The Meaning of Meh

So, Pete Wells is the new restaurant critic at The Times.

As I expected, the job went to a NYT insider, as it has done each of the last three times it was vacant (William Grimes, Frank Bruni, and Sam Sifton). And like each of the last three, it is probably not a career move, but rather a sabbatical en route to some other job, a few years from now.

Sam Sifton was officially announced as National Editor on September 13. Heaven knows why it took two months to find a replacement, when he was a few feet away the whole time. Was he drafted, like Sifton? Or did he have to apply, and then twist in the wind while higher-ups decided whether to give him the big promotion?(*)

(*Technically, the restaurant critic works for the Dining Section editor, the position Wells is vacating. But given the visibility and influence of the job, this is a step up. They are not demoting Wells, trust me.)

Fortunately, we do have some evidence of what Wells will be like as a restaurant critic, as he filed several reviews during the last interregnum, between Bruni and Sifton. I have no argument with any of his starred reviews: Gus & Gabriel Gastropub (zero stars), Hotel Griffou (zero), The Standard Grill (one), and Saul (two).

On the other hand, when he had the opportunity to hit a home run, he whiffed. If you don’t understand that SHO Shaun Hergatt is a three-star restaurant, you are presumptively unqualified. He could, of course, eventually show us that this error was a momentary lapse, and not a fair indication of his judgment. I’m not holding my breath.

At least his full reviews, from two years ago, show none of the preciousness or pretension of Sam Sifton. If he can just keep writing in that style, the reviews will be a lot better than they’ve been the last two years.

Tertulia

The new Spanish restaurant Tertulia is this year’s “I-don’t-get-it” place. It isn’t bad: I visited three times, which I wouldn’t have done if I’d hated it. But I don’t understand the hype.

And hyped it is. Tertulia got an enthusiastic two stars in The Times, two-and-half in Bloomberg, three in New York, and four out of five in Time Out. Serious Eats was a notable dissenter: they rated it a B, and said, “We don’t get it.”

To be fair, I wasn’t taken with Boqueria, chef Seamus Mullen’s last place, which he left “amicably” last year. The two places are similar (same cuisine, casual vibe, reservations not taken, quite loud when full), so perhaps Mullen and I are just not on the same wavelength.

The printed menu changes frequently, and there seem to be announced specials every day. Most of the offerings are in two categories: breads, cheeses, and charcuterie ($5–20) and tapas ($6–16). There are usually two or three larger plates offered, for which prices can vary widely. A 40-day aged prime rib, shown on the website and mentioned in some reviews, was $72, but as of last Friday it was no longer on the menu.

Anyhow, the tapas are the core of a meal here, but very few of them pleased me. Either they were too bland, or too salty, or too greasy. A couple were pretty good, but Mullen’s batting average wasn’t high enough.

Tomates de Nuestro Mercado, a salad of heirloom tomatoes, melon, cucumbers, fresh cheese, and herbs (, $14; above left) was competent and forgettable. Spanish mackerel with Fabes beans ($12, above right) was so bland that it left no impression at all. Even the roasted and pickled peppers were unable to come to the rescue.

Cojonudo…Revisited ($5; above left) was a hit, and one of the better bargains on the menu. It’s just two bites of smoked pig cheek topped with a fried quail egg and pepper, but packed with all the flavor the first two dishes lacked.

Nuestras Patatas ($9; above right) ought to come with a warning: not to be ordered by one person. Crispy potatoes drizzled with Pimentó and garlic had a spicy kick, but you want at least two or three fellow-diners to share it.

Mullen touts Arroz a la Plancha ($16; above left) as a signature dish, but I hated it. The description (Calasparra rice, snails, wild mushrooms, celery, fennel, Ibérico ham) sounds promising , but it’s dominated by a torpedo of greasy brown rice that had none of the crisp char that you would expect from the plancha.

The flavors really pop out in the Ensalata de Otoño ($13; above right), with squash, kale, mushrooms, Idiazábal cheese, and mushroom vinaigrette. There is not a lot going on here, but it’s a successful dish.

