Alfama

In the restaurant industry, second chances are rare. The Portuguese restaurant Alfama got one, re-opening in East Midtown in late May after losing their lease in the West Village two years ago.

They’ve done a handsome job of building out their new digs. It’s a bright, comfortable (if casual) space. The small dining room has a West Village-y intimacy, despite a location where restaurateurs tend to build big.

But it’s not on a block that gets a lot of foot traffic, so they’ll need good word-of-mouth to build a following. The restaurant wasn’t busy on a Friday evening, but as it was Fourth of July weekend, I wouldn’t draw any conclusions.

The chef, Francisco Rosa (same as at the previous location), has installed a menu with a mixture of crowd-pleasers and more challenging dishes. No one at my table was willing to share the rabbit meatballs, despite my assurance that they’d taste “just like chicken.” Chicken gizzards anyone?

It’s not terribly expensive: dinner for three was about $120 before beverages, tax, and tip. Appetizers are $4–16 each, entrées $21–32, sides $4–7, desserts $7–10.

The amuse bouche (below left) was a bit of spicy tuna tartare on a spoon.

Both appetizers were very good. Flambéed Portuguese Sausage ($10; above right) arrived literally on fire: the server advised us to let it burn for a couple of minutes before blowing out the flame. We also liked Pulled Lamb crostini ($14; below left).

Grilled Sardines ($19; above right), an announced special, made a good simple entrée.

Mariscada Alfama ($32; above left), or seafood stew, is probably the most complex of the entrées. Red Snapper ($25; above right) was of the simpler variety, although I especially liked the crisped skin, along with the tender fish inside.

Abade de Priscos ($10; above left) is one of the stranger desserts I have had in quite some time, described as: “A Mystifyingly dense Custard of Egg Yolks, Sugar, Port Wine and Prosciutto, served with a Prosciutto tuille and Lemon Sorbet.” Prosciutto makes just as bad a dessert ingredient as it sounds. I left this creation half-uneaten. Pasteis de Nata ($9; above right), or traditional Portuguese custard tarts with cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar, were a much better bet.

The restaurant had gained its liquor license only a day or two before our visit, and there were only a handful of bottles on the wine list. The one we had ($39) was unmemorable, but fine enough at the price. In any case, more are coming, and according to The Times, the selection will be heavily Portuguese, as it should be.

It’s nice to see another solid option in a cuisine that is under-represented in Manhattan. To keep the rent affordable, the owners had to settle for a mediocre block. Here’s hoping that diners take a few extra steps out of their way, to give Alfama a try.

Alfama (214 E. 52nd Street, east of Third Avenue, East Midtown)

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

Szechuan Gourmet (39th Street)

Last year, I visited Szechuan Gourmet on 56th Street, the newest branch of that venerable and successful chainlet. I wanted to try the 39th Street branch that had won two stars from Frank Bruni in 2008.

On a menu with 100 items and numerous daily specials, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions from just two dishes. Nevertheless, we liked Szechuan Gourmet 39 much less than SG 56.

I thought that Sun-Dried Pork Belly with Leeks ($14.95; above left) might be the pork belly dish that Bruni liked. On re-reading, I am not sure, because Bruni called it an appetizer and didn’t mention leeks. This was apparently meant to be an entrée, but it is not really a successful one. The bacon was cloying and a bit too greasy. It needed heat or textural contrast, which the leeks didn’t supply.

My son ordered less adventurously, choosing Prawns in Spicy Garlic Sauce ($20.95; above right), a dish offered (in some form) at every Chinese restaurant in town. This was certainly a much higher quality version of it.

If I cannot offer a definitive comparision of the food between the two Szechuan Gourmet branches, I can certainly say that 39th Street is a far less pleasant space than 56th Street. No one would call the uptown branch elegant, but it feels like a restaurant, a place you wouldn’t mind lingering in. Here, you order, you eat, you leave.

At 8:00 p.m. on the Sunday evening of a holiday weekend, when many New Yorkers were out of town, we waited about 10–15 minutes to be seated in a full dining room. Service was inattentive, although the food came out promptly.

