Brasserie Ruhlmann

Brasserie Ruhlmann got on my “ought-to-try” list after I heard that Laurent Tourondel had taken over the kitchen. Perhaps I ought to have been suspicious.

Laurent Tourondel has spread himself thinner than goose liver pâté. He has four other Manhattan restaurants in his BLT franchise (BLT Steak, BLT Prime, BLT Fish, and BLT Burger), a fifth opening this summer (BLT Market), and BLT Steak outposts in two other cities. He’s built up that empire in just a shade over three years, so he can’t be spending much time in any of his kitchens.

Brasserie Ruhlmann was a quick rescue job. The restaurant opened in January 2006 with another executive chef, and Tourondel was named to the post just three months later. I assume Tourondel got a tidy consultant’s fee to design a standard-issue French brasserie menu that he could hand over to a chef de cuisine, and never think about again. His name is on the menu and his cookbook prominently displayed, but there’s none of the inspiration that make the BLT restaurants so impressive. (Update: Tourondel has yet another offspring: BLT Steak in the Westchester Ritz-Carlton.)

Brasserie Ruhlmann is named for the art deco furniture designer Émile-Jacques Ruhlmann. Owner Jean Denoyer is a Ruhlmann collector himself, and he spent $5 million building out the spectacular space on Rockefeller Plaza, where the art deco theme is always at home. Denoyer knows a little something about restaurants too, as he also owns the Michelin-starred La Goulue on the Upper East Side (among other places).

Alas, the kitchen just goes through the motions. You’ll have a satisfactory meal at Brasserie Ruhlmann, but nothing you can’t have at many other French brasseries around town, or indeed at La Goulue, where the food is better, and the atmosphere feels far less like a tourist trap.

We arrived at around 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday night, with the restaurant nearly deserted. It seemed like a nice evening, so we decided to sit outdoors. Drinks—a sidecar for me, a whiskey sour for my girlfriend—took twenty minutes to arrive. The manager explained that they’d never heard of a sidecar, and had to look it up. After all that time, they served my girlfriend whiskey straight-up, rather than a whiskey sour. We sent it back.

By now, it was 8:25. Though we had only just started sipping our cocktails, naturally they were keen to take our wine and food order instantly, but we were having none of that. When we finally did order, the wine came promptly, but the waiter struggled to uncork it. After a minor skirmish, he managed to push the cork into the bottle. With a sheepish look, he disappeared.

Meanwhile, the rains had come, so we headed inside. A short while later (it was now 9:00), he returned to our new table with the wine in a decanter—“very well filtered,” he assured us.

Complain all you want about Laurent Tourondel, but the bread service is always superb at his restaurants. Gougères (above, right) were perhaps the most original item we had at Brasserie Ruhlmann.

Country Pâté (left); Beef Shortribs Bourguignonne (right)

Country Pâté ($12) was competently prepared, although fairly ordinary. Beef Shortribs Bourguignonne ($28) were served in a generous portion, though the sauce was a bit heavy. (The photo doesn’t do it justice—beef seldom photographs well.)

After the comic mishaps with the drinks, the rest of the evening’s service was just fine. On principle, we thought that the drinks should have been comped—but they weren’t. The restaurant was nearly empty while we were there. It is probably busier and livelier at lunch, as at dinner time there’s usually no reason to be in the area. So far, it doesn’t look like Brasserie Ruhlmann will change that.

Brasserie Ruhlmann (45 Rockefeller Plaza, 50th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Rockefeller Center, West Midtown)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Mediocre
Ambiance: Good
Overall: Satisfactory

Wild Salmon

Note: Wild Salmon closed at the end of 2007, yet another failure for Jeffrey Chodorow. The space became Richard Sandoval’s Zengo.

*

Wild Salmon is the latest offering from restauranteur Jeffrey Chodorow. His China Grill Management empire now spans twenty-five restaurants in ten cities—several of them mini-chains, such as Asia de Cuba and China Grill, both in five cities. The first opened in 1987, so it’s clear he turns them out in a hurry.

He’s also a prolific failure. Just three months ago, Kobe Club received zero stars from Frank Bruni of the Times. It was a replacement for another failure, Mix in New York. Wild Salmon replaces the failed English is Italian, which replaced the failed Tuscan, which replaced the failed Tuscan Steak. Across town, there was the failed Rocco’s (made famous in the TV series The Restaurant) and its successor, the failed Brasserio Caviar and Banana. All gone.