The last item I tried was one of the large-format plates, the Fabada ($32; above left), a bean stew with pork belly, house-made morcilla and chorizo. The pork belly was crisped up nicely, and the chorizo had a strong, spicy kick. The morcilla, or blood sausage, seemed a bit too loose, and the Fabes beans still seemed bland to me, as they had the first time. The cold side of red cabbage that came with it (above right) did not add much.

The beverage program emphasizes sherries, ciders, and wine. There is no printed cocktail list, but the mixed drinks are good, if you ask for them. As I was alone, I didn’t have an opportunity to explore much of the wine list, but the Spanish ciders are worth a try. One one visit, I was served wine in a juice glass, which a Facebook friend said is common in Spain, but on another I was given a proper wine stem.

The dining room occupies a long, narrow space, with distressed brick walls, dark wood tables without tablecloths, and an open kitchen in the back. It is rather dark, and there are no windows, except at the front. Unlike Boqueria, Tertulia at least has real tables and seats with backs, though I didn’t get one: I sat at the bar three times. Last Friday night, there was a 10-minute wait for a bar stool at 6:00 p.m., with most tables taken. It was standing-room-only by 7:30.

That is the rhythm of dinner at Tertulia, three months in. Servers are friendly, knowledgeable, and good at multi-tasking, as they have to be in a place this busy. The cuisine here makes a nod at ambition. The menu seems to rely heavily on authentic ingredients, and the chef is not afraid to challenge his audience, but the ratio of hits to misses is not good enough.

Tertulia (359 Sixth Ave. between W. 4th St. & Washington Pl., West Village)

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

Benoit

Alain Ducasse never gets an opening right in New York. His troubles at the Essex House and at Mix are well enough known that I needn’t repeat them. (Let google be your friend, if they’re unfamiliar to you.) Anyhow, those restaurants are long gone.

Adour at the St. Regis and Benoit are both on their third executive chefs in roughly four years. I hear great things about chef Didier Elena’s tenure at Adour, but haven’t been back yet. The other night was my first visit to Benoit since Philippe Bertineau took over last year.

When Ducasse opened Benoit, he told The Times that he had a list of 100 recipes he’d like “to put on the menu sooner or later.” I can believe that, as the menu looks new almost every time I go. I won’t miss the fries “Louis l’Ami style,” stacked in an impressive-looking tower but cold and greasy on the inside, nor a bizarre pork shank I had in 2009.

Other items, like the egg mayo, escargots, onion soup, quenelles, roast chicken for two, and steak aux poivres, have been more or less constant since the place opened. Cassoulet is offered in season, as in right now. It’s all classic French bistro food, made well.

Prices have edged upward, as they have almost everywhere. In 2008, there were no items above $29; now, half the entrées exceed that price, with the high end at $39. Onion soup that was $9 in 2008 is $12 now. Cassoulet that was $26 in 2009 is $29 now.

You can also dine more economically. At each place setting is a printed card with a pencil, where you can check off three appetizers for $12 or five for $16. If you’re there before 6:30 p.m., as I was the other night, the pre-theatre prix fixe is $29 for two courses or $39 for three. (There is also a less expensive bar menu.)

The carb spread (above left) is pretty good, with four light gougères and sliced French bread in a cloth basket.

The $29 prix fixe offered three choices apiece for the appetizer and entrée. The twice-baked Comté cheese soufflé (above left) was rich and luscious, with a creamy sauce poured tableside. My apologies for the poor photo.

Skate Wing Grenobloise (above right) was the best fish entrée I’ve had in a few months, with crisp crust, tangy on the inside. (The term “Grenobloise” refers to a sauce with browned butter, capers, parsley, and lemon.) Skate isn’t a luxury fish, but the kitchen couldn’t have made it shine any more brightly.

The ambiance straddles the divide between fancy and casual. Once upon a time, there was a four-star restaurant here. The iconic room (formerly La Côte Basque) could stand to be a bit brighter. There are crisp white tablecloths, sauces and flambées at tableside, French-speaking waiters, and a deep wine list where many bottles reach three figures. But roasted peanuts (above right) replace the usual petits fours, the menu is presented in a plastic sleeve, and the wine glasses are “one size fits all.” There’s a good list of classic cocktails, like the French 75 ($15), but the list of wines by the glass is over-priced and underwhelming.

