Toloache

[Kalina via Eater]

Note: Click here for a review of Toloache on the Upper East Side.

*

The so-called Mexican food we eat in America is nothing like the real McCoy: that much I learned on a business trip to Mexico City a few years ago. Bulls’ testicles, corn fungus, and fried worms were among the items on order. (I tried the first two, but gave the third a pass.)

At the new midtown restaurant Toloache (pronounced to-lo-AH-chay), you can order Tacos Chapulines, which feature sun-dried grasshoppers. Reviewers Paul Adams and Andrea Strong tried them, and you’ll find a photo here. My girlfriend and I weren’t about to touch them with a ten-foot pole, but ironically, it was this menu item—along with the foie gras tacos, which I did have—that made me think that Toloache was worth a visit.

It’s a striking space on two levels, in a neighborhood that’s normally dead to fine dining. The restaurant has white tablecloths and cloth napkins, but a theater district vibe and hustling waiters who call you a caballero. We arrived without a reservation at around 6:30 on a Friday evening and managed to secure one of the few tables not spoken for. I started with a drink advertised as a pumpkin margarita, but my girlfriend and I agreed there was no perceptible taste of pumpkin.

The menu is in multiple sections: guacamoles ($11), ceviches ($10–17), appetizers from the brick oven ($8–13), tacos ($8–14), small plates ($8–10), entrées ($18–26), and side dishes ($3–7). We weren’t that hungry, and settled on a ceviche and a taco order apiece, with a side of rice & beans. Our server insisted that wasn’t enough, and talked us into ordering a mid-course, which was more than we needed, although his suggestion was the best item we had.

 
Ceviche Atun (left); Mini pumpkin with crabmeat (right)

Chef Julian Medina throws a lot of ingredients together; it doesn’t always work. Ceviche Atun had spicy yellowfin tuna, key lime, vidalia onion, radish, and watermelon. I like spicy food, but the tuna was overwhelmed. In my girlfriend’s shrimp ceviche, the flavor balance worked better.

The next dish was the item our server “upsold” us. Lump crabmeat and pumpkin came served inside a hot miniature pumpkin, with tortilla chips on the side. This inspiration looked like orange guacamole. There were some cool spots inside, suggestive of uneven heating, but it was still the best thing we had at Toloache.

 
Foie Gras tacos (left); Rice & beans (right)

Foie gras tacos seemed, too, to suffer from too many ingredients: foie gras, refried beans, mango, red onion, and chipotle salsa. There was nothing wrong with the dish—how far wrong can you go with foie gras?—but it felt like a gimmick. Our side of rice & beans was fairly standard, and we didn’t finish it.

The restaurant is geared up to serve lots of people in a hurry. We noted tables turning fairly rapidly. There are probably some quality issues in the kitchen: in addition to our crabmeat salad not quite fully heated, we noted that a dish was sent back at the table next to us. There are a lot of clever ideas at Toloache, but you might need a bit of luck to put together a fully satisfying meal.

Toloache (251 W. 50th St. between Eighth Avenue & Broadway, Theater District)

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

26 Seats

There’s no mystery behind the name 26 Seats: it’s the capacity of a sweet little East Village restaurant. It’s the kind of quiet French bistro that we like to think the Parisians have on every street. New York ought to have more like it. In the Times, Eric Asimov liked it too, when he reviewed it for $25 and Under in April 2001.

A friend and I had a leisurely dinner there last week. The menu had few surprises, but it’s nice (for a change) to walk into a place where you’re not greeted by a hostess at a computer terminal, where the person seating you remembers your reservation without having to look it up in a book, and where an 8:00 table is yours for the evening.

It’s friendly on the pocketbook too, with appetizers $6–8, entrées $11–16.50,  and desserts $6.50. Wines, I believe, were around $7 a glass for a generous pour, and the server happily accommodated us when, near the end of the evening, we asked to split a glass.

I ordered a duck confit (around $14), which was nothing special, but at that price one can hardly complain. Service was professional and friendly. The space is cozy, but perhaps that is part of the charm.

26 Seats (168 Avenue B between 10th & 11th Streets, East Village)

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

F.illi Ponte

This week, I dined at F.illi Ponte for the first time in over three years. It was a business dinner, and I wasn’t focused on reviewing, but I felt it would be worth recording my impression.

A bit of history is in order. In 1967, Ponte’s steakhouse opened in what was then a remote corner of TriBeCa. The restaurant needed signs visible from the West Side Highway to lure diners, who must have felt a bit brave about even venturing into the neighborhood. A colleague mentioned the other night that, twenty years ago, he could have had a condo in the area for $90,000. Today, it would cost millions.

