Edi & the Wolf

There are two paths for a second restaurant: give the public more of the same, or attract a new clientele by doing the opposite.

If chefs Eduard Frauneder and Wolfgang Ban wanted to create the opposite of their Michelin-starred Seäsonal in midtown, I have two words: Mission Accomplished. A more striking contrast than their new place, Edi & the Wolf, would be impossible to imagine.

I’m a huge fan of Seäsonal, one of the few upscale restaurants to have opened during the recession. The chefs either didn’t have PR, or didn’t know how to use it, and the place received scant critical notice. The food is excellent, but the space is somewhat cold and clinical. I wondered whether they’d join the list of not-from-here chefs that New Yorkers have chewed up and spit out.

Unlike Seäsonal, Edi & the Wolf—that’s the two chefs’ nicknames joined by an ampersand—creates the instant impression that it belongs here. The distressed farmhouse look and the long communal table are old ideas, but they don’t look at all hackneyed. The space is comfortable and inviting.

Despite the “I’ve-seen-this-before” esthetic, the décor is inspired by something not frequently encountered in the U.S., an Austrian Heuriger, or neighborhood tavern. A 40-foot rope salvaged from an old church has been turned into a chandelier; recycled military boots become flower vases; the wooden ceiling comes from an old barn.

The only resemblance to Seäsonal is the Austrian cuisine, which is rendered more simplistically and less expensively here. Appetizers—sorry, “Small Plates”—are $4–13; larger appetizers—sorry, “Shared Plates”—are $12–17; and entrées—sorry, ‘Schnitzel & Co.’—are $14–22.

If I sound annoyed . . . well, this is one East Village-ism I could have done without. The term “appetizer” never put any restaurant out of business. The term “Shared Plate” is misleading, given that the server suggested I order two of these for myself. I wondered if I could trust that advice, so I took a different path.

Cured Pork Belly ($9; above left) with horseradish, pearl onions, and quince was wonderful. If you think pork belly is over-used, you should order this dish, which is unlike any I’ve had in Manhattan, served cold light enough to be a salad.

Wiener Schnitzel ($19; above right) is offered with either veal or pork (I took the latter). It comes with the traditional accompaniments: potato salad, cucumber, and lingonberry jam. The breading is unheavy, and not at all greasy; the portion was ample, and more than I could finish.

The mostly-European wine list tilts towards whites, many of which are Austrian labels not often found in New York. Rieslings, for instance, pair well with most of the food here, even the meat dishes.

The restaurant was empty at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday evening, but by East Village standards the evening hadn’t begun; an hour later, the room was just beginning to fill up. I dined at the bar, where service was knowledgeable and attentive. It is hard to judge at this early date whether Edi & the Wolf will be a long-term hit, but right now it seems to fit right in.

Edi & the Wolf (102 Avenue C between 6th & 7th Streets, East Village)

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

Feast of the Seven Fishes at Stuzzicheria

Stuzzicheria, the Italian small-plates restaurant in Tribeca, offered the Christmas season’s cheapest Feast of the Seven Fishes, at $49.

It turned out to be an even better bargain than I expected, because the restaurant put out only one serving for my son and me to share, whereas I was fully expecting to pay $49 each. With bread (below left) and a shared dessert, the whole bill was just $70.25 before tax and tip.

A copy of the menu is shown above; click on the image for a larger version. Strangely, the dishes were not served in the order stated. The food was unremarkable: a good home cook could do about as well, although not without slaving in the kitchen all day. This took about an hour.

1. Crostino: Marinated white anchovy & fresh mozzarella (above left)

2. Insalata di Calamari: celery, lemon & red chili (above right)

3. Vongole: baked Little Neck clams oreganata style (above left)

4. Agro Dolce: sweet & sour fried flounder (above right), probably the most enjoyable dish

5. Bacala Casserole: potato, cippolini onions & tomato (above left)

6. Gamberetti: grilled prawns [sic] scampi style (above right). Despite the description, you can see that it is only one prawn.

7. Sardina: grilled sardine, fennel, pinoli & raisins.

Dessert, beignets with (if I recall correctly) almond ice cream (above right) was very good.

Everything but the dessert and the flounder was frankly forgettable, and a couple of the dishes (the prawn, the sardine) weren’t really well designed for sharing. My son wasn’t fond of these dishes, but he put up with them gamely.

My feeling about this place, as it was when I visited in September, is that the flavors and the ambition are distinctly timid. The service wasn’t bad, allowing for the price point. The restaurant was a bit over half full on Christmas Eve.