There is certainly more of the menu I would like to try, but as more-or-less the same menu is available at 56th Street, I think I’ll go there.

Szechuan Gourmet (21 W. 39th St. between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Telepan

Note: Telepan closed in May 2016, leaving the chef, Bill Telepan, without a restuarant. (Telepan Local, his Tribeca restaurant that was supposed to be a casual version of Telepan, failed miserably in 2014.)

Telepan had a respectable ten-year run, but as we noted in the review below, he had to scale back the original concept to stay aligned with what the neighborhood would pay, and even so, the restaurant wasn’t consistently full. He told The Times that, eventually, he reached the point where he couldn’t raise prices enough to keep pace with escalating costs.

In a sense, Telepan fell between two genres. Its Michelin star signaled a level of quality that the chef clearly wanted to maintain, but that doesn’t come cheap. It was too expensive to be an every-day restaurant, but didn’t attract enough guests to be a special-occasion place either.

*

I hated my first visit to Telepan, more than five years ago. For some odd reason, I nevertheless gave it 1½ stars. As I now see them, a star (even just one) is supposed to be a compliment, and there was very little about the meal that I liked.

Nevertheless, other reviews were generally good, and friends continued to recommend it, so Telepan was on my list of restaurants deserving a second chance, which it finally got last week.

The four-course prix fixe, which was $55 in 2006, has risen by just four dollars, to $59. If you order à la carte, the prices seem not to have changed at all: an over-priced restaurant has become a fairly-priced one.

The menu is still divided into three parts—starters ($10.50–15), mid-courses ($21–26), and entrées ($29–35—a format I dislike, but that has become more common, though still by no means prevalent. The use of fifty-cent price increments on some items feels a bit cheesy.

Of course, when prices are basically unchanged after five years, something is usually lost. What was once a flight of three amuses bouches is now one (above left), a plate of pickled radishes in a dipping sauce. But the bread service (three kinds) is excellent.

We weren’t that hungry, so we ordered entrées only. Wild Striped Bass ($33; above left) and Roasted Trout ($29.50; above right) were both presented simply, and very good for what they were.

Perhaps because of the overwhelming trend in favor of more casual dining over the last five years, Telepan’s décor, which once seemed dull, now seems upscale, bordering on elegant (though not quite there). The service is more polished than it was, then. The twenty-five page wine list offers a wide selection and price range, but the lower end (in the mid-$50s) is reasonable for this type of restaurant. If you want to spend three thousand bucks on a 1999 Screaming Eagle, you can.

The restaurant was not crowded on a Wednesday evening, but we dined early—6:00 p.m. for a 7:30 Lincoln Center curtain. When prices are virtually unchanged five years later, one can safely conclude that Telepan isn’t a runaway hit. However, it has hung on and improved, and we are better off for that.

Telepan (72 W. 69th St. btwn Central Park West & Columbus Ave., Upper West Side)

Food: ★★
Service: ★★
Ambiance: ★★
Overall: ★★

The Leopard at des Artistes

Twenty years ago, when I was looking for a restaurant that could play host to a romantic meal, a friend recommended Café des Artistes. I knew nothing about the place, but was instantly transported by the voluptuous décor. Alas, a practically dessicated Duck à l’Orange ruined the meal, and I vowed never to return.

The restaurant had been there, attached to the Hotel des Artistes, since 1917. More than its old-school French cuisine—which had its ups and downs, to put it charitably—the space was known for the nine murals of Rubensesque nudes, “Fantasy Scenes with Naked Beauties,” painted by one of the building’s residents, Howard Chandler Christy, from the late 1920s to 1935.

Jennifer and George Lang took over the restaurant in 1975. Despite the mediocre food, it was a popular haunt for musicians, celebrities, and journalists. (We saw soprano Beverly Sills there on our last visit.) In 2009, the restaurant closed for its usual August vacation and never re-opened. Business was down, as it was for many restaurants then, and as Mr. Lang was 85, the owners felt it was time to let go.

