Vong Bites the Dust

Update: The space will become the third NYC branch of Wolfgang’s Steakhouse. Clever man, that Wolfgang.

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Eater.com reports that Vong will close on Saturday.

General consensus was perhaps embodied in Frank Bruni’s takedown three years ago, when he knocked the restaurant down from three stars to one. It was certainly no longer relevant to the food community. A discussion thread on Mouthfuls.com hadn’t seen a post in 5½ years.

The closure means that I no longer have to fret over my three-star review, posted in 2005. I’ve become a tougher grader over the years. Though I am sure I would still enjoy that meal if I had it today, I probably woudn’t give it three stars any more. And if reports like Bruni’s can believe, even that meal was better than Vong could regularly deliver these days.

After Saturday, Vong is no more.

Jo's

Note:  This is a review of Jo’s under chef Colin Kruzik, who was fired in June 2010. Chef Andrew Pressler eventually replaced him. Click here for a review of the food under Chef Pressler. The restaurant closed in May 2013.

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Out of failure comes a second chance. Most restaurants we’re visiting these days are in spaces formerly occupied by other restaurants.

That’s the story at Jo’s, which opened in May in the former Tasting Room space. The earlier failure there was one of the sadder stories we’ve seen. Colin Alevras had a cult hit in the East Village, but it didn’t scale up to a NoLIta space that was triple the size.

Jo’s has humbler ambitions. The website describes it as “casual, neighborhood dining at great prices.” The food is better than we expected, but unlike the Tasting Room, Jo’s isn’t a destination, and apparently doesn’t aspire to be.

If you remember the Tasting Room, the new space won’t make you forget it. A couple of partitions, some modest wall hangings, and a new bartop have been added, but the Tasting Room’s old sliding barn door and exposed brick walls remain.

With $9 cocktails, $4–6 beers, wines by the glass mostly $9–11, and a happy hour every night from 5–8pm, there is a clear emphasis on the bar trade. So far it seems to be working, as we found the space full on a Friday evening. We were delighted by those cocktail prices until we tasted a couple of them. We found them far too sweet and syruppy.

The dining room was not full, but if a few of those bar patrons can be persuaded to stick around, they’ll find it worth their while. Appetizers are mostly $9–12, entrées $15–25. Several of the entrées are listed with two prices, “old school” or “à la carte” (sans vegetables) for $5 less. Side dishes, not coincidentally, are $5 apiece.

Chef Colin Kruzik (a veteran of James, Maremma, Nobu 57, and Bouley) works in a solid American comfort-food idiom. We encountered nothing adventurous, but within its narrow ambitions, enjoyed all of it.

A selection of Cured Meats ($11) was just fine, but we were even more impressed with Crispy Pork Ribs ($11), in a garlic glaze with shiso and peanuts. The meat fell off the bone, and the sauce was just right. I would go back just for those.

Is chicken the acid test for a competent chef? If it is, then this chef passed. I loved the Free Range Chicken ($19) with wilted baby spinach. Shell Steak au poivre ($25) was at the level you would expect of a good neighborhood place.

Service was attentive and polished, but we would have liked a place to hang our coats and bags, as there was little room for them in our booth. We thought the food came out at a reasonable pace, but the concerned kitchen comped a bowl of excellent gougères (photo above) while we waited.

It’s hard to walk in here without remembering the Tasting Room, but Jo’s is probably a better fit for the space. We sampled only a few dishes, but we’ll bet that the chef who made that chicken can nail the rest of the menu too.

Jo’s (264 Elizabeth Street, south of Houston Street, NoLIta)

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

Tabla Retrenches

Union Square Hospitality Group has announced that Tabla, the Indian restaurant at Madison Park, will eliminate its casual downstairs sibling, Bread Bar at Tabla. From now on, both spaces will serve the identical menu.

When we visited the Bread Bar in June, Tabla was serving a $59 prix fixe. On a Friday evening, the space looked almost empty, while the Bread Bar was bustling. The new menu (PDF here) strongly resembles the Bread Bar menu that we dined from that evening. It has a wide range of à la carte choices from $9–22 (Naan just $4), along with tasting menus at either $54 or $79.

So while USHG says that the Bread Bar has been discontinued, it’s actually the fine-dining option that’s going away. The new combined menu is basically the Bread Bar menu. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as we liked most of the food we had there.

But it does appear to be a retrenchment.

Review Recap: Imperial Palace

Some days, I am happy to be wrong. That’s how I felt about Sam Sifton’s one-star review of Imperial Palace.

Forgive me if I sound like a broken record, but one star in the Times system is supposed to be “good,” but most of Frank Bruni’s one-star restaurants were mediocre. This led to a situation where it was nearly impossible to award one star, and have it be a compliment. The few restaurants so honored were lost in the scrum of many more where one star was an insult.

So I was gratified to read this:

Crab is the restaurant’s calling card. But a series of meals taken there over the last few months say more: The Palace is riding high, at the zenith of Cantonese cooking in New York City.  .  .  .

Entirely on the fly, it is possible to eat brilliantly there, in the manner of an improvised Cantonese banquet. It is not a formal restaurant nor in any way a perfect one; service can be slapdash, particularly if you speak no Chinese. But the cooking is extremely sophisticated.