The Upstairs Bar

Wild Salmon, described as “A Pacific N. W. Brasserie,” looks to have a brighter future. A solid and moderately priced seafood restaurant, it should have no trouble drawing on an East Midtown corporate audience looking to eat well, if unadventurously.

Chef Charles Ramsayer, who moved to New York from Seattle, flies in everything he serves from the Pacific Northwest. The menu offers the usual raw bar items, including several varieties of salmon, prepared every conceivable way. Or you can have anything from Penn Cove Mussels ($7) to a huge platter costing $160. Other starters are $11–26.

 
Bread service (left); Smoked scallops cocktail (right)

I started with the Smoked Scallops ($13), served with sour cream & chives and cocktail sauce—a happy riff on the more commonplace shrimp cocktail (also available). The bread was mightily addictive.

The entrée menu offers a range of composed dishes ($21–38), along with an à la carte section where you choose a protein, a cooking method, and a sauce. Just considering the à la carte seafood options (there’s beef too), there are seven fish, five cooking methods, and eight sauces, making for a dizzying array of 280 combinations, before side dishes are considered.

Cedar Planked King Salmon with Meyer Lemon Orange Hollandaise Sauce

The server recommended the Cedar Planked King Salmon with the Meyer Lemon Orange Hollandaise sauce. At $37, it was $10 more than the next most expensive à la carte fish. It certainly was a solid choice, but there are 279 more options, and it could take a decade to try them all. If Wild Salmon lasts that long.

Among the composed entrées, more than one server recommended the Black Cod ($28), but I doubted that Nobu’s version of it could be improved upon, so I took a pass.

Cheesecake

I had cheesecake for dessert ($9), which wasn’t particularly memorable.

The restaurant is still in its first few weeks of business. It was not full at 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. Nevertheless, as one would expect at a Chodorow restaurant, I was firmly commanded to retire to the bar until my girlfriend arrived. At least it is a comfortable bar that one doesn’t mind retiring to.

Everyone working at Wild Salmon is excited to be there, or they’re putting on a damned good act. Bloomberg reviewer Alan Richman complained that they were too talkative, and I suspect other visitors will too, but we were merely amused. Lines like “We have a plethora of side dishes” or “We have tons of appetizers” aren’t all that helpful.

The wine list is reasonably priced in relation to the rest of the menu. A sommelier came over unbidden and steered us to a terrific pinot noir ($52), and probably not one I would have thought to choose.

The space is attractive and comfortable. Built on two levels, the dining room is downstairs, the bar upstairs. Hundreds of little sculpted salmons hang above the dining room (they reminded Richman of sperm), reminiscent of Kobe Club’s dangling samurai swords. But here, one needn’t worry of imminent death should one of them fall.

We enjoyed our meal, but wouldn’t rush back. We suspect that’ll be Frank Bruni’s verdict, too. The bartender told us that, as far as they knew, Bruni hadn’t been in yet. I suggest they simplify the menu. Frank doesn’t like to have quite so many choices. Neither did we.

Wild Salmon (622 Third Avenue at 40th Street, East Midtown)

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

Spice Market

Note: Spice Market closed in September 2016. The restaurant remained successful; the landlord simply wanted them out, to make way for a more lucrative retail tenant. Jean-Georges Vongerichten says that he hopes to re-open at another New York location. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with clones in Punta de Mita, Mexico, and Doha, Qatar.

Amanda Hesser of The New York Times comically over-rated Spice Market when it opened in 2004, awarding three stars. It was probably a solid two, but suffered the inevitable decline that plagues almost all of the Vongerichten restaurants. In 2009, Frank Bruni demoted it to one star, which was probably about right. By the end, it was basically a party restaurant for tourists, but as tourist restaurants go, you could do a lot worse.

*

A little over three years ago, Spice Market’s arrival signaled a milestone for the Meatpacking District. For the first time, a serious restauranteur (Jean-Georges Vongerichten) was staking claim to an area that used to be a wholesale meat market and prostitution haunt.

Indeed, in a much-ridiculed three-star review, Amanda Hesser of the Times advised Vongerichten to pump ginger aroma into the street, to overcome “the stench of blood and offal from the surrounding meatpacking district.” She added, “It’s hardly an olfactory amuse-bouche.”

