Marble Lane

I’ve been trying to reduce my percentage of wasted restaurant meals—the places (usually newer ones) that I try, “just because they are there.” But some odd impulse last week brought me to Marble Lane at the Dream Hotel, a venue I should easily have guessed would be terrible.

The clues of a big-time fail are abundant, from the location slightly north of the Meatpacking District, to the heavy breathing from Eater’s Scott Solish when it opened. In charge are the same folks who created the money-printing machine (and culinary mediocrity) Tao, following it up with the even more dreadful Lavo.

As chef, they hired Manuel Treviño, who was famous for fifteen minutes on Top Chef (Season 4: eliminated after four episodes); then ran the now-you-see-it, now-you-don’t restaurant Travertine; and then moved to the aforementioned Lavo, where Sam Sifton goose-egged him. If you’re running Marble Lane, he’s just the guy you want. Right?

There’s a vaguely steak-focused “international menu,” and Grub Street tells us: “each steak will have its own twist.” Oh, dear. Prices are are in a wide range, but high, with appetizers $10–22, non-steak entrées $21–28, steaks (aged prime and “American Kobe”) $30–65, and sides $9–10.

On the wine list, it’s hard to do business below $60 a bottle. Cocktails, ranging from $14–16, are also on the expensive side. It all adds up, and before you’re done you’ve spent $100 or more a head for mediocre food.

Calamari ($18; above left), served as an appetizer, were rubbery.

Entrée portions are ample. If they aren’t great, they aren’t bad either: Loup de Mere ($25; above left), Romanian Skirt Steak ($39; above right). The latter is the same cut they serve at Sammy’s Romanian, but better quality (claimed to be American Kobe). It was an enormous portion I couldn’t finish. In a nicer room, I wouldn’t have minded it.

But Sammy’s at least has personality. Marble Lane is a cookie-cutter hotel restaurant, looking for a party that hasn’t started yet, and probably never will. Reservations are available any day, any time. The dining room was empty when I arrived, but it didn’t stop the hostess from administering this cold greeting: “Let me know when your guest is here and I’ll have you guys sat.”

There were no seats at the bar, so I trundled off to the charmless lounge, where I waited (and waited) for a server to notice me. Attractive twenty-somethings in tight black dresses walked by, skipping the restaurant and headed for one of the hotel’s various lounges.

Later this fall, the Spanish chef Miguel Romera is planning to open a restaurant in this same hotel, where he’ll charge $245 for a prix fixe tasting menu. I have no idea whether his food is worth that much. He earned two Michelin stars in Spain, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. But among those who are willing to drop that much coin on a meal, who would do so at this dismal hotel? I wish him good luck with that.

Marble Lane (355 W. 16th St between 8th & 9th Avenues, in the Dream Hotel)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Fair
Ambiance: Poor
Overall: Fair

The Mark by Jean-Georges

The current crop of new restaurants is dismal these days, so I have been re-visiting places that I thought deserved a second look. The Mark by Jean-Georges is packed every time I drop in, and reservations at prime times need to be booked several weeks in advance. So, I wondered: has it improved?

When we last visited The Mark, I wrote:

. . . we were left with the impression of decent hotel food served in a gorgeous room where the people-watching trumps the cuisine. Perhaps Vongerichten is skipping the inevitable decline, and launching with mediocrity in mind from the beginning.

I was referring, of course, to the “inevitable decline” that afflicts most Vongerichten restaurants after the first few months in business. Unlike other successful chef–restaurateurs, like Daniel Boulud or Tom Colicchio, he never seems to find the talent that can run a restaurant in his absence.

I’ve been back to The Mark many times, perhaps a dozen or more, but always at the bar. It attracts a lively crowd of affluent, educated, attractive Upper East Side-types, along with assorted mafiosi and working girls. It’s not a bad place to have a drink, if you’re in the area.

But when my friend arrived first, the vibe looked so unsavory to her that she chose to wait in the hotel lobby, rather than go in alone. That sense of discomfort did not abate when we went into the dining room, where the staff seated us at a smallish round table in the corner, right next to the patio door.

