Monday
Nov152010

Ciano

Note: Ciano closed in April 2013. Management says that it will re-open on the Upper East Side in August 2013 as Cucina Ciano, with one of chef Shea Gallante’s assistants, but without Gallante himself.

*

Shea Gallante is back. The chef who made Cru into one of the city’s best restaurants, only to see his work undercut and eventually rendered irrelevant by the Great Recession, has his own place again: Ciano.

In an era of increasing informality, Cru was one of the few restaurants that actually got fancier between its 2004 opening and our most recent check-in, two years ago. But after the fall of Lehman Brothers, the restaurant was forced to reverse field, adopting a less expensive à la carte format and slashing the prices on its legendary wine list by 30 percent.

Gallante never explained his departure. A plausible guess is that when Cru became unsustainable in its original form, he preferred to go out on his own terms. Sure enough, Cru is now closed. Gallante went back briefly to David Bouley’s empire (from which he’d come), then did some consulting in Westchester, and is now back in New York.

Ciano occupies the pretty space that was formerly Beppo. I was never there, but as the re-fit was brief, I assume that a lot of the décor was retained. It’s a beautiful setting for what I call adult dining, with a long polished wood bar, flowers and tablecloths on every table, and a roaring fireplace.

The Italian serving staff—all men, and none of them youngsters—are likely carry-overs too: where else would they find so many waiters of that age on short notice? The patrons also skewed to middle-aged, though not exclusively so. Perhaps many of them had been Beppo regulars, and wanted to see if the new place measures up.

There was always an Italian accent to Gallante’s cuisine at Cru, but it is overtly Italian here. Prices are roughly in line with Cru’s à la carte phase, but without the tasting menus. No one would call it inexpensive. Insalate are $12–15, antipasti $11–18, pastas $19–28 (smaller portions listed for about 1/4th less), secondi $28–35 (not counting the ribeye for two, $48pp), and contorni $10.

Beyond Gallante’s sure hand in the kitchen, what elevates Ciano is its wine program, run by his former Cru colleague, John Slover. As he does at Bar Henry, Slover sells a slew of wines by the half-bottle — the majority of the list, in fact. And we’re not talking about the cheap stuff, either. Real wines of interest, bottles with age, are available by the half, at 50 percent of the bottle price. This is a boon for the customer, but it clearly entails a risk for the restaurnant, as an open bottle quickly deterioriates if another no one buys the other half reasonably promptly.

We began with two of the tenderest Roasted Veal Meatballs ($18; above left) that I’ve had in a long time, so smooth they could have been Kobe beef. Gnocchi ($28; above right) with black truffle butter and 36-month parmigiano were a creamy delight. 

I loved the Berkshire Pork Roast ($32; above left), but it exemplifies the challenge of attracting customers to a restaurant like Ciano. Gallante is clearly sourcing the best beef. With a Barolo vinegar and grilled maitake mushroom sauce, he isn’t stinting on the other ingredients. But diners may ask, “What’s with $32 for pork shoulder?” Lamb Chops ($33; above right) were so rare that I thought they could still “Baaaaa,” and that’s a lot of money for two measly chops.

The experienced server was more polished than one usually finds at a new restaurant, and he didn’t hesitate to share his opinion. He was quite adamant that the smaller-size pasta orders (generally $5–6 less than the full-size ones) aren’t worth the tariff. And when we asked that our shared appetizer and pasta courses be brought out separately, he insisted it would confuse the kitchen, which we found very difficult to believe. Apart from that, he was on top of things.

Obviously, this isn’t bargain dining . Gallante’s technical ability is rock-solid, but he is cooking in a simpler, from-the-gut, style than he did at Cru. Success here will depend on people being willing to spend a bit more for more polished versions of dishes that are available less expensively at more stylish destinations.

I, for one, am happy to do that, but I’m not the guy that restaurant investors are targeting these days.

Ciano (45 E. 22nd Street, east of Park Avenue, Gramercy/Flatiron)

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

Thursday
Nov112010

The Burger at Peels

Note: Peels closed in January 2014. As Taavo Somer botches project after project, the success of Freemans (which is still open) begins to look more and more like a fluke. Later in 2014, Andrew Carmellini and his team expect to open an Italian restaurant in the space called Bar Primi.

*

Peels is the lively second act of those downtown scene-builders Taavo Somer and William Tigertt, whose first place (Freemans) is so legendarily crowded that I won’t go near it.

