Louro

It’s a pleasure to cheer when good things happen to great people. The chef David Santos certainly deserved better than his last two NYC restaurant gigs, both fatally flawed for reasons not his fault: 5 & Diamond (wrong location) and Hotel Griffou (wrong crowd).

It’s fair to say that the former sous chef at Bouley and Per Se might have known he’d be a fish out of water at those two spots, but I suppose he had to give them a shot. After he left Griffou, he ran an acclaimed private supper club (Um Segredo) out of his apartment for a while, then launched a project on Kickstarter to open his own restaurant—finally on his terms.

Louro (Portuguese for “bay leaf”) occupies the space that was Lowcountry, and before that Bar Blanc and Bar Blanc Bistro. It’s still under the same owners, but the Kickstarter funds paid for a new décor (nearly as blanc as Bar Blanc was) and upgraded kitchen equipment.

Santos refers to Louro as a causal restaurant (no tablecloths, low-end glassware), but by today’s standards the staff is smart, attentive, and polished. An OpenTable spot-check shows that it is usually full at prime times; we pulled strings to get in at 7 pm on a Thursday evening.

The quasi-American, quasi-Portuguese menu is divided into four categories: Bites ($6–8), Small Plates ($12–16), Eggs & Grains ($12–18), and Large Plates ($22–28). Portions are generous. A five-course tasting menju is $65. We ordered that and paid full price, but we were known to the house and received an extra course or two.

 

Bread (above left) was served warm, with a “butter” (more like a dipping sauce) made from pork and duck fat, along with black pepper, caramelized onions, and scallions. The amuse-bouche (above right) was a lighter-than-air seafood fritter with smoked paprika aioli, and a very spicy piri-piri shrimp (both from the “bites” section of the menu).

 

The main menu started with a Puntarelle salad (a bitter green vegetable in the chicory family) on a large crouton with parmesan and bottarga (above left).

I especially liked the soft/crunchy contrast in kampachi (above right) with purple carrots and carrot purée.

 

Gnocchi (above left) were terrific, with a poached duck egg and a creamed truffle sauce. There was a vague taste of bacon in there too, though I don’t recall any mention of it from the wait staff. Cobia (above right) was beautifully done, with a curried mussel emulsion and sun-dried tomatoes.

 

Duck (above left), on a bed of roasted beans and plantain sauce, offered simple pleasure. Dessert, also simple but effective, was pain perdu (above right), served warm, with cinnamon toast ice cream and huckleberries.

I tried two cocktails from the house list: both were excellent, but I neglected to take notes, so I’ll leave the critique to others. The wine list is brief, but good enough. It is something to build on.

In short: every dish was skillfully prepared; none fell back on obvious clichés. At the price point, Santos is doing a remarkable job. After two restaurant jobs that misfired, he finally has the right location, a strong supporting staff, and a customer base that appreciates what he is doing.

Let’s hope that Louro is around for a long time to come.

Louro (142 W. 10th St. between Waverly Pl. & Greenwich Ave., West Village)

Food: Excellent Portuguese-inspired cuisine
Service: Remarkably assured for a new restaurant
Ambiance: Upscale casual

Rating: Critic’s Pick
Why? Wonderful, especially at this price point

Willow Road

Willow Road has been open since early December in the old John Dory space, sandwiched between Colicchio & Sons and Del Posto. Why the Dory failed here remains a mystery to me, but the venue stood vacant for more than three years.

The new owners, coming from a nightlife background, have decidedly modest ambitions. They brought in Todd Macdonald, a former chef at Cru, and Grayson Schmitz, a former Top Cheftestant, to serve a bunch of comfort-food dishes that look like Quick Fire challenges. Open till 3:00 am, it’s a boozier, less elaborate Stanton Social.

The menu is organized around “Bites” ($6–9), Small Plates ($12–18), Large Plates ($15–34), and Side Dishes ($8). The server pushed us to over-order, but we held firm at two small and two large plates, which was enough for us, but might not be for you. I suspect many of the guests here will be visiting more than one dining/boozing location in an evening. Two plates a person is probably enough.