Stuzzicheria (305 Church Street at Walker Street, Tribeca)

NYC's Top Ten Restaurant Trends in 2011

This is my third 2010 wrap-up piece: new or continuing trends for 2011. (See previously: NYC’s Top Ten New Restaurants of 2010 and NYC’s Ten Most Disappointing New Restaurants of 2010.)

1. Spend, spend, spend. Get ready to spend more money. Restaurant prices will rise beyond the pace of inflation. During the recession, chefs and restaurateurs held back, either by reducing their profit margins, or by using less expensive ingredients. As New York begins to recover, restaurants will raise prices. Entrées will test the $40 mark (and at some places, already have).

2. Eleven Madison Park/Del Posto copycats. During the recession, Eleven Madison Park and Del Posto bucked the economy, and actually got fancier. Eleven Madison is busier than ever, while Del Posto was rewarded with four stars. Restaurant owners will notice that this ploy worked, and will seek to copy it—not necessarily to four-star heights, which can happen only rarely, but at all levels of the dining spectrum.

3. Long-format fixed menus proliferate. Brooklyn Fare and Torrisi Italian Specialties have thrived with long-format menus that practically eliminate customer choice. Compose, which just opened in Tribeca, is another in this format. The idea isn’t new (Per Se, Masa, and Momofuku Ko had done the same) but at these newer places, the chefs had no track record that suggested they could get away with it. Given the success at Brooklyn Fare and Torrisi—Compose is too new to assess—we expect to see more of the same.

4. The small-plates format begins its overdue decline. The small-plates format is one of the many tricks that restaurants use to make themselves appear to be less expensive than they are. You might see a menu on which no individual dish is over $20, but you need to order four of them, so you wind up with a $60–80 food bill in the end. Although it will take more than a year to kill this format, you’ll see less of it in 2011, as chefs will not be tempted to make their menus seem cheaper.

5. Expect more “menus for many.” In his year-end rant, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo complained about “silly feasts,” like Má Pêche’s beef seven ways ($85pp; 6–10 people) and the Breslin’s suckling pig dinner ($65pp; 8–12 people). Get used to it, Steve: you’re going to see more of these. We disagree with Cuozzo that these feasts “exist mainly to feed chefs’ egos”: we loved the Bo Ssäm at Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and most reviews of “beef seven ways” have been positive. But I lament that the format is so inflexible. I would love to try the fried chicken dinner at Momofuku Noodle Bar, but you need to coordinate schedules with half-a-dozen other people, and then if someone cancels you could be left holding the bag.

6. Wine lists become more elaborate. Wine has the widest price range of any product sold in restaurants. A bottle could cost as little $20 or as much as $20,000. Restaurant wine lists were understandably cautious during the recession: there is no reason to stock bottles in three figures if people aren’t buying them. As the economy recovers, wine lists will become more adventurous, but also more expensive. More restaurants will go the Bar Henry/Ciano route, and offer large sections of their wine lists by the half-bottle, a move that encourages diners to order more adventurously. Web gurus like Feast’s Gary Vaynerchuk and Eater/Winechap’s Talia Biaocchi will continue to bring wine education to a wider market. Oh, and we’ll probably see more iPad wine lists (of which we are not fans).

7. Burger craze is not over. Are you tired of seeing a $16–25 burger on every menu? Too bad: the designer burger craze isn’t over. Exhibit A: the heavy breathing for the recently introduced “White Label” burger at Michael White’s Ai Fiori. These burgers are like catnip for influential bloggers, and they’re a no-risk proposition for the restaurants. We strongly disagree with Feast’s Ben Leventhal that a burger can add a whole star to a restaurant’s Times rating; but they certainly can’t hurt. (For the record, we find this trend unobjectionable: Don’t like ’em? Don’t order ’em.)

8. The Italian segment consolidates. The Italian segment is overdue for consolidation. The last half of 2010 saw a slew of fancy new Italian restaurants, such as Lincoln, Ai Fiori, Ciano, Manzo, and Villa Pacri. In a perverse way, it was a flight to safety. The Zagat Guide lists more Italian restaurants in New York than any other ethnic cuisine, and the standard four-course format (antipasti, primi, secondi, dolci) tends to plump up the bill. But at this point, the market for upscale Italian is beyond saturation. There will be some losers, and chefs (if they have a choice) won’t choose Italian cuisine quite as readily. It’s perhaps notable that Ai Fiori, despite retaining its Italian name, is now described as Mediterranean cuisine, and we strongly suspect that Lincoln’s Jonathan Benno might be wishing he had done the same.

