Shun Lee Cafe

Shun Lee, is the dean of the pre-Lincoln Center restaurants. It has been serving haute Chinese classics since 1981, when Mimi Sheraton awarded two stars in the Times.

The original space was apparently “dim and dowdy.” It received a snazzy makeover in 1985, but Bryan Miller found the food inconsistent, demoting it to one star in 1987. For the record, Shun Lee’s sister restaurant, Shun Lee Palace, which has been around since 1971, and serves the same menu, still carries two stars, courtesy of Ruth Reichl in 1995.

Shortly after the 1985 makeover, the front dining room was converted into a separate Dim Sum-themed restaurant called Shun Lee Cafe. The main restaurant and the cafe are separately reservable on OpenTable, but they share the kitchen and restroom areas.

Shun Lee Cafe offers an abbreviated version of the full restaurant menu, but when we visited the other day, we had Dim Sum on our minds.

Dim Sum comes on a cart, which a server wheels around the restaurant. There are only a few items at a time on the cart. This keeps the food fresh, but you don’t really know what’s coming next. The server just tells you what she has; either you want some, or you wait until next time the cart comes around. After she serves you, she scribbles on the back of a card. The more scribbles at the end of the meal, the more you pay.

Most items come in pairs, making them well suited to sharing. We had eight servings for a total of $54, which averaged out to $6.75 each. With two cocktails ($10 ea.) and two desserts ($6 ea.), the total cost of the meal was $86 before tax and tip. You’d pay a bit less in Chinatown, but you wouldn’t have Lincoln Center across the street, and you wouldn’t have Shun Lee’s incredibly clever light fixtures staring down at you.

 

We started with dumplings: beef (above left) and shrimp (above right), both done to a high standard.

 

The cart’s next couple of visits featured items from the deep fryer. Our favorite was the Giant Crab Claw (lower left-hand side of the first photo), a large juicy hunk of crab. We loved it so much that we asked for another one.

Shrimp Cheese Puffs (right side of the second photo) came a close second. Shrimp and ricotta cheese made fine company. We also enjoyed the Shrimp Taro Pancakes (left side of the second photo).

The only real dud was the Chicken Sesame Pancake (upper left of the first photo), which had the consistency of shoe leather.

Service was efficient, as it must be at a pre-theater place, though there was some of the upselling, huckstering quality endemic to such restaurants. We asked for just one dessert to share, but the server, perhaps feigning hearing loss, brought two.

Like most long-term restaurants, Shun Lee has its crowd of devoted regulars. Much of the crowd was distinctly elderly. The restaurant has a long-standing relationship with the Jewish community. The owner, Michael Tong, estimates that his clientele is seventy percent Jewish. His busiest day of the year is Christmas, and he can even prepare a kosher banquet on request.

I haven’t been to the main restaurant in many years. Our visit here reminded me that it has been too many years. I’ll have to rectify that. In the meantime, if you’re looking for a more casual option in the area, Shun Lee Cafe is a respectable choice.

Shun Lee Cafe (43 W. 65th Street, east of Broadway, Upper West Side)

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

Porter House Evolves

I dropped in at Porter House New York last night for a quick bite. On a Thursday evening at around 6:30 p.m., the restaurant was mostly empty. Many servers and runners were just standing around. As in the past, the clientele included a number of families with small children.

I wasn’t that hungry, so I had the Skirt Steak, at $28 the second-cheapest entrée (after the chicken, $27). This is a second-string cut of meat, but Porter House gives it a first-rate preparation, with a nice smokey char and an Argentine chimichurri sauce.

Since my last visit, Porter House has wisely dropped its plats du jour—dishes that are served only one night of the week. The Cowboy Steak, formerly available only on Thursdays, is now offered every day. On a less happy note, that steak was $38 fifteen months ago; it is now $45.

The “porterhouse” conceit has been scaled back. There were once porterhouses not just of beef, but also lamb, veal, pork, and even monkfish; only the beef and the veal options remain. There were once more than half-a-dozen seafood entrées; there are now only four.