Sam Sifton awarded two New York Times stars in April of last year, while finding the cuisine “so unambitious that it is difficult to fumble.” We had a similar reaction, but the crowds have not dissipated, so Mr. Vongerichten’s money men decided they could hike prices. A lot. Whereas most of the entrées were below $30 when The Mark opened, now almost none of them are. A burger, formerly $22, is now $26. The black truffle pizza with fontina cheese, $16 when I had it last year, is now $26. Linguine with clams has risen from $30 to $32, parmesan crusted chicken from $23 to $30.

But I liked the food better this time, and that counts for something.

The amuse bouche was a honeydew gazpacho (above left). We shared the Watermelon and Goat Cheese Salad ($14; above right), which the kitchen plated as two half portions. It’s served with cracked white pepper and a dash of olive oil, a perfectly balanced summer dish.

Both entrées were faultless. Scottish Salmon ($29; above left) is lightly poached, served with sprink leeks, roasted peppers, and artichokes. Casco Bay Cod ($32; above right) rested on a bed of spinach, with sweet garlic lemon broth and a coating of crunchy lemon crumbs.

All of these plates shared that wonderful combination of sweet and sour that Vongerichten is known for, so satisfying when it works, but so difficult to duplicate. There is much more to the menu, but in these selection his vision is evident, and the deputies he left behind seem to know how to execute it.

I still like The Mark, but it isn’t for everyone. Some will find the “scene” there a distinct turn-off. If you can tune it out, or don’t mind it in the first place, the food is actually very good.

The Mark by Jean-Georges (25 E. 77th St. near Madison Ave., Upper East Side)

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

East End Kitchen

You’ve heard of a time-warp, right? East End Kitchen is in a space-warp, a Yorkville restaurant that “feels like” it belongs in the Hamptons or the Flatiron District. Bemused residents walk by all evening long, peering through the windows, wondering how such a place wound up in their neighborhood.

The owners, Allan and Diane Carlin, told Grub Street they wanted “to fill a void of ‘casual’ ‘thoughtful’ restaurants in the area. As such, their ‘American bistro’ uses organic produce, sustainably sourced seafood, and grass-fed meats in its menu.”

But how “thoughtful” is it, when you trot out the same bistro tropes that have been used at six dozen other places? Of course, there is nothing wrong with replicating a widely successful model, if you can do it well, but don’t claim you’re something you’re not.

Unfortunately, the performance here is somewhat uneven, with hits and duds in just about equal measure. The menu is inexpensive by downtown standards, with entrées mostly $18–24 (the steak is $35). But there is nothing distinctive enough to lure destination diners to this remote location, and the neighborhood may find it too expensive for a regular hang-out.

Crab Cakes ($18; above right) were pretty good, but Grassfed Meat Balls ($14; above left) were bland and under-seasoned. If I’d made them at home, I wouldn’t have had grassfed beef, but I would have done something more interesting with them.

Snapper in a Bag ($20; above left) is one of the more notable entrées. It’s surprising you don’t see this more often: the bag really does hold in the moisture, as advertised, and there was a nice stew of mushrooms and crushed tomatoes inside.

There’s nothing wrong with Pork ‘n’ Peaches ($23; above right) as a concept, but pork off the bone tends to be underwhelming. The corn was excellent and the peaches were fine, but you could have made ’em at home.

A frozen blueberry soufflé ($8; left) was a textural disaster: a brick of frozen, cakey blueberry substance in a ramekin. My friend called it astronaut food. The server told us it was a real soufflé, but any resemblance to that familiar dessert was strictly incidental.

The wine list is slightly over-priced for the neighborhood, as were the cocktails ($14 each), although we enjoyed our Muga Rosé ($33).

The old Boeuf à la Mode space has been re-done in bright, distressed blond wood. There is a spacious bar, and the dining room is deep, with space to seat at least 60, and maybe 75. There was a decent crowd by the time we left, so the locals are at least amenable to giving the new place a try.

The staff does try hard, and undoubtedly they have a genuine desire to embrace (and be embraced by) the neighborhood. If I lived nearby, I would give it another shot, but the food will need to be more dependable, and they may need to shave a couple of dollars off the appetizers, if they want to attract a real following.

East End Kitchen (539 E. 81st St. btwn York & East End Aves., Upper East Side)

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

Mary Queen of Scots

Note: Mary Queen of Scots closed in April 2012 after an 18-month run.