On some prior visits (this was my fourth or fifth), I’ve noted scatter-brained service as the restaurant fills up. I couldn’t test if that problem has been fixed, as it was only about one-quarter full at 6:15 p.m., and still under half full when I left for Carnegie Hall at 7:15. The server was attentive, and the food came out fairly quickly.

Ducasse keeps fiddling with the place, but despite occasional flubs on past visits, Benoit still feels like a two-star restaurant to me, and a vital one at that.

Benoit (60 W. 55th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

The Burger at Saxon + Parole

Earlier this year, AvroKO Hospitality Group and chef Brad Farmerie decided to close their three-year-old Asian-themed restaurant, Double Crown. Farmerie told The Times, “I want to take a fresh approach, innovate on familiar dishes with touches of North Africa and the Mediterranean.”

If there is anything fresh or innovative about its replacement, Saxon + Parole, it is lost on me. The menu offers the likes of seafood towers, a beet and feta cheese salad, a foie gras terrine, steaks, chops, lobster, chicken, a whole branzino, and so forth. It’s a generic upscale suburban restaurant, transplanted to the Bowery, with the kind of easily replicated fare that can be churned out on auto-pilot while Farmerie tends to his Michelin-starred flagship, Public.

The design department at AvroKO, which was once hailed for innovative designs at Public and Park Avenue, has fallen pray to repetition. This exact idea (named for two nineteenth-century race horses) hasn’t been used before, but there is nothing clever in its realization. The firm has become a world-class accumulator of tchotchkes.

In a one-star review earlier this week, Eric Asimov of The Times praised the burger ($17), so I ordered that. It gets a wonderful kick from a gooey fried egg, Havarti cheese, and maple bacon. The beef has a strong fatty flavor, but probably wouldn’t hold up on its own without all of the extra toppings. The fries ($6 if ordered separately) come with two dipping sauces, chili ketchup and blue cheese mayo. To my taste they were too greasy, but perhaps some people like them that way.

I dined at the bar, where getting a server’s attention was a chore. Whatever you may want—to get a menu, to order, to get a check—you’ll be waving your arms wildly before you’re noticed.

They do a brisk bar business here. I had two tequila-based drinks, the Bowery Fx and the Beetnik (both $14). The tables appeared to be about half full at 7:00 p.m., but that’s early by East Village standards. With tables spaced fairly close together and plenty of hard, exposed surfaces, it’ll get loud later on. I didn’t stick around to find out.

In a neighborhood chock full of restaurants with personality, I’m hard press to see the point of Saxon + Parole, which seems to revel in its very ordinariness. I suppose another AvroKO creation will replace it in a few years.

Saxon + Parole (316 Bowery at Bleecker Street, East Village)

Coppelia

Coppelia, as critic Robert Sietsema observed in the Village Voice, is what the average New York City diner might have been, if the tradition had been founded by Latinos instead of Greeks. Or the Walt Disney version, at any rate. It could transfer to the Cuban pavilian at Epcot (if there was one), and chef Julian Medina wouldn’t need to change a thing.

Medina is in his moment now, with three outposts of his Mexican place Toloache, two of his pan-Latin restaurant Yerba Buena, and now Coppelia, which is billed as Cuban, but isn’t really anchored to any national cuisine.

Coppelia is the least ambitious of the three, but as diners go, you’ll be happy it exists. Located strategically at the midpoint between Chelsea’s clubland and the Meatpacking District, it’s open 24/7, serving the perfect food for soaking up alcohol after night on the town. At 8:00 p.m. on a rainy Saturday evening, it was nearly deserted. My son wondered how it could stay in business. “The crowds come later,” I explained.

If you come in sober, what you’ll find is decent, inexpensive (for Chelsea), pan-Latin cuisine. Entrées are $13.95–17.95; burgers and sandwiches $6.95–7.95; starters and salads $2.95–10.95; breakfast dishes, served all day, $4.95–9.95. The food is slightly better than you are entitled to expect at those prices.