I wouldn’t have gone near Peels either if I hadn’t walked by at 1:30 p.m. on a Wednesday, one of the few times you can walk in and not wait forever.

The vaguely Southern cuisine has received mixed reviews so far. Sam Sifton gave it one star, though he was more interested in guessing (and guessing wrong) which side of the tracks the clientele was from.

The two-story space is a magnet for sunlight. At off-hours, it’s a cheery main-street diner that you wish all neighborhoods would have. In the evenings, it fills up quickly with a party crowd, though the bartender allowed I might get seated promptly on a Monday a Tuesday evening, provided I arrived early enough.

The kitchen butchers its own steaks (a grass-fed ribeye steak is $45). The off-cuts and trimmed fat go into their burger blend. The hand-formed patty is thick and rich, a good foil to the twice-fried potatoes. At $13, it’s less than most of the city’s high-end burgers these days, and arguably better.

The staff were friendly; helpful; welcoming. They’re probably like that all the time, but on a Thursday evening there’s not much they can do for you, and forget about Saturday. Or even brunch. A late lunch is just fine.

Wednesday
Nov102010

Tolani Wine Restaurant

It’s not exactly news that most wine bars these days have deep enough menus to serve you a full meal. So now comes Tolani Wine Restaurant, standing astride the borderline between a bar and a full-service dining room.

The website is desperately in need of an editor, but it at least explains the philosophy, if not exactly elegantly:

The space at Tolani was imagined and created into two distinct divides – the upstairs is a semi-casual bar meets lounge, while the downstairs lends itself to the fine-dining experience.

There is too much self-congratulation in the pitch:

“Tolani” means “too good,” and that is exactly what this UWS gem is – an unpretentious spot of which you simply can’t get enough. Drawing from the very best flavors, techniques and ingredients from each corner of the world, Tolani Wine Restaurant’s menu brings a culinary adventure to your backyard, marrying authenticity with ingenuity.

Filled with small to medium sized plates meant to be shared, the menu is best experienced as a journey around the world. Start in Greece with a grilled octopus salad, hop over to the West Indies with goat curry and mango, shoot over to the Maghreb for a duck pastilla and shoot pea salad, enjoy a T-bone cooked Brazilian-style or perhaps a Thai Green Papaya and cucumber salad with crisp rice peanut sauce.

The menu’s inventiveness is representative of the eclectic group of people who dreamt and built Tolani into existence.

The décor screams “date place.” It’s warm, low-lit, and comfortable. Wines are mostly $30–80 a bottle, with twenty selections by the glass. We ordered a $36 Portuguese wine from Dao, one of the better values we’ve had lately.

The chefs are a couple of Picholine graduates. Craig Hopson of Le Cirque is consulting, while David Rotter runs the kitchen full-time. Their work isn’t very impressive. The menu features the comfort foods of about 20 different nations. When a chef purports to master so many different styles, it’s a sure bet the results won’t be great.

Robiola Cheese ($11; above left) with orange honey was the most enjoyable item. Tuna Tartare ($16; above right) with blood orange, fennel, and avocado, was forgettable.

 
 (Please forgive our camera fail.)

Pasta Carbonara ($17; above left) and Greek Octopus Salad ($17; above right) tasted flat and under-seasoned.

Cuban Style Pork Loin ($17; above left) was over-cooked and dry. A Giant Meatball ($11; above right) – described thus on the menu – was just fine, but you could have made it at home.

The menu is in two sections, cold and hot, with sharing plates ranging from $9–26. The server recommended three per person, which was one or two more than we needed. Even after we specifically asked that the dishes not come out too quickly, the kitchen insisted on sending them out in pairs.

Aside from that, the service was good, and we especially appreciated having our wine decanted.

The bill came to $124 before tax and tip, which seemed high for such mediocre food. If I lived in the area, I’d love to stop in again for some wine, but I wouldn’t bother having dinner here.

Tolani Wine Restaurant (410 Amsterdam Avenue between 79th & 80th Streets, Upper West Side)

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

Tuesday
Nov092010

The White Truffle Burger at Burger & Barrel

Go ahead, call me a sucker. When I heard that Burger & Barrel was serving a white truffle burger, I had to have one.

It’s a gimmick dish, but B&B is not a gimmick restaurant. The chef, Josh Capon, knows his burgers. (We tried his burger at Lure Fishbar last year, and thought he nailed it.)

