a perfect medium rare inside, and a buttery brioche bun. To be sure, the real Kobe beef would have more marbling, but this was impressive enough, and what do you want for $16? At the Old Homstead, the Kobe burger is $41, and I don’t know if their menu is any more accurate about its origin than Spitzer’s.

For the record, Spitzer’s also serves a trio of sliders for $9 and a short rib burger for $10. Both are available with cheese, but when a customer asked for cheese on the Kobe burger, the server declined. There are culinary standards to be upheld, even for hamburgers.

Our server was knowledgeable, attentive and friendly. There are paper napkins, but silverware was replaced after every course. We were clearly getting the VIP treatment, so you can take that for what it’s worth. But there’s no denying the attempt here to serve “pub food” several orders of magnitude better than the norm. Word of mouth seems to be catching on, but only time will tell if this level can be maintained.

There are some limitations, besides the spartan surroundings and communal tables. At present there is no dessert menu or even coffee. Some people would consider the lack of cocktails a drawback, but with 80 beers available no one should go thirsty here.

Full credit is due to the persistent owners of Spitzer’s Corner, who could have given up on their gastronomic ambitions and relied on their beer menu. Instead, they snagged Wayne Nish and Sung Park, who have turned this pub into a destination.

Spitzer’s Corner (101 Rivington Street at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side)

Café Boulud

[Kalina via Eater]

Unlike the professional critics, I don’t have the time, the inclination, or the pocketbook to pay multiple visits to a restaurant before venturing an opinion. My posts are snapshots of individual meals. I can’t help it if my impressions are either much better, or much worse, than the prevailing “conventional wisdom.” I may have caught the restaurant on an unusually good or bad day. I might, by dumb luck, just happen to have ordered the best couple of dishes on an uneven menu, or the worst ones on a very good menu.

Sometimes, though, I have the distinct impression that a restaurant deserves a second chance. And that was what I thought after a friend and I had an exceedingly dull meal at Café Boulud two years ago. It’s not that we had anything bad, but that, for the price point, the food struck us as uninspired. There were also some service miscues.

In its ten-year history, Café Boulud has probably had some ups and downs. It seems to be a proving ground for chefs, who benefit from Daniel Boulud’s mentorship and move on to better things. The opening chef, Alex Lee, was around just long enough to win three stars in the Times from Ruth Reichl. Andrew Carmellini had a six-year run (1999–2005) before leaving to open A Voce. Boulud then promoted Carmellini’s sous chef, Bertrand Chemel, who won three stars from Frank Bruni and promptly departed for Falls Church, Virginia.

Gavin Kaysen has been running the kitchen since December 2007, though presumably with plenty of input from Boulud. The menu, as it has always been, is divided into four sections: La Tradition (French classics), Le Voyage (world cuisine), La Saison (seasonal items) and Le Potager (vegetarian choices). The pattern persists through dessert and even the cocktail menu.

Prices are about par for a three-star restaurant, with appetizers $16–28 (most in the high teens), entrées $27–55 (most in the $30s), and desserts $10–24 (most $14).

 
“Red Snapper” cocktail (left); Amuse-bouche (right)

My girlfriend and I tried a couple of the seasonal cocktails. The terrific, labor-intensive “Red Snapper” was made with jalapeño-infused gin, celery ice cubes, and tomato juice poured tableside from a glass caraffe. My girlfriend had a Rhubarb Mojito. They were both $12, which is extremely reasonable in a town where cocktails north of $15 are increasingly common.

 
Spring Risotto (left); English Pea Raviolini (right)

Our appetizers, chosen from the potager section of the menu, were full of bright flavors of the season: Spring Risotto ($19) with ramps and watercress; English Pea Ravioli ($18) with bacon, pea leaves, and a sherry-shallot jus.

 
Butter Poached Halibut (left); Greek Lamb Trio (right)

I loved the soft, buttery Poached Halibut ($36) from the Saison section of the menu, which featured an excellent supporting cast of whole grain mustard sausage, tiny potato gnocchi, English peas, and tomato fondue.

