Crif Dogs & Please Don’t Tell

 

The faux speakeasy cocktail bar is the most prominent development in the Manhattan drinking scene over the last five years.

Historically, of course, speakeasies were establishments that sold alcohol illegally. The modern speakeasy is legit, but usually concealed—as if it had something to hide. There is often a hidden or unlabeled door, and many of these places won’t admit you unless there is an open seat. There is generally a host at the door, as opposed to the usual bar, where you just saunter in and fend for yourself.

Last week, I went on an East Village “pub crawl” of three speakeasy-style cocktail bars that I had long wanted to try: Please Don’t Tell, Angel’s Share, and Death & Co. (The latter two are covered in subsequent posts.) That’s probably not the best way to experience them, assuming a normal alcohol tolerance, but I wasn’t sure when I’d find another opportunity.

It’s hard to imagine two more incongruous establishments operating under one roof, and having common ownership, than Crif Dogs and Please Don’t Tell. From the outside, all you see is the sign for “Crif Dogs,” with a giant hot dog bearing its insoucient catch phrase, “eat me.”

Inside, Crif Dogs is as divey-looking as you can imagine. Dimly lit, with a low ceiling and plain aluminum tables, it is an indoor hotdog stand. The name, by the way, is an inside joke. One of the owners (Brian Shebairo) once tried to say the name of his business partner, Chris Anista, while he had a hot dog in his mouth. It came out “Crif”.

Despite the Spartan surroundings, the owners aspire to serve the city’s best hot dog, and they just might have managed it. They deep-fry the wieners in fat, locking in flavor and giving the skin a satifying crunch.

The menu (click on the image, above left, for a larger version) offers seventeen varieties of hot dogs ($2.50–5.00), along with numerous optional toppings and side dishes. Beers ($3 or less) are the only alcoholic beverages.

You can make up your own hot dog with à la carte toppings, but I decided to order the server’s recommendation, the Tsunami, a bacon-wrapped hot dog with teriyaki, pineapple, and green onions.

Such odd combinations are typical of the menu, but if the rest of their zany creations are as good as this, then consider me hooked. I didn’t taste much teriyaki, but I loved the pineapple-bacon contrast, as well as the hot dog’s crunchy casing.

Please Don’t Tell (PDT), the adjoining cocktail lounge, does not open until 6:00 p.m. I had arrived at 5:45, which was about all the time it took to order and consume my hot dog.

In the meantime, the people-watching made a fascinating study. If you didn’t know about PDT, you’d wonder about the people walking in, looking just a bit lost, dressed as if they were going to a three-star restaurant. (The PDT website doesn’t even supply an address.)

The entrance is behind a “false” unlabeled antique phone booth in a corner of Crif Dogs. Open the door, and you feel a bit foolish. There is a white phone inside. It was out of order when I visited, but when it’s working you pick up, and a hostess answers. If there is space for you, a steel door opens in the back of the booth, and you’re admitted.

Reservations at the tables notoriously sell out by mid-afternoon (they are taken same-day only), but the bar is first-come, first-served. As I was there early, I was seated immediately. Later on (or so I hear), you cool your heels with a hot dog while you wait for someone to leave, as standees aren’t admitted.

A more pronounced contrast to Crif Dogs could not be imagined. The bar is a gorgeous space. The booths and bar stools are plush and comfortable. The bartenders are solicitous, smartly dressed, and work with surgical precision. Cocktails are served with ice cubes the size of a fist—keeping the booze cold, without diluting it.

The menu lists a couple of dozen specialty cocktails, though you can also go off-book. But as this was my first visit, I stuck with the printed list.

The two cocktails I had are typical. A Benton’s Old Fashioned (bacon-infused bourbon, maple syrup, angostura bitters) had a deep smokey flavor. The Mariner (scotch whiskey, pineapple, citrus, and smoked cardamom syrup) offered a nice balance of citrus sweetness and the bitterness of the scotch.

The restroom has a long list of etiquette rules posted, which perhaps shows how hard it is to run a Serious Cocktail Bar in the East Village. For instance, “No PDA at PDT: hands on table, tongue inside your mouth.” Another warns customers not to try to hit on other patrons’ dates. I don’t recall any other bar that found it necessary to point these things out.