The truffle burger will be on the menu only for a few months, while the fungi are in season. The rest of the menu is classic bistro comfort food, ranging from an old-fashioned cheeseburger for $13, up to a grilled ribeye for $38.

On a cold, rainy Thursday evening at 7:30, the place was packed. The wait for a table would have been over an hour. Even at the bar, I waited about fifteen minutes for a stool to free up.

At $48, Capon isn’t exactly giving these burgers away, but he gives you plenty of truffles for your money. Actually, I tasted them more than I tasted the beef. He uses a Pat LaFreida blend (doesn’t everybody?) that was a shade over-cooked: the specimen he served to A Hamburger Today looked distinctly rarer. The fries were spot-on, and so were the two onion rings, which seem to come with every burger he serves, truffled or not.

It’s not a dish that any sane person will order twice, but I was happy to try it this once. I look forward to sampling more of the menu—perhaps when the place settles down.

Burger & Barrel (25 W. Houston Street between Mercer & Greene Streets, SoHo)

Monday
Nov082010

Kin Shop

Note: Harold Dieterle closed Kin Shop and its sister restaurant, Perilla, late in 2015. He said that he was “not having fun and enjoying myself.”

*

Harold Dieterle, the winner of Top Chef Season 1, has done many admirable things. To date, he is the only winner of that show to parlay his success into a restaurant: Perilla.

And since opening three years ago, Dieterle has basically stayed put, focusing on his kitchen, not photo-ops. Critical reception was tepid, but we liked Perilla when we visited earlier this year, and it remains steadily busy.

A few weeks ago, he opened Kin Shop, a Thai restaurant. Yeah, it’s a bit of an eye-roller: both the kitschy name, and the deeper question whether Thai cuisine is something a non-native can just dabble in.

Does Kin Shop qualify as an authentic Thai restaurant? I’ll leave that debate to others. In an interview, Dieterle wisely described the menu as “spins on traditional dishes” and “original stuff with influences from Thai flavors and ingredients.” In short: it doesn’t much matter whether you would see these exact dishes in Thailand.

The menu is much more focused than at the typical Thai restaurant, where you could visit every day for months without running out of new things to try. There are just two dozen items, all served family style, as sharable plates. It’s fairly priced for the West Village, though not if your idea of great NYC Thai food is a place in Queens. Salads and soups are $9–14, vegetables $8–9, noodles and curries $14–25.

Spicy Duck Laab Salad ($13; above left) was aggressively hot. We loved it, but we were left with no taste for the Beef Tartare ($14; above right), which failed to make much of an impression.

Dieterle’s skill with proteins really shone, including the tenderest duck breast ($24; above left) that I’ve had in a long time. Put it in pancakes and add some red curry sauce, and you are in for a treat.

Goat ($21; above right) came with a milder curry sauce and a blaze of fried shallots, purple yams, mustard greens, and toasted coconuts. It seemed to be the same cut that would be called osso buco if it were veal, and if this were Italy. Having been braised for many hours, it came off the bone like butter. [Update: Justin, in the comments, says it’s the neck, not the osso buco.]

We didn’t mind the family-style service, but the food came out too fast. Our first two items, plus a Stir Fry of Aquatic Vegetables ($9; above left), all arrived at once. Perhaps we’d have liked that Beef Tartare better if the Duck Laab Salad hadn’t been there to overwhelm it. Perhaps the vegetables wouldn’t have seemed dispensable if they’d been served later.

The two entrées came together, as well, and I began to suspect this was part of a strategy for turning tables. Kin Shop is packed in its early days: both the bar (where they also serve food) and the tables were full, and the host was turning walk-ins away. Servers, at least, are attentive and well informed about the cuisine.

The space is narrow, with an open kitchen in the back. There is exposed brick, painted white. Green floral wall hangings match the banquettes, in a design not especially suggestive of Thailand. It is exactly what you expect a West Village-y dining room to be.

I suspect the Sripraphai set will sniff haughtily at Kin Shop, but Harold Dieterle’s version of Thai cuisine is very good indeed.

Kin Shop (469 Sixth Avenue between 11th & 12th Streets, West Village)

Food: **
Service: *
Ambaince: *
Overall: *½

Tuesday
Nov022010

Mehtaphor

Mehtaphor is one of those restaurants that manages to be endearing, despite its odd annoyances. I’ll get to those in a moment, but let’s focus on the positive.