The Greek Lamb Trio ($41), from the Voyage section, wasn’t as exciting as the other items we had. The roasted loin was lovely, but as girlfriend noted, “This isn’t really very Greek.” Oddly enough, both Times critics (Reichl and Bruni) found Le Voyage the weakest portion of the menu here; this has been true both times I visited.

 
Rhubarb & Almond Tart (left); Madeleines (right)

We shared a Rhubarb & Almond Tart ($14), and to finish, the server dropped off a folded napkin full of warm , delicious sugar-coated madeleines.

The wine list has a section dedicated to bottles $60 and under. This part of the list seems to have shrunk since my last visit, but there are still some wonderful finds. The sommelier suggested the 2004 Stéphane Tissot Singulier ($60), made from the seldom encountered Trousseau grape from the Arbois region of France. We were struck by its light, fruity texture, resembling a pinot noir. We appreciated the recommendation, as we’d have never have found it on our own.

I wouldn’t choose Café Boulud for a special occasion, but rather, for food that is reliably excellent. The dining room is lovely and fairly quiet, though it also has the feel of an Upper East Side neighborhood place. One family was there with a two-year-old, and the staff dutifully produced a high chair. Fortunately, he was well behaved.

The service is polished and elegant, with a high ratio of staff to diners. Sometimes they get a bit confused, as when one asked us for our cocktail order after another had already taken it. Our cocktail order took a bit too long to be filled. It was a good thing I delayed our order, as otherwise the appetizers would have arrived before the wine was poured. These are minor complaints, and didn’t at all detract from our excellent meal.

There aren’t enough days in the week to give every restaurant a second chance, but Café Boulud is one that deserved it. With Gavin Kaysen in the kitchen, Café Boulud is in good hands.

Café Boulud (20 E. 76th Street between Fifth and Madison Avenues, Upper East Side)

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

Shun Lee Cafe

Shun Lee, is the dean of the pre-Lincoln Center restaurants. It has been serving haute Chinese classics since 1981, when Mimi Sheraton awarded two stars in the Times.

The original space was apparently “dim and dowdy.” It received a snazzy makeover in 1985, but Bryan Miller found the food inconsistent, demoting it to one star in 1987. For the record, Shun Lee’s sister restaurant, Shun Lee Palace, which has been around since 1971, and serves the same menu, still carries two stars, courtesy of Ruth Reichl in 1995.

Shortly after the 1985 makeover, the front dining room was converted into a separate Dim Sum-themed restaurant called Shun Lee Cafe. The main restaurant and the cafe are separately reservable on OpenTable, but they share the kitchen and restroom areas.

Shun Lee Cafe offers an abbreviated version of the full restaurant menu, but when we visited the other day, we had Dim Sum on our minds.

Dim Sum comes on a cart, which a server wheels around the restaurant. There are only a few items at a time on the cart. This keeps the food fresh, but you don’t really know what’s coming next. The server just tells you what she has; either you want some, or you wait until next time the cart comes around. After she serves you, she scribbles on the back of a card. The more scribbles at the end of the meal, the more you pay.

Most items come in pairs, making them well suited to sharing. We had eight servings for a total of $54, which averaged out to $6.75 each. With two cocktails ($10 ea.) and two desserts ($6 ea.), the total cost of the meal was $86 before tax and tip. You’d pay a bit less in Chinatown, but you wouldn’t have Lincoln Center across the street, and you wouldn’t have Shun Lee’s incredibly clever light fixtures staring down at you.

 

We started with dumplings: beef (above left) and shrimp (above right), both done to a high standard.

 

The cart’s next couple of visits featured items from the deep fryer. Our favorite was the Giant Crab Claw (lower left-hand side of the first photo), a large juicy hunk of crab. We loved it so much that we asked for another one.

Shrimp Cheese Puffs (right side of the second photo) came a close second. Shrimp and ricotta cheese made fine company. We also enjoyed the Shrimp Taro Pancakes (left side of the second photo).

The only real dud was the Chicken Sesame Pancake (upper left of the first photo), which had the consistency of shoe leather.

Service was efficient, as it must be at a pre-theater place, though there was some of the upselling, huckstering quality endemic to such restaurants. We asked for just one dessert to share, but the server, perhaps feigning hearing loss, brought two.