9. Chefs trade up. During the recession, classically-trained chefs opened things like meatball shops and hot dog stands. In 2011, chefs will trade up again. An early example is Zak Pellacio, who told the Times that he’s closing his casual goat-themed restaurant Cabrito, in favor of something “a little more studied” and “with a slightly more grown-up menu and service style.” Pelaccio is unlikely to open anything resembling a fine-dining restaurant, but when was the last time anyone actually closed a place so that he could make it “more grown-up”? As the recession eases, chefs will itch to return to the “more studied” food they were trained to cook, but have been avoiding.

10. The luxury segment is NOT back. If our trends have a theme, it’s that restaurants in 2011 will get fancier, more audacious, and more expensive. Despite those trends, there will be no new balls-to-the-walls luxury restaurants next year. I’m talking about places that are consensus four-star (or at least, “high three-star”) restaurants from the day they open, the way Per Se and Masa were in 2003–04. It’s not that there is no longer demand for those that already exist: just try getting a last-minute table at Le Bernardin, which is always full, despite its $112 sticker price. Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton reported this week that Masa’s menu is back up to $450 (it had gone down to $400), and that reservations at Per Se are becoming harder to come by. But that kind of restaurant has a much longer planning cycle. Investors will require confirmation that the economy has truly rebounded, and that when such a place comes along, there are critics capable of understanding them.

Overall, we expect 2011 to be a better year for dining out, but one in which we’ll have to be more selective. The fact that restaurants can get away with charging more, doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be better.

Industria Argentina

Note: Industria Argentina has closed, as of February 2012. The space is now Telepan Local.

*

I remembered Industria Argentina as a pretty good Tribeca standby. I gave it two stars in 2006 (I was grading easier then), and bumped it down to 1½ stars in 2007.

The restaurant has continued to decline, or maybe I just got lucky with my previous entrées here—osso buco and suckling pig—neither of which is still on the menu. Bread service (below), warm on my last visit, was room temperature this time, though the house-made butter is still good.

To start, we chose a pair of sausages (above), among five offered, the hot & spicy and the lamb sausage. There was nothing wrong with them, but does that look like $19 worth of sausage to you? It doesn’t to me.

Ribeye steak ($28; above left) was tough and stringy, though the fries were good. You don’t expect aged prime at this price, but there is no point in serving sub-standard product. I take the server’s word for it that our other entrée was indeed the 14-day dry-aged short ribs ($25; above right), but they neither looked nor tasted like short ribs, and they didn’t taste dry-aged either. A skirt steak you’d get in a diner is more like it.

Industria Argentina still looks good, but it didn’t have much patronage on a Friday evening. In a neighborhood with plenty of dining options, it hasn’t attracted much of a following. I can see why. At $115 before tax and tip (including a $43 bottle of wine), it’s no bargain.

Industria Argentina (329 Greenwich Street between Duane & Jay Streets, Tribeca)

Food: Fair
Service: Fine
Ambiance: Good
Overall: Fair

NYC's Ten Most Disappointing New Restaurants of 2010

In a previous post, I listed my top ten new restaurants of 2010. Now, here are my top ten disappointments. The list ranges from those that were truly bad (Kenmare), to those that merely failed to live up to outsized expectations (Lincoln).

As before, the list is based on my actual experiences at the restaurants, not what others have said, what the chefs are theoretically capable of, or what may have changed since I visited. Some of these places will eventually earn return visits, but remember: I’m spending my own money. I usually wait a while before giving a second chance.

1. Lincoln. No restaurant opened with higher expectations than the new luxe Italian restaurant at Lincoln Center with former Per Se chef Jonathan Benno. I’ve read reports of some great meals here, but ours was mediocre, and most of the pro critics were unimpressed. The space is terrible, and that can’t be fixed, but Benno won’t go down without a fight. If Lincoln is the year’s biggest disappointment, it’s also the one most likely to improve.

2. Colicchio & Sons. Coming from a chef with Tom Colicchio’s pedigree, this place figured to be excellent. But Colicchio botched the roll-out, opening with an à la carte menu, switching to an expensive prix fixe after just a month in business, and then switching back less than a month later. Practically all the reviews were negative, except for a bizarre trifecta from Sam Sifton of the Times. The restaurant is now off the radar, and we’ve heard nothing that would justify a return visit.

3. John Dory Oyster Bar. The re-located April Bloomfield/Ken Friedman seafood place bears no comparison to the original John Dory, which was in a poor location, but was otherwise a very good restaurant. Our meal here wasn’t bad, but it’s nowhere near what this team is capable of. Let’s hope that April is able to find her mojo, as she has done at The Spotted Pig and The Breslin.

