Knife + Fork

Note: Knife + Fork closed in late 2010 after a brief, ill-fated re-boot on Avenue A.

I had dinner at Knife + Fork about three years ago, and thought, “I really like this place.” Unfortunately, when a restaurant isn’t in my neighborhood, it takes me a really long time to get back.

I finally returned last week, to find that Knife + Fork is just as good as I remembered it. The background is in my original review, and I won’t repeat all of it. Prices are still quite reasonable for the quality, with appetizers topping out at $16 and entrées at $26. There’s a $24 prix fixe, and the six-course tasting menu remains $45. Small plates at the bar are just $8, or you can enjoy wines by the glass and snack on a gratis bowl of mixed olives.

There is no hard liquor license, as a school is nearby, but there are plenty of bottles in the $20s, $30s and $40s, and an ample selection by the glass, priced at $9–14.

On the night we visited, Chef Damien Bressel was a one-man band, as his wife was out of town and the waiter had called in sick. At least his prep guy was there, but Bressel was greeting customers, waiting tables, and cooking the food without help. He seemed preternaturally calm about doing three jobs at once, and gave better service than many waiters who have nothing more to do. To be fair, we were there quite early, and there were not many customers on a Wednesday evening.

To start, I ordered the Carrot Risotto with ginger purée, topped with a wild chervil salad (above left). My friend had the Foie Gras Torchon (above right).

For the main course, I had the Salmon (above left), my friend the Duck (above right). We didn’t taste each other’s dishes, but mine were both terrific. It’s not easy to make routine dishes like risotto and salmon stand out on a prix fixe menu, but Bressel pulled it off.

For dessert, crème brûlée was more pedestrian—nothing wrong with it, but not memorable either. Bressel comped a separate order of it for my friend. (He hadn’t ordered the prix fixe, and would normally have had to pay an extra $8 for it.)

It’s no small accomplishment to keep a “mom & pop” restaurant in business after three years. The accolades haven’t exactly poured in (the Times never reviewed it), but there must at least be a local following. Knife + Fork deserves wider exposure than that. The impressive food and the charming atmosphere remain compelling draws.

Knife + Fork (108 E. 4th St. between First & Second Avenues, East Village)

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

Fall Restaurant Preview

Ah, autumn. Changing leaves, nippy air, and a slew of new restaurants competing for attention. We took Florence Fabricant’s full list from the Times (here, here), and edited out those not in Manhattan, or that don’t appear to be full-service restaurants. What follows is a brief description of each place and an early guess about whether we’re likely to visit.

ABE & ARTHUR’S Franklin Becker cooking in the former Lotus space. 409 West 14th Street. Late September. Probably not. Sounds like all the drawbacks of the Meatpacking District, with none of its virtues.

A VOCE COLUMBUS Time-Warner outpost of the restaurant founded by Andrew Carmellini, now helmed by Missy Robbins. Third Floor, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, (212) 823-2523. Sept. 9. Most Definitely: reservation September 26.

ARDESIA Wine bar and Italian small plates in far west Clinton. 510 West 52nd Street, (212) 247-9191. Mid-September. Probably not: It’s a crowded field, and there are many others more conveniently located.

BALABOOSTA Jewish cooking with North African and Middle Eastern accents. 214 Mulberry Street (Spring Street). December. Neutral: Doesn’t sound compelling to me, but I’ll wait for reviews.

BAR HENRY Bistro/wine bar in the west village. 90 West Houston Street (Thompson Street). Sept. 12. Neutral: Sounds like a hundred other places, but maybe this one will stand out.

B CLINTON Michael Huynh cooks a 3-course prix fixe for $29—at least, when he’s there: 6 Clinton Street (Houston Street). November. Probably not: I am so over Michael Huynh.

BILL’S BAR & BURGER American pub food, operated by Stephen Hanson. 22 Ninth Avenue (13th Street). Late October. Probably: The Full Hanson is always worth a look.