They serve food here too—mostly hot dogs, though different recipes than those offered on the Crif Dogs menu. One is named for David Chang (wrapped in bacon and smothered in a kimchee puree); another for WD~50 chef Wylie Dufresne. There’s also a cheeseburger, and what appeared to be the most popular offering, tater tots.

These offerings come from the Crif Dogs kitchen. When the food is ready, a low buzzer rings, and the bartender opens a small metal door, with a pass-through direct to the Crif Dogs side of the house.

In some ways, this minimal menu doesn’t seem equal to the surroundings , but I admit my curiosity to try any hot dog named after Wylie Dufresne. However, I’d already had one next door, so that will have to await another visit.

This is a relaxing place. Had I not been alone, I would probably have stayed longer. Since hitting on other guys’ dates is a no-no, I’ll have to bring my own next time.

Crif Dogs & Please Don’t Tell (113 St. Marks Place between First Avenue & Avenue A, East Village)

Café Boulud

 

Last week I paid a return visit to Café Boulud, my first since a renovation last year that brightened up the main dining room and added a cocktail lounge called Bar Pleiades.

As it has been from the beginning, the menu is in four sections: La Tradition, La Saison, Le Potager, and Le Voyage, as well as a separate printed list of daily specials. After two prior visits (here, here), I finally learned my lesson:

Order Anything but Le Voyage!

The only really disappointing dishes I have ever had here, have been from Le Voyage. Avoid them and you will have a happy experience. This was the best meal I have had at Café Boulud.

Full disclosure: my mom and I received a version of the VIP treatment, with a triple amuse-bouche (left), a comped mid-course, and a comped dessert. Perhaps the staff recognized my name, but I have never received extras at any of Boulud’s other restaurants.

For whatever the reason, service was superb—practically clairvoyant—but no amount of pampering could create excellent food unless the kitchen is already capable of it. Which it clearly is.

 

To strart, my mom had the oysters ($21), while I had the Jersey Corn Agnoloti ($18), with flavors wickedly fresh and vibrant. The kitchen comped a bright, colorful Heirloom Tomato Salad (below).

 

I love the wine list at Café Boulud. You can spend a whole paycheck, if you want to, but there is more variety under $100 than at just about any other restaurant in its class. There is still a whole page of wines under $60, but I decided to spend a bit more than that—a 2002 Bernadotte, a comparative bargain at $80, but still more than we normally spend. Not many restaurants right now have any 2002 Bordeaux at that price. We ordered it before the food (the only reliable strategy), and the sommelier offered to decant it for us, giving the wine time to bloom.

 

I can’t begin to describe the excellent and beautifully plated entrées in detail—they were far too complex for that, and the joy of being an amateur blogger is that I don’t have to. (If I were Sam Sifton, I’d need to call the chef and write down every ingredient, for fear of misstating one.) So go, and order them: cherry-glazed duck ($38; above left) and rabbit three ways ($37; above right).

 

Goat’s milk sorbet ($10; left) was a fulfilling, uncomplicated way to end the evening. The kitchen comped an extra scoop for my mom, along with a “fruit soup” (above right) that was somewhat underwhelming. We did our best to lay off of the traditional beignets that come as petits-fours, but resistance was futile.

Frank Bruni once said that Café Boulud was his favorite of the Boulud restaurants. It took me a while to see why. Daniel, the flagship, is a formal dress-up evening, and I’ve never quite had the feeling that it lived up to its price point. The other three (DB Bistro Moderne, Bar Boulud, and DBGB) are all very good, and I enjoy them, but they are casual, quick-bite places. (Two of the three are dominated by pre- and post-theater business.)

Café Boulud is fancy enough to make you feel special, but casual enough that you don’t need an occasion to dine here. The restaurant used to be booked solid weeks in advance, virtually precluding an impulse visit, unless you were a regular. They’re still doing fine, but the reservation book has loosened up, and there’s even the occasional 1,000-point booking on OpenTable. We should go more often.