Later on, it came out that the union was partly to blame. Café des Artistes was one of the few non-hotel restaurants in the city with union labor. In a bitter post-mortem, Jennifer Lang noted that the place was hobbled with uncompetitive labor expenses that no other comparable restaurant would have. Several prominent restaurateurs passed on the space, because of its union affiliation.

Finally, about a year later, Gianfranco Sorrentino, owner of the Italian restaurant Il Gattopardo in midtown, inked a 15-year deal to re-open the space without union labor, vowing to invest $1.5 million to refurbish the dining room, including “expert restoration” of the Christy murals.

The restaurant re-opened last month as The Leopard at des Artistes (Gattopardo means “Leopard” in Italian). The cuisine and service style are old-school southern Italian. The renovation is gorgeous, but when you see the menu prices, you won’t forget what you’re paying for, as entrées (other than a $24 meatloaf) are $30–46.

As is often the case at such restaurants, there is a lengthy list of recited specials, from which both of us ordered. Whole Turbot ($46; above left) was expertly filleted tableside, served with braised escarole. House-made Fettucine ($24; above right) was served with a pork ragú.

One may blanche at the prices and quibble that the chef isn’t serving unmentionable pig parts or market vegetables grown on a rooftop in Brooklyn, but both dishes were impeccable. It is hard to imagine anything much better of their kind—especially the wonderful turbot, which I’d order again in a heartbeat.

As we were going to a concert at nearby Lincoln Center, we drank only one glass of wine apiece; but I noted that the medium-length wine list had plenty of options below $50 a bottle, a much lower entry price than one is entitled to expect at a restaurant this expensive.

The restaurant was about half full at 6:45 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, too early (in the evening, and in the week) to draw any conclusions about its prognosis. It is too expensive to justify being a regular here, but for food this good I’ll certainly be back occasionally.

The Leopard at des Artistes (1 W. 67th St. near Central Park West, Upper West Side)

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

Cafe Luxembourg

I think Cafe Luxembourg is the only restaurant in the Lincoln Center catchment area that I had never—until last week—visited. I was put off by reports it was over-priced and over-crowded, and (a little bit) by Frank Bruni’s one-star review for The Times.

Cafe Luxembourg is a lot better than that.

Let me make a meta-critical point, as my rating at the bottom of this review is identical to Bruni’s. Bruni had a habit of writing scathing reviews, and then awarding a star. This was a perversion of the original New York Times system, in which the meaning of “one star” is supposed to be “good.” Many of Bruni’s one-star reviews, including Cafe Luxembourg, didn’t sound good at all.

I don’t give out a star unless I liked my meal. I might have complaints—even significant ones, especially if the restaurant was billed as being something much better. Still, I think one star ought to be a compliment, and under Bruni’s system it often wasn’t. His star for Cafe Luxembourg was a pan; mine isn’t.

To be sure, at least one thing has changed since Cafe Luxembourg arrived in 1983: it no longer has the Lincoln Center area to itself. Marian Burros awarded two stars just six weeks after it opened. Bryan Miller affirmed that rating three years later, noting the “gastronomic tundra” in the neighborhood. He reviewed it again in 1988 and 1992, awarding two stars both times. Those were the good old days, when important restaurants could be assured of reasonably frequent re-reviews. After that, it took 13 years before Bruni returned.

Lincoln Center is a gastronomic tundra no more, with Picholine, Lincoln, and Bar Boulud among many others within sight of the complex. And that’s without counting the three- and four-star restaurants at Columbus Circle, many of which do a strong pre-concert business. In a field it once had to itself, Cafe Luxembourg wouldn’t even rank in the top ten—not because it has gotten worse, but because its competition has become much, much better.

The founding owner, Keith McNally, relinquished Cafe Luxembourg (along with its sister restaurant, The Odeon in Tribeca) many years ago in a divorce settlement. Nevertheless, it retains the trademark “French brasserie chic” that McNally imprted to many other properties he has built since then, such as Balthazar, Pastis, Minetta Tavern, and so on.

My mother, who has been to Paris dozens of times, said, “This place must be 85 years old.” That she was off by five decades is a tribute to McNally’s talent for architectural impersonation. Cafe Luxembourg just feels like it has been part of the scene since a time unremembered.