4. Kenmare. This Italian restaurant from chef Joey Campanaro was probably the worst new restaurant we visited in 2010. Given Campanaro’s track record (Little Owl, Market Table, and before that The Harrison and Pace), who would have expected it to be this bad? Was ever a “consulting” gig more phoned-in than this one?

5. Zengo. This restaurant, built on the site of four failed Jeffrey Chodorow places, is so comically bad that the critics couldn’t even bring themselves to review it. The Latin–Asian fusion concept is unfocused and poorly executed. The nominal chef, Richard Sandoval, has fifteen restaurants in five U. S. cities and three countries. This one never got the attention it needed.

6. Lotus of Siam. This is the New York branch of a legendary Las Vegas standout, which Gourmet critic Jonathan Gold anointed the “best Thai restaurant in North America.” But none of the Las Vegas staff moved to New York: the original chef spent just a few weeks training the New York staff, and then went back home. The result is a watered-down version of the original. It’s such a pity to see a great opportunity missed.

7. Bar Basque. I had high hopes for this place, despite the involvement of Jeffrey Chodorow, who builds failed restaurants at a prolific pace. There’s a serious chef here, and a number of critics have had better meals than we did. But there is no getting around the Chodorrific service and the irritating space. Over/under on a new chef or concept: 18 months.

8. The Lambs Club. This was supposed to be Geoffrey Zakarian’s big comeback, after his pair of three-star standouts, Town and Country, imploded after long declines. Our meal here did not live up to Zakarian’s talents, to the space, or to the excellent service team. On the first night of service, we saw Zakarian dining at Lincoln, which tells you how committed he is to the project. We’ll be giving a pass to his other new restaurant, The National.

9. Nuela. This pan-Latin restaurant was in gestation so long that the original chef, Douglas Rodriguez, gave up. With Adam Schop now in charge, we found an overly long menu (60+ items) with far too many duds, a horrific décor and an overly-loud sound track. This restaurant concept was sorely in need of an editor.

10. Plein Sud. Here’s another case of missing expectations. Plein Sud offers serviceable comfort food, but chef Ed Cotton (who made it to the finals of Top Chef Season 7) did far, far better work at Veritas and BLT Market.

Fish Tag

The history of chef Michael Psilakis has become the culinary equivalent of “The House that Jack Built.” Every time he opens a new place, you need to tell the story of all the previous ones, to understand what is going on.

His newest, Fish Tag, is his fourth on the same site that was once home to Onera (very good), Kefi (good), and Gus & Gabriel Gastropub (awful). He has also done five places with the restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, including Anthos (excellent, but closed), Dona (not bad; now closed), Mia Dona (where he is no longer involved), a larger version of Kefi (mediocre), and the restaurant Eos in Miami.

Where those restaurants failed, Psilakis’s cooking usually wasn’t at fault. (To go into the reasons, Jack’s House would become a whole subdivision.) Onera, Anthos, Dona, and Mia Dona, all got two stars from the Times, and Anthos should have had three. Kefi was good before it moved to a space far too large for its own good. That leaves Gus & Gabriel as Psilakis’s only outright failure (though he claims it will be reincarnated in Brooklyn), amidst a long line of successes.

At Fish Tag, the chef is once again in his sphere. It offers mainly a seafood menu—not overtly Greek, but in the same imaginative modern Greek style that was successful at Onera and Anthos. It’s more elaborate than the former, but less fancy than the latter. The layout was gutted and replaced with a sleek, elegant design that’s the best I’ve ever seen it. The dining room now seats 60 (it was formerly 75). There are now three separate bar counters that seat 30 between them.

Psilakis is hedging his bets, so Fish Tag doubles as a wine bar. To that end, many of the wines are available in three-ounce, six-ounce, or half-bottle pours, and the menu includes plenty of cheeses and cured meats for bar patrons who might not want a full meal. On the main menu, the entrées top out at $26, and there’s the ever-present $16 burger that shows up in most restaurants these days.

There are some blunders that could cost Fish Tag a whole star. After you sit down, the server utters the seven words most dreaded in the Western culinary canon: “Let me explain how our menu works.” But you really need the explanation this time. Although Fish Tag has traditional appetizers and entrées, they aren’t so stated on the menu. Instead, the items are arranged from “lightest” to “heaviest,” with appetizers in red and entrées in black.

