Rolling the Dice: The Harrison

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni takes a pulse check on TriBeCa standout The Harrison under new chef Amanda Freitag. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 10-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 12-1

The Skinny: It may not be fair, but chef changes at existing restaurants don’t get the same press as brand new restaurants, even where the change is fairly dramatic. The Times is the only paper in town that at least makes the attempt, however irregularly, to re-review restaurants where there has been a significant change of personnel—and indeed, sometimes when there hasn’t been.

When Amanda Freitag took over at The Harrison, owner Jimmy Bradley told Grub Street, “We were doing French cookery in a New American style, but with Amanda the menu is going to be lusty, soulful, rustic Mediterranean-inspired cookery.” That’s enough to make The Harrison, for all intents and purposes, a brand new restaurant. But as it’s still called “The Harrison,” the rest of this town’s critics have basically ignored it.

So I don’t have any kind of critical baseline to go on here. I can tell you that William Grimes awarded two stars shortly after The Harrison opened in 2001, with the Little Owl’s Joey Campanaro in the kitchen. Bruni wrote a favorable Diner’s Journal follow-up after Brian Bistrong took over.

I can also tell you that I’ve loved The Harrison both times I visited. The chef has changed, but what hasn’t changed is Jimmy Bradley’s sure-handed touch, which was good enough to attract a generous two-star Bruni review for Bradley’s other restaurant, The Red Cat.

Eater is taking the three-star odds, betting that Bruni will award three stars for the same reason he did at Dovetail: for the price, The Harrison is very good indeed, with appetizers mostly below $15 and entrées mostly in the mid-twenties. We also realize that Italian or Italian-influenced menus, if they are good, often get a “bonus star” from Bruni.

Against that, we haven’t heard the kind of raves about The Harrison that we heard about Dovetail, and we subscribe to the theory that three-star restaurants usually don’t hide in plain sight. Our gut tells us that if Freitag were turning out three-star food, lots of folks would have noticed by now. Bruni has given out a lot of three-star ratings this year: at some point the average needs to return to normal.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award an enthusiastic two stars to The Harrison.

Bar Milano

 

Note: You can probably guess what rating Bar Milano got from Italian-loving Frankie two-stars, despite “bungled pastas.” The rest of the dining community, including us, had a more muted response. Bar Milano closed at the end of 2008 and has re-opened as a clone of the same owners’ more casual place on the Lower East Side, ’inoteca. That spot closed in September 2012.

*

There’s no shortage of great Italian restaurants in New York, so it’s tough for a new one to command attention. So far, Bar Milano is off to a great start. In the first six weeks, reservations have generally been tough to come by.

It helps to have Jason Denton running the show. With four previous establishments (’Ino, ’Inoteca, Lupa, Otto), he has shown a knack for the kind of stylish-yet-casual restaurant that feels like a neighborhood place, but has the following of a dining destination. It’s something that many restauranteurs aspire to, but that Denton seems invariably to get right. Joining him here are brother Joe Denton (’Ino, ’Inoteca) and chefs he lured from two of those restaurants, Eric Kleinman (’Inoteca) and Steve Connaughton (Lupa).

A name like “Bar ______” can mean almost anything these days (just like “Bistro” or “Brasserie”). This is the fifth Bar Something-or-other that I’ve reviewed this year, and they have little in common. I’m not sure it has much to do with “Milano,” either. The cuisine is allegedly Northern Italian, but only in the loosest sense.

Rattlesnake

There is indeed a lovely bar here, and the house cocktails are worth a look. From a set called “Lost & Somewhat Forgotten” I had a Rattlesnake ($13), with Rittenhouse rye, Pernod, lemon juice, powdered sugar and egg white. The bar tab was transferred to my table without complaint, which ought to happen all the time, but often doesn’t.

There are 20 American whiskies available for a classic Manhattan cocktail, or 10 gins for a classic Martini. The menu offers no suggestions for any of the 9 vodkas.

Bread service

The dinner menu is somewhat pricey for this patch of Third Avenue. Success will depend on attracting a destination crowd, as the Dentons have historically done at their lower priced restaurants. Antipasti here are $10–15, primi $9–24, and secondi $20–43 (but most under $30). An eight-course tasting menu looks like it’s a bargain at $85.

