ellabess

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ellabess (153 Elizabeth Street at Kenmare Street, NoLIta)

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

Eleven Madison Park

Note: This is a review of the 4×4 grid-format menu that Eleven Madison Park was using for a while. The restaurant has since changed to a more conventional tasting menu, which I have not yet tried.

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rating: ★★★

Gravy

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Update: Inside Park at St. Barts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Elsewhere

Note: Elsewhere closed in December 2011.

*

I yawned when I read the publicist-massaged opening press for Elsewhere: “an Eclectic American menu of farm-driven, shareable plates.” As if no one had ever thought of that before.

I’m not sure if the proffer has changed, or if they had a particularly uncreative publicist. Eight months later, none of that seems especially true. There are a few sharable items at the top of the menu, but you don’t build a meal that way, and the restaurant seems no more farm-driven than any other.

Elsewhere is appealing for other, better reasons. It’s owned by the same people as Casellula Cheese & Wine Café, and as you’d expect, both the wine and cheese programs are strong. Chef Megan Johnson’s cuisine is firmly in the American bistro idiom, but it’s a lot less cliché ridden than the press release was. She might not be the first to serve an appetizer of Duck Confit Rillette with Pickled Miso Eggs, or an entrée of Roasted Bone Marrow with French Fries, but at least you don’t see them every day.

Let’s hope they have better luck than the last tenant, Le Madeleine, which was evicted in 2008 after a lengthy court battle. The owner had a “demolition clause,” which allowed him to take back the space if he planned to tear it down. So after 30 years, a popular restaurant was forced out for a demolition that never took place. After being vacant for two years, the building is a restaurant again.

The menu is mid-priced, with snacks (“to share”) mostly $4–10, appetizers $9–14, entrées $16–32, and sides mostly $7–9 (a “5-Spoke Tumbleweed Poutine” is $14).

Cheeses are $6 each, or five for $27. We let the server choose for us, and she came back with a hard blue Dumbarton (above left) that was very good. Chicken Liver Pâté ($14) was unremarkable; I would prefer that it not come pre-spread, as it did here.

Black Bass ($26; above left) was fine, with artichokes, rosted tomatoes, and polenta, but we thought there ought to be less lemon jus: the bass was practically swimming in it. Pork Sausage Meatballs ($24; above right) had a robust, tangy flavor, with egg noodles and mushroom gravy. One might quibble, though, that it comes out to eight dollars a meatball.

We wrapped up with bite-sized chocolate petits fours (left).

The wine list is around 150 bottles, in silly categories like “Pretty Young Things,” “Va-Va-Voom!” and “Do You Feel Lucky?” But there is a good price range, with a few options off the beaten path, and a Vieille Julienne Côtes du Rhône for $56 was one of the better inexpensive Rhones I’ve had in a while.

My one and only visit to Le Madeleine, the previous tenant, was about twenty years ago, but I instantly recognized the space, especially the spectacular garden room with its skylight and decades-old ficus tree. But we were seated in the main dining room, which was awfully loud, with sound ricocheting off of the exposed brick. I thought it would let up after the pre-theater crowd got out, but the restaurant remained nearly full. I have about it with noisy restaurants lately. I would hesitate to return to Elsewhere for that reason alone.

Service was efficient and attentive. I especially appreciated being shown to my table a full twenty minutes ahead of my reservation, before my date had arrived, a courtesy few restaurants extend these days, especially if they are at all busy.

Elsewhere has not had a single professional review that I can find. Perhaps it’s time they hired a new publicist. There is much here that is worth publicizing.

Elsewhere (403 W. 43rd Street, near Ninth Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen)

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

Left Bank

There is much to like about the new West Village restaurant, Left Bank. The menu is inexpensive and admirably brief: just five starters ($8–12), three pastas ($16–18), four entrées ($19–23), three sides ($7), and three desserts ($5–8).

But there is a distressing lack of focus in that menu: lamb tartare, chicken, gnocchi, cheese. Not much that gets the pulse racing. It’s hard to imagine a signature dish emerging from the tepid offerings the restaurant has opened with. The wine list is as brief and as timid as the menu, with about a dozen uninteresting bottles.

If “Left Bank” leads you to expect French cuisine, you would be wrong. I won’t bother you with the tortured justification for the name—something about the Bohemian reputation of the West Village (which isn’t really true anyway). A romantic twilight photo on the restaurant’s home page doesn’t resemble, in the least, the restaurant’s actual location, a cursed space that was most recently Braeburn. It hasn’t changed much, and it gets awfully loud when the dining room fills up—as it did on a recent Wednesday evening.