Nowadays, your tender nostrils needn’t worry about the stench of blood: the original meatpackers are long gone, and the area is a maze of clubs and mostly second-tier restaurants. Whether it has any restaurants worth your while is open to debate. I am probably in the minority, when I tell you that there are actually a few Meatpacking restaurants I like.

Until yesterday, I’d never been to Spice Market, except for drinks. In the early days, it was one of the city’s toughest tables to book, and I never bothered. However, when a friend suggested it, I was happy to accept the invitation, as it was the only one of Vongerichten’s Manhattan restaurants I’d never been to. Things have settled down a bit, although Spice Market still does brisk business. On a Tuesday night, most tables were taken, and I noted that all of the luxurious private rooms downstairs were fully booked.

The pan-Asian menu is divided into appetizers ($9.00–14.50), salads ($7.50–14.00), soups ($7.50–8.50), seafood entrées ($18–30), meat entrées ($16–36), and noodles/rice ($2.00–14.50). At the bottom comes the ominous warning, “All dishes are served family style.” That means they come out of the kitchen, and onto the middle of the table, when the kitchen is ready to serve them—not necessarily when you’re ready to eat them.

We weren’t sure how much food we needed, and “small plate” restaurants like Spice Market tend to encourage over-ordering. For appetizers, we tried the Black Pepper Shrimp ($14.50), which was nicely balanced in true Vongerichten fashion with sun dried pineapples. Mushroom Egg Rolls ($9.50 for four) with a galangal dipping sauce were also excellent.

We moved on to the Ginger Fried Rice ($7), which came topped with a fried egg, sunny side up, with ginger and garlic. This was so irresistible that we practically inhaled it, and didn’t wait for any of the entrées to arrive. The kitchen also did well by a tangy Cod with Malaysian Chili Sauce ($19), which the waiter divided and served tableside.

Both meat entrées disappointed. Pork Vindaloo ($19) and Red Curried Duck ($19) both tasted like they could have been simmering for a week, with generic sauces that could have come from any curry house on any back street. Amanda Hesser loved both, but they’ve lost whatever appeal they once had.

In the end, we probably ordered one dish more than we needed, but I was glad to be able to sample a broader swath of the menu. Most dishes were spicy, but not particularly so. The server was about right, when he said that the heat of the Pork Vindaloo was “5 on a scale of 1 to 10.”

I had recalled that Thai Jewels were the best of the desserts, and though we were quite full, we had to give it a try. Here we agreed with Amanda Hesser, so I’ll let her tell it:

Tiny bits of sweet water chestnut are glazed with tapioca, dyed candy colors like cherry red and lime green. These jewels are blended with palm seeds and slivers of jackfruit and papaya, then heaped onto a nest of coconut ice. It is fruity, nutty, cold and slushy, a wonderful mess of flavors, not unlike Lucky Charms.

The wine list isn’t long or complex, with reds and whites listed in each of three categories: smooth, bold, spicy. I chose a spicy red wine for $48, and we were quite pleased with it.

Servers were well versed in the menu and gave reasonable ordering advice. The choreography of waiters and runners sometimes got a bit discombobulated. At the table next to us, they managed to spill a whole bottle of water. Nothing so alarming happened to us, but there were minor glitches. Yet, at other times the service was more polished than you’d expect for a restaurant in Spice Market’s price range.

Despite the “family style” menu, the pace was quite reasonable, and we spent around 2½ hours there. I don’t know if we lucked out, or if they actually try to time the courses intelligently. Anyhow, it’s a good thing we were never served more than one dish at a time, as our small two-top wouldn’t have accommodated any more.

What can you say about the Disney-meets-Thailand décor, and serving staff in orange pajamas? You’ll love it or hate it, but it has no peer in Manhattan. I would guess that Jean-Georges Vongerichten spends no more than 15 seconds a month thinking about Spice Market. It runs on reputation. But there’s just enough left that you can see what all the excitement was about.