Bread service is a bit spartan, with two people asked to share a single slender bread stick, a small slice of bread and an equally puny dinner roll.

 
Left: Tajarin con Porri Selvatici; Right: Agnolotti di Gamberi

We had mixed reactions to our pasta starters. Tajarin con Porri Selvatici ($17), or pasta with ramps and bread crumbs, had a nice crunchy texture. I liked the way the ramps were integrated into the dish, instead of being just seasonal add-ons used mostly for show.

But Agnolotti di Gamberi ($18), or shrimp-filled pasta with peas and mint, was not nearly as appetizing, with the taste of peas being far too dominant.

 
Left: Costolette di Maiele (pork chop); Right: Cotoletta alla Milanese (veal chop)

A pork chop ($26) and a veal chop ($32) were both expertly done, though if I’d stumbled on either preparation in another restaurant, I wouldn’t have associated them with Italy. The pork chop lay on a bed of escarole and was topped with a mustard fruit somewhat redolent of applesauce; the veal chop had a light, delecate bread crumb crust.

The meal ended with a couple of small petits-fours that seemed, like the bread service to start with, a little skimpy.

Service was polished and attentive, but this was the Friday evening before Memorial Day, and the dining room was clearly less busy than it would ordinarily be.

The Dentons told W Magazine that they envisioned Bar Milano as “a fun three-star place.” Bar Milano is fun, but it isn’t three stars. The food here is generally solid, but there are some soft spots on the menu, and there isn’t enough Milano in it. Like their other restaurants, it is a slightly over-achieving neighborhood place.

Bar Milano (323 Third Avenue at 24th Street, Gramercy)

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

Restaurant Outlook

Welcome back to Restaurant Outlook, the quasi-weekly highly subjective listing of restaurants we’re paying attention to.

Fairly New

• Bar Milano — Early reviews are mixed, but the Lupa/’Inoteca guys have a strong track record. Reservation: tonight.
• Elizabeth — Former Country chef de cuisine Doug Psaltis is designing the menu here. It’s only a consulting gig, which makes us skeptical, and Psaltis seldom remains anywhere for long, which makes us doubly skeptical. But at a low price point we’re willing to roll the dice. Reservation: May 30.
  
• Savarona — The rare serious Turkish restaurant in New York is surely worth a try. Reservation: May 31.
  
• Hundred Acres — This Marc Meyer/Vicki Freeman follow-up to Provence opened last week. It will be in the Five Points–Cookshop haute barnyard vein. A hit is no sure thing, but I wouldn’t bet against them. Reservation: June 6.
  
• Scarpetta — Italian restaurant by Scott Conant, formerly of Alto and L’Impero. Early reports are promising, but it’s in the Meatpacking District, which hasn’t seen a serious restaurant in years. Reservation: June 7.
• The Redhead — There’s a twenty-page Mouthfuls thread about the Thursdays-only family-style meal, but it didn’t get my attention till the Times review this week. No plans to visit yet.
• Duane Park — This sequel to Duane Park Café looks interesting, though there aren’t many reviews to go on. No plans to visit yet.
  
• Merkato 55 — Reviews have been mediocre. We’ve had several reservations, all cancelled for various reasons. My girlfriend no longer wants to go, so I’ll have to drop in one night after work. No plans to visit yet.
• Greenwich Grill — Of interest mainly because it’s near the office. No plans to visit yet.

Forthcoming

All of these restaurants have been announced or mentioned in the press, but some of them may be a long way off.

• Lever House — Bradford Thompson is taking over the kitchen next month. We’ll wait for the early reports before we decide whether to pay a visit.
  
• Bouley v 3.0 — David Bouley’s move to the Mohawk Atelier Building at 161 Duane Street. Expected “by the fall.”
  
• Susur Lee’s first New York restaurant at 200 Allen Street on the Lower East Side, also expected “come fall.”
  