The owners, a couple of Red Cat/Mermaid Inn vets, ought to have known better than to choose such a frequently used name. Search for “Left Bank,” and you’re liable to find a restaurant in Buffalo, a restaurant on Second Avenue, or an apartment building in Chelsea, rather than this restaurant.

We shared a lamb tartare ($16; left), which was strewn rather lazily with leafy greens and strips of parmesan. I just barely detected the promised anchovy in the mix, but my girlfriend (who loves anchovies) couldn’t pick it up, so perhaps the balance needs to be adjusted.

She liked the Grilled Squid ($19; above left) a bit better than I did, but she noted that the beans and the tomatoes weren’t at a uniform temperature. I loved the Chicken ($21; above right), which was tender and garlicky, but the vegetables were unremarkable.

In a neighborhood that has bistro food on almost every block, I am not sure how Left Bank aspires to stand out from the crowd. The kitchen needs to pick up its game. Aside from the prices, several dollars per dish lower than comparable restaurants, Left Bank is awfully forgettable.

Left Bank (117 Perry Street at Greenwich Street, West Village)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Good
Ambiance: Loud and Bare Bones
Overall: Satisfactory

Casa Nonna

When investor Jimmy Haber and chef Laurent Tourondel broke up their BLT Restaurant Group last year, expansion strategy turned out to be the sticking point. Haber “wanted to develop new restaurants that were more affordable, appealed to a wider audience and did not carry the BLT name.” Tourondel did not want any other chef as an equal partner.

Haber’s rustic Italian joint, Casa Nonna (“Grandmother’s House”), finally sent Tourondel packing. According to Crain’s, the Washington, D.C. restaurant threw off $70 million in annual revenues. You can see why Haber would expand in that direction, and why Tourondel would consider it a threat. [Correction: $70 million was the group revenue; see comment below.]

In truth, even the group’s high-end BLT restaurants were gradually losing relevance: there were too many of them for Tourondel to do much more than lend his name to efforts that were increasingly derivative. Haber’s plan to focus on food for the masses was probably the more sensible one. He was headed in that direction anyway.

Tom Sietsema, restaurant critic for The Washington Post, gave Casa Nonna two stars out of four. I have no idea whether that’s justified. But in New York, where there are dozens of excellent rustic Italian restaurants, the bar is much higher.

The 200-seat Casa Nonna in far west midtown is handsomely decked out in a Corporate Italian way. When the 3rd Casa Nonna opens, heaven knows where, they’ll hand over the blueprints and source Italian knick-knacks from the same second-hand supplier that decorates the likes of Applebee’s.

Chef Amy Brandwein’s menu is somewhat predictable and a shade on the expensive side. Antipasti are $6–13, primi $17–28, secondi $21–45 (but most in the $20s), contorni $6–10. These aren’t outrageous prices by midtown standards, but Casa Nonna is competing in a crowded field, and for the same money you can do better elsewhere.

Whole Grilled Branzino ($26; above left) was very good, although plenty of New York restaurants offer the same item. Guance di Maiale, or braised pork cheeks ($23; above right) was the only item on the menu that seemed slightly unusual. The plating would win no awards, but the white wine tomato ragu and creamy polenta complemented the pork nicely.

Located on an uninteresting block near the garment district, west of Eighth Avenue, Casa Nonna isn’t an immediate hit. On a recent Wednesday evening, there was a decent crowd at the bar, but we had the dining room very nearly to ourselves. The site is a bit too far away from Broadway to be an obvious pre-theater place, and it isn’t interesting enough to be worth a detour.

Casa Nonna (310 W. 38th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Del Posto

Del Posto isn’t a four-star restaurant. You already knew that, right? Sam Sifton of The Times is the only critic to have made that claim. Of the city’s  four-star restaurants, Del Posto has the fewest supporters.

Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton gave it just two stars, which errs in the opposite direction, but Sutton recognizes an an essential truth: a four-star restaurant needs to make you say wow! Not after every bite (which would be impossible), or even every dish, but at least sometimes.

There wasn’t much wow in our meal at Del Posto, which is not a complaint, just a reflection of where Del Posto stands, when soberly assessed. Almost every dish we tried, with exceptions I’ll note later on, was extremely well prepared. A careful, competent craftsman is at work here: chef Mark Ladner. Not many Italian kitchens in New York could produce a meal like this.