*

Mary Queen of Scots opened a year ago in the former Allen & Delancey space. It’s the second Scottish-themed restaurant from the Highlands team. Early reports weren’t encouraging, and most of the pro critics didn’t review it.

Lauren Shockey in the Village Voice gave it Mary “meh.” Sam Sifton filed a “brief,” as he much prefers reviewing club joints and restaurants that peaked in the 1980s.

The concept, I have to admit, was unwise: French cuisine through a Scottish lens, or something like that, inspired by the fact that the historic Mary was a queen of both France and Scotland.

The original idea has quietly been pushed to the side. Uninspired dishes like pasta carbonara, steak frites, moules frites, and beet salad, no longer appear on the menu. Prices are moderate, with most appetizers below $15 and most entrées below $25. (The most expensive item is a Venison Wellington, $27.)

The décor is East Village chic with a cold splash of Scotland in the form of tartan plaid banquettes. The bar, in the back of the restaurant, is worth exploring. Cocktails are $11–13 a pop, and they transfer the tab to the table. I can vouch for the Respect Your Elders ($12), with Plymouth Gin, Rosemary Syrup, Lemon Juice, Angostura and Lavender Bitters.

There is nothing complicated about Chilled Asparagus ($11; above left) with thyme-parmesan crumbs and hollandaise sauce, but it’s the ideal summer appetizer. Seared Tuna ($20; above right) with haricots verts, a quail egg, and worcestershire-red onion dressing, was quite good, and clearly a step above the less ambitious salads offered on earlier menus.

Roast Lamb Sirloin ($26; above left) with heirloom carrot salad, coconut yoghurt, and mint jelly, was less impressive. There wasn’t much of the lamb, and although tender, it was a shade over-cooked. We don’t usually order a side dish, but when we saw the Chips & Curry Sauce come out of the kitchen ($5; above right), we had to have some. Crisp and tangy, they’re a treat.

The wine list of about 30 bottles is a shade more expensive than it ought to be, in relation to the food. It could use a few more options under $50. The 2008 Francoise & Denis Clair Cote-de-Beaune, decent but not spectacular, was priced at $48, or about 228 percent of retail, which is a bit dear. There is, as you’d expect, an abundant selection of whiskies, though we didn’t have any.

Typical of many Lower East Side places, other than the most popular ones, the restaurant was nearly empty at 7:30 p.m. on a Thursday evening, although the front room had filled up by 9:00 p.m. (I didn’t check the back). Service was attentive and thorough. On this showing, Mary Queen of Scots is a more comfortable and polished restaurant than Highlands, though your mileage may vary.

Mary Queen of Scots (115 Allen Street near Delancey Street, Lower East Side)

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

Tocqueville

If you find the current NYC dining scene depressing, here’s a pick-me-up: Tocqueville. It’s at once a reminder that civilized dining is still possible, and a reminder of how much has been lost.

The city’s four-star restaurants remain popular, but at the level immediately below them, what has opened in the last two or three years that wasn’t Italian? It is a very short list, practically an empty one.

To be clear: it’s not that I want a meal this refined — this expensive — every day, or every week. It’s that, when I do want them, most of the options are legacy restaurants that hardly anyone would open today. Chef Marco Moreira and his wife, Jo-Ann Makovitzky, probably wouldn’t do it themselves, if they were starting again now.

To rewind a bit: Tocqueville grew out of a catering firm, then known as Marco Polo. Its original location was an odd, traezoid-shaped dining room that somewhat undermined the upscale cuisine that Moreira wanted to serve. William Grimes gave it two stars in 2000; I gave it two and a half in 2005.

In 2006, Moreira and Makovitzky moved Tocqueville half-a-block west and gave it an upscale makeover, precisely the opposite of what would likely happen today. (See Aureole, Oceana, and SD26, all of which moved in the last couple of years and relinquished a piece their former elegance in the transaction.) The couple still have the old space, which is now the excellent Japanese restaurant 15 East.

Frank Bruni gave the new Tocqueville the same two stars, while seeming to like it less than Grimes did. His complaints were almost entirely service glitches, none of which were apparent when I visited last week. The current reviewing culture doesn’t allow for re-reviews, save in the most exceptional cases, so it falls to people like me to call attention to a restaurant like Tocqueville that is almost entirely below the radar, but shouldn’t be.