Like most long-term restaurants, Shun Lee has its crowd of devoted regulars. Much of the crowd was distinctly elderly. The restaurant has a long-standing relationship with the Jewish community. The owner, Michael Tong, estimates that his clientele is seventy percent Jewish. His busiest day of the year is Christmas, and he can even prepare a kosher banquet on request.

I haven’t been to the main restaurant in many years. Our visit here reminded me that it has been too many years. I’ll have to rectify that. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a more casual option in the area, Shun Lee Cafe is a respectable choice.

Shun Lee Cafe (43 W. 65th Street, east of Broadway, Upper West Side)

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

Porter House Evolves

I dropped in at Porter House New York last night for a quick bite. On a Thursday evening at around 6:30 p.m., the restaurant was mostly empty. Many servers and runners were just standing around. As in the past, the clientele included a number of families with small children.

I wasn’t that hungry, so I had the Skirt Steak, at $28 the second-cheapest entrée (after the chicken, $27). This is a second-string cut of meat, but Porter House gives it a first-rate preparation, with a nice smokey char and an Argentine chimichurri sauce.

Since my last visit, Porter House has wisely dropped its plats du jour—dishes that are served only one night of the week. The Cowboy Steak, formerly available only on Thursdays, is now offered every day. On a less happy note, that steak was $38 fifteen months ago; it is now $45.

The “porterhouse” conceit has been scaled back. There were once porterhouses not just of beef, but also lamb, veal, pork, and even monkfish; only the beef and the veal options remain. There were once more than half-a-dozen seafood entrées; there are now only four.

There are, of course, other entrées: hangar steak, filet mignon, chili-rubbed ribeye (not worthwhile at $48), lamb chops. But with a few exceptions (“Duck Steak”), the restaurant is evolving closer to the classic steakhouse, albeit with one of the world’s best views.

Bread service remains a strength, with three excellent house-made breads and a soft serving of butter. I didn’t order wine, but the wine list didn’t seem quite as egregiously priced as it was last time. Aside from that, I had a somewhat dour server who seemed displeased with his lot in life. Come to think of it, nobody seemed especially pleased. An empty restaurant will do that.

In a sense, Porter House is a somewhat less interesting restaurant than it was before. But the steaks remain top-notch, and the ambiance is more comfortable than most steakhouses.

Porter House New York (Time-Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 4th floor)

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

Bern's Steakhouse

 

The words “fine dining” and “Tampa, Florida” seldom occur in the same sentence. For a recent family celebration, only one restaurant came to mind: Bern’s Steakhouse. It is the one Tampa restaurant with an international reputation, founded largely on its 700,000-bottle wine cellar, believed to be the largest privately-held wine collection in the world.

That collection is so large that about 80% of it is not even stored at the restaurant, but in a warehouse across the street. The 212-page novel-length wine list is a massive tome, including bottles hundreds of years old. The list of wines available by the glass (around 150) is more than most restaurants offer by the bottle.

The restaurant, named for Bern Laxer, has been at this site since 1956. Laxer’s son, David, is now in charge.

The building, not originally a restaurant, is unimpressive from the outside. But once you get in, the rest of Bern’s is as overwhelming as its wine list. Its eight dining rooms, each with a different theme, seat up to 350. Our party of eight was in a room featuring enormous photographic mural of the Rhone valley.

Bern’s doesn’t do anything small. The menu goes on for eighteen pages, several of which are long essays explaining how—in the restaurant’s favorite phrase—“We do things differently here.” Want to start with caviar? There are twenty-one selections, priced from $20–220 per ounce. Want steak tartare? Bern’s offers it four different ways.

The steak portion of the menu goes on for four pages, because Bern’s can do nothing without lecturing you. There are fifty-one ordering options—a function of the cut of meat and the desired thickness—priced anywhere from $29.10 for a six-ounce filet mignon, to $233.12 a sixty-ounce strip sirloin that feeds six. You’d think they could round the cents on a $233 steak.