In the mid-1990s, the grandson of the original owner remodeled the space, stripping down the walls to reveal the original brick, and installing broad picture windows facing the Hudson. Rechristened F.illi Ponte (meaning “Ponte Brothers”), in 1995, it won an enthusiastic two stars from Ruth Reichl in the Times. But by 2002, Eric Asimov served up a double-demotion to “Satisfactory,” noting that the restaurant was “coasting.” I rated it at 1½ stars on my last visit.

The last time I came this way, most of the old warehouses nearby were in the process of being converted to condos. Most of those conversions are now completed. Though the surrounding streets still don’t get much foot traffic, F.illi Ponte no longer feels like it’s in no-man’s land. The neighborhood has caught up to the restaurant.

The space is on two levels, but a bar on the ground floor seems to be unused, except for special events. I noted a large display of pumpkins, then went upstairs to the main bar area, which is large and comfortable, with plush sofas that could be a friend’s living room.

After drinks, our party of eight moved to the dining room, which is beautifully appointed, with spectacular Hudson River views at night. The staff suggested a selection of appetizers and pastas served family-style. Their choices were mostly old-school, but updated for the season. A pumpkin ravioli was the highlight, but old standards like a plump searee scallop, or tomato salad with mozzarella, were executed perfectly.

A salmon entrée came with a crunchy herb crust, but the sauce pooled on the side wasn’t quite enough to compensate for a fish that was slightly dry. That error may have been an anomaly, though, as I heard no other complaints at the table.

With all entrées at $30 and up, pastas at $25 and up, the cost of dinner at F.illi Ponte can mount rapidly. There are some bargains on the wine list, though—at least in relative terms. I found a great 2001 Barolo at $100 a bottle. In many Italian restaurants, you can’t touch the Barolos for less than $150.

Service was excellent, but with the dining room well under half full on a Tuesday evening, the staff were able to give us their full attention. There were none of the service glitches that I noted on my earlier visit, or that Asimov noted in his 2002 re-review.

F.illi Ponte isn’t one of the city’s pathbreaking Italian restaurants, but it won’t disappoint you either, and it offers one of the best views in the city.

F.illi Ponte (39 Debrosses Street at West Street, TriBeCa)

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

The Payoff: Alto and L'Impero

Today, as expected, Frank Bruni does the do-se-do with Alto and L’Impero, taking a star from the latter and giving it to the former:

L’Impero and Alto remain vital restaurants, worthy of the attention of anyone who cares about serious Italian cooking. Alto, in fact, is better than ever…

L’Impero is now the restaurant with the more lugubrious air, all of that pleated drapery along the walls evoking the upholstered interior of a very large coffin.

I can neither agree nor disagree with Bruni here, as my visit to Alto dates from the Conant era, and I have never yet visited L’Impero. These are Italian restaurants, and from Bruni one naturally expected the stars to be twinkling this week. Coincidentally, I made reservations at L’Impero for a week from Friday—before knowing that Bruni would be reviewing it. Could there be a paranormal psychic channel between us? The mind shudders.

On our hypothetical $1 bets, Eater and I win $2 at L’Impero and $3 at Alto, for a whopping $5 payoff this week.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$55.50		$58.67
Gain/Loss	+5.00		+5.00
Total	$60.50		$63.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	24–6		23–7

Rolling the Dice: L'Impero and Alto

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni gives us an haute Italian two-fer: L’Impero and Alto. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

     L’Impero
Zero Stars: 8-1
One Star: 5-1
Two Stars: 2-1 √√
Three Stars: 4-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

     Alto
Zero Stars: 9-1
One Star: 5-1
Two Stars: 4-1
Three Stars: 3-1 √√
Four Stars: 8,000-1

The Skinny: L’Impero was the restaurant that put Scott Conant on the map when Eric Asimov awarded three stars in December 2002—a rare accomplishment for a non-Italian chef, to say the least. In 2005, Conant opened Alto, this time focusing on northern Italian cuisine. Frank Bruni gave it a brutal two-star review. It was a devastating takedown for a restaurant that was supposed to be more upscale than L’Impero. Not long thereafter, Eater put Alto deathwatch, but defying the odds, it has remained open—thriving, even. Earlier this year, Conant left both restaurants, with Michael White, formerly of the three-star Fiamma, replacing him.