I don’t know what a photo of three naked Parisian ladies has to do with Cafe Luxembourg, but it’s on the website, the restrooms, and the postcards. It certainly commands attention, so there you go.

Like all of the McNallyish restaurants, Cafe Luxembourg serves three meals a day. Prices at dinner, which once seemed expensive to me, now seem average; perhaps they’ve risen less here than elsewhere. Appetizers are mostly $12–15, entrées $24–34.

Both mains (we didn’t order starters) were right out of the bistro playbook. The steak ($34; above left), if not a rival to Minetta Tavern’s, is a 28-day dry-aged Creekstone farms specimen, very good for the price. The kitchen substituted haricots verts in almond butter, in lieu of fries, at no charge. Monkfish ($29; above right) was a daily special, and also very nicely done.

A scoop of rum raisin ice cream ($4; right) was a satisfying end to the meal.

Cafe Luxembourg is not as crowded as it used to be. It was only about half full at 7:00 p.m. on a Monday evening, and I now see 1,000-point reservations on OpenTable with regularity. The service was polite and attentive.

Many neighborhoods have French bistro cuisine about as good as this: Keith McNally himself owns or founded a number of them, and of course he doesn’t own a monopoly on the genre; it only seems like he does.

So I can’t tell you that Cafe Luxembourg is destination cuisine, but if you’re in the Lincoln Center vicinity, the reasons usually given for avoiding it—too crowded, too pricey, too sceney—no longer apply. It’s on my pre-show rotation from now on.

Cafe Luxembourg (200 W. 70th St. near Amsterdam Ave., Upper West Side)

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

Untitled

Note: Untitled closed in October 2014 as part of the Whitney’s move from the Upper East Side to the Meatpacking District. It is expected to re-open there in the spring of 2015 with Gramercy Tavern’s Michael Anthony as executive chef.

*

Danny Meyer is about as close to restaurant royalty as there is in this town. He has put his name on a wide variety of cuisines and concepts, from casual to formal, and he has never had a flop. (Tabla, his Indian restaurant, closed in 2010, but only after 15 years—certainly not a failure, by any reckoning.)

One factor in his success is that—except for his burger stand, Shake Shack—he has never opened outside of New York City, where he can personally supervise to the attentive service that his restaurants are famous for. Whether you like the food or not, there’s no doubt you’ll be treated well.

Meyer’s latest project, Untitled, carries some risks. Located in the basement of the Whitney Museum, the odd name is a pun on the establishment’s fondness for avant garde modern art works that lack titles.

The space, which was formerly Sarabeth’s Kitchen, is needed frequently for evening events, so it serves dinner only three nights a week (Fridays to Sundays). At breakfast and lunch, it serves sandwiches, salads, pastries, and the like.

Danny Meyer has a deep bench. When he opens a new restaurant, he reaches down to the triple-A farm team and promotes someone to the big leagues. Chris Bradley, the lucky guy at Untitled, worked four years at Gramercy Tavern as a sous chef and executive sous chef.

As the kitchen is quite small, the dinner menu is limited to a $46 prix fixe, where everyone gets the same appetizer, side dishes, and desserts. The only choice is the entrée: meat, fish, or vegetarian. It’s updated every week and posted on the website. (Last weekend’s menu is shown above; click on the image for a larger view.)

The wine cellar is also limited, with 5 whites and 5 reds, but you can bring in outside wine for just $10 corkage.

Untitled reminds me of Torrisi Italian Specialties, another restaurant that forces everyone into the same fixed menu, with a limited entrée choice being the only decision the customer makes. Torrisi costs $4 more and offers a few more courses, but not necessarily better food. Torrisi has an attitude, fostered by fawning critics who imagine it’s better than it is. If you build a Torrisi without the pretension, one that is larger, more comfortable, and more attractive; one that takes reservations and has better service, then you’ve got Untitled.

The meal starts with fresh vegetables and dipping sauce (above left); a thick, chilled avocado soup with specks of blue and red onion as amuse bouche (above center); and a warm roll with soft butter (above right).