The menu wears its greenmarket bona fides on its sleeve, though the chef has been doing this long enough to be excused. Tocqueville is very much in the Gramercy Tavern or Blue Hill (West Village) mold, but you’ll get in easier and enjoy your meal just as much and maybe more.

This comes at a cost: appetizers are $15–26, entrées $24–42 (most above $30), desserts $10–16. Tasting menus are $85 (five-course vegetarian), $110 (five-course) or $125 (seven). There is a separate, somewhat gimmicky greenmarket menu, a three-course prix fixe for $55, but its items are orderable à la carte, which somewhat undermines the point of it.

The amuse bouche was a vibrant lobster salad (above left). The bread service was excellent, with three kinds of bread (olive, brioche, and one other), baked in house.

I almost feel like we cheated, when we ordered the terrific beet salad to share ($16; above right), and the kitchen sent out two separately plated half-portions.

Arctic Char ($28; above left) was pink and moist, with an English pea purée, thumbelina carrots, haricots verts, and yellow beans. Black bass ($34; above right) in “bouillabaisse” broth was also very good. A long, thin slice of baguette was, I suppose, for mopping up the broth, though I could have done without it.

The thirty-page wine list has plenty of French, Italian, and California standards in a wide price range, as well as many unusual items, like a 1992 Savennieres Domaine aux Moines ($65), a deeply aged white wine that the sommelier decants, as it is so intense in both color and taste that it resembles port. How many lists in town would stock that? It is for such wines that you dine at a restaurant like Tocqueville.

The under-stated cuisine here is not fashionable now. It offers no pork chop, no burger, no organ meats, no foams. (There is a recited special, a $125 dry-aged prime côte de bœuf for two, so I suppose the chef is not entirely immune to fashion.) What Tocqueville does offer is extremely enjoyable, in the kind of dining room, and with the kind of service, seldom seen in restaurants opening in NYC today.

For that, Tocqueville should be celebrated.

Tocqueville (1 E. 15th Street at Fifth Avenue, near Union Square)

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

Columbus Tavern

Note: Columbus Tavern has closed. A. G. Kitchen, from Calle Oche chef Alex Garcia, replaces it.

*

Columbus Tavern is a cute and mildly diverting Upper West Side neighborhood restaurant. It has gastropub ambitions that it doesn’t quite deliver on.

The cringe-worthy proffer is written in the worst publicistspeak, and printed in large type on the world’s ugliest ca. 1980s website:

Columbus Tavern cunningly straddles the line between a destination and neighborhood restaurant by offering the beloved comfort food that diners secretly crave with a contemporary spin.

The 120-seat restaurant has great legs with its art deco tile floor, burgundy banquettes and gorgeous 100 year old mahogany bar which seats 20.

After posting that nauseating prose, they deserve to have no customers at all.

The folks in charge have the most clever name for their clutch of mediocre restaurants: The Restaurant Group. It’s the same team that failed a short distance away, at Bloomingdale Road (now closed). Their chef, Phil Conlon, brings a resume of no particular distinction, including Broadway East (now closed) and Cafe Cluny, though he turns out to be pretty good.

They aren’t off to a great start here. Although open since February, their web page still says, “Full Site Coming Soon.” The menu posted there is not current: both of our entrées were less expensive than the website shows. The menu is presented in a cheesy laminated sleeve; it obviously doesn’t change daily, so how hard would it be to post a current one online?

The restaurant is obviously cutting prices to attract patronage, but the wine list is barely accessible, with the average bottle of red wine priced at $70 and a number of them in three figures. The Federalist 2008 Zinfandel ($48) was quite enjoyable, but this type of restaurant needs more wines at that price and below.

The food is enjoyable and fairly priced: a rich ricotta ravioli with chestnuts ($18; above left), a supple roast chicken with fingerling potatoes, carrots and escarole ($19; above right). At another table, we saw a half-inch-thick burger that looked terrific.

I was curious to know what the chef would do with duck, but after ordering it the server returned moments later to say they were “out of that.” As it was early in the evening, and the restaurant was not close to full, a more accurate statement might be that they never actually had it. After a while, that server disappeared, and it was difficult to flag down anyone who could bring us a check.

The restaurant occupies one of those ubiquitous Upper West Side avenue storefronts with a covered outdoor patio that can be opened on nice days, but is usable in winter. It is a pleasant place to dine on a summer evening.