• Brushstroke, another Bouley restaurant, at 111 West Broadway. Given the well chronicled problems getting this restaurant off the ground, I would be surprised to see it before 2009.
  
• Restaurant Liebrandt, with Paul Liebrandt (formerly of Gilt) at the helm. This week, Eater reported that it’s “set to go into the old Montrachet space.” We walk by there regularly, and haven’t seen the slightest whiff of activity.

Pegu Club

 

I’m a newcomer to the cocktail revolution. The timing and temperament of my dining habits are such that I’m more likely to have a sit-down meal with wine than to have a liquid dinner at a bar. But the craft and care that goes into the better cocktail menus has started to get my attention, if belatedly.

Pegu Club, which turns 3 in August, is practically the senior citizen of the post-modern cocktail circuit. It “hides in plain sight,” like many places in the genre—in this case, behind a barely labeled red door on Houston Street. No one who casually walks by would realize it’s a bar. Even those who are looking for Pegu Club sometimes have trouble finding it.

The bar is named for a nineteenth-century British officers’ club in Burma, and one can just detect a bit of the fin-de-siècle elegance they were aiming for. It’s a large, comfortable, and beautifully decorated space, with plush table seating and comfortable bar stools.

 
Left: French Pearl; Right: Poquito Picante

Pegu Club takes its ingredients seriously, with house-made infusions, shots carefully measured, and sodas poured from fresh bottles. I tried three of them (all $12), starting with the Little Italy, a Manhattan variant made with an Italian bitter called Cynar (“CHEE-nar”). The bartender actually took a sideways glance at me as I took my first sip, to see if I’d like it as much as he predicted. I’d imagine he was pleased with the broad smile on my face. I also loved the French Pearl, made with gin, pernod, muddled mint, lime juice, and simple syrup.

I wasn’t as pleased with the Poquito Picante, which didn’t live up to the promise of “just a little bit of heat.” The jalapeño floating on top was merely decorative. The other ingredients, cilantro, cucumber, gin, cointreau and lemon juice, made a bland impression.

I wonder if Pegu Club is leaning too much on the menu it opened with, and if the restless inventiveness of the city’s better cocktail chefs is still present here. The same handful of ingredients recur in many of the drinks—for instance, five of them include mint; five have lemon juice. That’s a lot of repetition on a short menu. I didn’t run out of choices, but I don’t know if there’s enough variety to justify many repeat visits.

That said, there’s still plenty more that I’d like to come back and try.

 

There’s food here, too. There’s a beverage recommendation for each item on the brief food menu, but in a number of cases there was no such item on the cocktail menu. You’d think they could clear that up.

The smoked trout deviled eggs ($10) have been on the menu since the beginning (Frank Bruni raved about them). In a word: wow! The little flecks of trout have a smoky taste almost like bacon, which nicely complements the curry mayonaise on the eggs. I didn’t quite get the point of chopsticks as a serving utensil, as the eggs were far too slippery to pick up that way. I used my hands.

A vegetarian spring roll ($12) was much more bland, but it was a decent enough snack.

The service was excellent, but in fairness I came quite early in the evening—I was the first customer, in fact—so I can’t attest to what it’s like when they fill up.

I’m only just beginning my journey through the city’s great cocktail places, but I doubt that there are many as comfortable as Pegu Club, and many of the drinks here are already modern classics.

Pegu Club (77 W. Houston St. between West Broadway & Wooster St., SoHo)

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

Gray Kunz and the Short Rib Derby

 
Left: Café Gray; Right: Grayz

Note: Café Gray and Grayz have both closed. Café Gray will be replaced by a clone of A Voce. Grayz re-opened in January 2009 as Atria, with Gray Kunz’s former chef de cuisine, Martin Brock, as executive chef. After four short months, it bit the dust.

Café Gray will shortly be closing, a victim of sky-high rents at the Time Warner Center. That will leave the talented chef, Gray Kunz, with just one restaurant, Grayz, which struggles with problems of its own.

Linking both restaurants is one of this town’s great chefs and his destination dish, the legendary braised short ribs. He served a version of the dish at the four-star Lespinasse, and it anchors the menus at both Café Gray and Grayz.