Bern’s serves USDA prime beef, aged 5–8 weeks. They are aggressive about trimming fat and bone before cooking, so their eight-ounce steak has more edible content than it would at other steakhouses. The menu claims that they buy about 3–4 pounds of beef for every pound they serve.

Most of the steaks are around $35–40 per person, but Bern’s doesn’t follow the typical steakhouse à la carte model. Every entrée also includes French onion soup, a house salad, a baked potato, onion rings, and vegetables. Dinner for six adults and two children was $419 before tax and tip, and that figure included the wine—more on that below—and cocktails. The same dinner in New York would cost at least double that.

  

As I studied the wine list, I could hardly contain myself as I saw one bargain after another. I settled on a magnum of 1967 Julien Devèze Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which was around $140. The sommelier tried to upsell me to a bottle that was $100 more, but after I declined, he brought back the 1971, which he insisted was better, and at $126 was less expensive than the bottle I’d asked for.

To put that in perspective, at the New York wine-themed restaurant Veritas, the cheapest magnum of Châteauneuf-du-Pape costs $175, and it’s a 1999, twenty-eight years younger than the one we had. Veritas has only a handful of choices older than 1990, and only one older than 1980, whereas Bern’s has a long list of bottles going back to at least the 1960s.

The wine was superb, though I don’t have much to compare it to. In New York, a bottle that old, if you could find it, would cost the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment.

 

Everyone loved the French onion soup (above left), but a plate of “cheese toast” (above right)—basically melted cheese on saltine crackers—wasn’t much good at all.

 

The house salad (above left) was just fine, while my son ordered the caesar salad (above right) for $9.95 extra, which our waiter prepared tableside, in a multi-step process that seemed to take fifteen minutes.

My girlfriend and I shared the 16 oz. Delmonico ($69.34), which the restaurant recommends as a portion for two. It doesn’t look that big, but we filled up quickly, given all of the other food included. The steak itself was just about perfect, with a nice exterior char, marbling, and the nutty, tangy flavor that comes from long aging.

Vegetables were a mixed bag. The onion rings were stringy and greasy, and the other vegetables on the plate were rather dull, but the baked potato was wonderful. Most restaurants would leave it to each guest to apply the fixin’s, but our waiter split each potato at tableside and applied sour cream, bacon, and chives according to each diner’s preference.

Service in the main dining room was excellent. All of Bern’s waiters train for a full year before they’re permitted to serve customers on their own. Garnishes and sauces are all applied tableside, and the waiter himself serves and clears every dish.

 

Be sure to ask for a kitchen and wine cellar tour, normally given between dinner and dessert. It takes about fifteen minutes, and is well worth it.

Dessert is such an unusual experience that you should order something even if you’re not hungry. It’s served upstairs in the Harry Waugh Dessert Room (named for a famous wine collector). It’s actually not a room, but a rabbit’s warren of many rooms: to be exact, forty-eight separate alcoves of varying sizes, each shaped like a wine cask, that can accommodate between two and twelve guests.

No one will be surprised that dessert here, like everything else, is over the top. The menu is four pages long, and has about 60 selections. It comes with yet another wine list, this one 42 pages long, with another 1,800 selections (armagnacs, cognacs, scotches, brandies, ports, etc.)

 
Left: Dulce de Leche Liquid Center Cake ($10.95); Right: Tiramisu ($9.95)

 
Left: Chocolate-Chocolate-Chocolate ($10.95); Right: Macadamia Nut Sundae ($10.00)

We were mildly disappointed with a Macadamia Nut Sundae, if only because its billing on the menu (“best sundae in the world”) would have been tough for any dessert to live up to. I don’t think anyone finished their desserts (how could they?) but there were vague nods of satisfaction around the table.

Service in the dessert room was nowhere near as polished as in the main dining room. The waiter’s recommendations weren’t quite as good as they were cracked up to be, and on two occasions it took a major hunting expedition to find him.

The overall dessert room bill, including drinks, was $75.60 before tax and tip.

*

After you get past the steaks, there is some unevenness at Bern’s. Any restaurant with such a long menu is bound to have some soft spots. But the overall experience is incomparable, and the wine list ranks with the great pyramids as one of the wonders of the world.