Café Boulud (20 E. 76th St. between Fifth & Madison Avenues, Upper East Side)

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

Sagaponack

 

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? How about a restaurant opening?

Sagaponack must have been the lowest of low-key openings in 2009. It did not attract a single professional review, which is unusual for a Flatiron District restaurant with entrées in the $20s. The various amateur sites (Yelp, Zagat, etc.) are mostly positive about the place, but from the critics it got no attention at all.

It turns out Sagaponack is a solid little gem: nothing revelatory, but a welcome addition to the neighborhood. The décor resembles a Hamptons beach house—hardly an original idea, but well executed.

You can probably guess the menu: a raw bar, lobster rolls, mussels, crab cakes, conch fritters, and the usual bistro standards. A few dishes sound like they belong on someone else’s menu, like Korean short ribs.

Prices are modest, with appetizers $8–12, salads $7–17, entrées $14–28, and side dishes $5.

  

The appetizers were all good, including Oysters Rockefeller ($9; above left), Lobster Bisque ($8; above center) with large hunks of lobster; and Duck Confit & Mushroom Duxelle Dumplings ($8; above right). I am not sure what the dumplings had to do with the restaurant’s theme, but I didn’t mind.

 

We also liked the entrées: Crab Cakes ($10; above left) and a hefty Lobster Roll ($26; above right) that is bigger than it appears in the photo. The accompanying fries, however, were too soggy. (Those crab cakes are technically an appetizer, but my mom ordered them as her main.)

On a Friday evening, the bar was packed three-deep with an after-work crowd. The tables were about half full. (The restaurant also has a large upstairs area for parties, which was not in use.) Service was about as it should be. The wine list is meh: I would have liked to see a few more Long Island wines at a restaurant that purports to represent the region.

Sagaponack feels summery—like a visit to the Hamptons minus the three-hour jitney ride, but also minus the beach. It’s not an adequate substitute for the real thing, but we can’t exactly run out to Southampton every day.

Sagaponack (4 W. 22nd Street, off Fifth Avenue, Flatiron District)

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

WD~50

  

Note: WD~50 closed at the end of November 2014, giving way to a condo development. Chef Dufresne still has his casual restaurant Alder nearby, but at present he has no known plans to ressurect WD~50.

*

I probably spend far too much time seeking out the newest restaurants—which often aren’t that great anyway. Either they haven’t worked out the early jitters, or they just aren’t destined for excellence.

The Great Recession still casts a long shadow, and it’s harder than ever to find exciting new restaurants. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking, but perhaps it’s time to shift the balance a bit towards old favorites that are overdue for a fresh look.

WD~50 has been on my revisit list for a while, not because anything has changed, but simply for the pleasure of discovering the latest creations to come out of mad scientist Wylie Dufresne’s laboratory. His food might not be to all tastes, but in the avant garde niche he occupies, his work is without peer in New York City.

A few years ago, people wondered if Dufresne could keep the place going, but on a Saturday night, at any rate, it was packed. He has held a Michelin star for five years running, and two years ago Frank Bruni gave WD~50 a much deserved and overdue promotion to three New York Times stars.

The food is expensive, with most of the entrées over $30. Most of the bottles on the wine list are in three figures, and there is hardly anything under $65.

I’m not necessarily complaining about how expensive WD~50 is, merely putting the restaurant in context. Dufresne’s cuisine is well worth the tariff. It is also labor intensive, and Dufresne has only five services a week in which to cover his fixed costs: he doesn’t serve lunch, and he is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The restaurant sells a lot of tasting menus at $140, up from $105 just three years ago (though I think it had fewer courses then). We had it, and so did the tables on either side of us. At a restaurant where so much of the food is unfamiliar, it is better to try a dozen items, as you do on the tasting menu, than to guess which two or three you’ll like.

Our tasting menu was one hit after another, with only one dud among twelve courses. I’m not going to try to describe every one, but I’ll list them all and describe the highlights. (The staff deposited a printed souvenir copy on our table before it began, so that we could follow along.)

The bread service (above) might seem initially disappointing, but sesame flatbread is surprisingly addictive. Before the end of the evening, it was all gone.