BISTRO VENDÔME Parisian bistro in the old March space. 405 East 58th Street. Late October. Definitely: We have a weakness for these French places.

THE BRESLIN BAR AND DINING ROOM Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield hope to do better with meat than the John Dory did with fish. Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street, (212) 679-2222. Mid-October. Definitely: We’re happy to dine anywhere April is cooking. Assuming we can get in.

CANASTELS Recreation of a 1980s “hot spot”. 41 East 58th Street. April. Probably not: Sounds very skippable.

CASA LEVER Lever House is reincarnated as an Italian seafood joint. 390 Park Avenue (53rd Street), (212) 888-2700. Late September. Probably: We’re curious, but worried this genre is getting hackneyed.

EAST SIDE SOCIAL CLUB Italian Family-style from the owners of Employees Only and Macao Trading Company. 230 East 51st Street, (212) 355-9442. Late October. Neutral: We’re fans of these guys, but is this their best idea?

ED’S CHOWDER HOUSE Ed Brown’s seafood shack replaces the shuttered Center Cut at Lincoln Center. 44 West 63rd Street, (212) 956-1288. Sept. 17. Definitely: ’Cuz we’re at Lincoln Center a lot, and we have to eat somewhere.

THE EMPIRE ROOM Cocktail bar in a former Art Deco bank branch in the Empire State Building. 350 Fifth Avenue (33rd Street). November. Neutral: We’ll wait to see what the cocktail specialists say.

GANSEVOORT 69 A new diner and comfort-food spot in the old Florent space. 69 Gansevoort Street (Greenwich Street), (212) 691-0069. Sept. 14. Probably not: We don’t buy into the Florent nostalgia.

GINA LA FORNARINA An Upper West Side trattoria. 279 Amsterdam Avenue (73rd Street). November. Probably not: It would have to be awfully good to lure us here.

HAPPY FACE Japanese noodle joint from the AvroKO people. 1695 Broadway (53rd Street). October. Probably: If it’s AvroKO, it’ll at least be pretty to look at.

HIGHLANDS Scottish food and single malt scotch in the old P*ONG space. 150-152 West 10th Street, (212) 229-2670. Mid-October. Neutral: We’re fond of Scotland, but this could be a tough sell in Manhattan.

LE CAPRICE NEW YORK Pricey French comfort food in the Pierre Hotel. 795 Fifth Avenue (61st Street). Early October. Definitely: Because Mr. Cutlets told us not to.

LOS FELIZ Tacqueria in the old Suba space. 109 Ludlow Street (Rivington Street), (212) 228-8383. Sept. 8. Neutral: We’ll wait for the reviews.

MAIALINO Danny Meyer does Italian in the failed Wakiya space. 2 Lexington Avenue (21st Street). November. Definitely: Because it’s a Danny Meyer place.

MARK RESTAURANT BY JEAN-GEORGES AND MARK BAR BY JEAN-GEORGES Jean-Georges Vongerichten will be doing something—he’s just not sure what. The Mark, 25 East 77th Street. Late November. Definitely: Any JGV restaurant is at least worth a taste.

MERMAID OYSTER BAR Danny Abrams cloning the Mermaid Inn, in the space that was Smith’s. 79 Macdougal Street (Bleecker Street), (212) 260-0100. Late September. Neutral: We’ll wait for the reviews of this, yet another seafood place.

MOMOFUKU ??? RESTAURANT David Chang and Tien Ho, in an as-yet unnamed restaurant in the former Town space. Chambers Hotel, 15 West 56th Street, (212) 974-5656. Late fall. Definitely: Do I need to explain it?

OBAO NOODLES & GRILL Yet another Michael Huynh restaurant. 222 East 53rd Street. October. Probably not: Wake me up when it’s over.

NUELA Latino restaurant in the former Sapa space; was to have been helmed by Douglas Rodriguez, but now will be cheffed by a disciple of his. 43 West 24th Street. October. Probably: What can I say? We’re intrigued.