Fish tacos ($9.95; above left) offered crispy flounder and guacamole, topped with a rich chipotle cole slaw. Arroz con pollo ($15.95; above right) could feed a family. The chicken was tender, the rice sweet and sticky, and there was an abundance of peas, peppers, and scrambled egg.

But Ropa Vieja ($15.95; above left) was dull. The shredded beef both looked and tasted like traditional diner food, and a side of beans (above right) was too watery.

There is no liquor license yet (the staff says it’s a week away). A lime soda imported from Mexico wasn’t bad at all, though at $4.50 is a bit expensive in relation to the menu. Service was attentive, as it ought to be when the ratio of staff to customers is nearly one to one. I’ve no doubt they get a lot busier later on.

I wouldn’t want to over-hype Coppelia, but it’s the kind of restaurant you’re glad to have around.

Coppelia (206 W. 14th St., west of Seventh Avenue, Chelsea)

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

Lincoln Ristorante

I’ve dined at Lincoln Ristorante several times since it opened a year ago. It is not my favorite Lincoln Center restaurant, but it is certainly the most convenient, and it is very good.

I just wish I liked it better. I want to like it better. People I respect like it better. But it usually leaves me wanting more.

Lincoln opened with the proverbial thud, getting lukewarm reviews from most of the city’s critics. I had a long list of complaints in my original review, and I stand by most of them. Lincoln is too corporate: it screams of design by committee. The room and the building are unattractive. These things are unfixable.

What Chef Jonathan Benno and Restaurant Director Paolo Novello have done, is to fix what they can. Lincoln is not bargain dining, but prices now are a shade lower. An expensive tasting menu and an absurd $130 ribeye are no longer offered. Portion sizes, which for some dishes were insultingly small, have been increased.

Benno has found his inside voice. Though I am not fond of the open kitchen, at least you no longer hear a drill sergeant commanding the Normandy invasion. We sat right next to the glass partition at dinner a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t think we heard him once. What a relief!

Service, which was already excellent, has continued to improve. The staff know they need to get you to your show on time—all of my visits have been pre-concert or pre-opera—and they do it well, without ever seeming to be in a rush. Ask about any item, and a clear, patient, encyclopedic explanation will follow.

On the current menu, antipasti are $17–25, pastas $20–28, entrées $30–45, side dishes $10–15, and desserts $10–12. A traditional four-course Italian meal will thus set you back around $90 to $100 a head before wine, but I seldom eat that much before a show, and I am probably not alone. Indeed, the staff actively suggest that pasta dishes be ordered as mains or in half-portions.

We shared the Reginette Verdi al Ragú Bolognese ($24; above left), which the kitchen divided and served in separate bowls. This was one of the more enjoyable pastas I’ve had in quite a while. The reginette is a fascinating noodle, shaped like a long, thin, green zipper. The ragú was a rich mix of veal, pork, and beef, topped with just the right kick from parmigiano-reggiano.

But Halibut ($36; above right) was on the dry side. It was served over excessively salty lentils baked in chicken stock and pig trotters, but I couldn’t taste those ingredients. This seems to be my fate at Lincoln, where the wonderful dishes are offset by the less successful ones.

With the petits fours (right) there’s no argument. They may not be the fanciest, but they are more than sufficient.

So that’s the status of Lincoln circa late 2011. The professional reviews have started to improve. Esquire’s John Marianai called it one of the best new restaurants of the year. Gael Greene in Crain’s recently gave it “three hats” out of four, noting, “It is thrilling to watch a shy, insecure adolescent grow into a magnetic, irresistible beauty.”

But even allowing a year for Lincoln to improve, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo could only give it two stars recently, just slightly better than his 1½ stars a year ago.

I’m with Cuozzo. I very much want to like it better, but still cannot.

Lincoln (142 West 65th Street at Lincoln Center)

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

Monkey Bar

The business cards at Monkey Bar say in small print, “Est. 1936.” Yeah, sure it was. The space in the Hotel Elysée is that old, but nothing has lasted there except the Simian-themed décor.