 

1) Veal brisket, honeydew, black olive, fried ricotta (above left)

2) Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese (above right)

These dishes, like everything else on the menu, derive their success from unusual and often surprising combinations of ingredients that just happen to work perfectly. The “everything bagel” is actually a small donut-shaped circle of deep-fried cream cheese.

 

3) Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery (above left). When you see a disc of foie gras on the plate, you assume it’s a terrine. In fact, Dufresne has managed somehow to stuff the foie with passionfruit, which runs out when you cut into it.

4) Scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, kindai kampachi (above right). No Dufrene tasting menu would be complete without an egg dish, and this one was masterful.

 

5) Cold fried chicken, buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco, caviar (above left). We didn’t much care for the cold fried chicken. I’m sure Dufresne has a reason for serving it cold, but it was beyond our comprehension.

6) Striped bass, chorizo, pineapple, popcorn (above right). The striped bass was perfectly cooked.

 

7) Beef and bearnaise (above left). I think this was meant to be a neighborhood-appropriate play on matzo ball soup.

8) Lamb loin, black garlic romesco, soybean, pickled ramps (above right).

 

9) Chewy lychee sorbet, pistachio, yuzu, celery (above left).

10) Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate, chicory (above right).

12) Rainbow sherbet, rhubarb tarragon, orange, olive oil (no photo).

I have less to say about the desserts individually. Alex Stupak is the pastry chef, and he is every bit Dufresne’s match and alter-ego in the mad science department.

We wrapped up with Cocoa packets, chocolate shortbread, and milk ice cream (right), which took the place of the usual petits-fours.

The standard wine pairing is $85. We didn’t want to drink that much wine, nor was there a particular bottle that caught our fancy, so we asked the sommelier to choose four wines by the glass, and space them out over the two-hour duration of our meal, which he was perfectly happy to do. Like everything else at WD~50, his choices were off the beaten path, but excellent nevertheless.

Although WD~50 is a casual-looking place, the service is as polished and professional as at almost any three-star restaurant in the city. If you haven’t visited, you must. If you haven’t visited lately, it’s time to go back.

WD~50 (50 Clinton Street between Stanton & Rivington Streets, Lower East Side)

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

Review Recap: Tamarind Tribeca

Today, Sam Sifton gives a much deserved two-star review to Tamarind Tribeca, and you get the sense they were whiskers away from three:

So, have a drink and consider some curry-laced crab cakes and crisp pomegranate samosas, and the promise beyond them of a menu that can take diners across India in the name of flavor, and represent that nation’s varied cuisine with pride and great skill. . . . it is shaping up to be the best thing to happen to Indian food since Hemant Mathur and Suvir Saran opened Devi in 2004.

Unfortunately, this review marked the return of Sam the Incoherent, blessedly absent the last two weeks:

Here, too, is Gary Walia, the restaurant’s manager (nephew to Avtar Walia, the owner), directing his well-trained and helpful staff as if he were conducting an orchestra, greeting guests in the manner of a subcontinental Julian Niccolini, of the Four Seasons restaurant in Midtown.

Huh?

The bar serves an excellent gin and tonic, cold and tall.

Wow! What an accomplishment that is!

In London, where marvelous Indian food is as much a part of the culinary landscape as French restaurants or steakhouses are here, Tamarind Tribeca might rate a pleasant shrug.

Huh?

Families are scarce in the dining room — dates, friendships, too. Pressed shirts abound, and wide English ties. Suit jackets are thrown over the backs of chairs and bar stools.

So glad you told us that. You never see suit jackets thrown over the backs of chairs anywhere else. That’s so unusual. Just like those cold gin and tonics you’ve been drinking.

Nuela

Note: Nuela closed in February 2012. The space re-opened in June 2012 as Raymi, under chef/restaurateur Richard Sandoval.

*

The pan-Latin American restaurant Nuela opened last month in the Flatiron District, after an agonizing two-year wait. Douglas Rodriguez, the original chef (and Top Chef Masters alum) withdrew, leaving his one-time assistant, Adam Schop, in charge.