Jehangir Mehta is a former pastry chef who has worked at Jean Georges, Mercer Kitchen, and about a dozen other places. Three years ago, he oppened Graffiti in the East Village, a quirky little Asian Fusian restaurant that earned a steady following in a space described as “lilliputian” and “comically small.”

As one message board poster put it:

I never went to Grafitti because the size made it awkward for me.

If I went alone, I didn’t want to sit at a table with other people.

And if I went with a date, I CERTAINLY didn’t want to sit at a table with other people.

At Mehtaphor, the chef has room to breathe. Yes, there’s a long communal table, but there is also a bar, and there are two-tops, and four-tops. It is still a small restaurant, but no longer comically so.

What is comical is the service, clearly with an over-abundance of students who have never worked in restaurants before. One will open and pour the bottle of wine you just ordered, and then ask if you’d like a martini. Another will try to clear a teeter-tottering pile of plates and silverware, and then drop stuff.

Most of the menus have burn marks and grease stains on them. Yet, when I tried to take one home, the hostess begged me not to: “We are running out, and the printer has no ink.” Finally, she found one with three burn marks that she decided the restaurant could part with.

The food is inexpensive, although priced a shade higher than at Graffiti. It’s mostly good, in a quirky way, without duplicating dishes you’ve seen in a hundred other places. The menu is a model of austere simplicity, with categories captioned “$ NINE” (three items), “$ TWELVE” (three), “$ SEVENTEEN” (six), and “$ SEVEN” (eight).

Except for the last category, which are clearly desserts, the line between appetizers and entrées is blurry. Everything is served family style, and plates are not replaced until you ask them to. The server suggested that four plates would be about right for two people (which it was).

Our first two dishes showed off the chef’s talent for mixing sweet and savory. A fine Beef Tartare ($12; above left) was enhanced by a guacamole sorbet. Shaved Foie Gras ($12; above right) was served with a raspberry compote. The walnut salad that came with the foie gras was pedestrian, and we couldn’t fathom the logic of serving three slices of toast: two or four would make much more sense.

We loved the Goat Cheese Crab Pizza ($12; above left), made with a light pastry crust. A Chili Ribeye ($17; above right) was not bad for the price.

You’d expect an ex-pastry chef to get the desserts right. A Hazelnut Soufflé ($7; above left) was excellent, but a tiny scoop of vanilla rum raisin ice cream seems a bit stingy. Unbidden, the kitchen sent out a second scoop.

The wine list is a lot like the menu: there are just two categories: “$ THIRTY” and “$ FORTY-FIVE” with a total of eleven choices, all available by the glass as well ($9/12). The 2007 Beckmen Vinyards Grenache ($45) was the only bottle younger than 2008, but it was certainly drinkable.

The restaurant is in the Duane Street Hotel, one of many boutiques that have sprung up in the area. The hotel has been around for three years; it previously had another restaurant, Beca, that attracted no critical attention. Mehtaphor, I think it is obvious, hopes to pull in more than just hotel guests, and at least when we were there, it had clearly succeeded.

Despite a few service oddities, dinner for two was just $136, including tax and tip. Anytime a restaurant can do that, and serve food as enjoyable as Mehtaphor does, I am happy to endorse it.

Mehtaphor (130 Duane Street at Church Street in the Duane Street Hotel, Tribeca)

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

Monday
Nov012010

Osteria Morini

What a wild rocket-ride Michael White has had. Four years ago, he was the relatively unheralded chef at Stephen Hanson’s Fiamma. The restaurant was a solid three-star, but the chef’s name didn’t roll off the tongue.

Today, White is as close to culinary royalty as any chef in this town who doesn’t have four New York Times stars. His three established places (Alto, Convivio, and Marea) have nine NYT stars, and also five Michelin stars. No other NYC chef has more than two Michelin-starred restaurants, nor more than four stars in total.

Mario Batali is a better known Italian chef than White, but Batali hasn’t actually cooked in years, except on television. White really works in his restaurants.

This fall brings a dual test, as Osteria Morini, his latest place, has just opened; another, Ai Fiori, is forthcoming in the new Setai Fifth Avenue.

The obvious questions are: 1) Is there such a thing as too much Michael White? And 2) Can his restaurants remain as good, when his time is split among five of them? To answer the second question, we’ll have to wait a while. For now, we can answer the first: when they’re as good as Morini, White can open as many restaurants as he wants.