 

The Spiced Lamb Burger Bites ($12; above left) are excellent, and were gone far too quickly. As always, these sharing establishments send out three pieces for a party of two. I’d much rather have a second order of those than the very dull Duck Confit Salad ($16; above right).

 

Buttermilk Fried Chicken ($18; above left) is coated in an appealing crust of jerk spices and orange blossom honey. The plate looks small in the photo, but there are three pieces there. Mac N’ Cheese ($15; above right) is deceptively named. The noodles are more like half-length penne tubes, with an appealing mix of sweet sausage, lemon, fennel pollen, and parsley. It’s probably too cloying to order for yourself, but very good to share.

Three out of four items were just fine, bearing in mind the restaurant’s low aims. The menu is fairly small, with just nine “bites” and small plates, and just eight of the larger ones. It’s not upscale, but it’s not entirely cliché either, as such places often can be.

They’ve redone the space admirably, with reclaimed wood, subway tile, and a terrific hand-painted mural depicting the neighborhood by James Gulliver Hancock. We were seated at a two-top, but there’s also an ample bar and at least one long communal table. The scene is louder than I’d like, but the oldies sound track was palatable.

The staff paid plenty of attention to us; coats were checked and reclaimed efficiently. Although the “sharing plates” meme feels outdated already, at least the food was sent out in a logical order, and not all at once. You can never take that for granted at these establishments.

I can’t imagine what would bring us back to Willow Road, but for its intended audience it’s pretty good. The space was hopping on a Wednesday evening. If the management can keep people coming back, they might have something going.

Willow Road (85 Tenth Ave between 15th & 16th Streets, Chelsea)

Food: Stoner cuisine, re-imagined
Service: Attentive and well managed
Ambiance: A gastro-bar, with the emphasis on “bar”

Rating: Neighborhood Spot
Why? Satisfies a need for the area; not worth going out of the way

The Smith (Lincoln Center)

When The Smith opened in the East Village in 2007, I never imagined it would become a mini-chain. It seemed to us, at the time, an average neighborhood spot and NYU student cafeteria. But a Smith clone opened in East Midtown in late 2011, and a year later across from Lincoln Center, in the old Josephina space. I’m sure it’s not the last one.

The concept here is similar to the East Village: a boistrous, casual space, with subway tile walls and leaded glass windows. It looks like Keith McNally could have designed it, right down to the communal washrooms outside the loo. They take reservations, and the hostess checks coats, which I don’t remember them doing downtown.

menus are similar, but most of the entrées uptown are a couple of dollars more, and at Lincoln Center they serve some extra items: a $75 porterhouse for two, a raw bar. But the core of the menu is the same, and one of the best items, a burger, is $15 at either establishment.

 

Trout Milanese ($25; above right) is an appealing entrée, served breaded in a mustard crust on a bed of lentils. I didn’t really taste the bacon or pear compote alleged to be in the dish, but it was fine for what it was. I would have liked a bit more kick from the mustard. My girlfriend loved the lobster roll ($29; above left; served only on Fridays), which comes with irresistible house-made chips, as it did when we had it in the East Village two years ago.

There are about fifteen well-thought-out cocktails ($13), and about two dozen over-priced wines by the bottle. But there’s another twenty wines by the glass, caraffe, or large caraffe. These are the way to go. We had the Pinotage ($25, the caraffe), which was the right amount of alcohol before an opera. Bur really, are they that hard up that they can only afford juice glasses to serve it in? C’mon guys!

I’d forgotten how much space there was at Josephina, the restaurant that was here before. The front room would make for a good size restaurant all by itself, but you pass through a corridor and there’s another dining room in back, which is a bit more sedate. This was pre-show, so the crowd was all ages—unlike downtown, which skews young. They did a brisk business, but weren’t full. The noise level was energetic, but not punishing.

My impression here was a bit more favorable than our visit to the original Smith two years ago. Downtown, there’s many more restaurants to charm you. The Lincoln Center scene has improved, but it’s no East Village. There isn’t really any other good spot quite like this one, serving elevated pub food, and doing it pretty well. We’ll be back.