PULINO’S BAR AND PIZZERIA Nate Appleman’s cooking; Keith McNally holds the rolodex. 282 Bowery (Houston Street). Mid-December. Probably: It will likely be good, but can we get in?

QUATTRO GASTRONOMIA ITALIANA A Miami transplant in the Trump SoHo. 246 Spring Street (Varick Street), (212) 299-1062. Late December. Probably not: Sounds like a generic trattoria for models with breast implants.

RABBIT IN THE MOON Gastropub that chose the second-best name, because “Spotted Pig” was already taken. 47 West Eighth Street (Fifth Avenue). November. Neutral: Could be fun, could be derivative.

ROBATAYA NY Robata from the Sakagura and Soba-ya people. 231 East Ninth Street (Second Avenue), (212) 979-9674. November. Probably: Sounds like a fun place to take my 14-year-old.

SD26 Tony and Marisa May re-booting their San Domenico concept downtown. 19 East 26th Street, (212) 265-5959. Sept. 15. Definitely: We hope Chef Odette Fada’s sojourn in Italy has rejuvenated her cooking.

TIPSY PARSON Comfort food from the Little Giant people. 156 Ninth Avenue (20th Street), (212) 620-4545. Late September. Probably: We liked Little Giant and are happy to give these folks our business.

TRAVERTINE Elegant Mediterranean cooking from a Babbo vet. 19 Kenmare Street (Bowery), (212) 966-1810. Late September. Neutral: We’re not familiar with this one, so we’ll wait and see.

BOBBY WERHANE/JOSHUA MORGAN RESTAURANT As-yet unnamed seafood shack in the former Bar Q space. 308-310 Bleecker Street (Grove Street). November. Neutral: There are an awful lot of seafood shacks coming this year.

The West Branch

Note: West Branch closed in July 2010.

Tom Valenti has made a living at giving Upper West Siders haute comfort food. Ouest was an instant hit when it opened in 2001, in what was then a culinary desert at Broadway and 83rd. Two years later, he had another hit at ’Cesca (with which he has since severed his ties). Both got two stars from the Times.

The West Branch arrived last fall, after a long gestation. The name comes from a tributary of the Delaware River, where Valenti likes to fish. Also, the restaurant is a branch of Ouest, offering similar, but simpler cuisine at a much lower price point. Here, the average entrée price is around $20, as opposed to about $30 at Ouest.

In the large space, which was formerly three separate storefronts, he has 170 seats to fill. He has divided it up smartly into several adjoining rooms, so that you don’t feel like you’re in a dining barn. The classic bistro décor is easy on the eyes. We suspect it gets noisy when full, but on Labor Day that wasn’t an issue.

Valenti might want to consider updating the website. It still consists of nothing more than a splash page that says, “Opening Summer 2008.”

The menu plays it straight, consisting almost entirely of well known classics.  With gizzards, livers and hearts on offer, you couldn’t accuse Valenti of pandering. Still, it’s not an especially creative menu—not that it needs to be. Sometimes, comfort food well done is exactly what one wants.

We can offer only a preliminary verdict on the food, as our weekend of over-eating left us with room only for entrées.

Duck Confit “choucroute” ($19; above left) was executed flawlessly, including pork sausage, thick-cut bacon, and a bed of sauerkraut. House-made pappardelle bolognese ($19; above right) was a basic dish, but just as satisfying.

The West Branch impressed in other ways, too. We loved the warm, house-made bread with soft butter. We ordered a nice French country wine for around $35, and the server circled back frequently to refill our glasses.

It may not be an “ambitious” restaurant, but on this occasion The West Branch delivered on its ambitions perfectly.

The West Branch (2178 Broadway at 77th Street, Upper West Side)

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

Born Round by Frank Bruni

I’m a slow reader. Frank Bruni’s memoir, Born Round, is two-week-old news. I finished it yesterday.