I loved the Baby Spinach Salad (above left) with goat cheese, strawberries, and a tarragon vinaigrette; and also the main course, Pork Loin & Belly (above right) on a bed of spigarello. (I didn’t taste much of the garlic and chili mentioned on the menu, but the dish didn’t need them either.) Side dishes, served family style, included a Carrot & Barley Risotto (below left) and a Zucchini–Tomato Gratin (below center).

None of this was ground-breaking or complex food, but it was very much in the Gramercy Tavern greenmarket esthetic—lists of purveyors are written on a chalkboard above the bar. On a value basis, I would rather dine here than Gramercy.

I found the dessert less impressive, a forgettable Blueberry–Lemon Meringue Pie (above right) that you could find at just about any diner. How hard could it be, to offer at least one other option to guests who don’t want that much sugar?

As I was dining alone, I chose the two house cocktails over wine. Both ($12) were excellent: a Bourbon Lemonade (basil-infused lemonade, Maker’s Mark, mint leaves); and the Hemingway (white rum, prosecco, lemon and lime juice).

The bright, attractive space admits an abundance of outside light. Starchitect David Rockwell designed it, and used plenty of the blond woods he’s so fond of. The restaurant seats 70 at the tables and 10 at the bar; just 14 seats were occupied when I left, a bit after 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. However, Friday dinner service was only recently added (it was only Saturdays and Sundays, at first), and the word might not be out yet. The service, of course, was according to the Danny Meyer playbook.

If Untitled had a full menu, it might be a two-star restaurant. Points need to be deducted for a restaurant that offers so few choices. If you have any food allergies or other limitations, you may find that the limited options at Untitled become no choice at all. If you don’t mind being shoehorned into the menu du jour, you get a good value out of your $46 investment.

Untitled at the Whitney (945 Madison Ave. at 75th Street, Upper East Side)

Food: ★
Service: ★½
Ambiance: ★
Overall: ★

La Silhouette

 

Note: La Silhouette closed in November 2013, after cycling through three chefs in three years. This is a review under chef David Malbequi, who left the restaurant in July 2011.

*

It seems like an absurd quest these days, to open a French restaurant without a well known chef at the helm. This is in contrast to Italian restaurants, which proliferate in such excess that it is impossible to try them all.

It wasn’t always this way: French cuisine was central to the Western canon, as obviously essential as Shakespeare’s plays and Beethoven’s symphonies. It’s not so much that new French restaurants are rare these days, but they aren’t common either, and the few we have are drowned out by baser fare.

Todd English hasn’t opened an important restaurant in years, and two weeks ago the Times featured a glossy photo of him pumping iron. The accompanying article didn’t even attempt to assert any culinary importance, even though it appeared in, you know, the DINING SECTION. Heaven forbid they should actually focus on, you know, FOOD.

So of course, when two former Le Bernardin managers and a former Boulud chef open La Silhouette, does the critic-in-chief even bother to review it? No, he sends an underling, who pooh-poohs it, while he reviews his eighteenth hotel restaurant cum lounge, with which he is, of course, unimpressed. For once it was Adam Platt and Gael Greene who got it right, awarding two stars (or “hats” in Greene’s case).

The chef at La Silhouette is Frenchman David Malbequi, who arrives via Daniel, BLT Steak, BLT Market, and the Standard Hotel. Entrées are mostly in the $30s, which the Times describes as “quite expensive,” but these days you’ve got to hit $40 (which La Silhouette doesn’t) before I would say that. For anything beyond a bistro or its non-French counterpart, this is the going rate.

There’s a luscious Porcini Cappuccino Soup ($16; above left) with smoked foie gras and a dreamy Wild Burgundy Snail Risotto ($16; above right) with Hen of the Woods mushrooms and a garlic parsley sauce.

I heard nothing but praise for Mustard Crusted Lamb Loin ($34; above left) with stuffed artichoke and tomato confit, and Pan Seared Striped Bass ($30; below left) with spring peas, asparagus, mint, and vinegar jus.

It was, perhaps, lazy of me to order the New York Strip ($39; above right). If it wasn’t steakhouse quality, it was nevertheless better than most non-steakhouses serve—rare, rich, and beefy, with a satisfying marrow and porcini crust.