The Smith (1900 Broadway between 63rd & 64th Streets, Upper West Side)

Food: Elevated American pub food
Service: Good for this sort of place
Ambiance: McNally Lite

Rating: Neighborhood Spot
Why? Lincoln Center needed a restaurant like this 

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select

There’s a mini-boomlet in ski-themed bars and restaurants, including the Haven Rooftop in the Sanctuary Hotel, and the Hudson Lodge at the Hudson Hotel, both in midtown. The Minus 5 Ice Bar is scheduled to open in the Hilton in March 2013—odd timing, to say the least.

The Après-ski Chalet at Café Select has less glitzy ambitions. It occupies a charmless back room behind the kitchen, gussied up rather sloppily with outdated ski equipment and old posters. The staff said it’s used as an oyster bar in the summertime, though it’s about the last place I’d go to eat oysters.

 

 

Three of us paid $22 per person, or a total of $66, for a fondue crock with melted cheese, a bowl of bread cubes for dipping, and some crudités.  In contrast, three of you could share the Grande Fondue at Artisanal, which I’m pretty sure is no smaller than Café Select’s version, and is almost certainly better, at $42.

You can add to the basic fondue package, and you should, with plates of meats and sausages, which are more sensibly priced. Still, it’s a lot of money for what felt like about eight dollars worth of food, in a room that doesn’t feel like any kind of Chalet.

The fondue at Café Select won’t change your life. There’s nothing wrong with it either. But there’s a sense of romance implied in the name “Après-ski Chalet” that this spot doesn’t live up to. If you’re suddenly in that fondue mood, go uptown to Artisanal and grab a seat at the bar.

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select (212 Lafayette St & Kenmare St, Soho)

Food: Unmemorable but acceptable fondue and accouterments
Service: Fine, but cash-only
Ambiance: A storage room hurriedly re-decorated as a 1970s chalet

Rating: Not recommended
Why? If you want fondue, there are better and cheaper options

Thalassa

It almost felt like cheating to accept a publicist’s invitation to re-visit Thalassa, my favorite restaurant that no one writes about. I’ve reviewed it twice before (here, here), and visited at least two other times that I didn’t write about. The week after the publicist-arranged visit, I went on my own dime and spent almost $600 (albeit with a number of extra courses sent out).

Like many restaurants, Thalassa re-calibrated after the financial crisis. The “fish by the pound” program, which could seem daunting and confusing to customers, has been dropped. In 2006, I wrote that there were “many” fish entrées over $40. There’s now just one, the Dover Sole ($48), which is excellent. The staff no longer sends you home with a pastry for the next day’s breakfast.

The restaurant remains expensive, with appetizers $14–25 and entrées $29–47 (only one less than $32). But over six or more visits, across ten years, I’ve never had anything less than excellent. The space is refined, quiet, and comfortable—perfect for a business dinner or a romantic night out. I’ve used it for both.

The international wine list is outstanding, with over 12,000 bottles and more than 700 labels, but a list that strong ought to be available online—and it isn’t.

The account below is primarily of the publicist-arranged meal, as my visit the following week was a business event not suited to taking photos.

  

Both meals began with a light cod fritter (above left), served as an amuse. Zuchchini–Eggplant chips ($24; above center), are wonderful: incredibly light and not at all oily. However, it’s only a practical dish if several people are there to share it. There’s an assortment of dips ($10; above right) for spreading on house-made pita.

 

Octopodi ($25; above left) had a terrific, smoky flavor, served with a salad of sun-dried tomato, micro-organic greens, olive oil, and red wine vinaigrette.

Scallops ($22; above right) are a revelation, wrapped in filo dough, served with sheep’s milk butter and a balsamic reduction. I’ve had this dish before: it’s no wonder that it remains on the menu.

All of the whole fish are served basically the same way: lightly char-grilled, with a sprinkling of lemon and olive oil. The photo above is the Lavraki ($36), which appears as Branzino or Loup de Mer on some menus. The Dover Sole, the following week, was similar. The kitchen lets the quality of the ingredients speak for itself, with a minimum of interference.