Bern’s Steakhouse (1208 South Howard Avenue, Tampa, Florida)

Food: ***
Wine & Spirits: ****
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Bar Masa

When Masayoshi Takayama sold his famed Los Angeles sushi restaurant and moved into the Time-Warner Center, most of the attention was lavished on his famously expensive four-star gem, Masa. There, you pay anywhere between $400–500 per person for whatever omakase menu Chef Masa wants to serve that day.

I’ve not been to Masa, as the appropriate occasion to blow $1,000 (for two) on sushi hasn’t yet presented itself. There’s an adjoining restaurant called Bar Masa, and I gave it a try the other night. Reservations aren’t taken, but the bar was only about half full, and only a couple of tables were unoccupied.

Bar Masa has garnered scant critical attention, perhaps because it’s considered an annex of Masa. But Bar Masa is really a separate concept. Here, the menu is à la carte. If you’re in the chef’s hands at Masa, at the place next door you’re totally on your own.

Given that it’s run by a sushi chef, I thought that Bar Masa referred to a sushi bar. Silly me. It’s an alcohol bar that also offers food. Whatever you order, even if it’s sushi, is prepared behind the scenes, thereby depriving you of one of the great joys of sushi dining: the interaction with the chef.

The first two facing pages of the menu are dedicated to prepared foods. There are about 90 choices. That’s not a misprint. They’re priced anywhere from $8–68, but mostly $18 and higher. They’re in ten different categories, like “Chilled,” “Salad,” “Hibachi Grilled,” “Braised,” “Fried,” etc. I had trouble getting clear guidance from the confused servers, but it seems that the vast majority are appetizer-sized, meaning you’d probably need to order a good three or four of them, maybe five or six if you’re hungry, to make up a full meal.

The next couple of pages are the sushi menu, with rolls $18–120 (most $25 or less) and sushi/sashimi $6–65 (most $10 or less), or $98 for the omakase.

This being a bar, there is a drinks menu, which takes the price of dining at Bar Masa to ludicrous levels. The house cocktails are $18–35, including $20 for an “Ocean Bloody Mary” (tomato and clam juice with pepper celery ice cubes). Sakes, sold by the caraffe, are $19 and up; wines by the glass $16 and up; by the bottle $60 and up.

I confess some curiosity as to what a $20 Bloody Mary would be like, but I didn’t feel lucky, and I felt totally adrift in the sprawling menu. I only wanted a snack, so I ordered the cheapest caraffe of sake ($19) and two of the prepared dishes.

The caraffe of sake came in a stone bowl, wrapped in ice; the ceramic cup was pre-chilled, too. You pay through the nose here, but at least the presentation is first-class.

Peking duck with foie gras in mooshu skin ($24) was a miniature version of the Chinatown classic. The preparation was lovely, but the food was not really that much better than you get elsewhere. And those pancakes were awfully small—about two bites apiece—making the dish $3 a bite.

The server asked that I discontinue taking photographs, so I can’t show the more striking dish, the Crispy Snapper Head ($28). There was no mistaking the poor snapper when the plate arrived: a fish head split in two, with a vacant eye socket staring at me. The eyes themselves, the brains, and indeed all of the fleshy parts were excavated before the head was breaded and tossed in the deep fryer.

Once I got past the gross-out factor, the dish was a disappointment. With the soft parts gone, all that remained were a bread crust and dessicated bones. Think Southern-fried chicken without the chicken. Either they wasted a perfectly good snapper, or someone else got the tasty parts.

Desserts was the only bargain: I finished with a perfectly respectable cheesecake: $9. 

There are probably many gems, along with some duds, on the menu at Bar Masa. But two small appetizers, the cheapest caraffe of sake, and a small dessert set me back $100 (including tax and tip). At that price, I’m not rushing back.

Bar Masa (10 Columbus Circle, Time–Warner Center, 4th floor)

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

Bar Q

 

Note: As of February 17, 2009, Bar Q has closed. The space is now the Chesapeake Bay-themed restaurant, Choptank.