Spice Market (403 West 13th Street at Ninth Avenue, Meatpacking District)

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

The Payoff: Craftbar and Craftsteak

Today’s review is a bit of a snoozer, confirming our hypothesis that Frank Bruni is bored. He arrives at the correct ratings for Craftbar and Craftsteak (one and two stars, respectively), but he doesn’t have much passion for either restaurant. Maybe he banged it out on his laptop in between naps on his long flight back from Los Angeles, where he recently traveled to review a pizzeria. With apparently no NYC restaurants remaining that interest him, perhaps we can persuade Frank to take his discerning palate to the opposite coast, where no doubt they are hungering for a parade of Italian restaurant and steakhouse reviews.

Eater and I both placed identical $1 winning bets on Craftbar (2–1 odds) and Craftsteak (3–1 odds), netting each of us a total of $5 for the week.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$23.00		$25.67
Gain/Loss	+$5.00		+$5.00
Total	$28.00		$30.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	11–2		10–3

Rolling the Dice: Craftbar and Craftsteak

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: After last week’s gross dereliction of duty, Frank Bruni is back in action tomorrow with reviews of two real restaurants: Craftbar and Craftsteak. Eater’s official odds are as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Craftbar
Zero Stars: 3-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 20-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

Craftsteak
Zero Stars: 7-2
One Star: 4-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 12-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: All the critics in town pummeled Craftsteak after it opened last year, with Herr Bruni awarding just a measley star in July 2006. Tom Colicchio’s steakhouse did everything right except the one thing at which it had to excel: steaks. I visited twice, and wasn’t wowed either time. Colicchio publicly admitted that he had goofed, fired the chef de cuisine, and bought new cooking equipment—including a broiler, inexplicably not part of the original plan.

In three years on the job, Bruni has just one self-re-review to his credit (Eleven Madison Park). I don’t know what would possess him to re-review a steakhouse just ten months later, but the improvement must surely be significant. I suspect that in Colicchio’s mind, Craftsteak is a three-star restaurant, and if he’s finally got the steaks right, it’s not an unreasonable aspiration. After all, it is built on a similar model to Craft, which has three stars. But two stars is the most that Bruni has given any steakhouse, and after a two-week losing streak, we aren’t prepared to dare the Eater oddsmakers.

Craftbar is getting its first rated review, after receiving the $25 and Under treatment from Eric Asimov in 2002 and a Diner’s Journal piece from Sam Sifton in 2004. Since then Chef Akhtar Nawab has moved on to The E.U., and according to FloFab in the Times, the new menu is “less elaborate and expensive.”

It’s not unusual for restaurants promoted from $25 and Under to get two stars, and casual places like Craftbar are right up Frank’s street. When train wrecks like Morandi and Cafe Cluny get one star, it almost seems like there’s no longer any such thing as a “good” one-star restaurant, leaving two-stars as the minimum rating that represents any kind of compliment. But with Craftbar lurking pretty much under the foodie radar these days, we have to agree with the oddsmakers that a deuce is unlikely here.

The Bet: Tomorrow could be a wild day, but we aren’t taking any chances. We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award one star to Craftbar and two stars to Craftsteak.

Restaurant Pet Peeves

Over at the Bruni Blog, Marian Burros has a post about “annoying restaurant practices.” She leads off with paper tablecloth tops:

If restaurants cannot afford fresh tablecloths made of fabric — and I know it costs money to clean them — it would be far better to have a bare table.

I agree with that, but I have a few more pressing ones:

1. “You can have a seat at the bar until your full party arrives….” I realize there are some legitimate economic reasons for this policy. But I’ve been shooed over to the bar even at restaurants that weren’t full. It comes across as a cynical attempt to generate bar income, rather than a legitimate way to manage the reservations book. Needless to say, if you do begin your meal at the bar, any good restaurant should offer to transfer the tab automatically to your dinner check.


2. “Would you like still or sparkling water?” This is a subtle trick by which the restaurant hopes you won’t realize there’s a third option: tap water. Bottled still water is the biggest rip-off in the industry.


3. “Would you like to start with a cocktail?” There’s nothing wrong with this question. But if you order pre-dinner cocktails, then the server should give you time to drink them. You shouldn’t be asked for your wine order when full cocktail glasses have been dropped off just moments ago.


4. “Let me tell you about our specials…” Any decent restaurant ought to be able to produce a written list of specials. If they’re recited, rather than written, it should be no more than two or three items—otherwise, you can’t keep them all in your head. Most annoying is when the server comes by to recite the specials after you’ve already had menus for 10–15 minutes. By then, you’ve already chosen something. The time to announce the specials is before the diner has decided what to order.