  

 

The kitchen sent out practically the whole dessert menu (all $12). You won’t go wrong here, but my favorite was the Galaktobouriko–Citrus Custard layered in Filo and drizzled with honey (second row, left).

At ten years old, Thalassa is entering middle age by restaurant standards. It has survived and thrived, which is a tribute to good management. The dining room was not full for either of my mid-week visits, but there is always steady business. Thalassa is a shade less expensive than it used to be, but the quality of the food has not suffered, and the wine list is still first-rate.

I love Thalassa and always did. That none of the city’s professional critics reviewed it always puzzled me. Perhaps now, on its tenth anniversary, they’ll take a fresh look. Thalassa deserves it.

Thalassa (179 Franklin Street between Greenwich and Hudson Streets, TriBeCa)

Food: Greek, primarily seafood
Service: Elegant but understated
Ambiance: A quiet, serene room, reminiscent of the sea

Rating: Category Killer
Why? Thalassa has never been less than excellent, over 6+ visits 

Aska

 

Earlier this year, the Modern Nordic restaurant sensation Frej (pronounced Fray) flew past New York like a comet. Open for just six months, it was a critical darling and food board sensation.

But what was it, exactly? A real restaurant, or just a pop-up? It served a $45 five-course tasting menu just three nights a week, Mondays through Wednesdays, in what seemed to be a makeshift space. (It was a noodle shop and a party space the other nights of the week, and a design studio by day.)

Reservations were taken only by email, a system as inefficient as it was disorganized. It took about a dozen messages, back and forth, over a month or more, for me to get a booking. Then Frej closed abruptly for a month of “renovations.” No one bothered to tell me my reservation wouldn’t be honored (though, fortunately, I was well aware of it anyway).

In New York, “closed for renovations” often means “closed for good,” and that was the case here. A month morphed into nearly four, before the space re-opened as Aska. The part-time ramen shop is gone. The tasting menu (now $65 for ten incredible courses) is now served five nights a week (Sunday to Thursday). The bar, with a short à la carte menu, is open seven days a week. It’s still in the Kinfolk Design Studio, doubling as a coffee shop by day. Reservations are taken online—a far more civilized way of handling it.

Fredrik Berselius, one of the two original Frej chefs, runs the kitchen. (The other, Richard Kuo, is now at Pearl & Ash on the Bowery.) Joining Berselius is GM and cocktail/wine guru Eamon Rockey, formerly of Eleven Madison Park, Compose, and Atera.

The deep, narrow space looks similar to the photos I’ve seen of Frej. Some of the artwork has been removed, making it feel even more austere than before. Housed in the back of a renovated garage, there are just seven tables, seating a mere 18 guests. There’s an partly-open kitchen, a bar, and in the front a cocktail lounge.

I don’t know if the heating system is unreliable, but when the hostess seated us, she offered blankets, should we need them. We did not come anywhere close to taking her up on it.

The staff paces the reservations book at leisurely intervals. Just our table was seated at 6:00 pm on a Sunday; then the second at 6:30, the third at 7:00, the fourth at 7:15, the fifth at 8:15, the sixth and seventh at 8:30. This is obviously a deliberate strategy, as when I reserved, only the 6:00 and 7:00 times were available.

Serious Eats had a preview of the cocktail program: “No one could ever accuse Eamon Rockey…of not being a patient man. Of the eight signature cocktails he’s created for the just-opened modern Scandinavian concept, not one is without an ingredient that requires some sort of time-consuming infusion, fermentation, or extraction process.”

I tried two excellent examples: the US Export (“whiskies of all sorts, pear, maple, angostura”) and the Next of Kin (“aquavit, pu-erh combucha, caraway”), both excellent, and at $12 well below the going rate. Full disclosure: Rockey recogonized me, and the cocktails were comped.

(There’s a photo of the cocktail and beer list near the top of this post; click on the image for a larger view.)