To give only the recent history: the Glaziers of steakhouse fame (Michael Jordan’s, Strip House) acquired the Monkey Bar in 1994 and hired the restaurant starchitect David Rockwell to give it a plush makeover. There was a succession of chefs, including John Schenk, Kurt Gutenbrunner, Patricia Yeo, Chris Cheung. At one time, Monkey Bar was one of the toughest doors in town.

Somewhere along the line, the Glaziers turned it into a steakhouse. By then anyone could get in, including me. I recall having a pretty good steak there in the 1990s or early 2000s: after all, good beef was one thing the Glaziers had in abundance. By 2008, it had fallen on hard times. Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter acquired the space and closed it for restoration, installing a spectacular Edward Sorel mural in the dining room.

Carter’s idea was to create a midtown version of what he’d already achieved in Greenwich Village, at the Waverly Inn: a restaurant masquerading as a club for publishing and advertising industry moguls, celebrities, and the well connected. By July 2009, The Times reported that Carter spent 20 minutes a day, 7 days a week, laying out the seating chart of the two restaurants:

Although hardly any critics have reviewed the Monkey Bar yet — and the first chef was fired — prime reservations are already nearly impossible for anyone other than the famous or well connected…

For a while, there was a phone number people could call to reach a reservationist. No more.

“We were getting 1,000 calls a day,” said Mr. Klein in an interview at the bar at the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street, next to a property he owns, the City Club Hotel. “It’s hard on the phone to say, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have a place for you.’ It’s easier by e-mail. People get upset on the phone.”

So now there is an e-mail address…although 90 percent of reservations are made through the partners — that is, by people who know them or have some connection and reach them directly.

The one thing it lacked was food worth paying for. Within five weeks of opening, Carter fired the chef, Elliot Ketley, replacing him with culinary legend Larry Forgione, who was there only as a consultant until a permanent chef could be found. Forgione was on hand when Frank Bruni awarded a weak star, finding a menu strewn with “many mishaps.” That accomplished, Forgione gave way to Josh Moulton.

It turns out that there’s a limit to the number of people who will sign up for expensive, mediocre cuisine, and Monkey Bar had surpassed it. Before long, it was on OpenTable and reservable any day, any time, at short notice. Lunch service was dropped in the dining room.

Give Carter credit for recognizing that he’d run the restaurant into a ditch, and needed a full-scale talent make-over. To fix the place, he brought in the restaurant equivalent of the 1927 Yankees: managing partner and front-office genius Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin, The John Dory), chef Damon Wise (Craft, Colicchio & Sons), sommelier and GM Belinda Chang (The Modern), and cocktail whiz Julie Reiner (Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club).

The question is how long Carter can keep this team together. Wise admits that he plans to open a downtown restaurant in 2012. The Monkey Bar is in essence a stop-gap for him until that space is ready, though he insists he will remain executive chef here. Reiner is only consulting, and Friedman has places all over town, which leaves only Chang with a full-time commitment to the restaurant.

For now, though, let’s enjoy what they have accomplished, which in a few short weeks is something remarkable, given what they started with.

Chang’s wine list is just a few pages long. Reprinted daily, it comes in a cardboard folder with the leaves stapled together. About equally balanced between the United States and France, I assume it is a work in progress. You won’t find much below $50, whether red or white, but if you’re willing to spend a bit more, there are some older Bordeaux worth a look.

Perhaps the 2001 Château La Vieille Cure was a hold-over from prior management. At $80, it qualifies as a bargain on this list. Chang has stocked the place with proper Bordeaux glasses, but not decanters, and a wine this old really ought to be decanted. After a while, it opened up beautifully, and was well worth the price.

Wise’s menu is a complete departure from the brasserie food that Monkey Bar was serving a couple of years ago, with a fairly close stylistic resemblance to Colicchio & Sons, his last stop after many years previously at Craft. It’s priced for the midtown corporate crowd, with appetizers and pastas mostly $19–23, entrées mostly $29–36. There are a few outliers, like the ubiquitous côte de boeuf for two ($135) and pasta with truffles ($55): this is a Graydon Carter restaurant, after all.