5. Side dishes. Many restaurants offer separately priced side dishes. I don’t object to the steakhouse pricing model, where everything is à la carte, but many restaurant menus fail to make this clear. The server should say something if you order a side dish, and your entrée already comes with a substantial vegetable. This is especially annoying if the side dish and the included vegetable are similar—e.g., you order a side of mashed potatoes, and your entrée comes with fries.


6. Tapas-style dining. I’ve nothing against tapas, of course. But nowadays, “tapas-style” is a shorthand that means, “The kitchen will send out the food as it’s ready.” Inevitably, this means that a pile of food is going to arrive all at once, since the kitchen is working according to their convenience, rather than yours.


7. Butter knives. Any respectable restaurant should have them. And the butter should be soft and warm, not hard as a hockey puck.


8. Replacement silverware. Any restaurant above the level of Chinese take-out should replace the used silverware after each course, without being asked.


9. “Can I tempt you with dessert?” By all means offer a dessert menu, but servers shouldn’t call it a temptation, nor should they try to change the diner’s mind after a firm “No, thank you” has been delivered. (Of course, this pet peeve applies to all forms of up-selling, but for some reason it’s most prevalent at dessert.)


10. Depositing the bill too soon. No fancy restaurant should present a bill till you’ve asked for it. At other restaurants, I don’t mind this practice. But the bill should never be presented when you’re obviously still eating. When you’re done, or very nearly so, the server may ask if you’ll be having any more to eat or drink, and if the answer is no, I’ve no objection if the bill presented shortly thereafter.

Today's Dumb Stat: Most NYC Drivers Oppose Congestion Pricing

Today, Reuters reports that “most” NYC drivers oppose Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to implement congestion pricing for vehicles entering Manhattan (below 96th Street) during prime times. The polling margin was actually 51% opposed, which means that 49% of drivers either favor the proposal, or aren’t sure.

Well, duh! Obviously drivers don’t favor paying an extra $8 for their daily commute. What the article didn’t say, is that only about 10% of those employed in Manhattan drive to work. A poll showing a bare majority opposed, when the other 90% of the population is left out of the survey, doesn’t mean much.

Probably half of the 10% who drive to work in Manhattan would use mass transit, if it were available and convenient to the area where they live. And that’s the whole point of Bloomberg’s proposal — to use the congestion pricing fee to invest in mass transit. It’s a needed corrective to almost 70 years of neglect.

Since 1940, many new expressways, bridges, and tunnels have been built. But the city’s mass transit capacity actually shrank, because many elevated lines were demolished, and the subways that were supposed to replace them — such as the Second Avenue Line — were never built. Many of the lines that do exist aren’t in a state of good repair. And most lines could run more trains, were it not for antiquated signalling systems that are long overdue for replacement.

Manhattan can’t accommodate any more cars. But it can accommodate more transit lines. Building mass transit is the only way to get more people into Manhattan. It would also help the existing population, since transit is nearly always faster than driving, provided the starting and ending points of the journey are reasonably close to one’s home and office.

But Bloomberg’s proposal is still going to be a heavy lift, as many politicians in the outer boroughs oppose it. The trouble is that congestion pricing would take effect almost immediately, but building new transit capacity takes years. Politicians are loath to vote for short-term pain, when the long-term gain probably won’t materialize until after they’re out of office.

It will take plenty of political strong-arming to get congestion pricing approved. We simply must.

Gold St.

Note: Gold St. closed on April 1, 2009. It re-opened as Harry’s Italian.

*

Has a diner ever had so much attention? Practically every newspaper, magazine, or blog in town that chronicles restaurant openings mentioned Gold St., the latest brainchild of Harry Poulakakos, who owns Harry’s Steak, Harry’s Café, and various other Lower Manhattan restaurants.

To be fair, Gold St. isn’t quite a diner. It has an executive chef (Patrick Vacciariello from the Smith & Wollensky chain), a chef de cuisine (Tony Landeros), and a sushi bar. It serves a few items not found at many diners, like Kobe Beef Sliders and Fries with brie fondue, to say nothing of the sushi. But in other ways, it’s very much a diner, with the predictable burgers and meat loaf, on a menu long enough to include far more than any kitchen can execute well.