There’s an international wine list that runs to two pages, with separate sections dedicated to Riseling and Beaujolais, both of which Rockey feels pair particularly well with the food. We took his advice, ordering a 2005 Beaujolais.

The food is in the same austere, Modern Nordic style as the décor. The staff handed us a menu at the end of the meal, wrapped up as if it were a parchment scroll. (Click on the photo, above left.) However, that menu lists just seven courses. Counting various amuses, it was more like ten, or eleven if you count the bread.

Most dishes come with fairly elaborate descriptions from the server. If “pork chop, carrots, and mashed potatoes” is as much of an explanation as you want, Aska is not the place for you. Platings are elaborate, each its own modern art sculpture. Some of them are gone after just a bite or two. A hearty eater might still be hungry afterward—though we weren’t.

The chef can write a symphony with root vegetables. But at $65, some compromises are inevitable. You won’t find caviar, Wagyu beef, foie gras, lobster, white truffles, or other luxury ingredients. The protein courses are the menu’s weak spot. If Aska is a hit (and after less than a month in business, it’s well on its way), look for the price to go up, along with the quality of the ingredients.

The bread service (above right) consisted of warm, sweet caraway rolls and salty, crisp flatbread (like a thin pretzel), with a splash of soft butter hugging the upper left edge of the bowl.

 

The first amuse (above left) was a chip of crispy pike skin with sour cream, and a disc of shortbread with cheese and juniper. The second (above right) was an inner tube-shaped helping of pig skin with jam (6:00 position), a chip of dehydrated pig’s blood (2:00), and a buckthorn.

(Despite the “ick” factor, the pig’s blood chip did not taste like blood at all.)

 

We moved onto the first of the courses listed in the printed menu, smoked and dried shrimp (above left) with cucumber and rapeseed oil, which had a rich, salty flavor. A warm stalk of broccoli (above right) stood straight up, resting in a bath of mussel emulsion and seaweed dust. The note I took at the time, was: “Wow!”

 

A course described as “Potato” (above left) was something more elaborate, a stew of potato, onion, and mackerel, with a warm milk foam poured by the chef at tableside. To go with it, the owner poured a glass of potent milk punch made with aquavit.

Squid (above right) with purslane and turnips was our first dud: rubbery, bitter, and flavorless.

 

We adored the Salsify (above left), with celery root, wild greens, and lichens. “This is too good to be just vegetables,” my girlfriend said.

But Pork Shank (above right) with sunchokes was another dud, a one-note dish not rescued by a helping of apple cider poured tableside.

 

The palate cleanser (not listed on the printed menu) was a half-scoop of Whey Sorbet (above left) with oak chip and French sorrel. Dessert (above right) was an excellent cardamom ice cream with brown butter mousse and hazelnuts.

The service was as good as at any three-star restaurant. With four servers for seven tables, nothing went unnoticed. Clean plates and empty glasses were noticed almost instantly.

Aska is just three weeks old, so there are no professional reviews yet, but the basic idea is similar to Frej, which was a big hit. This is surely the best $65 meal in town, but I’ll bet it hits $95 within two years. If Fredrik Berselius can keep cooking like this, it’ll be well worth it.

Aska (90 Wythe Avenue at N. 11th Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn)

Food: Austere Modern Nordic, most of it stunning and flavorful
Service: As attentive and helpful as at any three-star restaurant
Ambiance: A renovated garage, comfortable but as austere as the food

Rating: Category Killer
Why? There is nothing else like this in New York. By all means go. 

La Villette

La Villette opened in late October, on the edge of the West Village. It offers a solid but sleepy incarnation of French Provençal cuisine. There’s nothing wrong with a restaurant like this—I wish my neighborhood had one. But there’s a distinct lack of dishes that set the pulse racing, and the execution isn’t so exemplary that it demands attention on its own.

On the face of it, this ought to be an ideal location, on a busy corner lot, close to several subway stations. But a number of restaurants on this block have struggled, including La Villette’s predecessor, the appropriately named 10 Downing.

If you’re the owners of La Villette, perhaps the best news of the year is that one of the fall hits, El Toro Blanco (which replaced another failure, Sam Bahri’s Steakhouse), just opened down the block. El Toro was packed at 7 pm on a recent Wednesday evening.