There are, of course, other entrées: hangar steak, filet mignon, chili-rubbed ribeye (not worthwhile at $48), lamb chops. But with a few exceptions (“Duck Steak”), the restaurant is evolving closer to the classic steakhouse, albeit with one of the world’s best views.

Bread service remains a strength, with three excellent house-made breads and a soft serving of butter. I didn’t order wine, but the wine list didn’t seem quite as egregiously priced as it was last time. Aside from that, I had a somewhat dour server who seemed displeased with his lot in life. Come to think of it, nobody seemed especially pleased. An empty restaurant will do that.

In a sense, Porter House is a somewhat less interesting restaurant than it was before. But the steaks remain top-notch, and the ambiance is more comfortable than most steakhouses.

Porter House New York (Time-Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 4th floor)

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

Restaurant Outlook

Welcome to Restaurant Outlook, a new feature in which we list the new and forthcoming restaurants of personal interest to us. There’s no attempt to be exhaustive, but merely to list those restaurants that have caught our fancy.

Fairly New

• Hundred Acres — This Marc Meyer/Vicki Freeman follow-up to Provence opens next week. This one will be more in the Five Points–Cookshop haute barnyard vein. As Eater noted, they could’ve just called it “Cookshop” and had a practically guaranteed hit—though no review from the Bruni. This one’ll get reviewed. 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.
  
• 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.
  
• Bar Milano — Early reviews are mixed, but the Lupa/’Inoteca guys have a strong track record. Reservation: May 23.
  
• 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.

• 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. Though Liebrandt admits he is working on a restaurant, no one is even sure where it will be (the old Montrachet site is the best guess) or when it will open. I walk by the Montrachet storefront regularly, and it remains sealed as tight as a drum.

The Payoff: Eighty One

Today, Frank Bruni awards the expected two stars to Eighty One, finding the ambitious food over-thought and over-wrought:

Maybe it’s an inevitable consequence of so many restaurants vying to be noticed. Maybe it’s an attempt to justify entrees sailing far north of $35. Maybe it’s a reflection of chefs too neurotic or vain to commit to one strategy or to dwell on one note.

Whatever the reason, the high-end New York dining scene is awash in troikas of pork, trilogies of tuna and the like. A meat that does a wholly satisfying turn as a chop, or a fish showcased adequately in a fillet, appears in many guises, as if it’s an actor doing one of those multi-part tours de force.

The spectacle is impressive to a point, but exhausting, too.

He awards points for the wine list, but subtracts them for the room:

Eighty One certainly preens. It goes so far as to title a section of the menu in which it lists spotlighted dishes the “tasting collection.”

When you see something like that, you’re less inclined to overlook a restaurant’s shortcomings. In Eighty One’s case, they include a sprawling dining room with unflattering lighting and oversize red velvet booths that look as if they were carted in from a bordello on some planet where the prostitutes are 12 feet tall.

We win $4 on our hypothetetical one-dollar bet. Eater, who had predicted three stars, loses a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$88.50		$99.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+4.00
Total	$87.50		$103.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	39–17		40–16

Rolling the Dice: Eighty One

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 gives us another pulse check on the Upper West Side’s fine dining revolution, with a review of Ed Brown’s Eighty One. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 10-1
One Star: 5-1
Two Stars: 4-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 12-1

The Skinny: This week’s Eater odds reflect the lack of consensus on Eighty One, with anywhere between one and three stars being realistically possible.

Of the reviews so far, the worst came from Paul Adams in The Sun. Adams doesn’t award stars, but he called the restaurant “a sad disappointment.” At the other extreme was Steve Cuozzo in The Post, who doesn’t do stars either, but said he would award three. Adam Platt in New York was in the middle, awarding the deuce.

For the record, we gave Eighty One 2½ stars. If we were using Bruni’s system, which does not have half-stars, we’d have rounded down to two. We think that’s the most likely outcome here—not just because it conforms to our own verdict, but for other reasons too.