Groups of menu items are lassoed with large curly braces, next to which are written the spirits (wines, beers, scotches, etc.) that purportedly go with them. As if this wasn’t enough to learn, some items are marked with a “§” sign, which means (a footnote tells us) that they may be ordered “simply grilled” with potato and broccoli rabe.

You might think this was enough complexity, but there’s more. While the wines are listed on the back of the food menu, a separate menu lists the hard liquors, ice creams, coffees, teas (“please allow five minutes for stepping”), cheeses, cured meats, and “appetizing.”

Appetizing? That’s the Jewish word for the food usually served with bagels, such as lox and other smoked fish. At our table, we received two copies of the food menu, but just one of the cheese-meat-appetizing-everything-else menu.

The good news is that once you’ve figured out how to order, Fish Tag becomes a delightful restaurant.

Young Pecorino “Saganaki,” or Sheep’s Milk Cheese ($12; above left) with lemon, garlic, and almonds, comes sizzling in a cast-iron skillet. It’s wonderful; yet, we could easily have missed it: it’s the bottom entry on the cheese menu.

Smoked Sable ($9; above right), one of ten choices from the appetizing menu, has a rich, smokey taste. 

Branzino Stuffed with Head Cheese ($26; above left) is a stunning creation, and dare we say, critic bait. The menu doesn’t say whose head it’s made with (presumably lamb), but once you get past the “ick” factor it’s a brilliant dish—vintage Psilakis. Striped Bass ($23; above right), simply grilled, is a less elaborate creation, but excellent nonetheless.

The wine list is delightful, with plenty of good buys at the $50-and-under level, my benchmark for this type of restaurant. Côtes du Roussillon Villages Latour de France is an appellation I’ve never seen before. The 2008 M. Chapoutier “Occultum Lapidem” ($45; label at right) has a light, fruity taste not unlike some Burgundies, making it a terrific red wine to go with fish. It was one of many that we could have had by the glass or the half-bottle, but we went ahead and ordered a full bottle.

I photographed the label (right) after the sommelier explained that, in honor of a former blind resident of the estate, all of the wine labels from this producer are printed in braille.

At times, Fish Tag seems just a tad too precious for its own good. Tap water comes in clear glass jugs, the size of one full glass, each with its own rubber stopper, which the server removes just before setting it on the table.

But even more precious is the collection of white porcelain cake plates, which are used for serving many different items, including the smoked fish. It looks impressive, but it’s a bit awkward to eat off of an elevated pedestal.

Those idiosyncrasies aside, the service and wine program are in very good shape for a month-old restaurant. The general manager and wine director aren’t credited on the menu, nor is anyone credited at ChefDB, but whomever Psilakis hired is earning their keep. The restaurant was full, and running smoothly, at 7:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening.

Even if Fish Tag is a bit over-thought (particularly the color-coded menu), we were impressed with the food—the way we had been with Psilakis’s earlier restaurants, before he lost his way in the last couple of years. Will Psilakis stick around long enough to ensure Fish Tag remains relevant? Or will he hop to a new project after the reviews are in? Ryan Skeen is assisting in the kitchen, but no one expects that to last: it’s the serial job-hopper’s seventh restaurant in three years.

Let’s hope that Psilakis has learned his lessons well, and that he’ll make Fish Tag his main focus. This is where he belongs.

Fish Tag (222 W. 79th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave., Upper West Side)

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

NYC's Top Ten New Restaurants of 2010

’Tis the season when food writers sum up a year’s worth of dining, so here are my top ten new restaurants of 2010.

It was not a great year. No new restaurant earned three or four stars on our rating scale, although two came close: Millesime and Tamarind Tribeca. Sam Sifton of the Times awarded three stars to just one new place, Colicchio & Sons, but most critics (including me) found it disappointing. There is no “almost” in Timesspeak, but it did not appear that Sifton came even close to awarding three stars to any other new restaurant.

This does not mean that we ate badly, only that our best meals in new restaurants were at the lower end of the dining spectrum. This isn’t really surprising. Restaurants generally have six to eighteen-month planning cycles. If you’d been planning a new place in 2008 or 2009, how ambitious would you have been?

I’ve ordered the restaurants based on my dining experiences, which in most cases was one visit. Unlike the pro critics, I’m spending my own money. If I am disappointed, I’m not going to go back a second or third time, just to see if it was a fluke. Even when I like a place, I often don’t have the time or money to go back right away.

Some of the restaurants listed below actually opened in late 2009. I’ve included them if my first (or only) visit was in calendar year 2010.