This week’s duo is tough to assess, but I am leaning towards the same conclusions as Eater. L’Impero flies well below the radar these days, which suggests it is no longer among this town’s elite. Bruni loves Italian, but he has given three stars to a lot of places. At some point, he’s got to make distinctions, and L’Impero may be the one that doesn’t make the cut.

Normally, a re-review brings a change of rating. It’s hard to imagine him liking Alto any less than last time, which suggests it has nowhere to go but up. Of course, White’s arrival may be reason enough for the re-review, with or without a change of rating. But I thought that Bruni woefully mis-rated Alto last time, so this gives him the chance to right a wrong.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award two stars to L’Impero and three stars to Alto.

Allen & Delancey

[Kalina via Eater]

Note: Allen & Delancey closed in March 2010, after something like five chefs in three years. A Scottish-themed restaurant, Mary Queen of Scots, from the Highlands team, opened in November 2010.

The new restaurant Allen & Delancey had one of those star-crossed births that give restaurant owners nightmares. It was announced for the Fall of 2006 with former Craftbar chef Akhtar Nawab at the helm. Then, an investor pulled out, and the project seemed dead…or was it?

A year later, Allen & Delancey has finally opened, with Neil Ferguson in the kitchen. Ferguson is the chef that was canned after the critics demolished Gordon Ramsay at the London. Ramsay is still alive and kicking with a new chef de cuisine, while at A&D you can enjoy, at less than half the price, the chef whom Gordon Ramsay thought was capable of earning four stars.

The space has been beautifully decked out, but it’s so dark you should bring a flashlight to read the menu. Ferguson keeps things simple, with just seven appetizers ($12–18) and seven entrées ($22–29). The similarity to the menu at Gordon Ramsay is striking: not a lot of fireworks, but simple things are done well.

 
Terrine of Guinea Hen (left); Cabbage, Beef and Onion (right)

My girlfriend and I both started with the Terrine of Guinea Hen, Smoked Ham Knuckle, Foie Gras, and Beetroot ($18). It takes a sure hand to make all of those ingredients work, but Ferguson managed it.

I probably wouldn’t have chosen Cabbage, Beef and Onion ($29), had not the server recommended it. This is the kind of dish that got Ferguson in trouble at Gordon Ramsay. It’s a technically impeccable presentation that doesn’t have much oomph. I was pleased with it, but perhaps some people will say that it doesn’t deserve to be a nearly $30 entrée.

The major critics have yet to weigh in on Allen & Delancey. The staff, who are all excited about the restaurant, mentioned that both Adam Platt and Frank Bruni visited earlier in the week. I can only hope that Ferguson gets a fair shake this time. Allen & Delancey deserves to succeed.

Allen & Delancey (115 Allen Street at Delancey Street, Lower East Side)

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

San Domenico

Note: San Domenico closed. Click here for a review of SD26, its downtown replacement.

I’ve always been a little hesitant about visiting San Domenico. It advertises more than most restaurants. You can hardly see anything at Lincoln Center without running across the distinctive San Domenico logo in your program. Now, I’ve nothing against advertising, but I figured a place that needs to sell itself so aggressively must not have enough adoring regulars. And that’s a bad sign.

On OpenTable, you can book San Domenico any day of the week, at almost any time you want—especially after 8:00 p.m., when the pre-theater crowd has departed. Another bad sign.

But San Domenico gets respect in the local press (New York rates it a critic’s pick), and many a fine Italian chef has passed through its kitchen. So I figured it was finally time to give it a try.

San Domenico has been offering luxe Italian cuisine on Central Park South for almost twenty years. It earned an adoring three stars from Bryan Miller just six weeks after it opened in 1988, with a celebrity chef that had earned two Michelin stars in Italy. Two years later, that chef was gone, and Miller demoted it to two stars in 1991. Ruth Reichl, always generous with her ratings, bumped it back up to three stars in 1993.

Owner Tony May (center), daughter Marisa May (left),
and Chef Odette Fada (right)

Since 1996, Odette Fada has been in the kitchen. William Grimes demoted San Domenico back down to two stars in 2003, finding that Fada “continues to perform marvels,” but that “the dining room is working from a different script,” noting a tourist atmosphere, “aggressive salesmanship,” and servers who “begin calculating their tip almost as soon as they approach the table.”

Grimes also noted that sometimes “the B team was at work” in the kitchen, and we seem to have chosen such an evening to dine at San Domenico. But maybe something more fundamental is wrong here, because no restaurant charging as much as San Domenico should be as clueless as we found it.