Recently, I tried the short ribs at both places. I wondered: how are they different? how are they alike? I also wanted to bid farewell to Café Gray, and to see if Grayz is as good as some message board enthusiasts say it is.

* * * 

At Café Gray, one can’t help escaping the glimmer of what might have been. In previous visits, I’ve never had the slightest doubt about the food: Kunz can cook rings around anyone. But the room: oh, the room! It’s noisy and ugly, and it interposes an open kitchen between diners and the world’s best view.

If you’re going to visit Café Gray, its final weeks are the best time. I found it mostly empty on a Wednesday evening. There’s no escaping the bone-headed design, but at least I had a pleasant supper without contracting a migraine.

 
Left: amuse-bouche; Right: petits-fours

Service was polished and seamless. The amuse-bouche was a small spoonful of chickpea yogurt, and there was a nice plate of petits-fours at the end.

I left Café Gray with a bit of sadness. This restaurant should have been, could have been, so much better.

* * *

Grayz is living proof of what happens when a promising restaurant botches its opening. The trouble here was that Kunz couldn’t decide if he was opening a bar that served snacks or a restaurant with a bar. The muddled concept was confusing, and early reviews weren’t favorable.

The menu has been revised, and it makes more sense now. The entrées, which numbered just three when I visited in the early days, have now been expanded to six. Whether you want a full meal or just to…well, “graze”—Grayz can accommodate you.

The interior design betrays indecision about the concept. You still feel like you’re in a bar that serves snacks, but the service is very good, and the food is first-class. Think of it as an elegant restaurant where the bar is closer than you’d like it to be, like a social misfit elbowing in on your privacy.

Despite its flaws, Grayz deserves your attention.

Unfortunately, it’s hard for a restaurant to get the word out after the early review cycle has concluded. The tables were less than half occupied on a Wednesday evening, and according to reports I’ve read elsewhere, that’s not unusual. The GM came over after my meal, greeted me warmly, and gave me his card. Grayz is still trying to cultivate a following.

 
Left: Bread service; Right: Weisswurst

To begin, Grayz offers the same wonderful spears of warm bread as before, with a Lebanese yogurt, spice, and olive oil dressing. I was better behaved this time: I stopped after only one.

I ordered the Weisswurst ($12), or German sausage, which comes with a homemade brown mustard. I’m not a connoisseur, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I loved the delicate casings, but the mustard was definitely needed, as the meat didn’t have enough flavor on its own. The bright-red cast-iron serving dish got in the way of my knife and fork.

To close, the petit-four was a hollow cylinder of crisp brown chocolate on a bed of sugar.

The cocktail menu here is a cut above the norm. I tried two of them, the Badminton Cup and the Aviation, both $14. My table was close enough to the bar that I could hear the conversation between the bartender and one of his customers—a post-modern meditation on the “art of cocktails.” I thought, “This is so 2008.”

* * * 

So, what about the short ribs?

 
Short ribs at Café Gray (left) and Grayz (right)

As you can see from the photos, they are quite similar. The manager at Grayz said he believes the meat is prepared identically. At Café Gray, it’s served on a bed of soft grits; at Grayz, it’s creamed spinach. The price is $41 at Café Gray, $39 at Grayz.

If I could have only one before I die, I’d choose the Grayz version. It was served on the bone; at Café Gray, there was no bone. At Grayz, it was slightly more tender, and spinach goes better with beef than grits. You could argue, though, that $39 is awfully dear for short ribs, even Gray Kunz’s.

* * * 

Kunz says that Café Gray will re-open at another location—rumored to be the current Oceana space.. He’s known to be a slow-poke, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for it. Wherever he goes, his first act should be to fire himself as an interior designer. But while we wait for Café Gray’s reincarnation, Grayz will be quietly chugging along.

Give Grayz a try. You could be pleasantly surprised.

Update: Grayz will close on August 10, 2008, for a facelift, re-opening on September 1. The downstairs catering space will become a proper restaurant, and the upstairs space—reviewed here—will presumably become what it was meant to be: a lounge.

Grayz (13–15 West 54th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Who is in the Kitchen at Mai House?