Wear your sunglasses and bring your earplugs. The all-red décor will assault your eyes, while the blasting sound track will bludgeon your ears. It is not a pleasant place to eat. The owners took over the huge space that had been Sapa, but I don’t remember feeling like I was in an airplane hangar, as I did here.

The menu offers sixty items in a dozen categories. There are so many ceviches that a separate menu must be printed to accommodate them. One’s eye is naturally drawn to the entrées for two: ribeye ($90), chicken ($48), duck ($60), or whole fish ($58). Suckling pig is served by the quarter ($65), half ($130), or whole ($250). Solo entrées are $25–32, ceviches $10–22, small plates, soups and salads $3–12.

The bread service (left) was wonderful: cheese bread and cornmeal, with honey-doused mascarpone for dipping. Matters turned quickly south when the appetizers arrived.

 

Oxtail Empanadas ($9; above left) had a strangely flat taste. Mixto Ceviche ($14; above right) had such a muddy taste, and was swimming in so much sauce, that I couldn’t even make out the octopus, shrimp, and crabmeat it allegedly contained.

The quarter suckling pig ($65; above) was just fine, but the degree of difficulty was low. The pig was served as a random pile of oddly-shaped pieces. Nothing much was done with it, except for baking the creature in its own fat and hacking the carcass apart. (There was an unidentified tangy dipping sauce, along with scallion pancakes and a superfluous helping of rice.) It came on a wooden board that didn’t quite fit on the small table, very nearly pushing our plates off the edge.

The wine list was expensive. The dull $56 Tempranillo we had came to the table warm. After pouring two half-glasses, the server volunteered to chill it. Twenty minutes later, it came back hardly changed.

You can probably cobble together a good meal here: with 60 items on offer, some of them have to be good. We aren’t at all interested in trying any more of them. We hated our appetizers, and there are plenty of places in town that serve a great suckling pig in a much nicer space.

Nuela (42 W. 24th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Satisfactory
Ambiance: A noisy red airplane hangar
Overall: Satisfactory

The Breslin

I visited The Breslin alone about a month ago. I felt it was a two-star restaurant at the time, but hadn’t sampled enough of the menu to form a definite impression. Now I can correct that (and Sam Sifton’s wrong-headed one-spot).

I wrote about the background of The Breslin in an earlier review, so I’ll get right to the food.

 

The Terrine Board (above left) is excellent—the components being guinea hen, rustic pork, rabbit & prune, liverwurst, and head cheese. I wonder why there is no option for a solo diner? It comes in two sizes ($25 or $42), and even the smaller one, which we had, is too large for one person.

A whole trout ($32; above right) was exquisite, its pink flesh moist and tender. We also had the lamb burger and fries once again (the photo is in my earlier review), which was as good as before.

The wine list is a tad expensive, with too few bottles under $50. However, the 2007 Domaine des Martinelles at $55 was wonderful. The list describes it as “the rustic side of Crozes-Hermitage: meat-driven, earthy, funky, and amazingly yummy.” It arrived at the table properly chilled. Even restaurants much more expensive than The Breslin often serve red wine at room temperature.

I don’t know how Chef April Bloomfield divides her time between The Breslin and her other restaurant, The Spotted Pig. She was in the Breslin kitchen the night we were there, apparently (as far as we could tell) looking at every plate that went out.

The space is noisier than I’d like, and I wish they took reservations. The dining room hasn’t been full either time I visited (the packed bar is another story entirely). Perhaps it would even help business to get with the program, and join OpenTable. But I love April Bloomfield’s food too much to subtract points for that, so The Breslin gets two stars from us.

The Breslin (16 W. 29th Street between Broadway & Fifth Avenue, West Midtown)

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

Sookk

 

Sookk came to my attention a month or two ago, when I noticed that eGullet’s Fat Guy had pronounced it the best Thai restaurant in the city—better than most people’s favorite, SriPraPhai in Woodside, Queens. A guy in the Eater comments had the same opinion—but so far, they’re the only ones.

I shy away from proclaiming the “Best…” anything, even in dining genres where I believe I have sampled all or most of the plausible candidates. So I would never make such a claim about Thai food, which I have only a few times a year.