First, Bruni is seldom impressed with the trappings of luxury, which he usually calls “fussy.” I abhor the word, but if ever there was a fussy restaurant, Eighty One is it.

Second, Eighty One is more expensive than nearby Dovetail, to which he awarded three stars. Given that Bruni is highly sensitive to price, Eighty One would need to be a lot better than Dovetail to receive the identical rating. It’s hard to see that happening, given that his review of Dovetail was a rave. Most critics, regardless of their rating, have had their complaints about Eighty One. If Bruni does too, it’ll be enough to withhold the third star.

Bruni has been pretty generous with three-star reviews this year. Maybe they’re putting happy pills in the water over at Times HQ. The year’s not half over, and three new restaurants have received that honor. In all of 2007, none did. As the honor comes rarely, and Frank can time his reviews however he wants, we doubt he’d do two of them in a row. Last week’s review, of course, was three-stars for Momofuku Ko.

Lastly, there’s the Cuozzo effect: he and Bruni seldom see eye to eye. Cuozzo loved Eighty One.

We’re a little perplexed as to what has taken Bruni so long to file this review. The place has been open for months, and Platt’s review appeared more than six weeks ago. We can only guess that Bruni really wanted to love this place—it’s in his neighborhood, after all—but in the end, couldn’t quite make the case.

Why not one star? For a restaurant at Eighty One’s level, a measly star would be close to insulting. Bruni is quite capable of delivering that kind of smackdown, but usually only when he feels he has to. Given how long he’s waited, we figure he has something nice to say—just not three stars’ worth.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Eighty One.

Country

Note: The upstairs dining room at Country has closed, to be replaced around October 1 March 2009 with Country Steak. The downstairs Café at Country remains open.

Update: Forget Country Steak. Millesime, under chef Laurent Manrique, opened here in fall 2010.

*

Country is one of our favorite special-occasion restaurants. It may not be the best of those restaurants, but we adore the luxurious, spacious, old-school dining room, the first-class service, and food that usually exceeds our expectations.

The new chef: Willis Loughhead [Country/Grub Street]We paid our fourth visit to Country on Saturday to check out the menu by Willis Loughhead, Country’s new chef. Loughhead, who made his reputation in Miami, arrived here without much of a publicity footprint. He quickly set about rectifying it.

We’re doing everything differently now,” he told Grub Street. “We’re breaking down whole animals, making our own charcuterie… And now that the Greenmarket is about to explode, you’re going to see so much from us based on that. It’s going to be very market-driven. Right now, I’m waiting for ramps, for instance. Just wait till they come in.”

Earlier this week, Gothamist had a “nose-to-tail” piece, with a photo of lamb and pig carcasses hanging on meat hooks:

Hanging in the wine cellar at Country’s Dining Room are, from left to right, lamb pancetta, pork pancetta, house-cured pigs’s leg prosciutto style, house-cured pig’s leg Serrano-style, Bresaola-style beef tenderloin and lastly imported Serrano with hoof.

“It’s not something you’re going to do unless you buy the whole animal,” Loughhead says of making charcuterie. As for the nose-to-tail aspect, the only folks who seem to be freaked out are the hotel staff: “The room service people complain when there’s a big pig or lamb’s head outside there office.”

One eGullet poster proclaimed the charcuterie in the Café at Country, the casual sister to the main dining room, was as good as or better than the offerings at Bar Boulud and Benoit—tall praise indeed if it is true.

But Loughhead is taking his sweet time about reforming the flagship restaurant. We found a new menu that still needs a lot of work, and that falls short of the rapture that a restaurant on Country’s level ought to deliver. There are just four appetizers, four mid-courses, five entrées, and four desserts—a perplexingly low total.

The appetizers and mid-courses were uniformly good, but except for rhubarb in one dish, we didn’t see the “haute barnyard” influence that Loughhead has been selling to bloggers and publicists.