The focus here is on the cuisine of the Emilia-Romagna region, known for hearty, uncomplicated fare. The word Osteria signals a more informal approach to Italian food: no tablecloths, no expensive prix fixe.

This was clearly meant to be the casual cousin to the chef’s earlier restaurants. As Frank Bruni noted in a blog post:

Its unvarnished sensibility will be reflected in its décor, which uses antiques and other materials plucked or salvaged from flea markets and farmhouses throughout Italy.

Still, with pastas priced at $17–19 and entrées $24–42, these aren’t cheap eats. It’s quite a bit more than White and his partner, Chris Cannon, told the Times just six months ago. At these prices, they could afford to ditch the paper napkins and the garish orange paper placemats. The loud rock sound track is probably the restaurant’s least authentic amenity; it ought to go, too.

But that is about all we would change at Osteria Morini, which is already a great restaurant after only a month in business.

Musseto ($13; above left) was a hearty stew of braised cockscombs, sweetbreads, calves feet, garlic croutons, and salsa verde. Nine out of ten diners would probably reject it for the “ick” factor alone, but I couldn’t actually distinguish the specific taste of any ingredient except the croutons.

Mozzarella ($11; above right) paired happily with figs and rosemary oil.

The pasta section of the menu is loaded with shapes and flavor combinations I have never seen before, all made in house. While Tortellini ($18; above right) may be common, the duck liver cream sauce it came with was not. It was an excellent dish, but it needed to be just a shade warmer.

White roasts Porchetta ($29; above right) with sage and rosemary on a spit for three hours, wrapped in thick, crackling skin. The pork was beautifully cooked, as tender as butter.

Petroniana ($27; above left), a crispy veal cutlet, is so rich that it could be dessert, putting the old classic to shame, with layers of prosciutto, parmigiano, and truffle cream, served on a bed of buttered spinach. We debated whether this dish was too heavy for its own good—it was certainly impossible to finish—but I would order it again.

Cavoletti Bruxelles & Pancetta ($9; above right), or Brussels Sprouts, were an excellent side dish, but honestly there was no need to order them, as the rest of the meal was already far too filling.

The wine list is excellent for this type of restaurant, with many unfamiliar wines (Talia Baiocchi published an overview last week). I checked in on foursquare, and within minutes a stranger directed my attention to a white wine fermented in its skin, in a section of the menu captioned “Vini Bianchi da Contemplazione.” These wines have a slightly orange hue and an arch, crisp flavor that pairs well with the cuisine. We had the Notte di Luna, which at $69 seemed to us a very good deal for something so unusual.

A restaurant in such high demand—and Morini is about as hot as any right now—could quickly become full of itself. There is none of that here. The staff volunteered without prompting to transfer our bar tab to the table (Ahem! Paging Jeffrey Chodorow). And when we stopped Chef White to ask how a dish was prepared (the Porchetta), he insisted on finding a piece of paper so that he could draw a diagram, and then took us into the kitchen to show us how it worked. (We are reasonably certain he did not recognize us as bloggers, because it was the end of the meal, and he had paid no attention to us before that point.)

Chef White is juggling four high-profile restaurants, soon to become five. To maintain quality at all of them will be a challenge. We can’t forecast how he’ll manage that. Right now, while Osteria Morini has his full attention, it’s everything we hoped it would be.

Osteria Morini (218 Lafayette Street between Broome & Spring Streets, Soho)

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

Monday
Nov012010

Should the Star Ratings Take Price Into Account?

At the bottom of every New York Times restaurant review is this blurb, essentially unchanged for many years:

Ratings range from zero to four stars and reflect the reviewer’s reaction to food, ambience and service, with price taken into consideration. Menu listings and prices are subject to change.

The paper never explains exactly how price is “taken into consideration.” Presumably, it means that a restaurant could receive a bonus star for being an exceptionally good value, or be docked a star for being too expensive.

I’d like to challenge that. Should the rating be price-sensitive? I can state at least four good reasons why not.

1. It is Open To Manipulation. In many notable cases, restaurants have raised their prices—sometimes substantially—just after they received a glowing New York Times review. For instance, when Frank Bruni awarded four stars to Eleven Madison Park, the prix fixe was $88; a year later, it is $125. Sam Sifton awarded four stars to Del Posto just a month ago; now, they have dropped their à la carte option, locking customers into a (minimum) $95 prix fixe.