I don’t have much confidence that the management can fix what’s wrong and publicize what’s right. The chef knows what he is doing, and at these prices the restaurant is a worthwhile neighborhood place. I hope it’s still around next year.

Columbus Tavern (269 Columbus Ave between 72nd/73rd Streets, Upper West Side)

Food: *
Service: Satisfactory
Ambaince: *
Overall: *

ellabess

Note: It turns out I overrated Ellabess. Reviews were lukewarm, and the place never caught on. It closed in February 2012 after seven months in business.

*

If you want to know if a new restaurant will be good, look at the company it keeps. Danny Meyer, for instance, couldn’t open a bad restaurant if he tried.

The same, I think, is true of the less well known Epicurean Management, which runs a duo of wonderful, casual Italian restaurants in the West Village (dell’anima and L’Artusi) and a nearby wine bar (Anfora).

With three hit restaurants to their name, they could have upped their game or stuck with what works. They’ve done the latter: the proffer at ellabess falls squarely within the dell’anima/L’Artusi idiom, except that it is not Italian. The owners are apparently happy to grow within a successful model, rather than to challenge it.

The restaurant is located in the boutique Nolitan Hotel, one of many largely interchangeable places dotting the East Village, the Lower East Side, and adjacent neighborhoods. The designer has thoughtfully given the dining room floor-to-ceiling glass picture windows, perhaps hoping that a view worth looking at will come later. At least it admits plenty of natural light.

Gabe Thompson and Joe Campanale, chef and sommelier respectively of the group’s West Village establishments, aren’t involved here. Troy Unruh, a former dell’anima chef de cuisine, runs the kitchen. He serves a mid-priced “seasonal American” (aren’t they all?) downtown menu, with appetizers $8–18, mains $22–32, sides $7. The list of selections at the three-week-old restaurant is brief—just nine appetizers and five entrées—but presumably will rotate frequently, as its seasonal emphasis is fairly apparent.

We shared an octopus salad ($16; above left), an excellent savory–sweet–tart justaposition with melon, cucumber, and mint. The same good judgment was evident in a comped fluke ceviche (above right) with watermelon, chili, radish, and mint.

The chef is fond of melon in savory dishes, but handles it well, as seen in a delightful striped bass ($27; above left) with melon consommé and heirloom cherry tomatoes. A gorgeous, lightly-poached king salmon ($32; above right) lay in a bed of porcini mushrooms, blueberries, and juniper lamb jus.

The wine list is not the conversation piece it is at the group’s West Village places, though it may blossom into one. A Domaine Ostertag Riesling ($40) paired well with our food choices.

The dining room was busy, but not full, on a Wednesday evening. Service was attentive, and the host seated me before my girlfriend arrived. There are no tablecloths, but with plenty of open space the room is not an echo chamber, as it is at so many other new places we’ve visited lately.

If not yet rising to destination status, ellabess has made a promising start.

ellabess (153 Elizabeth Street at Kenmare Street, NoLIta)

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

Eleven Madison Park

A year ago, chef Daniel Humm and general manager Will Guidara of Eleven Madison Park “decided to fix what ain’t broke.” They jettisoned their à la carte menu in favor of a laconic square grid of sixteen ingredients. Unless you ask, you’ll have no idea if “Lobster” is a risotto, a bisque, a thermidor, or something else.

“Tasting menus are like monologues,” Guidara told The Times. “This is a dialogue.”

But as one Chowhounder put it (quoted in The Post), “I don’t want no stinkin’ dialogue! When I go to a world-class restaurant, I want the chef to take care of me.”

At Eleven Madison Park, you are, of course, welcome to have as much of a “dialogue”—or as little—as you want. This being a Danny Meyer restaurant, the server will stand there all night and explain every dish, if that’s what you want. But you don’t really want that, do you? You’re probably just going to select one ingredient from each row of the grid, communicate any allergies, and be done with it.

If the poor crybaby Chowhounder cannot be bothered to name four ingredients ($125), he can order the tasting menu ($195) and get whatever the chef chooses to send out. Another crybaby Chowhounder (they do moan a lot there) went so far as to call the new menu “a scam.”

Of course it is not a scam. Not even close. What it is, at least arguably, is a gimmick.