Perhaps La Villette will get some of the spillover crowd, eventually. Or perhaps not. We found La Villette’s dining room mostly empty. I don’t believe they seated more than five tables while we were there, although the bar was mostly full.

The layout of the old 10 Downing space hasn’t changed, but it has been re-decorated like a typical French bistro, with subway tile, old French movie posters, and distressed mirrors. The dining room seats 85, with another 60 outdoors in good weather. That’s a lot of chairs to fill, a challenge that 10 Downing seldom met.

The current menu is not available online. The restaurant emailed me a menu about a month ago, but as of our visit it had already been pared down. That’s never a good sign. On the message boards (Yelp, etc.), there’s a smattering of unrealistically fawning message board reviews that are obvious shills.

On top of the food (mostly good), my Old Fashioned cocktail was well prepared. The wine list, though not extensive, is mostly French, offers fair value, and goes well with the food. The warm bread service (served with olive oil, not butter) a great start.

 

A Tomato Watermelon salad ($12; above left) was just fine, although December is a strange month in which to be serving it. I’d heartily recommend the Puff Pastry Tomato Tart ($9; above right), one of the better renditions of that dish.

 

Mussels are offered in two sizes, and each size with either of two sauces (White Wine or Tomato, i.e., Provençale). My girlfriend ordered the Provençale ($19; above left), which had her nodding with approval. I didn’t try the mussels, but the fries (below left) were wonderful.

La Villette sources its beef from the Ottomanelli Brothers, with three cuts offered: a ribeye, filet mignon, or veal filet mignon. I was modestly displeased with the Veal Filet ($32; above right), which was drowned in a humdrum shower of mushrooms and frisée.

 

Despite my carping, we weren’t ready for the meal to end, so we ordered the Cheese Plate ($20; above right), a good selection for this type of restaurant.

Although the dining room was mostly empty, the kitchen was quite slow, and the meal took over two hours. The table next to us received inordinate attention: an older guy with a trophy date and three cell phones. If you’re into people-watching, it wasn’t bad entertainment. We received what was, I suppose, the more usual service, which aside from the kitchen’s slow pace, was as friendly and proper as it ought to be.

I’m sorry if that comes across as too negative. We actually liked our visit to La Villette. We probably won’t rush back, not for any drawbacks of the place as presently conceived, but because French cuisine of this middling quality is available at many other places.

La Villette (10 Downing Street at Sixth Avenue, West Village)

Food: Provençal, generally well prepared, if a bit lacking in excitement
Service: Solid, friendly, reliable, but a bit slow
Ambiance: A typical brasserie, with subway tile and old French movie posters

Rating: Neighborhood Spot
Why? This is the kind of French restaurant every neighborhood should have 

Cannibal

 

Most restaurant names these days are hopelessly cryptic: Atera, Battersby, Reynards, The Goodwin, Governor, and so on. They could be anything. What are you to make of a Murray Hill restaurant called Resto? The name, shorthand for “restaurant,” leaves all options open.

How refreshing, then, that the folks behind Resto opened The Cannibal next door. Aside from the blankety-blank steakhouse, has ever a restaurant declared its meaty intentions more openly? Aside from a few token salads and side dishes, The Cannibal is a tribute to carnivory in all its forms—okay, all but one.

The early marketing billed The Cannibal as half-grocery, half-restaurant. One year in, the grocery angle has been phased out. There’s no mention of it on the website, and owner Christian Pappanicholas has brought in high-powered restaurant talent: Momofuku alum Cory Lane in the front-of-house, chef Preston Clark running the kitchens both here and at Resto next door. The menu seems more mature than when I looked at it a year ago.

There’s an overwhelming choice of some 300 beers, with which you can wash down a wide variety of pâtés and terrines, sausages, tartares, hams, salumi, and cheeses. I suspect most of the patrons are there for snacking: there are only six true entrées, three of which are offered only for two, and the menu warns that they take 45 minutes to prepare. (To see the current menu, click on the photo at right, which expands to a larger image.)