But a four-star restaurant needs to be a “category killer,” and the food at Del Posto is not. It is roughly on par with the better three-star Italian restaurants, like Marea and Babbo. Del Posto, of course, differs from them stylistically, but the gustatory pleasure it delivers is about the same.

What sets Del Posto aside are the atmosphere and service. Critics may sniff that the grand dining room feels like it belongs in Vegas, and even in Italy itself one probably wouldn’t encounter such a setting. No matter. For an elegant Italian meal, there’s nothing in the city more comfortable, or more relaxing, than Del Posto.

The service, too, does a passable imitation of high-end French models, with its armies of runners, sauces poured tableside, purse stools for the ladies, and so forth.

The wine list is superb, as it is at all of the Batali–Bastianich restaurants. The sommelier steered me away from the $115 Barolo I had chosen, to another bottle he considered a better choice, that cost $10 more. Decide for yourself if that counts as upselling, when you’re already on the hook for half a grand.

But he ably performed the whole decanting ritual far too seldom encountered in these days, and his recommendation was indeed very good.

Del Posto was always very expensive, and it has gone up considerably since Sifton gave it the fourth star. Almost immediately, the à la carte menu was dropped. A five-course prix fixe (now the least expensive option) jumped from $95 to $115, the tasting menu from $125 to $145.

Reservations, which were once plentiful, are now a bit tougher to come by. Four weeks in advance, I could do no better than 6:15 p.m. on a Friday evening. They don’t rush you, though: we were there for over three hours.

There was a trio of amuses bouches (above left). I don’t remember them individually, but they were very good. Bread service (above right) came with two spreads, the latter (on the right) made from lard (pig fat).

On the five-course menu, which we had, each diner chooses an antipasto, a secondo, and a dessert. Of the appetizers, I was more impressed with Lidia’s Lobster Salad (above left) with tomato and celery, which had a good, spicy zing. In comparison, an Abalone Salad (above right), with grilled asparagus and ramps, tasted flat.

I believe our first pasta was the Ricotta Pansotti (above left) with black truffles, probably the best dish of the evening. But that was offset by the evening’s only dud, a Lobster Risotto (above right), which was too soupy and over-salted.

Both entrées struck me as uncomplicated, although skillfully prepared. I thought that Sliced Duck Breast (above left) was sliced too thin, but my friend loved the dish. I had no complaints at all with Grilled Pork (above right), served with a hearty accompaniment of smoked whey, white asparagus, fava beans, and pickled cherries.

The desserts were superior. This being a birthday, the kitchen sent out cake, then wrapped it up for us to enjoy the next day.

I’m afraid we didn’t take note of which desserts we ordered (above), but we loved them. They were the strongest part of our meal at Del Posto. I believe the one on the right is the Butterscotch Semifreddo.

The evening ended in the usual blaze of petits fours (above left) and a wonderful chocolate sculpture (above right) that I felt quite guilty about not finishing.

No other Italian restaurant in New York can deliver an experience like Del Posto—assuming that its full-on embrace of unabashed luxury is your cup of tea. Many diners today find such meals oppressive. If it’s just the food you are interested in, you will eat about as well at Marea or Babbo, at Ai Fiori or Felidia, all of which offer à la carte menus that put you in much greater control over how much you want to order, and how much it will cost.

We werent’ really wowed by anything we tried. The best dishes were certainly excellent. Maybe I would give four stars if there were another one or two dishes as good as the pasta with truffles and the desserts; and if there were no duds like the lobster risotto; or flat-tasting dishes, like the abalone salad.

I’m glad that the owners, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, gave a four-star Italian restaurant their best shot. It is certainly much improved over our first visit, when I gave it 2½ stars. It doesn’t quite deserve four, but New York is better with Del Posto in it.

Del Posto (85 Tenth Avenue at 16th Street, Far West Chelsea)

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

Double Crown

Note: Double Crown closed in August 2011. It was replaced by Saxon & Parole with the same chef (Brad Farmerie), focusing on game and domestic meats.

*

This has happened to all of us: you get to the restaurant, and the host asks you to wait at the bar until your party is complete.

What happened last night at Double Crown took arrogance and audacity to new heights. When I arrived, the host said:

Your guest is here. She went to the ladies’ room. When she gets back, I’ll take you to your table. Feel free to wait at the bar.

This was in a practically empty dining room.

In a busy, casual restaurant, I respect the policy of not seating incomplete parties. Why should the host keep someone else waiting, while I sit at a half-empty table, waiting for guests who may never show up, or who could be considerably delayed?

But Double Crown wasn’t busy, and my date had arrived. Asking me to wait at the bar in that situation is beyond absurd.