Let me first say what this book isn’t: a kiss-and-tell recap of Bruni’s five years as New York Times restaurant critic. There are twenty chapters, and he isn’t even offered the job until the sixteenth. There are anecdotes about the reviewing gig, most of which have been excerpted on various websites. But even if you don’t already know them, they’re not the reason for reading Born Round.

No, the book’s unifying theme is Bruni’s battle with a minor compulsive eating disorder. I have to call it minor, because he’s not Karen Carpenter, and he hasn’t had a rubber band surgically wrapped around his stomach. But he has struggled with self-loathing for much of his adult life. He would turn down dates if he was seven pounds too heavy. At his nadir in the early 2000s, he was upwards of 85 pounds overweight.

I can relate to some of this. At about the time Bruni hit rock-bottom, I was around 30 pounds overweight. Bruni solved it with relentless exercise. His willingness to endure six-mile runs and sadistic trainers is probably what saved him. For me, the only answer was deprivation. Today is a Wednesday. I haven’t had a full meal since Sunday, and probably won’t again until Friday. The only things I eat in the meantime are small snacks, and only a few of them. Despite that, I’m still the ever-elusive seven pounds away.

Before he hit bottom, Bruni tried just about everything: vomiting, speed, Prozac, starvation, Atkins, and many other dieting fads. Each step forward was countered with two steps back. He ate voraciously and indiscriminately. A maternalistic Times colleague wondered if he could become a restaurant critic without endangering his health.

Ironically, the reviewing job gave him the structure he needed. When eating 7–10 big meals per week is part of your job, you can’t rationalize it away. There’s no saying, “I’ll just go on a diet tomorrow.” There can be no diet. Knowing that there was no escape provided the motivation Bruni needed to stay in shape. The money he saved by not having to pay for his own meals went to trainers and health clubs. After five years of eating for a living, he is in the best physical shape of his life.

None of this would be compelling reading if Bruni wasn’t such an entertaining writer. He’s at his best when he’s writing about himself. Family members couldn’t possibly be as perfect as he makes them out to be. But when he turns inward, he writes with self-deprecating humor that makes even the most humdrum material stand out:

There were other problems with Prozac as well. While it diminished my sex drive only modestly, it pushed back its satiation much more substantially, so that I found myself going round and round the block without any sure sign that I’d ever get to pull into the garage. As often as not I just gave up and left my car idling at the foot of the driveway.

That has to be one of the better paragraphs about masturbation ever penned.

In case you haven’t heard, Bruni is gay. He writes volubly about his sex life, stopping only at the bedroom door: the film of Born Round will get a PG–13 rating with nothing left out. Growing up gay doesn’t seem to have caused him much trouble. Though his beloved Italian grandmother never knew, the rest of his family found out promptly before he was twenty, and he doesn’t seem to have suffered for it.

As a journalist, Bruni has led a charmed life, attracting one plum assignment after another. Writing well on a deadline comes easily to him. He’s also a dabbler. The five years he spent as restaurant critic appear to be the longest he has ever spent at anything. He is able to write about any subject on the shortest notice, which has spared him the necessity of developing real expertise. If he has a lifelong intellectual passion for any particular field, the book shows no evidence of it.

There is, of course, passion for family—gregarious, prosperous, well-fed, and relatively untroubled. There are two poignant deaths; aside from that, time with family is what makes him happiest. The lack of drama makes some of these episodes a tad less interesting than the rest of the book. After a while, many of the holiday dinners start to sound the same.

By now, it’s old news that Bruni did not have the conventional background for a restaurant critic. The book makes clear just how little experience he had. Until he was appointed Rome bureau chief for the Times—just two years before he got the restaurant gig—practically his only dining memories outside of the home were lowbrow: junk food, fast food, diners, chains and bodegas. Cold noodles with sesame paste was as close as he came to a gourmet experience, aside from an annual meal with Dad at the Four Seasons, and a steakhouse here and there.

After he got the restaurant job, the Times sent him on an immersion course in fine dining. Pierre Gagnaire in Paris—sampled on a whirlwind tour—seems to have been the only Michelin three-star restaurant he had ever tried in his life. The food was secondary on that occasion. The only memory he shares is that of dining in the same clothes he wore on the plane, because Air France had lost his luggage.