The kitchen offers neither an amuse bouche nor petits fours (although one review, curiously, mentioned the latter). But there is a solid bread service: toasted bagel chips with a sour cream and chive spread, and an assortment of baked breads afterward. The staff are on top of their game, although an uncrowded Sunday evening might not be the acid test. Laminated menus sound the only off-key note.

The one cocktail I tried was very good: A Little Hell ($13), with Rittenhouse rye, sweet vermouth, and whisky marinated morello cherries, on the rocks. The seven-page wine list is slightly more than half French. There aren’t quite enough bottles under $60, but there’s a reasonable selection under $75, along with pricer bottles. Right at $60 is a 2002 Château La Vieille Cure (above right), which the sommelier decants at the table. After a few minutes, it opens up nicely.

Almost every reviewer has harped on the remoteness of the location. Is it really that unusual, today, to venture west of Eighth Avenue? It is less than ten minutes’ walk from Columbus Circle, not even all the way to Ninth Avenue. You could easily miss the entrance, though: a small, barely-marked door on a side street. The owners got a sleek, modern design from Richard Bloch, the starchitect whose work includes Masa, 15 East, Dovetail, and Le Bernardin.

This is an enjoyable place to eat.

La Silhouette (362 W. 53rd Street, east of Ninth Avenue, Hell’s Kitchen)

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

DBGB

On a recent visit to Daniel Boulud’s newest restaurant, Boulud Sud, I was struck by the consistent solidity of the chef’s restaurants.

Have there been wobbly moments? Yes, of course. Have the food and service always been precisely as they should be? No, of course not. But still, I find Boulud’s establishments more reliable than those of any other chef or restaurateur who has as many places as he does—except, perhaps, Danny Meyer.

Unlike Meyer’s empire, there is no one in Boulud’s large empire who is the obvious public frontman for the service end of the business, although he or she must exist: restaurants don’t keep executing at this level by magic, and Boulud himself could hardly be keeping track of them all.

Two years ago, my first visit to DBGB, the most casual restaurant in Boulud’s brood, had some hits and misses, but the restaurant then was nearly brand new, and so packed you could barely move. Sam Sifton came along and gave it two stars, which we thought was on the high side.

On a recent Saturday evening, we found DBGB very enjoyable indeed. It was less than half full, but as it was quite early—and a holiday weekend to boot—I wouldn’t draw any conclusions.

I certainly don’t remember a Matzo Ball Soup ($8; above left) on the opening menu. My son was perfectly happy with it.

One could argue that Spring Lamb ($27; above left) was over-priced for a rather small portion, but you can’t fault its preparation, which was first-rate. I wasn’t sure which of many sausages to try, but I finally chose the Korean, or Coréanne ($13; above right), a wickedly spicy pork sausage with a kimchi sauce and a stingy allotment of two shrimp chips.

DBGB has an attractive, casual dining room. It’s a pleasant place to be—at least when it is not crowded (and I don’t know when the crowds come, if they do at all these days). Service was much better than it had to be: I think the server checked back about 17 times, to ensure we had everything we needed.

The restaurant is a bit expensive, for what it is. My son didn’t drink alcohol, and all I had was a $10 beer. Nevertheless, the bill was $73 before the tip: not a splurge, but you can see from the photos how much food we got for that price, and it isn’t much. Obviously, there’s a “Boulud premium,” but at least the chef delivers.

DBGB (299 Bowery at E. 1st Street, East Village)

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

Duo

Note: Well, I predicted this thing wouldn’t last, and it hasn’t. Just two months in, opening chef Hok Chin is out, replaced by Bradley Anderson. That didn’t fix it either, and Duo closed in January 2014.

*

I hope that Sabina and Lorraine Belkin, owners of the new restaurant Duo, enjoy reading this positive review. Because I don’t think there will be very many of them. Yes, I liked my meal at Duo. But I’ve seldom been more sure that critics would hate a place.