1. Millesime. Chef Laurent Manrique returns to NYC (he was here in the ’90s), having won two Michelin stars in San Francisco. This classic French seafood brasserie doesn’t soar quite as high as that, but it was the best meal we had this year in a new restaurant. In our book, the food was three stars, though the service had some catching up to do. P.S. The downstairs “salon” is pretty good, too.

2. The Breslin. We adore the Breslin. Chef April Bloomfield’s fat-forward menu won’t be to all tastes, and it could be downright artery-clogging if we ate like this every day, but the chef doesn’t pander, and everything she does is impeccably prepared. They have a great lamb burger, and it’s great for breakfast too.

3. Tamarind Tribeca. This big-box Indian restaurant was the sleeper hit of 2010. We never imagined it would be this good. I gave it 2½ stars, but looking back, I am not sure why it didn’t get three. Of course, we sampled only a sliver of the menu, but what we had was flawless.

4. ABC Kitchen. Jean-Georges Vongerichten entered the farm-to-table game with a splash. Who’d have expected a restaurant in a home furnishings store to be this successful? JGV’s restaurants are notorious for quickly turning mediocre, after the attention-deficit chef wanders off to his next project. But if Chef Dan Kluger sticks around, ABC Kitchen could stay relevant for a long time. But good luck getting a last-minute reservation: the place is perpetually packed.

5. Ciano. Chef Shea Gallante (ex-Cru) returns to New York with a wonderful (if expensive) Italian restaurant, with a terrific wine list that allows most bottles to be ordered by the half. We would have rated this one higher, but one of our entrées was a dud (over-priced, under-cooked lamb chops).

6. Kin Shop. The year’s best Thai restaurant comes from an American, Top Chef alumnus Harold Dieterle. Not quite authentic, but clearly inspired by Thailand, the menu has both hits and misses, but the former are very good indeed.

7. Osteria Morini. Chef Michael White’s first casual Italian restaurant is dedicated to the hearty cuisine of Emilia-Romagna. Some of the dishes may seem over-bearing and unsubtle, but we liked just about everything we tried, even if the soundtrack is too loud and the paper napkins too cheap for the prices White is charging.

8. Manzo. If we were judging the food alone, we’d rate Mario Batali’s temple of Italian beef higher, but it’s smack dab in the middle of the city’s most crowded supermarket, Eataly. It is awfully expensive, for a space that is so unpleasant.

9. Riverpark. This is a “Tom Colicchio restaurant” that doesn’t charge Tom Colicchio prices. His former sandwich guy, Sisha Ortuzar, turns out to be a fine chef. But how many people will become regulars at a place that’s half-a-mile from the nearest subway station? We sure won’t.

10. Taureau. Chef Didier Pawlicki (of La Sirène) opened this all-fondue joint to very little critical notice. We loved our meal, but we’re not going to return regularly for such a limited menu. Still, we think it’s a great date place. There’s nothing like cooking raw meat in a shared pot of boiling oil to bring people closer.

*

Honorable Mentions: There are a few notable places that didn’t make our list, that nevertheless deserve a word or two.

1. Anfora. This quickly became my go-to wine bar after it opened in May. I probably visited fifteen or twenty times. But unlike some wine bars, the food menu here is too limited to qualify Anfora as a real restaurant. That’s why it didn’t make my top ten.

2. Maialino. Danny Meyer’s Roman Trattoria actually opened in late 2009, and we reviewed it in December, but most of the pro critics reviewed it this year, so you’ll probably see it on a lot of Top Ten lists. Our own meal there was slightly disappointing, but it was probably atypical, as Meyer’s restaurants tend to get better over time.

3. Má Pêche. You’ll definitely see David Chang’s first midtown restaurant on most critics’ top-ten lists, despite the fact that hardly anyone thought he had improved upon, or even equaled, what he’d achieved in the East Village. But in a bad year, Chang’s seconds are still pretty good. I dined here three times, and will again, but the review meal was not that great, although I hear the menu has changed a lot since then.

4. Recette. Jesse Schenker’s small-plates restaurant will also be on a lot of top-ten lists. I liked everything I tried; by the same token, I can’t actually remember any of it without re-reading my own review. It lacked (for me) any of the more memorable dishes from our top-ten list.

5. Terroir Tribeca. This was my other go-to wine bar, and unlike Anfora, it does have enough of a menu to qualify as a real restaurant. It doesn’t make the top ten because it’s practically the same as Terroir in the East Village, which opened in 2008. (Tamarind Tribeca, which does make our top ten, is quite a bit different from the original Tamarind in the Flatiron District.)

The Fat Radish

Just when you thought that there were no dusty corners of Manhattan left to be colonized by destination dining, The Fat Radish arrived a month ago on a desolate Orchard Street block.