He has since been to a couple of other three-star places—none in France—which explains his bias as a critic. He waxes rhapsodic about ricotta cheese in Italy and Tyson’s chicken in Detroit, but the French restaurants are a blur. Indeed, given his lack of preparation for the job, it is miraculous that his tenure as a critic didn’t turn out a lot worse.

Ultimately, the book is about Bruni’s triumph over binge eating. The last chapter attempts to distill the lessons he’s learned. I don’t know how many readers will find themselves similarly situated. That’s not my case, as I’ve solved the problem my own way.

I found the book entertaining nevertheless. Bruni’s in his early 40s, but he’s had a lifetime’s worth of experiences. He makes them well worth reading about.

Aureole

Note: This is a review under chef Chris Lee, who left the restaurant in December 2010. Chrisophe Belanca, the former chef of Le Cirque, replaced him for five months, then departed in April 2011. The current head man is Marcus Ware, a sous chef who had been with Aureole for four years, dating back to its Upper East Side townhouse days.

*

If you want to time the stock market, don’t ask Charlie Palmer. In 1988, he opened Aureole on the Upper East Side just in time for a recession. This summer, he moved the restaurant to Bryant Park—again, right in the middle of a recession.

Palmer seems to be recession-proof. He has at least sixteen restaurants to his name—opening, it seems, about one per year, in a career long enough to have weathered the economy’s ups and downs. He hasn’t actually run the kitchen at Aureole since 2001. The list of chefs who’ve worked for him is like a Who’s Who of the restaurant industry.

His relationship with the critics has been up and down. At River Café, he got two stars from Marian Burros in 1984, then three from Bryan Miller in 1986. At Aureole, Miller gave him two stars in 1989 and upgraded him to three in 1991.

The tony Upper East Side townhouse on East 61st Street, for which Palmer paid $3 million in 1987, got a facelift in 1999, prompting a re-visit by William Grimes, who promptly knocked the restaurant back down to two stars. My only visit was perhaps a year or two later. What sticks in my mind is not the utterly forgettable food, but an irritating electronic wine list that resembled an Amazon Kindle (before such things existed). I’m a gadget guy, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Last year, Palmer decided to move to the Bank of America building at Bryant Park. He hopes that his loyal Upper East Side regulars will folow him there, while he picks up business clients and theatergoers who wouldn’t venture to the old location. He’s on an ugly block, but the space has an $8 million makeover by Adam Tihany, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the last half-dozen projects Tihany has done.

If Tihany’s work is unoriginal, at least it’s effective. The new Aureole, like so many luxury restaurants these days, is a bifurcated space, with a spacious, bustling bar room and a quiet dining room. As there’s nothing to see on 42nd Street, Tihany gave dining room patrons a view of the bar room, dominated by a towering wine wall that puts most others to shame. Soft fabric wallpaper absorbs sound, even when the room is nearly full, as it was last Saturday evening

I have my doubts about the bar room, where most of the dinner entrées are above $30, and a burger is $19. At those prices, Aureole won’t be my first choice for a bar dinner.

The dining room offers an $84 prix fixe and a rather odd $115 parallel tasting menu (eight courses served in pairs). The prix fixe is comparable to other restaurants in Aureole’s league, assuming the food lives up to it.

Chef Christopher Lee, who won two Michelin stars at Gilt, has been running the kitchen since earlier this year. The menu is a mixture of his own ideas and Palmer’s own classics. If he can ace every meal the way he aced ours, he should win back the third star that William Grimes took away.

The amuse-bouche was a plate-cleansing raw scallop (above left).

The “Scallop Sandwich” (above left) has been on Aureole’s menu from the beginning. Bryan Miller found “a brittle lid of sauteed potatoes…atop the meltingly tender scallops glossed with a citric-edged shellfish stock,” but Grimes it “a very oily eating experience.” As of today, the dish is a winner again, with a delicate nugget of seared foie gras as a bonus.