Eleven Madison Park is serving what amounts to a mystery tasting menu, where the appetizer, two entrées, and the dessert, can be chosen from a cryptic list of four items each. Plenty of restaurants offer tasting menus where none of the items are described at all. EMP’s own $195 menu operates that way. Plenty of others offer tasting menus where the ingredients are listed in some detail, but where most or all of the courses offer no choice at all.

This menu is a hybrid, a tasting menu with a few degrees of freedom, but with most of it a surprise unless you are awfully inquisitive. The gimmick is the “dialogue,” which doesn’t really exist—except in the sense it does at any restaurant that offers diners a choice, which is to say, most of them.

At our excellent dinner last Friday evening, we weren’t at all affronted by the 4×4 grid. It isn’t very helpful, either. Wouldn’t it be better to write down the choices the way a conventional restaurant would? The kitchen clearly has a preparation in mind for each of the sixteen ingredients. It doesn’t make them up on the fly. So why not tell us?

*

The service is practically the best of its kind. On entering, the greeter asked for the name of our reservation. When I said “Shepherd,” he said to my friend, without missing a beat or consulting a list, “Welcome. You must be ____.” To memorize every booking is impressive enough. To know my companion’s name is unheard of. At the table, a handwritten birthday card was waiting for her.

As you’d expect, plates and flatware were set and cleared seamlessly, every request honored instantly, every need anticipated. It is a performance perhaps half-a-dozen restaurants in town can match.

The meal begins with something like four or five flights of amuses. I didn’t note them all, but the tour de force was a “clam bake,” with four delicate canapés and a broth that the server pours into a contraption heated by hot rocks, simulating a beach clam bake in miniature.

From the first row of the menu grid, my friend and I both chose “Rabbit,” which I correctly guessed would be a luscious, creamy terrine, as it was in the position on the grid that I know (from other reviews) is usually represented by a foie gras terrine. Without the advance research I did, no other diner would know this.

Had the meal ended here, I would give Eleven Madison Park the same four stars that Frank Bruni did. Instead, I was reminded of Bruni’s comment at the end of 2008, that: “one in every three dishes didn’t measure up to the others (though nothing — nothing — was wholly undistinguished).” It seemed there were two restaurants here, with a completely different kitchen responsible for everything after the appetizer.

The statement that “nothing — nothing — was wholly undistinguished” could apply to my friend’s Loup de Mer, her Pork, and my Chicken. But I would not call them distinguished either. Somewhat more impressive was Lobster wrapped in fat, rich noodles, a lasagne of the gods. It was the only savory dish that I would care to see again. There was nothing wrong with the others, but there was no wow! in them.

Even less memorable were pastry chef Angela Pinkerton’s desserts, “Berries” and “Apricot, and the petits fours were noticeably less impressive than at the other four-star restaurants. We weren’t served a birthday cake, either—just a lit candle poking out from the dessert we had already paid for. I didn’t actually need another cake at that point, but see my reviews of Asiate and Del Posto for how the pastry departments in comparable restaurants usually honor such an occasion.

Wine pairings are $95 per person, and if you ask the sommelier to “be creative,” he will. I lost count, but I believe there were six or seven pours, ranging from beer to sake to cocktails, and of course wines, all with decent age on them; most were off the beaten path. Where my friend and I ordered different items, the wines were different also. For one course, the sommelier couldn’t decide between a cocktail and wine, so he gave both.

The final pour, as many reviews have noted, is a bottle of digestif that the sommelier leaves on the table for you to take as much as you would like. It is a safe bet that most normal folk will be too full to abuse the privilege. This must be the best wine pairing in the city, aside from Per Se, which charges at least double for similar service.

If my review seems harsh, it is not. I adore Eleven Madison Park. This is my third visit since chef Humm came on board (here, here). The four-course menu at $125 is one of the best dining deals in town, given all the extras that come with it. What I don’t see, however, is the leap to four stars that other publications have claimed.

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

Cuisine: Hard to classify; extraordinary at its best, but occasionally falls flat
Service: Incomparable; arguably the best in the city
Ambiance: Superb; an elegant, high-ceilinged space in a landmarked building

Rating: Category Killer

Gravy

Note: This is a review under chef Michael Vignola, who left the restaurant in December 2011 to re-join Strip House. The restaurant closed in July 2012.