We began with drinks at the bar, served up by an old-school Italian bartender who took a while to notice we were there. When our table was ready, the service team insisted that my girlfriend’s unfinished drink would follow, but it took more than five minutes to arrive.

On the way to our table, the host was suddenly stopped by a more senior colleague, who berated him in Italian—for what sin I couldn’t perceive. We were offered fresh cut vegetables and olive oil immediately, but the bread it was meant to go with (excellent, I should note) didn’t arrive till quite a while later.

The waiters who served us were Indian, and they had a huckstering quality about them that belonged on Restaurant Row in the theater district. Our main server kept bumping into things. Others would come along and ask the same question (more bread? tap or bottled water?) we’d already answered. Did we want wine by the bottle or by the glass? It’s a crucial question, as there are separate menus for each option. I asked for wine by the bottle, and they brought both menus anyway. Bargains on the massive wine list are few, but I did find a great nebbiolo for $75, though with no help offered from the staff.

The dinner menu comes, and it’s a confusing jumble, with a lot of dishes to consider, and two loose inserts with additional choices, some of which are duplicated. One of those inserts is a white truffle menu. The server brings two truffles by our table, so we can see what they look like. If you go that route, you choose your food at the usual (very high) prices, and truffles are “$9 per gram” on top of that, with five grams recommended.

Who among us knows what a gram of truffles looks like? In 1993, when truffles were only $5/gram, Florence Fabricant reported that they actually bring the scale to your table and weigh the truffle before and after. It sounds like a procedure more appropriate at a gas station.

The pasta menu warns that dishes may be split, at an extra charge of $2.50. It seems almost churlish, when most of the pastas are around $25.

 
Candlestick pasta in spicy sausage sauce (left); Suckling pig (right)

To start, I had the nightly pasta special, described as “artisanal candlestick shaped pasta with a reduced spicy sausage sauce and green peppers” ($23.50). I was struck by the laziness of the plating, which would be unappetizing even at a diner. The pasta was undercooked and tough. The spicy sausage sauce packed some nice heat, but I didn’t see any green peppers. And for the life of me, I couldn’t perceive a “candlestick” shape; it just looked like large penne.

My girlfriend was even more disgusted with a similar-looking pasta, likewise undercooked, that was supposed to include lobster, at a price of almost $30. There were just two dinky pieces of lobster in there, which hadn’t been detached from their shells.

We both ordered the suckling pig, an entrée that’s tough to screw up, but was somewhat dull in light of a price point north of $35, and again unimaginatively plated. (To be fair, I had already eaten a bit of it before I remembered to snap the photo above.)

After all that, we weren’t going to take any chances on desserts, which at around $14 apiece struck us as exorbitant, even by this restaurant’s standards. After our meal, the server dropped off a plate of petits-fours, which were probably the best thing we had.

The room seems a bit dated, but I suppose it could be charming if only the food and the service lived up to it. San Domenico is surely capable of doing better than this. Then again, maybe not. We certainly don’t plan on trying it again anytime soon. At $300 (including tax and tip), we have better ways of spending our money.

San Domenico (240 Central Park South between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

Food: unsatisfactory
Service: classless
Ambiance: the perfect setting for a good meal that never arrives
Overall: disappointing

Philippe

 

I missed the Mr. Chow moment. That was almost 30 years ago, when Michael Chow opened Mr. Chow in East Midtown, building on successes in London and Beverley Hills. It was supposed to be haute Chinese reinterpreted for a modern audience, but it was always more about people-watching. Mimi Sheraton was unimpressed when she awarded one star in the Times. When Mr. Chow opened a fourth branch last year in TriBeCa, Frank Bruni turned in a devastating zero-star review. Not that it mattered. Mr. Chow is still there.

For 26 years, Philippe Chow (no relation) was the executive chef at Mr. Chow in midtown. Last year, he opened his own place just a few blocks away, and christened it Philippe. He hasn’t waited long to expand, with an outpost in Mexico City, and branches in Miami and Las Vegas to come.

Philippe was basically ignored by most of the critics in town. I believe Adam Platt was the only one who bothered, awarding zero stars. The menu is basically a clone of Mr. Chow. Philippe Chow’s aim in life is not to challenge us with anything new, but simply to get a piece of the gravy train that the other Chow has been feeding on for so long. Nevertheless, Philippe does have some advantages: It is not as hideously over-priced as Mr. Chow.