Another Foie Gras appetizer (above right) is an appealing marriage of unlikely ingredients: blueberries, corn bread, pickled jalapenos, and macadamia nuts.

Crispy Black Sea Bass (above left) was flawless, and an extremely generous portion too.

Another dish, styled “Canadian Lobster Tail vs. Berkshire Pork Belly” (above right) was an example of the side-by-side entrées that the new Aureole seems to favor. Oddly enough, it carried no supplement—the only entrée that did was King Salmon ($10). Anyhow, we thought the lobster won this duel by a narrow margin.

I don’t recall what was in the pre-dessert (shown left), but the desserts themselves were terrific. I adored a sweet corn soufflé (below left), a preparation I do not recall seeing on any other menu. (No doubt someone will write in that Ducasse did it 20 years ago, but in any case it was new to me.)

Cheeses (below right), sourced from Austria and Germany, were wonderful too.

A selection of petits-fours followed, of which we chose three from a larger selection, along with warm brown sugar beignets.

The large wine list (in a printed book this time) took a while to digest, but it was well worth it. Focused on France, with cameos from other nations, there are choices ranging from $40 to four figures. A $66 Volnay, near but not at the bottom of the list, was terrific.

I assume that Palmer brought his service team over from 61st Street. Their work was polished, their choreography a pleasure to watch. We started dinner with a cocktail, and we appreciated that we were not rushed into ordering. They wisely understood that we wanted time to relax.

Many upscale restaurants are re-tooling these days, including Bouley, Café Boulud, Chanterelle, and Oceana. It’s a little too facile to say that they’re all going downscale. Bouley actually got fancier, and while Aureole has added a more casual bar room, the dining room is very much in the spirit of the former location. Except it’s better.

Aureole (One Bryant Park [42nd Street W. of Sixth Avenue], West Midtown)

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

Who Will Take Over Café des Artistes?

As everyone knows by now, the charming but over-the-hill Café des Artistes has closed.

Both the space and the name are owned by the Hotel des Artistes, the apartment building in which the restaurant resides. I am quite sure that someone will re-open it. The question is, who?

How about Drew Nieporent? He told Bloomberg:

“I wooed my wife there over many a dinner and brunch,” Nieporent said in a phone interview from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “I loved the Mitteleuropean sensibility George brought, that flair, that imagination, those pates. He has been a mentor to me and a very good friend…”

“It’s a great space,” said Nieporent, “and I’m always interested in great spaces.”

Trattoria Cinque

Note: Trattoria Cinque closed in March 2013. A Marc Forgione steakhouse is expected to replace it.

*

Trattoria Cinque has arrived on Greenwich Street’s restaurant row, taking over the former Devin Tavern space.

The cinque in the name, meaning “five,” is the central conceit. On the menu, you’ll find five appetizers, five pastas, five entrées, five red wines, five whites, five cocktails, five desserts, and so forth. They’ll change it five times a year.

The 250-seat space could easily house two restaurants with room to spare. That was Devin Tavern’s downfall. Cinque could have the same problem, especially with Andrew Carmellini serving two-star food at Locanda Verde down the street.

The owners of the Alfredo of Rome chain have done a nice job with the rehab, installing a handsome, long marble bar and comfortable faux-rustic seating (photos here). The restaurant was about 80% full by 8:00 p.m. on a Friday. Keeping it that way may be a challenge.

At least the menu is priced to encourage repeat visits. There are just two dishes over $20, and just two wines over $40. I sampled two of those wines at the bar, where quartinos (equivalent to two glasses) range from $9–16. A bowl of olives with parmesan on the side was free. A respectable serving of Italian cheeses, grapes, and figs with raisin bread was just $10.

At the table, rustic bread was nothing to write home about, but I loved the ricotta spread flecked with olive oil. In lieu of bottled water, there is house-filtered water, still or sparkling, offered at no charge. We couldn’t decide, so they served both.