Note: Click here for a more recent update.

There are strange doings at Mai House. In January, founding chef Michael Bao Huynh was out. Or was he? Apparently, it was just a misunderstanding: he had merely gone AWOL for five weeks.

In March, Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn launched a tasting menu at Mai House, based on the food he’d prepared on the TV show.

Yesterday, the mystery of Huynh’s whereabouts was apparently resolved: Gael Green reported that Huynh had taken over at Rain, on the Upper West Side. And today, Eater reported that Mendelsohn was fired at Mai House. Eater reported, at first, that another Top Chefer, Lisa Hernandes, was replacing Mendelsohn, but later in the day this was retracted.

If this were any other restaurant, we’d assume an Eater Deathwatch was in order. But because it’s a Drew Nieporent restaurant, we figure it’ll all get sorted out. We love Mai House, and want it to live long and prosper.

But who is in the kitchen?

A Voce: How to Detonate a Restaurant

Update: Andrew Carmellini’s replacement has finally been named: Missy Robbins, formerly of Chicago’s Spiaggia. To learn more about the débacle that led up to this, read on.

The farce at A Voce is one of the sorriest spectacles we’ve seen in a long time.

After weeks of rumor-mongering, Grub Street reported yesterday that Manuel Treviño, a former Top Chef contestant, will temporarily replace Andrew Carmellini at A Voce. According to the report, “Treviño will oversee the expansion of A Voce to the Time Warner Center,” where it is replacing Café Gray, “but he is expected to make way for another big-name chef to be named (eventually) by A Voce’s owners.”

How many shades of stupidity can be painted in one sentence? Apparently, if Treviño does a good job at the Time Warner Center, he’ll get fired anyway. And if he does a bad job, the restaurant will have the mediocre reviews hanging like deadweights around its neck.

Remember: once the critics have reviewed a place, they seldom return. Why would anyone open the Time Warner branch with a transitional figure, get pummeled, and then bring in the chef they really want?

It gets worse. Today, Grub Street reports that pastry chef Josh Gripper has left the restaurant: “I’m not comfortable with [the ownership’s] direction, and I don’t think it would be a smart move to stay with them.” Ouch.

As a reader noted in the Eater comments section: “They might as well mail that 3rd star back to the Times right now.” We were never persuaded that A Voce was three-star material, but it’s still sad to see the owners squandering the good hand they were dealt.

The Rhythm of a Restaurant Meal

During the first ten or fifteen minutes after you sit down at a restaurant, several things happen in quick succession that will determine the rhythm of the rest of the meal:

• You’ll be given menus
• You’ll be told about specials—if there are any
• You might or might not receive a separate wine list
• You might or might not receive a separate cocktail menu
• You’ll be asked if you’d like to order cocktails
• The cocktails, if you ordered them, will arrive
• You might or might not receive a visit from the sommelier
• You’ll be asked if you’d like to order wine
• You’ll be asked for your food order

It’s remarkable how the order and timing of these events will vary from one restaurant to another. And how often they get it wrong.

Even at three-star restaurants, I’m amazed at how often servers ask for your food and wine order when you’ve just begun to sip your cocktails. This often sets up a situation where your half-consumed cocktails, your just-opened wine, and your first savory course are all on the table at once. If you finish your cocktail, then the wine isn’t serving its intended purpose—to accompany the food. If you leave your cocktail behind, then you’ve just wasted $5–7 (assuming the cocktail costs $10–14, which is typical).

This, of course, is merely one way that these events can be mistimed. There are many other permutations, such as the sommelier asking for your wine order before you’ve seen a menu. He surely knows—or should know—that wine is normally chosen to go with the food.

If there are specials, I prefer to have them in writing. But if they’re going to be recited, this should be done at the same time the menus are presented. The time to tell me about other options is before I start studying the menu, not after. It’s annoying when the server circles by later on with new information, potentially upsetting the ordering strategy I had already tentatively decided on.