The entrées on a recent menu at Country

The entrées were shockingly unimaginative, in addition to being over-cooked and tough. If Loughhead is breaking down whole animals, then why are most of the entrées just the standard rectangle of protein with a medley of vegetables? And why are they all cooked the same way? Every one we asked about, the server said: pan-seared, then roasted. The menu style shown above is reflected throughout: a main ingredient in capital letters (“PORK”), with little indication of what is done with it.

The menu at Country is priced at $75 for three courses, $89 for four courses, or $135 for the chef’s tasting menu. The middle option, which we had, is probably the best one, given that an extra savory course is only $14 extra. All of the menus at Country include canapés, an amuse-bouche, a plate cleanser, petits-fours, and one of the best bread services in town. We also received a complimentary glass of champagne to start. I am not sure if that is the norm, or if it was because the staff recognized us.

Despite my dismay at Loughhead’s half-hearted re-boot of the menu and the disappointing entrées, there are still many reasons to love Country. It sports one of the loveliest dining rooms in town, elegant service, and candle-lit tables widely spread out. There is hardly a better place to enjoy a leisurely, romantic meal. And given the number of excellent courses served for $89, I am almost ready to forgive the flawed entrées. Well, almost.

The restaurant was not full, and our 8:00 p.m. table, nestled in a quiet alcove, was ours for the evening. Two dainty canapés arrived quickly. I neglected to photograph them, but one was a cube of seared tuna, the other a small, deep-fried risotto ball.

 

The amuse-bouche was a frog leg in a garlic cream and watercress purée. The bread service, I am glad to say, has not changed: a large, warm Parker House roll. When we were about 2/3rds done with it, the staff brought another one, which we most reluctantly had to leave untouched.

 

Four our first course, I had the White & Green Asparagus with Serrano ham, mustard vinaigrette and fried quail eggs. My girlfriend raved about the Sea Trout Tartare, with barbequed eel, yuzu and cucumber.

 

I can’t identify the foam that came atop a grilled sea scallop; pork belly on the left-hand side of the plate didn’t make quite the impression that it normally does. But my girlfriend’s seafood risotto was the knockout dish of the evening. It was chock-full of chunky lobster, squid, cockles and dorade.

 

Our entrées were “DUCK” (left) and “PORK” (right). I loved the sear on the duck, but it was a bit tough; but that was nothing compared to my girlfriend’s pork, which was dry and even tougher. “They were probably cooked by the same heavy-handed guy at the meat station,” she suggested.

 

There clearly is a great talent in the pastry kitchen here. I neglected to photograph the palate cleanser, which was one of the most creative dishes we had: a lime granité with coconut foam, lemon pearls and sweet soda, served with a long spoon that doubled as a straw.

Both desserts were excellent: “YOGHURT” with guava, grapefruit and sesame (above, left) and “MILLE FEUILLE” (above, right) with raspberry, gianduja and fromage blanc.

 

Last, came perhaps the best petits-fours cart we’ve seen since Alain Ducasse.

William Rhodes is now in charge of the wine program. The bottles are generally expensive, as one would expect, but Rhodes is stocking whites as low as $40 and reds as low as $50. Throughout the list, there are wines touted as “Sommelier Selections,” and they aren’t just the expensive ones. Based on our 2005 St. Joseph, Rhodes’s instincts can be trusted.

There were minor service hiccups, none of which seriously undermined our evening, but which should not happen at a restaurant at this level. All were probably attributable to a server who, though eager to please, was error-prone.

Though I’d ordered one of the sommelier-recommended reds, a white wine was brought to our table. It’s a rather peculiar foul-up to bring a bottle many pages away from the one you picked. To his credit, the server admitted the error, and the restaurant had to eat the mistake.

We were given plenty of time to order, but we actually had to ask for a wine list. During the meal, runners at least twice were mixed up about which dish was mine, and which was my girlfriend’s.

*

If I had never before dined at Country, I would award 2½ stars. That is my usual rating for a restaurant that very clearly has the potential for three stars, but hasn’t quite lived up to them. Given our long history with Country, we assume that we caught the dining room in transition. Chef Loughhead has a vigorous publicity machine behind him. Now, he needs to deliver the goods.