But with an excellent bread service, an amuse bouche, and petits fours at the end, you are getting your money’s worth. In the early days, the menu is promising. If the execution isn’t quite perfect, it’s certainly miles ahead of Colicchio & Sons, in a far nicer room.

The amuse bouche (above left) was a small cup of celery root soup with diced apples. To start, we shared the Braised Pork Belly ($21; above right) with crispy deep-fried oysters and kimchee, a well conceived but slightly cloying dish.

Both entrées were impressive productions, though verging on the edge of over-worked. Halibut ($31; above left) was a lovely dish, served with heart of palm, chorizo, squid, and oyster velouté. Long Island Duck ($32; above right) came with salsify, black mission figs, and oyster mushrooms. The breast was a shade on the greasy side, and would have benefited from being cut in thicker slices. These are the kinds of adjustments I expect will be made in the coming weeks.

There is apparently not a full-time pastry chef on duty, but that didn’t stop the kitchen from turning out wonderful, sugar-coated beignets (above left) and petits fours, including the insouciently named “monkey balls” (above right).

Without Graydon Carter’s rolodex to rely on, Monkey Bar now needs to earn business the way most new restaurants do: by attracting repeat customers. As of last week, it had its work cut-out for it, although the publicity cycle was only just beginning. I made a last-minute reservation on Friday evening and changed it twice, all without any trouble. The dining room was about half full, although the bar was doing brisk business.

Service was smooth and assured. If you think of Monkey Bar as a two-week-old restaurant, this is a strong start. If you think of it as a place Graydon Carter has been tinkering with for three years, then you wonder if the latest move is just desperation. If Belinda Chang sticks around and Damon Wise’s downtown restaurant is delayed a little longer, Monkey Bar might just grow into something special.

Monkey Bar (60 E. 54th St. between Madison & Park Avenues, East Midtown)

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

Gastroarte

Note: Gastroarte “closed for renovations” in September 2012. The chef, Jesús Núñez, had already left the restaurant to open a similar place in the West Village called Barraca. The space, still under the same owners, and still Spanish, is now called Andanada 141.

*

I wrote last week about the Spanish moment we’re in: Gastroarte, Salinas, Tertulia, and the extravagant Romera, all open within the last year, and all with ambitious—or in Romera’s case, stratospheric—intentions.

They probably won’t all succeed, but it’s progress in a town that has too many Italian and New Brooklyn restaurants, and not enough of practically everything else.

Gastroarte opened in January 2011 as Graffit, named for the graffiti-clad walls and the chef Jesús Núñez’s artful platings. But a google search on Graffit most often returned another Manhattan restaurant, chef Jehangir Mehta’s Graffiti.

Mehta sued for copyright infringement and Núñez relented, renaming his restaurant Gastroarte. Good move. Even if the suit was baseless (as it almost certainly was), it was dumb to have two such similar names in one city, and Mehta got there first.

It took some chutzpah to put such a restaurant on the Upper West Side, near Lincoln Center, a neighborhood not known for rewarding culinary risk-takers. Of course, the city’s restaurant critics aren’t known for that either. Sam Sifton, Adam Platt, and Steve Cuozzo all gave it just one star apiece.

Those ratings aren’t irksome in themselves: I gave it 1½ stars early on, and frankly, I am not sure if I would have rounded up or down, had I been using a system without half-stars. What is irksome is the lack of respect for the chef’s art and the recognition of its potential, even if its execution, at first, was not consistently enjoyable.

Menu prices have risen: appetizers are now $14–21 (vs. $10–18 in January), entrées $29–32 (vs. $23–27). That’s a fairly substantial increase of around $8–10 per person (before dessert), in under a year. As before, a tapas menu is served only at the bar and at the front walk-in tables—an inexplicable blunder.

I assume Gastroarte is getting the customers to justify those higher prices. Fortunately, it deserves them. Nine months later, Gastroarte is a much more polished restaurant. The service is more reliable, plates arrive at the right temperature, and the balance of flavors seems more sure-handed.