But it’s the timing of the cocktail order that restaurants most often get wrong. If a party orders cocktails, it often means they want to relax a while before launching into the food and wine. The server ought to at least ask. Even high-end restaurants—places where diners are paying to enjoy a leisurely meal over at least a couple of hours—fail to get this right. This struck me last weekend at Café Boulud, a top-tier restaurant in most every respect, but where they were ready to take our wine and food order before the previously ordered cocktails had even arrived.

The other alternative is that a party is drinking only cocktails and wines by the glass. Here, servers make a different error: once your glass is empty, they they circle back and ask if you’d like a refill. But what if you ordered by the glass because you want to sample more than one item? Isn’t that one of the main benefits of ordering by the glass? Yet, I invariably have to ask them to bring back the beverage menu. That can take a few minutes, and then it’s a few minutes after that to prepare another cocktail or fetch another glass of wine. In the meantime, I’m sitting there with an empty glass.

Not all restaurants make these mistakes, but they happen well over half the time.

Am I being unreasonable?

Spitzer's Corner

When I heard that Wayne Nish was serving “three-star bar food” at a Lower East Side gastropub, I was a little skeptical.

Guess what? He has pulled it off.

Spitzer’s Corner, which opened in August 2007, had a tough first nine months, with a revolving door in the kitchen. Nish is the fourth chef. The early reviews found his predecessors’ menus underwhelming, and it’s tough get the critics back for a second look.

Wayne Nish

They should come back, because Nish’s menu at Spitzer’s corner is remarkable. Although Nish is billed only as a “consultant,” his hand-picked chef de cuisine, Sung Park, has serious credentials, with stints under Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Didier Virot, and Laurent Tourondel under his belt. He was also Nish’s chef de cuisine for the short-lived second act at Varietal.

And Park is no absentee chef: he was there on a Saturday night.

When I think about the food here, the closest comparison that comes to mind is Momofuku Ssäm Bar. Both restaurants offer sophisticated cooking with luxury ingredients in a laid-back, pared down environment. Park seemed taken aback when I mentioned the similarity, as David Chang’s food has an Asian tang, while Nish and Park come from the French tradition. But once I explained myself, he seemed to agree that the analogy was valid.

The foodies haven’t descended on Spitzer’s Corner as they’ve done at the Momofuku restaurants, but it’s not struggling either. The Saturday evening business was fairly brisk. The restaurant seats 130 and is open daily for lunch and dinner, with food served until 2:00 a.m. There is also Saturday and Sunday brunch.

The menu is inexpensive. A section called “Bar Snacks and Sides” features eight items priced from $4–10, while a section called “Plates,” corresponding roughly to appetizers and entrées, has fifteen selections from $9–17. Most items are suitable for sharing.

The aesthetic is pared down, with most of the seating at long communal tables. (There are a few two-tops.) The wood that lines the walls is alleged to have been made from reclaimed pickle barrels. There are broad picture windows, which on a warm evening are open to the outside.

The name, by the way, comes from a dress shop that formerly occupied the space. It has nothing to do with Eliot Spitzer, the disgraced former governor of New York.

They don’t have a hard liquor license, but there are 40 beers on tap and another 40 in bottles. They’re listed on the menu with brief tasting notes, as you’d find on a wine list (“Epic malts, spicy notes w/ hints of baker’s choc”).

They aren’t just the obvious beers, either. There couldn’t be many places in town serving Delirium Tremens, Victory Golden Monkey, Stone Arrogant Bastard, or Rogue Dead Guy Ale. The servers are like sommeliers, recommending beers that pair well with the food you’ve ordered.

The wine list is more modest, though the server insisted it should be taken seriously too: five reds and seven whites, all available by the bottle or the glass, with the most expensive bottles priced at $36 (not counting Veuve Clicquot Brut, $110).

Full disclosure: We dined at Spitzer’s Corner at a publicist’s invitation, and our meal was comped. We sampled considerably more food than any two sane people would order on their own. However, as I always do, I am calling the shots as I seem them.

I’ll be haunted for a long time by the “French Kisses” ($10), five luscious armagnac prunes filled with a liquified foie gras mousse. This was a dish that could come out of the kitchen at Per Se or Jean Georges, and it wouldn’t seem out of place. Prunes and foie gras make startling bedfellows, but we had the same observation several times during our long meal.