Though I am coming down a bit hard on Country, it’s because we know from experience that transcendent meals are possible here. By and large, this was a transcendent meal, but for the entrées. However, it is a significant problem when both meat dishes fall as flat as they did here.

Diners lured by the press coverage are going to have high hopes for a restaurant with such a high price tag. We will be back, as the wonderful dining room and luxurious service will always have a tug on our affections. But for the new clientele that Country is trying to attract, there might not be a second chance to make a strong first impression.

Country (90 Madison Avenue at 29th Street, Flatiron District)

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

Bern's Steakhouse

 

The words “fine dining” and “Tampa, Florida” seldom occur in the same sentence. For a recent family celebration, only one restaurant came to mind: Bern’s Steakhouse. It is the one Tampa restaurant with an international reputation, founded largely on its 700,000-bottle wine cellar, believed to be the largest privately-held wine collection in the world.

That collection is so large that about 80% of it is not even stored at the restaurant, but in a warehouse across the street. The 212-page novel-length wine list is a massive tome, including bottles hundreds of years old. The list of wines available by the glass (around 150) is more than most restaurants offer by the bottle.

The restaurant, named for Bern Laxer, has been at this site since 1956. Laxer’s son, David, is now in charge.

The building, not originally a restaurant, is unimpressive from the outside. But once you get in, the rest of Bern’s is as overwhelming as its wine list. Its eight dining rooms, each with a different theme, seat up to 350. Our party of eight was in a room featuring enormous photographic mural of the Rhone valley.

Bern’s doesn’t do anything small. The menu goes on for eighteen pages, several of which are long essays explaining how—in the restaurant’s favorite phrase—“We do things differently here.” Want to start with caviar? There are twenty-one selections, priced from $20–220 per ounce. Want steak tartare? Bern’s offers it four different ways.

The steak portion of the menu goes on for four pages, because Bern’s can do nothing without lecturing you. There are fifty-one ordering options—a function of the cut of meat and the desired thickness—priced anywhere from $29.10 for a six-ounce filet mignon, to $233.12 a sixty-ounce strip sirloin that feeds six. You’d think they could round the cents on a $233 steak.

Bern’s serves USDA prime beef, aged 5–8 weeks. They are aggressive about trimming fat and bone before cooking, so their eight-ounce steak has more edible content than it would at other steakhouses. The menu claims that they buy about 3–4 pounds of beef for every pound they serve.

Most of the steaks are around $35–40 per person, but Bern’s doesn’t follow the typical steakhouse à la carte model. Every entrée also includes French onion soup, a house salad, a baked potato, onion rings, and vegetables. Dinner for six adults and two children was $419 before tax and tip, and that figure included the wine—more on that below—and cocktails. The same dinner in New York would cost at least double that.

  

As I studied the wine list, I could hardly contain myself as I saw one bargain after another. I settled on a magnum of 1967 Julien Devèze Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which was around $140. The sommelier tried to upsell me to a bottle that was $100 more, but after I declined, he brought back the 1971, which he insisted was better, and at $126 was less expensive than the bottle I’d asked for.

To put that in perspective, at the New York wine-themed restaurant Veritas, the cheapest magnum of Châteauneuf-du-Pape costs $175, and it’s a 1999, twenty-eight years younger than the one we had. Veritas has only a handful of choices older than 1990, and only one older than 1980, whereas Bern’s has a long list of bottles going back to at least the 1960s.

The wine was superb, though I don’t have much to compare it to. In New York, a bottle that old, if you could find it, would cost the equivalent of a monthly mortgage payment.

 

Everyone loved the French onion soup (above left), but a plate of “cheese toast” (above right)—basically melted cheese on saltine crackers—wasn’t much good at all.

 

The house salad (above left) was just fine, while my son ordered the caesar salad (above right) for $9.95 extra, which our waiter prepared tableside, in a multi-step process that seemed to take fifteen minutes.