*

Anita Lo, co-owner of the beloved (and Michelin-starred) Annisa, has lately followed the path of many a celebrity chef who was trained in French kitchens: she’s gone downmarket and pan-Asian. First came the Rickshaw Dumpling Bar in 2005, where she consults; and now, Bar Q.

Bar Q is just a few minutes’ walk from Annisa, so she won’t have trouble keeping tabs on the place. But the upscale comfort-food menu looks like it was designed for dependable replication in her absence.

There are a lot of dishes that are braised, smoked, roasted and fried, including plenty of pork. “Tea-smoked” recurs in the description of three different items. There are odd combinations, like “tuna ribs” and “pork wings.” Who knew pigs could fly? A “Trio of Tartares” makes the obligatory appearance.

The space has been beautiully done in blonde woods and white walls. One of the servers said, with a grin, “I painted all the artwork.” There is no artwork; just hard, bare walls. I am a bit concerned that the space could become oppressively loud when full, but that is mere speculation, as the restaurant was nearly empty when I visited at around 6:00 p.m. on a Monday evening. There’s a lovely outdoor garden, which is scheduled to open sometime in May.

The menu is not inexpensive, with raw bar selections at $2–7 per piece, appetizers $11–16, entrées $18–29, and side dishes at $7.

There’s also a tendency to upsell. My server said, “We recommend starting with a raw bar selection, followed by an appetizer and a main course.”

I thought to myself, “Well, yeah, of course you recommend that.”

Once I had nixed that idea, the server helped me narrow down my order to the better appetizer and entrée choices, describing each as a “signature dish.” You have to wonder how that’s possible for a place that has been open three weeks.

There are house cocktails, but when I told the server I don’t like excessive syruppy sweetness, he suggested I give them all a pass. I heeded his advice in favor of an Old Fashioned.

 
Grilled Squid Salad (left); Stuffed Spareribs (right)

I started with the Grilled Squid Salad ($10), which had a wonderful smoky flavor. I asked the server if the squid had been smoked, and he cheekily replied that this was a “secret”. The accompanying Hijiki salad (seaweed) was unmemorable.

A dish called Stuffed Spareribs ($23) might lead you astray. It’s a solid brick of pork, served off the bone: pork stuffed with pork. The sauce is described as “Lemongrass BBQ, Peanut and Thai basil.” Peanut is what stands out. Is it good? The execution was superb, so it comes down to whether you like your spareribs to taste like peanuts. Hours later, I was still a bit haunted by the porky-peanutty taste. But I’m not sure I want my spareribs like that.

Bar Q offers a little bit of fun, but it strikes me as overpriced for a neighborhood place, yet not quite enthralling enough to become a destination.

Bar Q (308–310 Bleecker Street between Grove & Barrow Streets, West Village)

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

Commerce

Note: Commerce closed in June 2015, after failing to resolve a long-standing dispute with the landlord. As you will see from our review review, we had no love for the place, and never went back. But it clearly had a following. Perhaps it improved later on.

As of July 2016, the space is the un-Google-able Fifty, “a new neighborhood dining destination offering seasonal, new-American fare with a focus on South American spices and flavors. Helmed by chef Luis Jaramillo, who hails from Ecuador, the menu showcases local, seasonal ingredients complimented by bold, ethnic flavors from his home country and surrounding South American regions.”

*

Fifty Commerce is one of New York’s most charming addresses. Located on a twisting lane that no one can find without a map, it’s a reminder of New York a century ago, with its cobblestones, low-slung Colonial-style townhouses, and the lovely Cherry Lane Theater.

It hasn’t been a charmed address for restaurants, though. The Depression-era speakeasy became the Blue Mill Tavern, then Grange Hall, then a second Blue Mill Tavern. The first Blue Mill lasted fifty years, and perhaps it should have stayed that way. Grange Hall was, as I understand it, a reliable burgers-and-fries place. Blue Mill’s reincarnation replaced it, and sank.

[Kreiger via Eater]Now comes Commerce, owned by two Montrachet alumni, Tony Zazula and chef Harold Moore. They’ve given it a thorough make-over, removing Blue Mill’s art deco additions and restoring something like the old Grange Hall look. But this is no burgers-and-fries menu. Moore has stints at Daniel, Jean Georges and March under his belt. He and Zazula strive mightily to bring haute cuisine to this tavern-like atmosphere.