Broadly, the choices are divided into Charcuterie ($11–16), Small Plates ($6–13), Meat dishes ($14–20 for one, $60–65 for two), Cheeses (choose 3 to 7 for $12–19) and Sides ($5 each). The proportion of the menu that interests me: just about all of it.

 

The Poulard in Mourning ($13; above left) is a terrific chicken terrine made with a mushroom and leek purée. Spicy Merguez sausages ($11; above right) with yellow curry come on a bed of wheatberry and golden raisins.

Roasted Lamb Neck & Rib (above) is a $60 dish for two. With side dishes and appetizers, a party of four could share it. You get half a lamb neck and a quarter of the rib cage. I’ve never seen such a dish. We ate a bit over half of it, and were stuffed. The lamb was roasted perfectly, rubbed with a spicy Calabrian chile salsa verde.

The setting is casual, with all seating at the bar or at communal tables (on stools that aren’t very comfortable). The sound system is cranked up. Action flicks play on a couple of wide-screen TVs. Reservations aren’t taken for small parties, but seats turn over quickly. We had no trouble getting seated immediately at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. The place was mostly full, but not packed.

Casual vibe notwithstanding, the servers behind the bar are knowledgeable and attentive. Need help navigating that list of 300 beers? I certainly did. Their advice was spot-on. The Cannibal isn’t the solution to every dining need, but oh my! What it does, it does exceedingly well.

The Cannibal (113 E. 29th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, Murray Hill)

Food: Carnivory, every which way you can imagine
Service: Excellent for such a casual setting
Ambiance: A bar and long communal tables; a bit loud; hard metal stools

Rating: Category Killer
Why? The beer list, and food unlike any other place in the city

Pera Soho

 

When Pera, the midtown Mediterranean restaurant, opened a Soho branch last year, it didn’t get a lot of critical attention. (A Dining Brief from Julia Moskin of The Times was about it.) Most people probably assumed: same menu, 50 blocks south.

It turns out they’re not quite the same, and I like the Pera Soho menu better. The uptown menu is longer (always a minus in my book), more monotonous, and skewed more expensive. Pera Soho doesn’t have as many redundant meat dishes, and there are ample options for vegetarians.

I liked Pera midtown when we visited in 2009, but I felt that some of the dishes were phoned in. The food at Pera Soho struck me as more varied and better prepared. My endorsement comes with one huge caveat: we dined at the publicist’s invitation and did not pay for our meal. The dishes we tried were the chef’s selection.

Pera styles itself a “Mediterranean Brasserie,” and I had remembered it as mostly Greek. That was a mistake, but one I suspect the owners want people to make. The cuisine is actually Turkish, a genre that doesn’t have much traction in Manhattan. By labeling it generically “Mediterranean,” the restaurant attracts diners who might not want to commit to the unfamiliar cuisine of one nation.

The menu is divided into several categories: small plates and mezes ($6–15), appetizers and salads ($9–16), main courses ($18–30), and side dishes ($7–8). There’s a separate menu category called “Signature ‘Shashlik’ Steaks” ($25–33), comprising meat on skewers with vegetables and rice pilaf. The heading is a stretch, as one of the so-called “steaks” is chicken.

A tasting menu is $48, and this may be the best way to experience Pera Soho. There’s also a $29 prix fixe (with wines half-price) on Sundays, although it doesn’t showcase the best dishes. On Wednesdays, there’s an extra menu with seafood specials (we had several of these), which can be ordered à la carte or as a $39 prix fixe.

 

After warm bread (above left), we started with rich lobster relish crostini (above right).

A dull ceviche was the centerpiece of a seafood platter (above), but we enjoyed dipping lobster and shrimp in a horseradish and aioli sauce.

 

Phyllo rolls (above left) were excellent, as was a simple house-made pasta with mushrooms (above right).

 

Simplicity ruled too in a wonderful poached sea bass (above left) with root vegetables, carrot, and olive oil. On this showing the Wednesday seafood menu ought to be extended to the other six days of the week.