My girlfriend and I shared the 16 oz. Delmonico ($69.34), which the restaurant recommends as a portion for two. It doesn’t look that big, but we filled up quickly, given all of the other food included. The steak itself was just about perfect, with a nice exterior char, marbling, and the nutty, tangy flavor that comes from long aging.

Vegetables were a mixed bag. The onion rings were stringy and greasy, and the other vegetables on the plate were rather dull, but the baked potato was wonderful. Most restaurants would leave it to each guest to apply the fixin’s, but our waiter split each potato at tableside and applied sour cream, bacon, and chives according to each diner’s preference.

Service in the main dining room was excellent. All of Bern’s waiters train for a full year before they’re permitted to serve customers on their own. Garnishes and sauces are all applied tableside, and the waiter himself serves and clears every dish.

 

Be sure to ask for a kitchen and wine cellar tour, normally given between dinner and dessert. It takes about fifteen minutes, and is well worth it.

Dessert is such an unusual experience that you should order something even if you’re not hungry. It’s served upstairs in the Harry Waugh Dessert Room (named for a famous wine collector). It’s actually not a room, but a rabbit’s warren of many rooms: to be exact, forty-eight separate alcoves of varying sizes, each shaped like a wine cask, that can accommodate between two and twelve guests.

No one will be surprised that dessert here, like everything else, is over the top. The menu is four pages long, and has about 60 selections. It comes with yet another wine list, this one 42 pages long, with another 1,800 selections (armagnacs, cognacs, scotches, brandies, ports, etc.)

 
Left: Dulce de Leche Liquid Center Cake ($10.95); Right: Tiramisu ($9.95)

 
Left: Chocolate-Chocolate-Chocolate ($10.95); Right: Macadamia Nut Sundae ($10.00)

We were mildly disappointed with a Macadamia Nut Sundae, if only because its billing on the menu (“best sundae in the world”) would have been tough for any dessert to live up to. I don’t think anyone finished their desserts (how could they?) but there were vague nods of satisfaction around the table.

Service in the dessert room was nowhere near as polished as in the main dining room. The waiter’s recommendations weren’t quite as good as they were cracked up to be, and on two occasions it took a major hunting expedition to find him.

The overall dessert room bill, including drinks, was $75.60 before tax and tip.

*

After you get past the steaks, there is some unevenness at Bern’s. Any restaurant with such a long menu is bound to have some soft spots. But the overall experience is incomparable, and the wine list ranks with the great pyramids as one of the wonders of the world.

Bern’s Steakhouse (1208 South Howard Avenue, Tampa, Florida)

Food: ***
Wine & Spirits: ****
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Wildwood Barbecue

Note: Widwood Barbecue closed in January 2014. Shelly Fireman (owner of Redeye Grill and Trattoria Dell’Arte) will turn it into an Italian restaurant (yawn!) called Floriana.

*

The restauranteur Stephen Hanson generally sticks to tried and true formulas. So it’s no surprise that he has now opened Wildwood Barbecue, a few years after the barbecue revolution arrived in New York.

Hanson is known for commercializing cuisines without really mastering them: think Ruby Foo’s. Except for three-star Fiamma, Hanson’s eateries invariably seem flashy but mass-produced. As Grub Street wryly noted, it was telling that Hanson hired his interior designer (David Rockwell) before he’d hired a pitmaster.

Hanson quieted the skeptics when he hired Big Lou Elrose, formerly the deputy pitmaster at New York’s best barbecue restaurant, Hill Country. But Wildwood has a lot to prove, as great barbecue inNew York is no longer the rarity it once was. Hill Country, Blue Smoke, and R.U.B. are all short distances away.

 

Stephen Hanson tries to be funny: “Get Sauced”Ironically, Wildwood is located on the site of one of the few Stephen Hanson failures, Barça 18, a tapas place that even Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert, as consulting chef, couldn’t save. With Wildwood, Hanson has reverted to the kind of corporate restaurant he does best. If Outback Steakhouse had a barbecue chain, it would probably look like this.