They fail on almost every level.

The miserable space is the loudest we have experienced in quite some time. I felt like I needed to check into a clinic for aural detox. The reservations book is mismanaged: we were seated thirty minutes late, and another party waited an hour. The host tried to offer us a bar table. We should have taken that deal, which would have been better than a frenetic dining room as crowded as Penn Station. We were much better off than the party of six seated at a circular table with the diameter of a hula hoop. At another tiny table, a couple were practically in each other’s laps; fortunately, they didn’t seem to mind.

Bread Service

Moore’s cuisine doesn’t offer sufficient compensation, though I’m not sure any food could. We adored the bounty of bread rolls, which might be the best bread service in the city right now. Our appetizers were wonderful, but the entrées were awful and took quite a while to come out.

Dinner here isn’t cheap, with appetizers at $11–19 and entrées $23–44 (most in the high twenties).  As Eater noted, “the menu really doesn’t have an escape plan dish (say, a burger).” Even if the service issues are fixed, we can’t see this loud, cramped space surviving with a menu where you can’t get out for less than $60 a head—and that’s before you order from the over-priced wine list.

During our long wait for a table, we cooled our heels at the bar—also plenty busy, but more comfortable than the dining room. Several of the house cocktails caught our fancy, such as the Brunswick (rye whisky, fig purée), the Cherry Lane (gin, cherry purée) and the Agave Stinger (tequila, burnt honey, fresh lime, soda, honeycomb), all $13. They also serve food at the bar. If you can get a seat, you’ll probably have a better time, and get more attention, than in the dining room.

 
Ragu of Odd Things (left); Terrine of Foie Gras Rillettes (right)

We loved our appetizers, which at least showed the potential for Moore’s menu, if only it were served somewhere else.

A “Ragu of Odd Things” ($16) featured the likes of tripe, tongue, and oxtail. This hearty, filling dish could be a small meal in itself. A Duck and Foie Gras Rillettes Terrine ($19) was also nicely done. Had we left at that point, I would have gone home happy.

 
Halibut (left); Stuffed Veal Breast (right)

Both entrées failed. Halibut ($28) had been overcooked to the point that it became mush. The sweet pea sauce was alleged to contain speck ham and black truffles, but I couldn’t detect the taste of either. To the restaurant’s credit, they took it off the bill.

Stuffed Breast of Veal ($26) had potential, but it had been left sitting under a heat lamp too long. It was only lukewarm.

The front-of-house team seems to really care about what they’re doing, but they are simply overwhelmed. I ordered (and was charged for) a 2003 Italian red wine; they brought the 2006. The flubs at our table, plus those we observed at others, seemed like more than most restaurants make in a week.

And apropos of nothing, why don’t they have a website?

It’s rare that we leave a restaurant with near certainty that “We will never eat here again.” That’s the verdict for Commerce. If you go, bring your tylenol.

Commerce (50 Commerce Street near Barrow Street, West Village)

Food: Uneven
Service: Chaotic
Ambiance: Miserable
Overall: Intolerable

La Sirène

Part of a critic’s job is to direct readers to great restaurants they wouldn’t otherwise discover. Unfortunately, most of New York’s professional critics seldom have time to do so. With just one published review per week, it’s all they can do to keep up with new restaurants that, for all intents and purposes, must be reviewed.

So we were gratified to see Frank Bruni’s review of La Sirène—a restaurant we’d never heard of. We’re not sure how Bruni even found the place. When it opened in May 2007, every critic in town ignored it, except for Time Out New York, which awarded four-of-six stars. (TONY’s ratings are a bit odd sometimes, but they have one of the most thorough dining-out sections in town.)

Bruni awarded one star, but you shouldn’t be deceived by that. One star is supposed to mean “good,” and though the stars have been debased over the years, this was one of those rare reviews in which one star was a compliment: Bruni loved the place.

So did we.