Lamb Shashlik (above right) is one of those “steaks”. The lamb is marinated for two days, then cooked on a skewer and served on a bed of bulgur rice. “I love this dish” was my girlfriend’s summary, and I can’t add more.

 

Both desserts blew the doors off: Panna Cotta with kiwi and pineapple (above left), and a Turkish classic, the Kunefe (above right), a pastry of phyllo, butter and honey, topped with a clump of kajmak cheese. The Times’ Moskin called it the best rendition of the dish she’d had in New York. It was new to me, but I’d certainly have it again.

The interior is smartly decorated, though perhaps over-done in this casual era. A partially-enclosed outdoor garden seems to be popular: even on a chilly evening, it was decked out in soft lighting, and tables were set, though we saw no one take advantage of them. At 7pm on a Wednesday, the bar was busier than the dining room.

As always, caveats apply when one dines as a guest of the house, but we found quite a bit more to Pera Soho than we expected.

Pera Soho (54 Thompson Street at Broome Street, Soho)

Whym

Whym is “A Restaurant,” as both the outdoor sign and the credit card receipt remind you. I’m glad they cleared it up. Just in case you wandered in, and thought it was a shoe store.

Actually, there’s no chance of confusion. Whym is exactly what it appears to be: a comfortable, informal, stylish New American dining spot. It’s in a good location, within walking distance of Lincoln Center, and on the edge of gentrifying Hell’s Kitchen.

Open since 2006, Whym sits blissfully outside the culinary conversation, devoid of any media attention. It’s one of those acceptable, functional restaurants that the city is full of, neither objectionable nor especially praiseworthy.

For a family dinner before a show, Whym fulfilled its purpose. Most of the food was good, or good enough, and a family of five got out for $264 before tip (that was with two of us not drinking alcohol).

The cuisine at Whym is in the upscale comfort food idiom, with prices that all end in “.95”. I thought they only did that in the suburbs. Appetizers, soups and salads are $6.95–12.95, entrées $14.95–27.95, side dishes $6.95–8.95, desserts $7.95–9.95. There’s a good selection of vegan and gluten-free dishes.

  

Artichokes ($11.95; above left) were panko-crusted and pan-fried, tasting a bit like a vegetarian fried calamari. The arugula leaves that come with it were dry, and needed some dressing. I heard murmurs of approval from the crew that tasted the Butternut Squash Ravioli ($11.95; above center), but I didn’t try it. Pulled Duck Sliders ($12.95; above right) had a satisfying tang, but shouldn’t have contained bones.

  

Wild Mushroom Cavatelli ($20.95; above left) could have used some salt and were a shade too mild, the table said. But Thai Linguini ($22.95; above center) got the seal of approval from those who tried it. Maple Blackened Salmon ($23.95; above right) was just fine.

  

There was a Duck Breast special with sweet potato ($24.95; above left), which my son loved. I didn’t expect a Pork Chop ($25.95; above center) to be pounded flat. For almost the most expensive item on the menu, this undistinguished specimen was a disappointment. I was much more fond of the garlic-scallion mashed potatoes underneath it.

A side dish of so-called Sexy Mushrooms ($7.95; above right) was just a side of mushrooms (three kinds) with almonds in a mascarpone cheese sauce: a good dish, but the sexy angle entirely eluded us.

 

A trio of sorbets ($8.95; above left) included plum, coconut, and mango-banana flavors. The S’mores-wich ($9.95; above right) was by unanimous agreement the best thing on the menu, a terrific dessert with chocolate ganache, graham cracker crust, and melted marshmallows.

The space is arguably over-decorated, but the booths are comfortable, and the space is not loud. It was about two-thirds full on a Saturday evening. The service, like the prices, felt suburban, but was certainly good enough.

Whym (889 Ninth Avenue, north of 58th Street, Hell’s Kitchen)

Food: New American comfort food, unadventurous but mostly successful
Service: Like an upscale suburban place
Ambiance: Comfortable, modern, and not loud

Rating: Neighborhood spot
Why: A deservedly below-the-radar spot, good enough for a family outing