Based on my experience, limited though it may be, I thought that Sookk was above average, and certainly worth a visit. if you don’t mind a trip to 103rd & Broadway. According to my twitter feed, the Columbia students love this place, and I can see why. The prix fixe lunch is just $7. Our dinner for two was just $60, and that included a bottle of sparkling wine that might have been $60 all by itself in some restaurants. Certainly, in terms of value per dollar, it’s hard to beat this place.

But I found the food too mild. Several dishes carried the warning that they came with the extra-spicy special house sauce. We were cautioned to add it sparingly, as they would not be returnable if we went too far. After the appetizer failed to register, I unloaded all of the available sauce into the entrée, and still couldn’t find much heat to speak of.

Having said that, the food was carefully prepared, attractively presented, and mostly enjoyable. I certainly would not hesitate to return. I just find it hard to believe that it’s the city’s best.

 

The Assorted Golden Fritters ($7; above left) was our favorite dish, with an assortment of crispy chicken, shrimp dumplings, shitake spring rolls, blanketed shrimps, and sesame tofu. There wasn’t the slightest hint of grease, and a sweet chili sauce supplied just the right amount of heat. Even the tofu—and I am not a tofu guy—was wonderful.

A so-called Fiery Thai Beef Tartare ($5; above right) wasn’t very fiery at all. It’s hard to tell from the photo (which I shot after I’d spoiled the kitchen’s careful plating), but there’s a black rice cake underneath that heaping pile of seasoned beef. It’s actually a witty combination, as the rice cake somewhat resembled a hamburger patty—thus, the dish was reversing the usual order of the ingredients. For five bucks, the beef was obviously not aged prime, but I cannot fault it in a five-dollar dish.

 

Much of the menu consists proteins, to which you add your choice of accompaniments. Duck in Green Curry ($14; above left) was insipid and forgettable.

Thai Paella ($15; above right) was on a separately printed list, alleged to be the “weekly specials,” although the sheet was so dog-eared it could have dated from the Bush Administration. An abundant helping of rice was slightly on the greasy side; finding the seafood (shrimp, scallops, mussels) required a small fishing expedition. The secret sauce, as I mentioned, didn’t add much. Perhaps they ought to leave Paella to the Spanish.

The small space is inexpensively but attractively decorated in multi-colored fabrics. Tables are close together, but when families enter with strollers, the staff make room. They were about 80 percent full on a Saturday evening: we arrived without a reservation and were seated immediately. Service was a bit slow, but we were in no hurry and didn’t mind. 

If I sound a bit negative, perhaps it is only because we came in with high expectations. With the various combinations of proteins and broths, there are probably a hundred different dishes here, of which we sampled only a few. (I am fully prepared for someone to write in the comments, “You ordered wrong.”) Still, this should not take away from Sookk’s many charms. If you are looking for better-than-average neighborhood Thai cuisine, you’ll enjoy Sookk; we certainly did.

Sookk (2686 Broadway between 102nd & 103rd Streets, Upper West Side)

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

iPad Wine Tablets at South Gate

Last week, South Gate restaurant replaced its paper wine lists with iPads. It struck me as a gimmick to get the critics back to a restaurant they largely ignored—out of kindness, I suspect—when it opened two years ago.

This is the fourth electronic wine list I’ve seen. The old Aureole had one. It was so difficult to use that we just gave up, and asked the sommelier for assistance. Adour has a wine list projected onto the counter at the bar, though at the tables it relies on paper. I found the electronic version finicky, and as I’d done at Aureole, gave up and asked for the printed version.

SD26 is the only other New York restaurant that currently dispenses with paper entirely. As I noted after my visit:

I quickly figured out the user interface, but found it frustrating. On a traditional wine list, I can flip through the pages quickly, getting an instant sense of its breadth and depth. A small screen that shows only a few bottles at a time is disorienting. You have no idea what you’re not seeing. It’s probably a lot, given an inventory of 1,000 bottles. Response time isn’t bad, but turning a page is a lot faster.