The area is technically the southwest corner of the Lower East Side, but functionally it’s Chinatown. At night there’s nothing else doing on this block, nor the next one, nor the one after that. Then you walk into the restaurant and it’s full—and clearly not with a neighborhood crowd.

This must’ve been what it was like when Keith McNally opened the Odeon in Tribeca, or Wylie Dufresne launched 71 Clinton Fresh Food on the Lower East Side several blocks north of here, when nobody thought of visiting these neighborhoods to dine out.

Much of the Fat Radish’s proffer will seem familiar: farm-to-table cuisine in a rustic, no-reservations setting. Owned by the catering and events firm Silkstone, the cuisine is loosely that of the British Isles, which is suddenly chic. The incongruous name recalls the random adjective–noun format of places like the Spotted Pig and the Rusty Knot.

The menu, which changes daily, is relatively inexpensive, with appetizers $9–15, entrées $16–24, side dishes $7, desserts $8. There are vegetables in every dish, appropriate to the season, e.g., kale, celery root, hazelnuts, winter squash, beets, and so forth. The amuse bouche (if it may be so termed) is a plate of pickled radishes (above left).

The Beet Crumble ($12; above) is typical, made with goat cheese, aged cheddar, hazelnuts, and oats. It’s sweet enough to be a dessert, and big enough to be a side dish for four people. It was double the amount that two could eat.

A richly flavored Heritage Pork & Stilton Pie ($7; below left) made more sense as an appetizer.

I didn’t detect much honey in slightly over-cooked Honey Glazed Duck ($24; above right), and the winter squash on the plate was too tough.

Monkfish Vindaloo ($21; below left) was more successful, although not as spicy as one might expect a vindaloo dish to be.

Caramelized Banana and Clotted Cream ($8; above right) was a winning dessert. One can hardly go wrong with that much sugar on the plate.

The décor is farmhouse-pretty, but there are no soft surfaces to absorb sound. Carrying on a conversation was a real chore, and a couple of particularly loud parties were nearly headache-inducing. Service was slow: our three-course meal took more than three hours. Even coffee took about twenty minutes to arrive. I began to wonder if they’d flown to Colombia to harvest the beans.

Although the food was mostly enjoyable, and I am willing to forgive the noise and the slow service, I am not sure the Fat Radish is distinctive enough to keep drawing crowds after the novelty has worn off. Other restaurants, more conveniently located, are serving similar food, and doing it as well or better.

The Fat Radish (17 Orchard Street between Canal & Hester Streets, Lower East Side)

Food: *
Service: slow
Ambiance: pretty but loud
Overall: *

Atlantic Grill at Lincoln Center

 

“Did you remember to call ahead?”

At Atlantic Grill at Lincon Center, that’s the new euphemism for, “Do you have a reservation?” I guess reservations smack of privilege and favors, while calling ahead is merely having one’s act together. No worries, though. Atlantic Grill has ample bar seating — first come, first served — for those who didn’t “call ahead.”

The rhythm of the evening is defined by whatever is playing across the street. The alert host knows the starting time and the program at every Lincoln Center venue, even when diners do not. Customer: “Doesn’t the Met start at eight o’clock?” Host: “No, the Met’s at seven tonight. They’re doing Don Carlo.” He proceeds to rattle off the times at every other theater, just to show it’s no fluke. But he’s good at what he needs to be, which is getting diners to their shows on time.

This is the second Atlantic Grill in Manhattan, approximately the fifteenth production (still in business) of prolific restaurateur Stephen Hanson. None of them are great. Hanson’s only stab at excellence was Fiamma, which he closed during the recession. But most of his restaurants are at least competent, and a few are better than that. (Primehouse New York is my favorite Hanson place—though I haven’t tried them all.)

The menu at Atlantic Grill, as you might guess, is mainly fish and seafood. Steve Cuozzo gave it three stars in last week’s Post, which is ridiculous. It is not as good as Ed’s Chowder House a few blocks away, but it is good enough to be a dependable “when-you’re-in-the-neighborhood” place. Neither the food nor the prices will offend anyone, with appetizers in the teens, entrées mostly in the $20s.

I love it when restaurants serve house-made bread, with butter soft enough for spreading. The odd-shaped version of it here, clearly meant for sharing (but served that way to solo diners too), came out of the oven warm: crisp outside and soft inside.

I am not fond of sushi bars in Western restaurants. It feels like pandering. Either open a Japanese restaurant, or don’t open one. The menu here offers a modest selection of sushi, sashimi, and maki rolls. The omakase is $32, and how good could that be?