The vegetable stew under “Not-your-average egg” ($17; above left) changes with the season (compare it to the photo last time I had it). This version is less colorful than before, but it remains a triumph. As it was before, the centerpiece is an egg yolk enclosed somehow, miraculously, inside of a cauliflower sphere. It rests on turnip prepared two ways, and underneath that, yogurt and Serrano ham.

Lamb cheeks ($30; above left) were in a stew of lentils, spiced cheese, and asparagus, with a slice of brioche. A cuboid of black rice ($29; above right) was topped with calamari, sobrasada, and snow peas, with a streaks of Idiazábal cheese and red tobiko as garnishes.

Núñez doesn’t splurge on ingredients, but the assembly of these dishes is impressive, and so are the flavors, which blend beautifully. Both of the central proteins, the lamb cheeks and the calamari, were just right.

The difference from January is that the plates are no longer just entrants in an art exhibit: they’re a pleasure to eat, as well. That’s based on a small sample of the menu (plus amuses bouches and petits fours), but Gastroarte today seems far more promising than Graffit did at the beginning of the year.

Early on a Friday evening, before the opera, the dining room was not quite full. I have no idea if the traffic dies, or picks up, after curtain time; however, the restaurant has managed to impose a rather substantial price increase, without any of the usual signs of desperation, so I assume it is not doing badly.

In the competitive Lincoln Center dining market, it’s difficult to remain relevant (just ask Picholine, now an OpenTable 1,000-point fixture), but perhaps Graffit is on its way to becoming essential.

Gastroarte (141 W. 69th St. between Broadway & Columbus Ave., Upper West Side)

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

Salinas

Spanish cuisine is enjoying a resurgence in New York, with newcomer Tertuila as perhaps the most successful example this fall. After two mediocre meals there (which I have not yet written about), I was eager to have another data point.

Enter Salinas, with chef Luis Bollo, whose much-admired Soho restaurant Meigas (which I never visited), closed in 2008, a victim of the Great Recession. Bollo decamped to Connecticut for a few years, waiting for the opportunity to return to Manhattan, which he did in July of this year. The Times didn’t review Salinas, but The Post’s Steve Cuozzo filed a rave, and Esquire’s John Mariani pronounced it one of the best new restaurants in America in 2011. New York’s Adam Platt had (predictably) the least reliable review, giving it two stars for the food, but minus one (for a total of one) for “ the pokey, vaguely suburban surroundings.”

I wonder which suburbs have restaurants like this? There’s a small bar up front, leading to two dining rooms with exposed brick and bare, dark-wood tables. The back room has a retractable roof, now closed for the season. Chairs and banquettes are in an understated, plush soft blue.

The menu is in four sections: tapas ($7–20), starters ($11–19), entrées ($24–44), and side dishes ($8–9). In most of those categories, there’s one or two items much more expensive than the others. For instance, all of the entrées are below $30, except for the porcella (roast suckling pig), which is $44.

The menu doesn’t really encourage you to build a meal from tapas alone, as there are only nine of them, several of which are just breads and charcuterie. But all the dishes we had, even the main courses, lent themselves to sharing.

Coles e Coliflor ($9; above left) is a dish that could convert even Brussels sprouts and cauliflower skeptics. They’re served deep fried, with citrus zest, mint yogurt, and pimentón de la vera, the spicy Spanish paprika that polka dots the top edge of the plate. (A second comped plate of this was sent out later.)

We also liked the Chorizo special ($14; above right), sliced thin, with a runny quail egg on top. Puncture the egg, and you have a late breakfast.

A short ribs special ($29; above left) was rather pedestrian. Served on the bone, it was a generic short rib entrée that you’ll find all over town. Pollo Otoñal ($26; above right) was considerably better, a grilled local organic chicken in a Granja bean and green onion sauce, Swiss chard, baby carrots, garlic, and lemon emulsion.

The room is dark, and on the loud side when it fills up. Service was fine once we were seated, but the hostess insisted I wait at the bar until my guest arrived. The sense they’re trying to attract a scene, rather than build a following, slightly undermines the accomplished cooking.