Gold St. is also the Financial District’s first 24-hour restaurant, located at the epicenter of a neighborhood now dominated by rental and condo conversions. It might not be the East Village, but the area has as much need of 24×7 food as any other, and now we have it.

If you come to Gold St. expecting fine dining (as NYCnosh did), you’ll be disappointed. If you come looking for a “diner plus…,” you’ll probably conclude (as Bloomberg did) that Gold St. is “just about right.”

Slow Roast Pork ($15), cooked on a rotisserie all day, had a nice pink barbecue texture. Peas and carrots were expertly done. There was nothing special about the fries, and the tomato salsa garnish seemed unnecessary. I had nothing else, aside from two diet cokes ($3.25 each, no refills) and a coffee ($2).

I’m not going to recite the various menu categories, but the cheapest dinner item is a hamburger ($8), while the most expensive non-sushi choice is grilled shrimp ($22). The very long sushi menu has the usual suspects, and some creative ones, like an Angry Spider roll ($11.50) and a Yellow Tail Tasting ($12.50). Sushi combo platters run all the way up to $52. The breakfast and dessert menus have all of the expected items, and the back page of the menu lists a number of fruit smoothies. There is also a full bar and a modest wine list.

There’s nothing original about the vaguely retro 1950s décor, but the seats and banquettes are quite comfortable, and the waitresses wear short, short skirts. Service was attentive, although the restaurant wasn’t very busy when I visited. I saw Harry Poulakakos himself nervously pacing around, which was unexpected on a Sunday evening.

Be it ever so humble, I’m glad Gold St. has arrived. Most importantly, it means the Financial District as a residential neighborhood has arrived. Unfortunately, I’m moving way uptown this summer, so I won’t be around long to appreciate it.

Gold St. (2 Gold Street at Maiden Lane, Financial District)

The Payoff: Max Brenner

Today, Frank Bruni learns that he can take his niece and nephew out for dessert, and the New York Times will pay for it. At Max Brenner, critic-to-be Gavin, 6, pronounced “Not everything should be made into dessert.” No doubt Gavin will be on the Times payroll soon, as he seems to have the same discerning palate as his uncle.

I hadn’t thought that Bruni would pick out such an utterly irrelevant “restaurant,” only to give it zero stars. To be sure, it’s overrun with tourists, suggesting that perhaps there’s a large audience that needs Frank’s advice about the place. But Little Italy and the Theater District are overrun with tourists too. Will Ferrara be next week’s review?

But zero stars it is. We took the one-star action, and lose $1, for our first two-week losing streak. Luckily for us, the odds on zero stars were only even money, so Eater wins just $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$22.00		$26.67
Gain/Loss	+$1.00		–$1.00
Total	$23.00		$25.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	9–2		8–3

Insieme

Note: Marco Canora and Paul Grieco left Insieme in September 2009. As of December 2010, the new chef is Andrés Julian Grundy. As of January 2011, the restaurant was closed—except for breakfast.

*

When Marco Canora and Paul Grieco opened Hearth in 2003, it was an immediate sensation in foodie community. Canora had been the executive chef at the much-loved Craft, and Hearth was his first solo venture. It won an enthusiastic two stars from Amanda Hesser in the Times, and has been on a roll ever since. I’ve visited Hearth twice, awarding 2½ stars after my most recent visit.

Canora and Grieco are back with an encore: Insieme, which means “together” in Italian. It’s bound to be the most mispronounced restaurant name in Manhattan. (For the record, it’s “in-see-EM-ay.”)

A new restaurant from this team was bound to attract attention. It took Gourmet’s Ruth Reichl only a week to pronounce that Insieme was serving the best lasagne in New York. The bloggers will no doubt come trooping briskly; there’s already a rave on Off the Broiler.

Insieme is located in the Michelangelo Hotel. Frankly, the style of the restaurant clashes with the style of the hotel, but that probably won’t matter: Insieme has its own entrance on Seventh Avenue. It’s actually a bit of a challenge to find the restaurant from inside the hotel. Located at the northern end of the theater district, it should draw on the pre- and post-show crowds. But it’s close enough to the midtown business district to draw on the same clientele that patronizes Le Bernardin, just across the street.