The name means “The Mermaid,” perhaps a nod to chef Didier Pawlicki’s Marseille roots. The minimal décor in this tiny slip of a restaurant is faintly nautical, though there’s red meat on the menu too, in addition to the obligatory fish and seafood, especially mussels.

Pawlicki is a constant presence in the dining room, explaining himself and seeking our approval. He served the hangar steak at a table next to ours, and said, “Here it is, medium. I refuse to cook it medium well.” At another, he served sea bass and explained how much of the fish gets thrown away to yield just one filet. To us, he explained the sweet–sour balance of the chocolate in the profiteroles.

Time Out New York called Pawlicki the “Cockiest chef with the goods to back it up.” (The little plaque the magazine gave him is hanging proudly on the wall.) On Citysearch.com, Pawlicki adds a personal comment to every review. The overwhelming majority of those reviews are positive.

On the classic bistro menu, which changes seasonally, appetizers are $7.50–$13.95, entrées $19.50–$28.50, desserts $7.50–$12.75. There are four different preparations of mussels, $12.75 as an appetizer, $21.75 as an entrée. It is probably time that Pawlicki rounded his prices off to the nearest dollar.

These prices have risen considerably since TONY reported that the average entrée was just $20. But La Sirène is more-or-less in line with other places serving food of comparable quality. The restaurant is also BYOB, and apparently has no plans to obtain a liquor license. This reduces the de facto cost of dinner considerably.

 

Some of the menu descriptions mix French and English in almost comical ways, such as “Brie, Blue Cheese et Chèvre Rotis sur Croutons a l’ail et Salade Verte” ($13.75); that’s brie, blue and goat cheese on garlic croutons over greens. Our other starter, Gateaux de Crabe ($11.85), speaks for itself.

Both appetizers were adequate but unmemorable, and the plating of the crab dish wasn’t very attractive.

 

Hangar Steak, or Onglet Poêlé à la Facon Luchonaise ($24.50) was wonderful. The menu pronounces it the “Signature Main Course.” The steak was lightly seared, cut in thin ribbons fanned around the plate, served with a garlic and parsley sauce, and with a brick of sweet potatoes in the center. Hangar steak can sometimes be tough, but Pawlicki’s version was so tender you’d think it was rib-eye.

My girlfriend had the terrific Kassoulet Toulousain de la Maison ($26.95), with cannellini beans, tomato, duck leg confit, bacon and pork sausage, all braised with “duck fat yummy!!!”

The challenge with this dish is to ensure the ingredients maintain their clarity; the last two places I’ve had it, the cassoulet was over-cooked, and it the flavor had all boiled away. Here, it was just about perfect.

The entrées came with “veggies du moment” (left), served family style.

The profiteroles have apparently been controversial, with some diners complaining the chocolate was too bitter, though others seemed to love it. Pawlicki yanked it from the menu, but he was able to whip up a batch rather quickly when Frank Bruni and his friends asked for it.

Anyhow, it’s back, along with Pawlicki’s quirky description: 

Grand Profiteroles au “Bittersweet” Chocolat (Good to Share)
Back on the Menu due to Overwhelming demand. (You like it, Good. You don’t, it will stay this time! This isn’t Hershey’s Chocolate, but Callebaut!

Pawlicki ain’t kidding when he says “Good to Share.” With three pastries, each stuffed with ice cream, and the whole plate slathered in chocolate and whipped cream, even two people will struggle to finish it. We certainly didn’t. We can understand the “overwhelming demand” for this excellent dish, but it’s the most expensive dessert on the menu ($12.75). It should probably be scaled back a bit.

The early TONY review referred to an “empty dining room,” but that isn’t the case now. La Sirène has been discovered, and it was full on a Friday night. There are two servers for twenty-five seats, but they’re patient and polished, despite the slightly hectic atmosphere. The ambiance is decidedly informal—you have to pass through the cramped kitchen to get to the restroom—but there’s a romantic rusticity here that is instantly endearing. We suspect that La Sirène will remain a neighborhood classic for some time to come.

Note that, except for AMEX, credit cards are currently not accepted.

La Sirène (558 Broome Street, just east of Varick Street, SoHo)

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