Except for the reference to slapdash service, practically all of the review is positive—a rave, even. And it gets one star.

Sifton will need to file about a hundred more like it before people get the message that “one star means good.” But this is an excellent start. To make it stick, he’ll need to give zero a lot more often than Bruni did. I wonder if he has the guts for that.

Eater made the safe (and correct) one-star bet, winning $2 on a hypothetical one-dollar wager. We lose a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$0.00		$0.00
Gain/Loss	+$2.00		–$1.00
Total	+$2.00		–$1.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	2–1 (67%)		1–2 (33%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 71–27 (72%).

Nolita House

Note: Nolita House closed in May 2012.

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Nolita House is a comfortable pub-food place at the northern edge of Little Italy. We probably wouldn’t have thought to go, but it turned up on an OpenTable search for casual restaurants in close proximity to the Angelika Film Center.

The cuisine here is a half-step above pub food. Everything is below $20 except the strip steak, which is $22. The menu on the website is dated October 2009, which suggests it is updated more often than most pubs.

There are four versions of Macaroni & Cheese, each available in mini ($7–9) or main ($11–14). If you’re having an entrée, a mini is enough for two or three to share. We loved the Original ($7), made with four cheeses and panko breadcrumbs. There’s also the Lobster Bake, the Popeye (add spinach and bacon), and the “Mac N Cheesburger” (an upscale Hamburger Helper).

We weren’t as pleased when we moved to the mains. A Bacon Burger ($14) didn’t have much flavor, and fries were too dry. Shrimp Tacos ($16) were too dainty and didn’t have much shrimp. A pasta called Penne of Mulberry ($15) was probably the best try, a hearty portion with Italian sausage, broccoli, garlic, and parmesan broth.

Service was fine, and the selection of beers is good.

Nolita House (47 E. Houston Street between Mott & Mulberry Streets, NoLIta)

Review Preview: Imperial Palace

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews Chowhound favorite Imperial Palace in Queens. The Eater Oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Sift Happens: 250-1; Two Stars: 3-1; One Star: 2-1.

The Skinny: Sifton’s first two reviews were about unfinished business that Frank Bruni left behind. DBGB and Marea both opened long enough ago that Bruni could have reviewed them—but he didn’t. Sifton had no choice about reviewing these places.

With tomorrow’s review, the Sifton era really begins. There is no particular news event that prompted this review. It is all Sifton’s doing. This is where he wants to go.

NYT critics have often given two stars to this type of restaurant. Like it or not, about 99.5% of the reviewed restaurants are in Manhattan and Brooklyn—mostly the former. Queens is teeming with ethnic restaurants, most of which the Times will never review. On those rare occasions when it happens, the critic ought to at least highlight the better ones.

Sifton doesn’t have much of a track record yet, but we assume he’s not going to start reviewing Queens restaurants on a regular basis. We therefore suspect that his reasoning will be like that of Bruni and his predecessors. You don’t go to Queens to award one star.

The Bet: We are betting that Sam Sifton will award two stars to Imperial Palace.

Sea Urchin and Steak at Marea

I went back to Marea last week to sample two of the dishes mentioned in Sam Sifton’s three-star love letter.

I don’t know how Marea’s menu will evolve, but there is one item that will never come off. Not after this:

The very first item on the menu at Marea is ricci, a piece of warm toast slathered with sea urchin roe, blanketed in a thin sheet of lardo, and dotted with sea salt. It offers exactly the sensation as kissing an extremely attractive person for the first time — a bolt of surprise and pleasure combined. The salt and fat give way to primal sweetness and combine in deeply agreeable ways. The feeling lingers on the tongue and vibrates through the body. Not bad at $14 a throw — and there are two on each plate.

Well…I had it. Yes, it is very good. But no, it isn’t as good as a first kiss. My body did not vibrate in deeply agreeable ways.

Then came the steak, or perhaps I should say, the “Creekstone Farms 50-day dry-aged sirloin,” which according to Sifton, “would do epic battle with the beef at any steakhouse in town.”

Yes, it is an excellent slab of meat, served on the bone for good measure. What Marea lacks is the 2,000 degree ovens the better steakhouses have. So there is no exterior char, just the faint hint of cross-hatching. It’s a decent escape-hatch dish for the non-fish-eater in your party, but for $47 you’ll do better at restaurants that make their living at steak.

I’d thrown my diet to the wind anyway, so I figured one last cheat wouldn’t do much harm. Affogato ($13) doesn’t do much calorie damage—or so I imagined. It’s zabaglione gelato, espresso, and amaro: dessert and coffee combined in one glass.

I dined at the bar, where service is friendly. The bartenders told me they’d had plenty of laughs over Sifton’d description of the sea urchin toast, but everyone at the restaurant was relieved to have their three stars.

At some point I’ll be back to sample more of the pastas and fish. Sifton’s idea of visiting for the steak is just nutty. For now, we stand by the two stars we’ve awarded on two prior visits.

Marea (240 Central Park West between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

Pamplona Closes

The Times reports that Alex Ureña has closed Pamplona.