You’ll either love, or loathe, Duo’s over-the-top décor, with massive, lushly-painted murals depicting the owners in sensuous poses. Oh, but there’s so much more. Haute Living tells us, “Gold-leaf accents and crocodile-skin columns are scattered about the space, while the velvet walls sparkle with hand placed Swarovski crystals.” With a seven-foot-tall crystal chandelier and mohair bar stools, it all feels very luxurious. There are purse stools for the ladies, with an army of footmen to carry them in and out of the dining room. (They really got a work-out when a party of six women sat down.)

A restaurant needs menus, but for Duo, not just any menus would do. So they imported, custom-made, backlit menu folders, designed for reading in low light. At first, you think they’re iPads; then you realize they’re far too large for that, and they’re static—the text doesn’t change. It’s just an electric appliance that turns on when you open the cover, and off again when you close it. But they are heavy, and far too big for the table. With two of these and a wine list, there is no room to put them down without knocking something over.

The establishment’s full name, Duo Restaurant & Lounge, suggests the type of crowd it hopes to attract. So too does the owners’ last place, Duvet, a quasi-restaurant where most of the “tables” were beds. The State Liquor Authority closed it down in late 2009 after multiple incidents, the last being a rape in a bathroom stall, perpetrated by an ex-con hired as a bouncer. Duo is altogether more serious than that, but when you see a DJ perched high above the dining room floor, you wonder how serious?

They spent millions here. Although I liked it, I think most critics will loathe it.

They sure are trying hard. The service is attentive, and against all odds the food is pretty good. The chef, Hok Chin, isn’t exactly a household name. He has worked at Solo, and also at Sugar on Long Island, yet another place that seems to be more of a club than a restaurant. The menu is eclectic and somewhat difficult to characterize. I suppose it has a slightly Mediterranean lean, with such dishes as Black Truffle Pizza and Braised Veal Osso Bucco Tortellini, along with basics like Organic Free Range Chicken and a 20 oz. Aged Prime Ribeye.

Prices are in a wide range, with appetizers $10–20 and entrées $22–42. You could get out of here inexpensively, if it wasn’t for the wine list: most of the bottles are way over $50. It is not a very long list either, and one assumes it can never be more than two facing pages, or else it would outgrow their imported, custom-made, backlit menu folders.

The meal begins with lovely, just-out-of-the-oven bread loaves (above right), marred by freezing cold, just-out-of-the-fridge pats of butter.

A Vegetable Tartlet ($13; above left) in lemon tarragon beurre blanc was wonderful. What was billed as a Golden Beet Terrine ($17; above right) was really just a deconstructed beet and goat cheese salad. While the plating was lovely, the ingredients lost something by being served in separate pieces.

Hanger Steak au Poivre ($31; above left) was another triumph of plating technique, the steak resting impossibly on a tower of roasted fingerling potatoes and wild forest mushrooms, with a very good green peppercorn sauce and a stack of onion rings. The steak itself was just average.

Glazed Duck ($28; above right) on a bed of French lentils and baby carrots was wonderful, but when you bathe the duck in caramelized peaches and honey-ginger ponzu, it can’t help but taste very rich indeed.

They have 120 seats to fill here, and less than half of them were occupied at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. It was only their fourth day in business: they have their work cut out for them. Most people in the food community will assume that Duo is not a serious restaurant, for all the reasons I gave at the top of this post, and the nightlife community is notoriously fickle—assuming you can even get their attention. The location is a difficult one for restaurants, as the prior tenant, Olana, quickly discovered.

I liked Duo, and its plush luxury didn’t bother me at all. The food, if not uniformly great, was not bad for a restaurant in its first week of service. But to break even, they probably need 300 covers on weekends, and I am not sure where they’ll come from.

Duo (72 Madison Avenue between 27th & 28th Streets, Flatiron District)

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

Hospoda

Note: In July 2013, Hospoda hired chef René Bastien Stein, a former chef de cuisine at Seäsonal. The Czech theme was abandoned, in favor of New American beer-inspired cuisine—whatever that meant. That didn’t work, and Hospoda is now closed. As of February 2014, the space is Bay Kitchen Bar (BKB), a Hamptons-themed restaurant.