The barbecue here isn’t beholden to any particular region or style. Though respectable, it isn’t as good as the better places in town. Prices are modest, with appetizers $5.25–8.95, sandwiches and salads $10.95–14.95, entrées $9.95–23.95, tasting platters $21.50–28.95, and side dishes $4.95–6.95.

We got a good sample of the menu by ordering two tasting platters, which came with two side dishes apiece. This was a lot of food for two people. We brought home part of the chicken and several ribs, and the sides were left half-finished.

The Rib Sampler ($28.95) included both the longer pork ribs and Memphis-style baby back ribs. The pork ribs were meatier and more tender. The baby backs seemed a bit dried out.

The “Best of the Best” ($23.95) included a half-chicken, three slices of brisket, and a scoop of pulled pork. The chicken was the star of the meal: pink, tender, flavorful. Elrose serves it with an apricot barbecue glaze. My girlfriend thought this was superior to the chicken she’d had at Hill Country.

The brisket, on the other hand, was disappointing. It was too thin, too lean, and too dry. This was surprising from a pitmaster who’d worked at Hill Country, where the brisket is one of the best things on the menu. The pulled pork seemed merely competent.

We loved the side dishes: Crusty Cheddar Macaroni, Kettle-Cooked Burnt Ends & Bacon Baked Beans, Sweet Potato Fries, and Baked Cornbread. The first two were especially good.

The sides dishes served with the tasting platters are smaller than the sides ordered separately. A couple at the table next to us thought our cornbread looked good to share, but theirs came in a cast-iron skillet, and was about twice the size of our portion.

There are wine and cocktail lists, but the highlight is a broad selection of beers and bourbons. A pitcher of Cold Ass — not a brand we’d heard of — was $22.

Service at Wildwood is better than most barbecue restaurants. Reservations are accepted for dinner. There is a coat check girl (who refused a tip), and there was even an employee outside to flag a taxi for us on a rainy night. But the space is too cramped, with hardly an inch to spare between tables. It’s neither as comfortable nor as authentic as Hill Country.

We had no trouble getting a table when we walked in at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday night, but the place was full by the time we left. Though there’s better ’cue in the city, we suspect that Stephen Hanson will figure out a way to keep the customers pouring in. He usually does.

Wildwood Barbecue (225 Park Avenue South between 18th & 19th Streets, Flatiron District)

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

Bar Masa

When Masayoshi Takayama sold his famed Los Angeles sushi restaurant and moved into the Time-Warner Center, most of the attention was lavished on his famously expensive four-star gem, Masa. There, you pay anywhere between $400–500 per person for whatever omakase menu Chef Masa wants to serve that day.

I’ve not been to Masa, as the appropriate occasion to blow $1,000 (for two) on sushi hasn’t yet presented itself. There’s an adjoining restaurant called Bar Masa, and I gave it a try the other night. Reservations aren’t taken, but the bar was only about half full, and only a couple of tables were unoccupied.

Bar Masa has garnered scant critical attention, perhaps because it’s considered an annex of Masa. But Bar Masa is really a separate concept. Here, the menu is à la carte. If you’re in the chef’s hands at Masa, at the place next door you’re totally on your own.

Given that it’s run by a sushi chef, I thought that Bar Masa referred to a sushi bar. Silly me. It’s an alcohol bar that also offers food. Whatever you order, even if it’s sushi, is prepared behind the scenes, thereby depriving you of one of the great joys of sushi dining: the interaction with the chef.

The first two facing pages of the menu are dedicated to prepared foods. There are about 90 choices. That’s not a misprint. They’re priced anywhere from $8–68, but mostly $18 and higher. They’re in ten different categories, like “Chilled,” “Salad,” “Hibachi Grilled,” “Braised,” “Fried,” etc. I had trouble getting clear guidance from the confused servers, but it seems that the vast majority are appetizer-sized, meaning you’d probably need to order a good three or four of them, maybe five or six if you’re hungry, to make up a full meal.