We ordered far too much food, receiving no guidance from our young waiter. He then compounded the mistake by telling the kitchen to send out the pasta and both entrées simultaneously. A manager came over to apologize and then comped the entire meal. We aren’t sure if it was due to these mistakes alone, or because he was aware of our camera.

We loved the Pizza with Gorgonzola and Pears ($12), with a crisp crust no thicker than matzo. But at eighteen inches across, this was no appetizer. Even if it had been our only item, we might have struggled to finish. It’s arguably too rich for two people; we took more than half of it home in a doggie bag.

There were two recited specials, but though they sounded intriguing, they were the weakest things we tried. Penne with Italian Sausage (above right) was of the “I-could-make-this-at-home” variety, except that most home cooks would probably do it better. Veal (below left) had been pounded so thin that there was barely any flavor, and it was cold by the time we tasted it.

An aged ribeye steak was wonderful, especially as it was just $25. It isn’t the best ribeye in the city, but it was one of the better ones outside of a steakhouse. I doubt you’ll find many this good within ten dollars of the price.

Trattoria Cinque is certainly generous with portion sizes, and all of the items we had off of the printed menu were good. If the restaurant can stick to what it does well, perhaps it will be able to fill those 250 seats.

Trattoria Cinque (363 Greenwich Street near Franklin Street, TriBeCa)

How Dumb Can Ozersky Get?

Josh Ozersky, editor of The Feedbag, is often called on as expert du jour when the press need a quote and don’t know whom else to ask. But unless the topic is burgers, barbecue or steaks, he doesn’t really speak expertly.

The latest example comes in today’s New York Daily News article, “Recession forces ritzy restaurants such as Café des Artistes to close doors.” The reporters, Leah Chernikoff and Edgar Sandoval, don’t exactly cover themselves in glory. The story purports to be about “ritzy” restaurants killed by the recession, but several of those listed don’t fit that description. Elettaria wasn’t ritzy at all. LCB Brasserie closed before the economic downturn, and the restaurant that replaced it (Benoit) was practically the same genre. La Goulue closed due to a lease issue; its owner insists it will re-open nearby.

The reporters say that “512 [NYC] resetaurants have closed this past year.” But the vast majority, as in about 95%, aren’t “ritzy.” As far as I can tell, “ritzy” restaurants (however one defines that term) are closing in roughly the same percentage as the fraction of the market they occupy. No more, no less. Take a tour through Eater.com’s posts tagged “The Shutter,” and tell me how many of them are “ritzy” in the same sense as Café des Artistes. It’s a tiny number.

Café des Artistes closed, as far as I could tell, because the owner was 85, and as he was going to have to retire eventually, now was as good a time as any. [ETA: Oh, that and a greedy union.]

One doesn’t expect much nuance from Daily News staff writers, but from Ozersky one expects better:

The great fine-dining fuddy-duddy restaurants were already on the wane before the recession hit… Overwrought and overstaffed, they were lingering in their own twilight. Now the meteor has hit, and these places have all gone under… The old white tablecloth dinosaurs have been supplanted by friskier mammals.”

It’s usually a safe bet that when people use words like “fuddy-duddy” and “dinosaur,” it’s shorthand for “restaurants I don’t understand.” Now, I am not suggesting that the loss of Café des Artistes is any great culinary loss: my last meal there was a disaster. But it filled a legitimate niche, and some of the remaining examples of the genre are still very good, for what they are (Le Périgord, for instance).

If Ozersky’s point is that the narrow genre that Café des Artiste occupied (Classic Old French) is shrinking, that has been true for decades—not so much due to the recession, but because their clientele is aging and is not being replaced. But to Daily News readers, when “white tablecloth” and “dinosaur” are put in the same sentence, there is no distinction between Café des Artistes (which Ozersky hated) and Marea (which he loves). Both have white tablecloths and elegant service. And I’ll betcha Marea has far more staff than CdA did.