 

Nish works similar magic with a salad of warm Spinach and Shitake Mushrooms ($6), in which the startling extra ingredient is a white soy sauce.

I was eager to try the Duck Fat Potato Cake ($6), but it was the evening’s only dud. There’s plenty going on in this dish too, with confits of shallot, garlic, rosemary and thyme, but it was too dry. I expected the duck fat to be more flavorful, but I really couldn’t taste it.

  

We loved the bracing, bright flavors of a Red & Yellow Tomato Salad ($9), with goat cheese, marcona almonds, balsamic vinegar, and watermelon-chili dressing. Even better was Mac & Cheese ($9), which the menu says is made from local artisanal Saxelby cheese and topped with herbed duck cracklings.

A Sweetbread Po’ Boy was just fine, but the sandwiches that came next surpassed it.

We had the Roasted Pork Belly Sandwich ($11), the Warm Duck Confit Sandwich ($12) and the Soft-Shell Crab Po’ Boy ($15). We couldn’t agree with was the best, as all had their merits. They all benefited from Nish’s playful combination of unexpected ingredients. The pork belly was paired with a red wine sauerkraut, the duck with pickled daikon radish, the crab with housemade aioli. My girlfriend thought that the tempura batter on the crab was especially successful, while I was partial to the pork–sauerkraut combination.

 

Halibut, at $17, is the most expensive item on the menu. It was the second item we had (after the “French Kisses”) that could come out any three or four-star kitchen with no one batting an eyelash. It was certainly as good as the wonderful halibut we enjoyed the night before at Café Boulud. A lemon walnut crust imparts a tangy crispness to the perfectly roasted fish.

Our stomachs had by now reached our limit, so we barely tasted the Herbed Roast Chicken, but it seemed to be just about perfect, with (according to the menu) herbes de provence and jus roti. Once again, take note of the price: a half chicken for $12.

 

The last item we tried was the Kobe Burger ($16). There’s a bit of dishonesty here, as it’s actually American Kobe beef, and strictly speaking, that’s a contradiction in terms. On the other hand, where else is any kind of Kobe beef (even if it’s Wagyu) available for $16.

We aren’t the hamburger experts, but my girlfriend said, “This is the best hamburger ever.” A blogger on Serious Eats disagrees with us, but to our taste it was excellent: a nice charred exterior, a perfect medium rare inside, and a buttery brioche bun. To be sure, the real Kobe beef would have more marbling, but this was impressive enough, and what do you want for $16? At the Old Homstead, the Kobe burger is $41, and I don’t know if their menu is any more accurate about its origin than Spitzer’s.

For the record, Spitzer’s also serves a trio of sliders for $9 and a short rib burger for $10. Both are available with cheese, but when a customer asked for cheese on the Kobe burger, the server declined. There are culinary standards to be upheld, even for hamburgers.

Our server was knowledgeable, attentive and friendly. There are paper napkins, but silverware was replaced after every course. We were clearly getting the VIP treatment, so you can take that for what it’s worth. But there’s no denying the attempt here to serve “pub food” several orders of magnitude better than the norm. Word of mouth seems to be catching on, but only time will tell if this level can be maintained.

There are some limitations, besides the spartan surroundings and communal tables. At present there is no dessert menu or even coffee. Some people would consider the lack of cocktails a drawback, but with 80 beers available no one should go thirsty here.

Full credit is due to the persistent owners of Spitzer’s Corner, who could have given up on their gastronomic ambitions and relied on their beer menu. Instead, they snagged Wayne Nish and Sung Park, who have turned this pub into a destination.

Spitzer’s Corner (101 Rivington Street at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side)

Café Boulud

[Kalina via Eater]

Unlike the professional critics, I don’t have the time, the inclination, or the pocketbook to pay multiple visits to a restaurant before venturing an opinion. My posts are snapshots of individual meals. I can’t help it if my impressions are either much better, or much worse, than the prevailing “conventional wisdom.” I may have caught the restaurant on an unusually good or bad day. I might, by dumb luck, just happen to have ordered the best couple of dishes on an uneven menu, or the worst ones on a very good menu.