The next couple of pages are the sushi menu, with rolls $18–120 (most $25 or less) and sushi/sashimi $6–65 (most $10 or less), or $98 for the omakase.

This being a bar, there is a drinks menu, which takes the price of dining at Bar Masa to ludicrous levels. The house cocktails are $18–35, including $20 for an “Ocean Bloody Mary” (tomato and clam juice with pepper celery ice cubes). Sakes, sold by the caraffe, are $19 and up; wines by the glass $16 and up; by the bottle $60 and up.

I confess some curiosity as to what a $20 Bloody Mary would be like, but I didn’t feel lucky, and I felt totally adrift in the sprawling menu. I only wanted a snack, so I ordered the cheapest caraffe of sake ($19) and two of the prepared dishes.

The caraffe of sake came in a stone bowl, wrapped in ice; the ceramic cup was pre-chilled, too. You pay through the nose here, but at least the presentation is first-class.

Peking duck with foie gras in mooshu skin ($24) was a miniature version of the Chinatown classic. The preparation was lovely, but the food was not really that much better than you get elsewhere. And those pancakes were awfully small—about two bites apiece—making the dish $3 a bite.

The server asked that I discontinue taking photographs, so I can’t show the more striking dish, the Crispy Snapper Head ($28). There was no mistaking the poor snapper when the plate arrived: a fish head split in two, with a vacant eye socket staring at me. The eyes themselves, the brains, and indeed all of the fleshy parts were excavated before the head was breaded and tossed in the deep fryer.

Once I got past the gross-out factor, the dish was a disappointment. With the soft parts gone, all that remained were a bread crust and dessicated bones. Think Southern-fried chicken without the chicken. Either they wasted a perfectly good snapper, or someone else got the tasty parts.

Desserts was the only bargain: I finished with a perfectly respectable cheesecake: $9. 

There are probably many gems, along with some duds, on the menu at Bar Masa. But two small appetizers, the cheapest caraffe of sake, and a small dessert set me back $100 (including tax and tip). At that price, I’m not rushing back.

Bar Masa (10 Columbus Circle, Time–Warner Center, 4th floor)

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

The Payoff: Momofuku Ko

Today, Frank Bruni concludes the early review cycle for Momofuku Ko with a strangely mixed three-star review:

You don’t get start-to-finish enchantment, but that’s not a function of insufficient coddling. It’s a function of where you set the bar for a restaurant that must master only a cluster of dishes on a given night, and that compels you to surrender so fully to its authority.

Under those terms there’s a promise of unwavering transcendence, and Ko in its early months serves a few dishes that merely intrigue along with others that utterly enrapture. It also falls prey to some inconsistency.

At least half the review was about matters other than the food: the newfangled reservation system; the minimalist aesthetic; the pared-down service. When he does discuss the food, he finds it surprisingly uneven.

In a sense, this was a “review by subtraction.” Bruni started with the unwritten presumption that Momofuku Ko was gunning for four stars — a presumption certainly bolstered by Adam Platt’s review in New York — and proceeded to explain why “Deification may have come prematurely to Mr. Chang.”

Bruni was also hemmed in by his two-star reviews of Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Degustation, the most similar non-Chang restaurant in Manhattan. Ko is better than both.

It seems that there’s a “bonus star” available for any restaurant that confirms Bruni’s wholly unwarranted assumptions about what the younger generation of diners is purportedly seeking in a restaurant:

Ko pares down stuffy atmospherics in a particularly thorough way. It wagers that for a younger generation more focused on food than on frippery, a scruffy setting, small discomforts and little tyrannies are acceptable — preferable, even — if they’re reflected in the price.

Bruni’s reviews have improved markedly over the years. We could almost become a fan if these tiresome rants were sent to the cutting-room floor, where they belong.

We and Eater both took the obvious three-star bet, paying just even money. We both win $1 on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$87.50		$98.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+1.00
Total	$88.50		$99.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	39–16		39–16