The list of standard appetizers was incredibly boring (standard soups and salads), so I succumbed to a crispy tempura oyster roll (below left), which was offered as an off-the-menu special. It was just fine, but also instantly forgettable.

 

Arctic Char ($27; above right) was more impressive: the skin was crisp, the fish tender, and the accompaniments were no afterthought: French lentils, honeycrisp apples, turnips, and whole grain mustard. If the appetizers showed this level of thought, Atlantic Grill might be a two-star restaurant.

The by-the-glass wine list was uninteresting. Service was friendly and efficient, and there was none of the upselling that one often encounters at this kind of restaurant.

The space used to be the venerable O’Neals’. Numerous walk-in guests seemed perplexed, asking the host what had happened to their old standby. Most of them stayed, and I suspect they were happy. Atlantic Grill is better than O’Neals’. It offers the safe, reliable, fairly-priced food that a pre-theater crowd wants.

Atlantic Grill (49 W. 64th St., east of Broadway, Upper West Side)

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

John Dory Oyster Bar

The John Dory Oyster Bar should come with a disclaimer: all similarities to the outfit formerly named the John Dory are purely coincidental.

Once upon a time, chef April Bloomfield and business partner Ken Friedman opened a damned fine restaurant called the John Dory in far Southwest Chelsea, on the same block as Del Posto, Colicchio & Sons, and Morimoto. It got mostly favorable reviews (two stars from both Frank Bruni and yours truly).

In a move that no one saw coming, the restaurant closed after just nine months. Friedman gave multiple explanations for why it failed. (We’ve heard others that we can’t repeat.) In essence, he says that the business model counted on a heavy all-day walk-in trade, which is absent in that neighborhood. It’s an understandable mistake, coming from a team whose other places—the Spotted Pig, the Rusty Knot, and the Breslin—don’t take reservations.

Now called an Oyster Bar, the John Dory has re-opened in a corner of the Ace Hotel, the same boutique that’s home to the Breslin. Located just south of Madison Square Garden, Penn Station, and the Herald Square shopping district, it should have no trouble attracting the foot traffic that was lacking in the old location.

Some of the old Dory’s over-the-top fish décor made the trip upstream, er, uptown, but it is done far more tastefully here. With high ceilings and panoramic picture windows, it no longer looks like, as Frank Bruni put it, “Mr. Friedman . . . went on eBay, typed in ‘fish décor’ and bought and made use of everything that popped up.”

But some of the changes are less salutary. The seating—all bar stools—is so cramped that it must surely be at the legal limit. It leaves servers with hardly any space to maneuver. At 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening, I got one of the few places available, a window stool with my back to the room, looking out on what must be one of Manhattan’s most charmless intersections.

The limited menu, which changes daily, is now all bar snacks, raw fish, and small plates. Most individual items are $15 or less, but a hungry diner will need several of them to put together a full meal. Friedman and Bloomfield have already proven that they can serve real entrées in a casual, no-reservations setting. The loss of the original Dory’s more serious cooking is a real disappointment.

 

I loved the Oyster Pan Roast with Uni Crostini (above left), even if there was no “pan.” This is one of the few dishes retained from the old John Dory, and with good reason. But the Lobster and Onion Panade (above right) was too bland—the first time I’ve ever said that of an April Bloomfield dish—and I didn’t detect any lobster. It turned out to be a not-very-good French Onion Soup without the cheese.

There’s a fine wine list here, but I had two very good cocktails, the Spring Forward (Gin, Vermouth, Spring Onion) and the Fall Back (Applejack, Rye, Amaro Nonino, Vermouth, Peychaud).

The staff are friendly and attitude-free, but they struggle to keep up. The cocktails took too long to come out, and there were other awkward waits. I was puzzled by the kitchen’s decision to send out my two dishes simultaneously, although this could have been the server’s error (i.e., not making clear that I was a solo party). The server might also have pointed out that both were soups, which I had not realized. I would probably have ordered something else.

The John Dory Oyster Bar is an excessive reaction to the failure of the original John Dory. I fully understand the desire to be in a neighborhood with customers, and the no-reservations service model is fine with me: I love the Spotted Pig and the Breslin, both of which work the same way. But the menu is not as appealing as their other places, and right now the service is too frantic.

With April Bloomfield in charge of the kitchen, you know that it will probably get better.

John Dory Oyster Bar (1196 Broadway at 29th St. in the Ace Hotel, West Midtown)

Food: *
Service: no stars
Ambiance: *
Overall: *