Sometimes, though, I have the distinct impression that a restaurant deserves a second chance. And that was what I thought after a friend and I had an exceedingly dull meal at Café Boulud two years ago. It’s not that we had anything bad, but that, for the price point, the food struck us as uninspired. There were also some service miscues.

In its ten-year history, Café Boulud has probably had some ups and downs. It seems to be a proving ground for chefs, who benefit from Daniel Boulud’s mentorship and move on to better things. The opening chef, Alex Lee, was around just long enough to win three stars in the Times from Ruth Reichl. Andrew Carmellini had a six-year run (1999–2005) before leaving to open A Voce. Boulud then promoted Carmellini’s sous chef, Bertrand Chemel, who won three stars from Frank Bruni and promptly departed for Falls Church, Virginia.

Gavin Kaysen has been running the kitchen since December 2007, though presumably with plenty of input from Boulud. The menu, as it has always been, is divided into four sections: La Tradition (French classics), Le Voyage (world cuisine), La Saison (seasonal items) and Le Potager (vegetarian choices). The pattern persists through dessert and even the cocktail menu.

Prices are about par for a three-star restaurant, with appetizers $16–28 (most in the high teens), entrées $27–55 (most in the $30s), and desserts $10–24 (most $14).

 
“Red Snapper” cocktail (left); Amuse-bouche (right)

My girlfriend and I tried a couple of the seasonal cocktails. The terrific, labor-intensive “Red Snapper” was made with jalapeño-infused gin, celery ice cubes, and tomato juice poured tableside from a glass caraffe. My girlfriend had a Rhubarb Mojito. They were both $12, which is extremely reasonable in a town where cocktails north of $15 are increasingly common.

 
Spring Risotto (left); English Pea Raviolini (right)

Our appetizers, chosen from the potager section of the menu, were full of bright flavors of the season: Spring Risotto ($19) with ramps and watercress; English Pea Ravioli ($18) with bacon, pea leaves, and a sherry-shallot jus.

 
Butter Poached Halibut (left); Greek Lamb Trio (right)

I loved the soft, buttery Poached Halibut ($36) from the Saison section of the menu, which featured an excellent supporting cast of whole grain mustard sausage, tiny potato gnocchi, English peas, and tomato fondue.

The Greek Lamb Trio ($41), from the Voyage section, wasn’t as exciting as the other items we had. The roasted loin was lovely, but as girlfriend noted, “This isn’t really very Greek.” Oddly enough, both Times critics (Reichl and Bruni) found Le Voyage the weakest portion of the menu here; this has been true both times I visited.

 
Rhubarb & Almond Tart (left); Madeleines (right)

We shared a Rhubarb & Almond Tart ($14), and to finish, the server dropped off a folded napkin full of warm , delicious sugar-coated madeleines.

The wine list has a section dedicated to bottles $60 and under. This part of the list seems to have shrunk since my last visit, but there are still some wonderful finds. The sommelier suggested the 2004 Stéphane Tissot Singulier ($60), made from the seldom encountered Trousseau grape from the Arbois region of France. We were struck by its light, fruity texture, resembling a pinot noir. We appreciated the recommendation, as we’d have never have found it on our own.

I wouldn’t choose Café Boulud for a special occasion, but rather, for food that is reliably excellent. The dining room is lovely and fairly quiet, though it also has the feel of an Upper East Side neighborhood place. One family was there with a two-year-old, and the staff dutifully produced a high chair. Fortunately, he was well behaved.

The service is polished and elegant, with a high ratio of staff to diners. Sometimes they get a bit confused, as when one asked us for our cocktail order after another had already taken it. Our cocktail order took a bit too long to be filled. It was a good thing I delayed our order, as otherwise the appetizers would have arrived before the wine was poured. These are minor complaints, and didn’t at all detract from our excellent meal.

There aren’t enough days in the week to give every restaurant a second chance, but Café Boulud is one that deserved it. With Gavin Kaysen in the kitchen, Café Boulud is in good hands.

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

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