Beyond that was a loud sound track that made pleasant conversation difficult; a hackneyed faux Asian décor phoned in by the folks of AvroKO, who’ve done better work elsewhere; and a Vongerichten lite fusion menu that seems to have lost its focus since Frank Bruni awarded two grade-inflated stars in 2008.

The website claims that, “Double Crown explores the aesthetic and culinary dualities arising from the British Empire’s forays into Southeast Asia.” The British influences have disappeared, assuming they existed in the first place. What we have now is pan-Asian miscellany, filtered through an East Village twenty-something comfort food lens.

At least it is not terribly expensive. Most appetizers are $13 or less, most entrées $27 or less. Cocktails were $12, including a great chipotle sour made with three kinds of whisky. That passes for a bargain in Manhattan these days. Bread service (below left) was pretty good too, with two kinds of rolls and soft butter.

A whole braised short rib for two, served on the bone ($44; above right), and coated with an unspecified spice mix, was tender and flavorful, but short rib is hard to mess up if you braise it long enough. I realize that braised meats are prepared long in advance, but this came out literally five minutes after we ordered it—before the wine was poured, in fact. It came with a decent Asian mushroom salad.

The wine list, printed on the back of the menu, is a grab bag with no particular focus. There’s an ample selection of inexpensive bottles, or you can go into the triple digits for bottles that I couldn’t imagine drinking with this food. A 2007 Weninger Zweigelt at $36 was one of the more enjoyable inexpensive bottles I’ve seen in quite some time.

The server kept the wine on a counter away from the table, and I wondered if she’d be attentive enough to keep our glasses charged. Surprisingly, she was. But after the wine was finished, and we wanted our bill, she was nowhere to be seen.

When Double Crown opened, the Bowery was just beginning to sow its oats as a dining destination. Nowadays, if you’re in the area, Pulino’s, DBGB, or Peels are all better bets. And if you have a hankering for Chef Brad Farmerie’s best work, Michelin-starred Public and The Monday Room aren’t far away.

Those are all better options than Double Crown.

Double Crown (316 Bowery at Bleecker Street, NoLIta/East VIllage)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Loud and Hackneyed
Overall: No Stars

Bistro Lamazou

Note: Bistro Lamazou closed in July 2012. In a familiar story, they closed for renovations, then two months later announced that the closure was permanent.

*

I don’t spend much time in Kips Bay, but apparently Nancy and Aziz Lamazou did everything right: their neighborhood cheese and sandwich shop, Lamazou, has fans galore.

So they decided to double down, opening a new restaurant, Bistro Lamazou, taking over a store that used to be a Blockbuster Video. The space is striking, with two bars (one for liquor, the other cheese), a communal table, and an ample dining room, which I fear may be too large for the area.

The chef, Jean-Claude Teulade, who once worked at La Côte Basque, offers a menu centered on North Africa (where Aziz Lamazou is from), though it pays tribute to many other cuisines. The Times describes it as French, a somewhat misleading label.

The menu, with its many categories, meanders more than it should. Appetizers are roughly $8–18, entrées $18–29, though it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. The burger is $18, which strikes me as audacious.

A whole section of the menu is captioned “From the Cheese Bar.” Given the owners’ background we had to try some. The Cheese and Charcuterie Sampler ($24; left) was bizarre, with its centerpiece a fountain of prosciutto and melon balls dangling out of a martini glass, with cornichons and pickled onions on the side. (It also came with a plate of bread, not pictured.)

It was far too much for two people. Four could have shared it happily. The ingredients were fine, but the selection balance was off: it could have used more cheese and less meat, especially coming from a team that specializes in the former.

Entrées were ample too: Couscous with Lamb & Vegetables ($27; above left); the Braised Lamb Shank ($25; above right). If no new culinary ground was broken, they were well prepared and attractively presented.

The wine list is ambitious, for a restaurant like this, with more than fifty bottles, mostly from France, Italy, and Tunisia, with plenty of options below $50. But I was less impressed when I ordered a 2005 Valpolicella Classico Superiore, and was presented with a 2008, which the server did not notice until I pointed it out. The printed price, $42, would have been a bargain for an ’05. Not so much for a bottle three years younger.

Aside from that, service was fine for a restaurant roughly two months old. It was not crowded at 8:00 p.m. on a Wednesday evening. It’s a cute place, and I would certainly visit again if I were in the neighborhood.

Bistro Lamazou (344 Third Avenue between 25th & 26th Streets, Kips Bay)

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