*

Gravy is a bright, spacious restaurant that opened in a prominent Flatiron District storefront in late April. The cuisine is billed as “New Southern,” a genre for which I have no points of comparison. Indeed, the website claims that there are no other examples of it in New York City.

Despite a featured FloFab post in The Times before it opened (a boon few restaurants get), Gravy has received no professional reviews to date. A restaurant that well publicized usually gets at least a look from the main critics. I’m guessing they weren’t impressed, and decided not to invest in additional visits.

The chef is Michael Vignola, who came from Michael Jordan’s The Steakhouse, clearly not the best endorsement. But Gravy is actually pretty good. Perhaps it has worked out the early kinks. At least the menu is interesting, and not a clone of anything else that has opened lately.

Prices are moderate for the neighborhood, with appetizers $10–17 and entrées $21–31. The ubiquitous “table shares” are $10–15, side dishes $8–9.

House-made charcuterie ($15; above left), with pickled vegetables and home-made brown butter mustard, is an excellent way to start. Two can easily share the dish. The bread was warm and crisp, with each slice individually toasted, but it is a lot of bread for one evening. (Earlier, there were warm rolls with soft butter: bread is clearly a strength of this kitchen.)

The Sullivan’s Island Bog ($26; above right), with shrimp, crawfish, mussels, squid, scallop, andouille, charred tomatoes, and Carolina red rice, is a good modern take on a Jambalaya.

Spice Rubbed Venison ($28; above left) was slightly tough, but still plenty flavorful, and I liked the contrast of roasted baby beets and bing cherries. Grits are offered three ways—honey, cheesy, or porky ($8 for one; $16 for all three). The porky grits (above right) had very little pork that we could detect, and tasted like not-very-good oatmeal.

The wine list is mainly American, as it should be, and if not overly long, is well suited to the cuisine. I don’t recall my original selection, but the wine director advised against it, and offered me an off-list Conway Family 2008 Deep See Red, an unobjectionable Shiraz blend, at the same price. It sells retail for $28, so the restaurant’s $46 (a 64 percent markup) is fair.

The dining room was around three-fourths full, and the kitchen was quite slow. At one point, I wondered if they’d run out of deer, and had sent a posse into the Catskills to shoot another. Even a cocktail took so long to make that, by the time it arrived I no longer wanted it. (They were quite willing to take it off the bill, without my even asking.)

The space is modern-looking and attractive. There are no table cloths, but the tables are more generously spaced than they have to be. Ambient noise was energetic, but not oppressive.

It seems to me a pity that when someone opens a restaurant that actually attempts to do something new, it gets so little critical attention. Fortunately, Gravy seems to be doing fine without the critics’ help, but it deserves more notice.

Gravy (32 E. 21st Street between Park Ave. S. and Broadway, Flatiron District)

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

Update: Inside Park at St. Barts

Three years ago, I thought that Inside Park at St. Barts was the best new restaurant no one had heard of. I wrote:

Folks, you must visit this restaurant. It is crazily good. Oh, and the space is gorgeous too.

Having said that, I never thought that my recommendation alone would make much of a difference. It didn’t. The Times never reviewed it, and Adam Platt in New York gave it just one star because the room had few customers. Silly me, I thought that the role of criticism is to draw attention to neglected gems, rather than to assume they’ll sink like the Titanic.

Anyhow, the reviews were what they were, and chef Matthew Weingarten did what he had to. The menu is now slightly less expensive. Bread service, amuses bouches and petits fours are all eliminated. The food remains good: Weingarten didn’t forget how to cook. But it is no longer as interesting.

I can report that artichoke fritters ($9), a pork chop ($29), and a crab cake ($26) were all enjoyable, if not worth traveling for. But the restaurant now has what it lacked: guests. Plenty of them. On a recent warm summer evening, all of the service was in the outdoor courtyard, which was packed. Loud music blared on the speakers.

I suspect that the lovely indoor space is better, when they start using it again in cooler weather. Meantime, I’m glad Weingarten found a way to stay in business. Perhaps, if the customers keep coming, he’ll be able gradually to bring back the food he clearly wanted to serve. There is nothing wrong with what Inside Park at St. Barts has become, but it’s not what it was.

Inside Park at St. Bart’s (109 E. 50th Street at Park Avenue, East Midtown)

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