The cuisine has a more upscale feel to it than Hearth. The menu (PDF here) is on two facing pages. On the left are traditional Italian favorites, written in Italian with English translations. On the right are modern versions of the same or similar dishes, with the descriptions only in English. Each side has four antipasti ($12–18), three primi/mid-courses ($14–16) and four secondi/entrées ($29–36). Most of the primi are also available in entrée-sized portions for $26. Side dishes are $9. A five-course tasting menu is $85.

Hors d’oeuvres

After we arrived, the kitchen sent out a wonderful plate of hors-d’oeuvres. Radishes were hollowed out, and stuffed with olives and anchovies. Crostini were topped with goat cheese. Fresh baked rolls came out, with a helping of soft, creamy butter.

Egg-drop soup (left); Black olive fettuccini (right)

The amuse-bouche was an intense egg-drop soup in a beef and chicken broth. To start, I had the Black Olive Fettuccini ($16), with duck ragu and a hint of foie gras. Although wonderful, I thought the portion size was a mite too small, even allowing that it was an appetizer. My girlfriend had the Lasagne Verdi Bolognese ($16), which is surely the dish Ruth Reichl raved about. Made with spinach noodles, it had an astonishingly light texture.

Lamb chop, saddle, breast, sausage with lavender, spring garlic, morels, and mustard greens

Fagioli all’ Uccelletto

We were both drawn to an entrée titled simply “Lamb” ($36), featuring four renditions of lamb: chop, saddle, breast, and sausage. “Breast” is an unusual description for any part of lamb, but I’m assuming it referred to the tender lamb belly (nine o’clock in the photo). The chop and saddle were both impeccably prepared. I was not wowed by the sausage, which seemed to have been stuffed inside of morel mushrooms, and didn’t have enough spicy kick.

A side dish of Fagioli all’ Uccelletto ($8), or Cannellini beans, tomato, garlic, and sage, was terrific. In less accomplished hands, the tomato base would overwhelm the beans, but Marco Canora’s kitchen had the balance just right.

Baba au Rhum
 

Petits-fours
 

Whistler “The Black Piper” G.S.M. 2005For dessert, we shared the Baba au Rhum ($10), an unlikely dish in an Italian restaurant, but still well worth a try. I can’t say that it eclipsed the legendary rendition of this dish at Alain Ducasse, but that would be an unfair comparison.

The evening ended with petits-fours, all excellent, particularly the chocolate truffle in the middle of the photo.

The wine list is a work in progress. At the moment, it’s neither as long nor as interesting as the wine list at Hearth, but with Paul Grieco in charge of both, you can be sure that won’t last. Grieco himself came over to our table, and offered to assist. After a discussion, his advice confirmed the choice I was already leaning to anyway: the Whistler 2005 Black Piper ($47), a fruity Grenache–Shiraz–Mourvedre blend. We loved it so much that I brought the label home.

Service throughout the evening was first-rate. When I arrived, the maitre d’ alertly noticed that our original table was too close to a baby in a high chair. Without prompting, he offered to move us.

The dining room was never more than about half full. It cleared out considerably after 7:30, as the pre-theater crowd headed out. It started to fill up again around 9:00 p.m. I suspect that will be the rhythm of this place. I overheard Chef Canora telling a friend that the restaurant will stay open until 11:00 p.m. on weekdays, 11:30 p.m. on weekends. It’s an experiment to try to attract a post-theater crowd, and Canora didn’t sound positive that it would work. (Hearth closes at 10:00 p.m. on weekdays, 11:00 p.m. on weekends.)

It’s clear that Canora is trying to pitch Insieme at a higher level than Hearth. It’s about $10 per person more expensive, and the décor feels more elegant. Yet, Canora was obviously wary of getting too fancy, given that the city’s major critics tend to hold that against a restaurant. There are no tablecloths, and the tables are crammed rather close together.

It’s a familiar vibe that feels very much like two other recent successes, Perry St. and A Voce. But Insieme seems more sincere, and also more fun, than either of those two restaurants. At Perry St., Jean-Georges Vongerichten, the nominal man-in-charge, is too busy running 10 or 15 other restaurants to give the place more than passing attention. And at A Voce we found the service and ambiance seriously annoying.

And the best part of it is that Insieme is only two weeks old. It can only get better from here.

Insieme (777 Seventh Avenue at 51st Street, West Midtown/Theater District)

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