The iPad wine list at South Gate has much the same problem. The user interface is pretty easy to figure out, but you have to dig through several layers of menus to get to a list of bottles. Along the way, you have several decisions to make:

• Bottle, glass, cocktail, small format, large format, or beer? [I choose bottle]
• White, red, sparkling, or dessert? [I choose red]
• A particular grape, a particular country, or “all red”? [I choose country]
• Which country (out of 14)? [I choose United States]
• Which Grape (out of 4)? [I choose Merlot]

After all that, I find that South Gate has only one United States Merlot, and I later discover that there are only five U.S. bottles overall. So this is clearly not the strength of the list, which it has taken me a bit of searching to find out. On a printed list, you’d quickly see at a glance that the largest selection is French.

Response time for any given menu option ranges from one to four seconds, which doesn’t sound bad, but the minutes add up quickly, while you’re still not sure how big the list is, or how much you’re missing. Fortunately for me—but not for the restaurant—the place wasn’t busy, and the server let me hold onto the iPad for about 45 minutes, so I had plenty of time to browse. This wouldn’t work at a busy place, unless they’re prepared to invest in a lot of iPads.

Eventually, someone will develop the killer wine list app that beats paper, but it hasn’t happened yet.

*

Kerry Heffernan, the original chef at Eleven Madison Park, has been at South Gate since it opened. The Tony Chi-designed room has no charm; it could be a soulless hotel dining room anywhere.

The city’s most expensive non-Japanese restaurant, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, was once in the same building, so you don’t expect it to be cheap. And it isn’t. Practically all of the entrées are north of $30. Even the three-course pre-theater menu feels expensive, at $49.

A more gently priced bar menu was introduced recently (though, as at most places, you can get the full menu at the bar, too). I wasn’t hungry, so I sampled just one item.

Try to imagine Fried Macaroni & Cheese ($12). Does your mental picture agree at all with the photo on the left? I thought not.

A confused runner dropped the dish in front of another patron. He was sure he hadn’t ordered it, and handed it off to me. I thought it must be a mistake, but I couldn’t find a server and didn’t want the dish to get cold.

I had eaten four out of the five little fritters before the server returned, and assured me that this was, indeed, the fried macaroni & cheese. I didn’t taste much macaroni, but the dish wasn’t bad. I’m not sure that five bites are worth $12, but when the roast chicken is $30, I suppose it is not out of line.

A glass of wine and a bar snack were all I had, but I must have spent an hour there, as the server seemed in no hurry to…you know, serve. It’s not much of an improvement over my first visit, when the place was new. Inexplicably, I gave South Gate one star. I am not sure why. Nothing I saw here makes me want to return.

South Gate (154 Central Park South between 6th & 7th Avenues, West Midtown)

Review Recap: Aquavit

Yesterday, Sam Sifton demoted Aquavit from three stars down to two:

Aquavit is now 23. It has been in this location since 2005, when it moved east from the Rockefeller Townhouses, across Fifth Avenue. . . .

Gone are the fireworks of the Samuelsson era, the high-wire act of matching Scandinavian food to French technique and the flavors of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. (Ruth Reichl of The New York Times awarded the restaurant three stars in 1995. William Grimes did so again in 2001; in 1988, before Mr. Samuelsson’s arrival, the restaurant was given two stars by Bryan Miller.)

Aquavit’s dining room can be somewhat lonely these days, only a little more than half full at peak hours. There is a sour scent to some of the passageways, the sort that flowers cannot battle.

But Mr. Jernmark has moved the menu toward a quiet, seasonal intensity that is well worth investigating.

This was an unsurprising outcome for a restaurant no one ever seems to talk about any more.

We certainly do not assume that Sam Sifton is reading this blog, but we note that, for several weeks running, there has not been a “terrific” or a “delicious” in his reviews. Now he needs to drop the overwrought literary references:

It has been a Swedish summer here in New York. There seem to be Stieg Larsson novels on every fourth lap on the D train choogling over the Manhattan Bridge, on every third iPad glowing in the dark of the jitney driving east on the Long Island Expressway toward Montauk.

Remind me: the D train and the iPad have what to do with Aquavit?