 
Chicken Lettuce Wrap (left); Whole Crispy Duck (right)

To start, we had the Chicken Lettuce Wrap ($15), which my friend Kelly remembered fondly from Mr. Chow. I assume the mystery meat we were served was indeed chicken, but it had that bland generic taste of the take-out place down the street. Kelly said that it was nowhere as good as the wraps at Mr. Chow.

Nearly all of the entrées are priced for two persons. We ordered the Crispy Duck ($54), served with the traditional pancakes, duck sauce, lettuce and scallions. Unlike the traditional Peking Duck (which Philippe also offers, at $65), this duck is deep-fried. It was presented whole, then dissected table-side. We were mightily impressed with the textural contrast between the crisp skin and the succulent, fatty duck meat. It was so tender that the server only needed two spoons to pull it off the bone.

We also had an order of pork fried rice ($8) to share. It was gorgeously presented in a gleaming silver crockpot, but it wasn’t warm enough, and it tasted like it had come out of the microwave. 

There is a tendency to upsell. We didn’t finish anything we ordered—and, in the case of the duck, I was sorry to leave any of it behind. Nevertheless, our server tried his best to persuade us to order a second appetizer, which would have been truly a waste. After the duck was cleared, he brought a tray of dessert samples to our table, a practice normally encountered only at low-class restaurants.

Nevertheless, we did take the plunge on dessert, and I wasn’t sorry we did. Kelly was happy with a chocolate éclair (right), and I enjoyed an orange–carrot tart (left), both beautifully plated.

It’s hard to rate Philippe, because the duck was first-class and the desserts were very good, but our appetizer and fried rice were no better than mediocre take-out. But plenty of places in town are less expensive and more consistent.

Philippe (30 E. 60th Street between Park & Madison Avenues, East Midtown)

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

The Payoff: Moim

Today, as expected, Frank Bruni awards one star to Moim, a four-month-old Korean restaurant in Park Slope:

Moim does a tempered, tweaked version of Korean cooking that’s still rarer — still more of an exciting discovery — than you’d expect, given all the Momofuku mania. Many of its dishes, distinguished by a beautifully modulated and lingering heat, are compelling. Most are at least satisfying…

And the prices at Moim — $4 to $10 for small plates, $8 to $22 for larger ones — amply reflect its liberation from Manhattan rents.

This is Bruni at his best, calling attention to a good restaurant without resorting to star inflation. And, in a rarity for him, discovering a place not already discovered by others.

Eater and I both win at 3–1 odds on our hypothetical $1 bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$52.50		$55.67
Gain/Loss	+3.00		+3.00
Total	$55.50		$58.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	22–6		21–7

Pamplona

Note: Pamplona closed in October 2009.

*

When the restaurant Ureña opened last year, it quickly earned a place in the hearts of adoring foodies, but not, alas, their pocketbooks. Stuck on a drab block without much foot traffic, chef Alex Ureña closed earlier this year, re-opening after a brief makeover as the more downmarket Pamplona. Gone are the foams, the foie gras, and the degustation menu. A tapas menu and hearty comfort food replace them.

 
Salt Cod Croquettes and Dates wrapped in Bacon (left); Confit Suckling Pig (right)

I started with a couple of tapas. Salt Cod Croquettes ($5) were were delicate and not at all heavy. Dates wrapped in Bacon ($4) offered a well judged mixture of sweet and savory. None of the tapas were over $6, and on a list of appetizers none were over $12.

Among the entrées ($18–24), I was intrigued by the “Hamburguesa,” evidently a hamburger made with beef and suckling pig.  However, there are several entrées for two, and we were drawn to the Cochinillo, or config suckling pig, a tender brick of braised pig at $35 for two—Ureña had offered a similar dish at $25 for one.

Like the rest of the menu, the wine list at Pamplona is fairly priced. I forgot what we paid for the wine pictured at right, but it was reasonable, and as it went well with our food, I thought I’d show the label. 

The restaurant was full on a Saturday night. Everything we tried was prepared to a high standard, but it is hearty, uncomplicated, and not likely to challenge diners very much. That just might be what Alex Ureña’s customers want right now. We’d rather see him succeed at something—even if it’s not the ambitious restaurant he had before.

Service was competent, but it felt a bit rushed. 

The décor at Ureña was much scoffed at. Even after the makeover, no one would call it a romantic spot, but the hard edges of the lighting seem to have been smoothed, and it is now a perfectly pleasant inexpensive restaurant.

Pamplona (37 E. 28th Street between Park & Madison Avenues, Gramercy)

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