I am not suggesting that either restaurant would lose the fourth star if the critic went back today, but these are hardly isolated examples. Country raised its prix fixe from $85 to $110 after Bruni gave it three stars. Fiamma went from $75 to $95 (later partly rolled back after Bruni called them on it). At Falai, a two-star restaurant, Bruni likewise saw a noticeable price increase (beyond the rate of inflation) when he returned two years later. In a blog post, he surveyed several other examples.

Now, I do realize that anything can change at a restaurant. But a talented chef is probably going to stay talented; an attractive dining room is probably going to remain that way. Prices, on the other hand, are merely the function of what a manager types into a word processor.

2. It Depends on Factors the Critic Can’t See. According to Joe Bastianich (partner with Mario Batali at Del Posto and many other restaurants), food is only 30 percent of the price—the rest being rent, labor, miscellany, and of course profit. The critic can see the food on the plate. He generally has no idea if the restauranteur got a sweet rent deal that enables him to undersell comparable restaurants. The restaurant might be saddled with union labor, which tacks on added costs. Restaurants that are part of larger empires might have the flexibility to run at a loss for a while, an option that independent outfits don’t have. Restaurants in hotels might be subsidized.

Lower rents, of course, are the reason why the dining scene has flourished in neighborhoods not formerly known for fine dining, like the Lower East Side, the East Village, and Brooklyn. (The same was true twenty-five years ago in Tribeca, but it clearly isn’t now.) But those chefs don’t deserve bonus stars, just because they choose to locate in a low-rent district. Critics review restaurants, not rent deals.

3. It Makes Comparisons Much More Difficult. It is already hard enough to discern whether a pair of two-star restaurants are really comparable, when one four-tiered system needs to accommodate every genre and cuisine. But it only adds to the confusion when there is a mysterious price element in the mix. Is the two-star Torrisi Italian Specialties really punching at the same weight as fellow Italian two-stars Maialino and A Voce Columbus? Or is Torrisi getting a bonus for serving a bounty of pretty good food for just $50? It’s quite a bit less than you would pay at the other two places, but is it actually as good in the absolute sense?

4. Critics Should Evaluate Quality, Full Stop. Think about the other disciplines in which The Times employs critics: music, dance, film, theater, books, fashion, architecture. In no other, does the price of the product figure in the review. A critic gives an informed reaction to the product, independent of its economics. The Times doesn’t give better reviews to plays that open in cheaper off-Broadway houses; it reviews the production, not its price.

I am not suggesting that diners don’t, or shouldn’t, care what the meal costs. Of course we do. But value from the customer’s perspective depends on factors the critic can’t easily assess. For all of the above reasons, I think The Times ratings should be based on quality, full stop. The reviews, of course, would still show price ranges (as they do now). Diners can decide for themselves if the restaurant is “worth it.”

Tuesday
Oct262010

MPD

Note: MPD closed in 2012. The space is now Bubby’s High Line.

*

Here is one big hint that the new restaurant MPD probably wasn’t built for guys like me: I thought the name stood for Meatpacking District.

Florence Fabricant of the Times set me straight: it’s Mon Petit Déjeuner, which is French for my breakfast. The restaurant does not currently serve breakfast (the website indicates it eventually will), and how many of its likely patrons knew that anyway?

Perhaps the name is meant to be taken ironically. After a night of club-hopping, regulars will feel like breakfast, and MPD will be there for them.

MPD’s backers, Derek and Daniel Koch, are known mainly as nightlife mavens. They also have an investment from the Ginza Project, the Russians behind Mari Vanna. A French bistro might not be what you expected from this crew.

MPD is a much better restaurant than it needs to be. It won’t put Pastis out of business, although perhaps it deserves to. It serves solid bistro fare in a pretty room that that, unlike many in the area, doesn’t seem over-built. Service is civilized. You can carry on a conversation, you won’t be sitting in your neighbor’s lap, and you won’t be overrun with tourists.

Those things are all worth cheering about.

Prices are in a wide range, but a shade on the high side, with appetizers $9–19 (caviar service, $215), entrées $19–38, and sides $7–9.

I am assuming the bread basket was outsourced, but the dinner rolls were just fine, served with a plate of olive oil, into which the restaurant’s name had been “drawn” (see photo).