What, exactly, makes Café des Artistes “overwrought,” and not Le Bernardin? Obviously the latter restaurant is far better (and still thriving), but its style of service is much farther over the top than CdA ever was. If the word “overwrought” applies to the service at any restaurant, on what principled distinction could Ozersky apply it to CdA and not Le Bernardin? Or is it really just a lazy term used to disparage a genre he never appreciated?

Veritas

Note: This is a review under chef Gregory Pugin, who was fired in August 2010. After remodeling, the former Tao chef Sam Hazen replaced him.

*

We’ve been eager to return to Veritas ever since Gregory Pugin took over as executive chef in the middle of last year. Pugin had been executive sous-chef at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, and given our high opinion of that restaurant we figured that Veritas could only get better.

Mind you, we thought that Veritas was already a very good restaurant under the previous chef, Ed Cotton. Perhaps the food alone wasn’t quite worth three stars, but it was certainly good enough when the incomparable wine list was taken into account.

We heard even better reports of Chef Pugin’s cuisine, which unlike that of his predecessors just might be worthy of a visit on its own account. The Times completely ignored the transition. We do not recall a single mention of it, even in passing, by Frank Bruni—a sad but not altogether surprising omission, given his lack of enthusiasm for this style of dining.

For a couple of weeks in August 2009—traditionally a slow month for this kind of restaurant—Veritas was offering 25% off all wines, and this was the excuse for six members of the Mouthfuls food board to pay a visit.

Pugin, unlike his predecessors (Scott Bryan and Ed Cotton), brings a classic French sensibility to the menu. It’s still prix fixe ($85, as opposed to $82 when I last visited), but the dishes seem more formal and elegant than before.

I didn’t make a mental note of the amuse-bouche, but I’ve included a photo (above left). There were something like five or six choices of house-made breads, and I enjoyed both of those that I sampled.

I loved the rich flavor of the Lobster Nage (above left). Two of my companions had the Peekytoe Crab Mille-Feuille (above right), which one of them described as “a very nice presentation of two ‘slices’ with jicama forming the bottom layer and avocado the top.”

A Degustation of Lamb (above left) might well be called a Symphony of lamb, including the loin, the chop, and sweetbread, all perfectly prepared. Another of our party had the Skate Wing (above right), which he described as “superb.”

I was mightily pleased with the Grand Marnier Soufflé with crème anglaise (above left). Two others at the table had the Sparkling Grape Consommé (above right), of which one said, “I didn’t detect much sparkle, but it was as grapy as all getout.”

The petits-fours (right) weren’t as impressive as in some three-star restaurants, but they got the job done.

Obviously wines were to be a focal point of our evening, and with six in our party it was possible to try five of them. I won’t even attempt to describe them all, but fortunately another of our party has done so.

Service was mostly attentive, but the staff seemed slow to take our initial wine order, a curious omission at a restaurant focused on wine. The dining room was no more than half full, and our six-top was the largest party.

Veritas already had one of the city’s best wine lists. With the arrival of Gregory Pugin, it now serves the kind of food that such great wines deserve.

Veritas (43 E. 20th St. between Broadway & Park Avenue South, Flatiron District)

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

The Worst of Bruni

Frank Bruni’s tenure as a restaurant critic has come to an end. On Monday, we posted the Best of Bruni. Now, we turn to his failures.

My opinion of Bruni isn’t any great secret. He’s an entertaining writer and a top-notch journalist, but he had no background in food, and it showed. The Times would never put a novice in its music department or its science department. Why, then, did they put a novice in the restaurant department?

Despite his inexperience, Bruni eventually got the hang of it. Any intelligent person with a six-figure dining budget would make at least some of the right calls, and would improve with time. But his aversion to fine dining and his narrow preference for a few limited cuisines severely hampered his effectiveness.

As I did with the Best of Bruni, I’ve made a list of 10 items, but with so much to choose from, a few of the items are thematic rather than individual reviews. Here, then, is the worst of Bruni:

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