Salinas (136 Ninth Avenue between 18th & 19th Streets, Chelsea)

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

Jones Wood Foundry

Could the Upper East Side be the next bastion of hip restaurants? I admit it’s far-fetched, and we’re a long way from that happening, but the essential requirements are there. East of Third Avenue, real estate is inexpensive by Manhattan standards, making it attractive both for restaurants and the young, single, urban professionals they hope to attract.

Jones Wood Foundry, a gastropub that opened in February, has the same rough-and-tumble vibe as many an East Village or Williamsburg restaurant. Whether it’ll succeed is not for me to say, but a young crowd had packed the place by 8:00 p.m. on a Monday evening, and the pro reviews have been favorable (Cuozzo for the Post, Moskin for The Times, Sietsema for the Voice).

I’m assuming the customers are mainly locals, as most Manhattanites can’t escape the impression—although it is decidedly false—that the Upper East Side is the bastion of trust fund babies and and ladies who lunch. That may be true on Fifth and Park Avenues. Take the Lexington Avenue Subway uptown, and turn right as you leave the station, and you find a much more diverse community.

This section of the Upper East Side was once called Jones Wood: it was even a candidate location for what became Central Park. The building itself, dating from the late nineteenth century, was once a foundry that manufactured manhole covers, among other things. Descendants of the original occupants, the Eberhart Brothers, still own the building.

The chef, Jason Hicks, worked in New York at Aureole, La Goulue, and Orsay, but he’s a native of the Cotswolds region of England. He’s partnered here with Yves Jadot, who also runs the Petite Abeille chain and the excellent cocktail lounge, Raines Law Room.

The menu here may remind you of April Bloomfield’s places (Spotted Pig, Breslin), but it’s more of a full-on English pub, with heavy doses of Bangers & Mash ($17), Steak & Kidney Pie ($18), Mushy Peas ($7), Haddock & Chips ($22), and so on. There are also fall-back dishes for the less adventurous, like a DeBragga dry-aged burger for $18 (which I didn’t order, but looked wonderful), roast chicken ($22), or a Niman Ranch pork chop ($28).

Most appetizers are below $15, most entrées below $25, so you can get out of here easily for $50 a head before drinks. There’s an ample list of beers on tap or by the bottle and a pretty good wine list too, though no hard liquor is served. The wine-based cocktail list is by Meghan Dorman of Raines Law Room and the Lantern’s Keep.

Celery root and blue cheese soup ($7; above left) with croutons and crispy bacon was a perfect starter for autumn. But my friend Kelly thought that Sweet pea soup ($7; above right) was overpowered by olive oil. She also found jumbo lump citrus crab salad ($14; no photo), with avocado, roasted tomato, and frisée, just average.

There were four announced specials — why should this be necessary on a menu reprinted daily? — including Partridge ($42), “just shot this weekend in Scotland.” It was served deboned, on a rich root vegetable stew. The server warned us to be on the lookout for birdshot, but all I encountered was a stray bone the butcher’s knife had missed.

Kelly has a hypothesis that food with a narrative (i.e., “just shot in Scotland”) is never worth the tariff, and this dish bore that out. I haven’t ordered partridge before, so I have no idea how it is supposed to be. It tasted slightly gamey, as you’d expect, but it was also a bit tough. A domestic, farm-raised bird on the same bed of vegetables would have been twice as good, and would have cost half as much.

We concluded with an excellent milk chocolate and sea salt pie ($7; left) with Chantilly cream.

The three-room space is smartly decorated in distressed pub chic. There is a long bar in the front room, a banquet-length communal table in the middle, and a dining room in the back. It was not terribly loud, although the crowds did not arrive until the end of our meal. Service was fine for a restaurant on this level: an incorrect order was dropped off, but promptly replaced after we pointed it out.

We didn’t really love anything, and a couple of dishes seemed off-kilter. But I adore the menu, and given the reviews it has received, I suspect we ordered wrong, or caught the place on chef’s night off. Despite the tone of the review, I’d happily rush back, next time I am in the area.

Jones Wood Foundry (401 E. 76th St. between First & York Avenues, Upper East Side)

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