The space has been home to two upscale Spanish restaurants over the last four years, both helmed by Chef Ureña. The eponymous Ureña, won two stars from Frank Bruni in early 2006, but the dowdy-looking space was at war with the three-star food the chef was trying to serve.

In 2007, after a brief makeover, it re-opened as Pamplona, slightly downscale in terms of both price and culinary ambition. It once again won two stars from Frank Bruni.

We loved the food at Ureña, but like most people, found the atmosphere lacking. We found the less-ambitious Pamplona still very good, though slightly undermined by the service. Perhaps like many diners, we never felt the need to return.

Despite two fairly positive Times reviews, the restaurant never gained traction in either of its incarnations. It wasn’t in a lively neighborhood, nor could it get much residential traffic on the dull commercial block it occupied.

Bill's Bar and Burger

Bill’s Bar and Burger is restauranteur Stephen Hanson’s burger joint in the old Hogpit Barbecue space in the Meatpacking District. Burgers are the centerpiece of the menu, which also features hot dogs, wings, fries, and milk shakes. The most expensive item is a Grouper Sandwich ($9.95).

Hanson is the king of low-brow food. Except for the shuttered Fiamma, his restaurants have never been at the vanguard of culinary ingenuity. He sees a trend and figures out how to down-brand it for popular appeal.

So you figured that a Hanson burger joint would at least be competent. The alleged hamburger experts are officially impressed. Mr. Cutlets, A Hamburger Today, Hamburger America, and the BLD Project are all smitten. We’ll let Cutlets’ comments stand as a proxy for all of them:

The Bill’s burger, at least the one I tasted, is the next step in the evolution of mainstream hamburgers. It takes the aggressive “smashing” technique from Steak n Shake and Smashburger, and applies it even more aggressively, and using LaFrieda beef — a rich blend I couldn’t exactly put my finger in, but lush and sweet in a way that suggested lots of brisket. It’s flatter and wider and browner that the Shake Shack, so much so that it hangs outside of the bun. It’s just luscious and enveloping and compuslively edible. And beneath that crust, which is complemented by a butter crisp toasted Arnold’s roll and a slice of deliciously viscous American cheese, is a torrent of juicy, salty, beef flavor that really lets you know you’ve eaten real meat, not just gray burger tissue. The thing is just fantastic, and there is not one weird topping or middlebrow trope anywhere to be seen. Is it too soon for me to say that this is the best hamburger in New York? I don’t think it is. Certainly it’s the best cheap hamburger in New York, if not the world. Daniel Boulud, Josh Capon, Nick Solares from Serious Eats…we all tried it and were knocked out. But better still than the taste was the fact that it was a blow for orthodoxy, and proof that our national sandwich is still best presented unadorned, in all its rude glory.

I don’t get it.

I dropped into Bill’s Bar & Burger the other night and ordered the so-called “Fat Cat” ($6.95) basically a burger topped with caramelized onions, with tomato and pickles on the side. The burger was over-cooked, and what little flavor it had was overwhelmed by the onions. It’s absurd that this is touted as one of the city’s better burgers. It ain’t in the top 50.

It’s not just a question of taste. The photo (above) doesn’t even look attractive. Those on sites like A Hamburger Today aren’t much better.

This tolerable burger was nothing compared to the awful fries ($3.50), which were over-salted and too greasy. What was worse, it appeared I was served a basket made in two separate batches, as some were burnt and others hadn’t been in the fryer long enough.

The beer was pretty good, and so was the service. There were plenty of empty tables at around 6pm, and there were still a few when I left, around 45 minutes later. By 9pm, I understand there was an hour wait. Don’t waste your time.

As I was getting ready to pay the bill, Mr. Cutlets sauntered in. Acted like he owned the place.

Addendum: It took a while, but finally there’s a pro reviewer who agrees with me: Alan Richman in GQ. I was about 90% certain that I spotted Richman there, but I only caught a brief glimpse of him, and wasn’t positive. He actually looked happy, smiling and waving to the staff. They’ll probably be surprised to learn he hated the place.

Bill’s Bar and Burger (22 Ninth Avenue at 13th Street, Meatpacking District)

Where David Chang Got The Idea

Here’s William Grimes in Appetite City (p. 40), describing a couple of downtown oyster saloons called Dorlans, circa the 1860s and ’70s:

No uptown rival, though, could cut into the business of the downtown restaurants, whose mystique grew with the years. Ambiance could not explain the attraction: both establishments were spartan, dispensing with such niceties as napkins, tablecloths, and butter knives. This did not deter fashionable New Yorkers. “Fastidious ladies, who at home dwell in splendid boudoirs and sit in perfumed chambers, take Dorlan’s [sic] on their way from the opera, for a stew or saddle-rock roast,” wrote one observer in 1868. “Gentlemen who have rosewood tables on Turkey carpets, eat off porcelain and silver ware, whose dining-rooms are perfumed with the choicest flowers, thankfully accept a stool without a back to it at Dorlan’s, and are jostled by the crowd. The belles and madames of the upper ten often stand in a row awaiting their turn.