*

There’s always a place in my heart for restaurants that come out of nowhere—that neither set nor follow any discernable trend; that exist, for no other reason than someone believes in an idea.

Hospoda (“beer hall”) is such a place. Featuring Czech cuisine, it’s located in the newly renovated Bohemian National Hall, a landmarked building owned by the Czech government itself. No market survey could have inspired the idea; no restaurateur is likely to copy it.

I have visited no other Bohemian beer halls for comparison. This is probably a slightly more fancy version of the genre, with its striking black and gold panels and a glass floor in front of the bar that gives view to kegs of beer down below.

The company that operates the restaurant has 15 others in the Czech Republic. The executive chef, Oldřich Sahajdák, makes his home at one of these, La Degustation, which, according to a reliable report on Mouthfuls, is more upscale.

There is some evidence of cold feet, as a March post on DNAinfo.com mentioned a $76 prix fixe, later abandoned. That might have been a tough sell in a conservative neighborhood, when neither the cuisine nor the chef is well known.

In lieu of that, at least for now, the restaurant is offering two plates for $32, a remarkable deal. Each additional course is $12; desserts are $9. Somewhat confusingly, there’s also a separate beer menu that lists à la carte “beer plates” at $8 each, perhaps intended for snacking before dinner, although there is no bar at which to try them. The purpose of these wasn’t really explained, and we didn’t order any.

(Click on the beer menu (above right) or the full menu (left) for larger images.)

There’s only one kind of beer, Pilsner Urquell, but they serve it four ways, varying only in the ratio of foam to liquid. The foamiest, called “Sweet,” of which a sample is given as amuse bouche, is practically all head. The other extreme, called “Neat,” has practically no head at all. For $19, you can sample all four—not a bad deal, as it’s almost two full pints before you’re finished.

Right now, the wine list is almost a nullity, consisting of just two reds and two whites. Pours are stingy, but at $8 apiece one can’t complain. (The server told us that we could have brought in our own wine for free, but call ahead to ensure this policy is still in force, as they may not be so generous after their own list is beefed up.)

There is a nice bread selection. First comes a plate of sourdough slathered in cream cheese and topped with radishes (above left), then a dish of plain bread and rolls (above right), though without butter.

On the main menu, there are seven appetizers and seven entrées, each consisting of a list of three to five ingredients, with no indication of what is done with them. Fortunately, the servers know the menu well and answer questions patiently. An example is: “duck breast, celery, pear, sour cream” (above left): a thin, and somewhat bland, slice of breast, served cold, wrapped around a pear salad and topped with a celery foam.

Our other appetizer, “white asparagus, warm mayo, quail egg, bacon,” was breakfast topped with asparagus—fine for what it is, but unremarkable.

Lamb leg (above left) was the evening’s best dish, a tender (although small) piece of lamb in a carrot purée with thyme sauce and a bit of spinach. Beef oyster blade (above right) tasted like the inexpensive cut of meat that it is, but the creamy dill sauce was very good, as were the barley dumplings.

Macaroons (right) were served with the check. The dining room seemed to be about half to two-thirds full on a Thursday evening. Service was good, for a ten-day-old restaurant.

Hospoda is enjoyable, especially at the current price, and we appreciated a menu that’s entirely free of clichées. The chef isn’t working any miracles: the ingredients aren’t the best, and portions are on the small side. The cuisine is neither upscale nor rustic, but something in between.

With the Czech government invested in the restaurant’s success, presumably they’ll be given time to work out the kinks. I would dine here again, but I have to wonder how such an odd concept will play in the long term, after the curiosity-seekers have come and gone.

Update: As I expected, Hospoda continues to improve. On a subsequent visit, a substantial and fairly priced wine list had arrived, with suggested wines by the half-glass or full glass that pair with the menu, which is reprinted daily. Prices remain compelling: two courses for $32, three courses for $45, or a seven-course tasting for $88. I loved a snow pea salad (greens, kirby cucumber, peach, malt biscuit) and slow cooked rabbit (bacon, red cabbage essence, dumpling).

Hospoda (321 E. 73rd Street between 1st & 2nd Avenues, Upper East Side)

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