Both dishes I tried were what you want French bistro food to be: hearty, flavorful, solidly prepared. I loved the pork confit ($14; above left) with pickled cauliflower—nothing complicated, but the pork was nicely done. Crab Cakes Benedict ($27; above right) were offered as a special; perhaps another pun on the breakfast theme. I don’t remember seeing that before as a dinner entrée. I would be happy to have it again.

At 6:30 p.m. on a Friday evening, the restaurant was practically empty, except for the small bar up front. There were only three or four parties seated by the time I left, but it was clearly a very early hour for the area. Service was attentive, but it is not difficult to look after the only customer in the restaurant. There were a lot of staff on the floor; presumably, the “party” gets started much later on.

In a neighborhood where restaurants tend to be more functional than useful, MPD is a worthy addition. You’re not likely to find me there to sweat off a hangover. As a drop-in place after work, I’d be happy to add it to my rotation.

MPD (73 Gansevoort Street at Washington Street, Meatpacking District)

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

Monday
Oct252010

Donatella

Note: We weren’t impressed with Donatella, and neither was anyone else. The place closed in January 2014. The space is now Heartwood.

*

Donatella and DBar are the latest creations of Donatella Arpaia, the restaurateur and chef wannabe. The former is a pizzeria, the latter a cocktail bar. A passageway (not open to the public) connects the two, so that the same pizza can be served in both places.

Ms. Arpaia first came to notice in 1998, when she gave up her law practice and invested her whole trust fund to open the restaurant Bellini. Five years later, she supplied the financial backing for the hugely successful David Burke & Donatella on the Upper East Side. There followed a series of restaurants with the chef Michael Psilakis—in each case, Ms. Arpaia running the dining room while leaving the cooking to others more qualified.

Over the last couple of years, her partnerships with Messrs. Burke and Psilakis dissolved, and at Mia Dona (formerly a Psilakis collaboration) she took over the kitchen herself. In the Times, Sam Sifton knocked the former two-star restaurant down to zero, calling it “exactly the sort of decent, middlebrow, red-sauce Italian restaurant you’d relish if you found it in a town near the town where you grew up in the suburbs of New York.”

Ms. Arpaia, no longer content to be a restaurateur or a cook, is now a brand. Her proven inexhaustible talent is naming restaurants after herself: David Burke & you-know, Dona, Mia Dona, DBar, and Donatella. She is wonderful to look at, and in case you didn’t know, there’s a magazine featuring 45 glossy photos (and not much else) across just 15 pages. If there’s such a thing as over-exposure, Ms. Arpaia doesn’t seem to think she has reached it.

At Donatella, she imported a gold-clad word-burning oven from Naples. To ensure that the customers wouldn’t be in doubt about the name of the restaurant, she added “Donatella” in big white letters on the outside of it. That’s probably as much as you’ll see of her, unless one of the employees sends an alert that a big-whig is in the house, in which case she’ll rush over to blow the critic an air-kiss. We weren’t graced with her presence—not that we expected to be.

Ms. Arpaia’s absence wouldn’t matter if the staff running the place were on top of things. We found, instead, that drink orders weren’t taken, silverware had to be asked for, and at least one of the bathrooms didn’t have soap.

In addition to pizza, there’s a range of salumi ($9–10), antipasti ($12–15), fritti (9–12), insalate ($10–13), pastas ($15–18), and griglieria ($23–24). There’s only three or four items in each category, which at least suggests that the menu has been edited down to what the kitchen can do well.

Indeed, that proved to be the case. I liked the Arancini ($9; above left), rice balls with peas and sausage. The Zuppa di Cozze ($12; above right) did not have much of the tomato stew that was the basis for calling it a soup, but my son thought the mussels were excellent.

Ultimately, Donatella must deliver on its signature item, the pizza, and this wasn’t the case. There are seven kinds ($12–20) starting with a basic Marinara and building up to more complicated creations. The name of the most expensive one won’t surprise you: Donatella, with Piennolo del Vesuvio Tomatoes, Stracciatella, Rocket, and Basil.

They come in one size that is too much for one person, unless you have a very large appetite.

We shared the Enzo ($16), with smoked mozzarella, pecorino, sausage, and rapini (i.e., broccoli rabe). The crust was too floppy, the sausage tasted store-bought, and the broccoli was too over-powering. It was sloppily sliced into four unevenly-shaped pieces, which were two fewer than it needed. I did like the slightly musky flavor of burnt wood, but it was not enough to make this pizza worth trying again.

Donatella (184 Eighth Avenue between 19th & 20th Streets, Chelsea)