The Payoff: Mas

Yesterday, Frank Bruni upgraded Mas to two stars, omitting to mention that this is the rating it deserved in the first place:

In growing older Mas has indeed grown wiser. Its talented chef, Galen Zamarra, is making better decisions and his kitchen operates with more discipline than in 2004, when I gave the restaurant one star.

Frank is amazed that restaurants that start out good can actually stay good:

Too many restaurants start off like gangbusters, only to sag into a sour, cynical middle age while they’re still young. Once they’ve made their first impression, they focus mainly on making money. In lumbering lock step, the Champagne flutes and the servers lose their sparkle.

They even polish the silver: “The exquisite place settings, with gleaming silverware propped in flawlessly parallel lines on carved slate wedges: wasn’t this the jittery perfectionism seen in enterprises still awaiting judgment?”

Eater and New York Journal both win $3 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$78.50		$84.67
Gain/Loss	+3.00		+3.00
Total	$81.50		$87.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	35–14		34–15

Rolling the Dice: Mas

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 re-reviews the West Village farmhouse gem, Mas. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 8-1
One Star: 5-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 6-1
Four Stars: 7,500-1

The Skinny: Frank Bruni’s first review of Mas came early in his tenure: it was something like his fifth or sixth review. He awarded just one star, which even then felt too low. When I finally got around to visiting, albeit a couple of years later, the restaurant felt like a clear two stars, with the potential for three.

Despite Eater odds that suggest a real horserace, two stars is the only realistic outcome here. Two-step promotions are extraordinarily rare in the NYT star system, and Mas isn’t an important enough restaurant for Bruni to bother re-reviewing just to re-affirm its original one-star rating. Actually, Mas isn’t a restaurant I would have expected Bruni to keep on his radar screen at all, so I’m glad to see him rectifying one of his earlier mistakes.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Mas.

Mia Dona

Note: Click here for a later review of Mia Dona. It wasn’t as impressive the second time.

Restauranteur Donatella Arpaia and Chef Michael Psilakis have been busy. Every few months, they seem to be closing one restaurant and opening another.

Donatella Arpaia and Michael Psilakis

In less than five years, Arpaia has opened six restaurants. One closed, and she severed ties with another, leaving her with four. In less than four years, Psilakis has opened five restaurants. Two closed, leaving him with three, all partnered with Arpaia. One of them, Kefi, will be moving shortly, and they intend to open yet another restaurant in the current Kefi space.

Got that?

Mia Dona is their latest creation. It was supposed to replace Dona, which was a hit, but lost its lease not long after it opened. As it was at Dona, the cuisine at Mia Dona is Italian, though interpreted through Psilakis’s Mediterranean–Greek lens. But Mia Dona is really a much different concept, despite the superficial similarities. Dona was much more elegant and nearly twice as expensive. I wasn’t wowed at Dona, though I realize many others liked it better than I did.

At Mia Dona, you almost have to pinch yourself when you see the prices. Could this be true? Appetizers are $8–13; pastas are $10–12 as appetizers or $15–17 as entrees; meat and fish entrees are $17–24; side dishes are $8–9. The wine list has plenty of decent bottles under $50. Compare this to Dona in mid-2006, where entrees topped out at $45, and a four-course dinner was $75.

The front dining room [thewanderingeater]

Of course, something has been lost, too. The tablecloths are gone, and there’s a motley assortment of unmatched china and cheap wine glasses. A single hostess has the dual role of greeting guests and checking coats. The casually dressed servers are a bit pushy and somewhat bumbling. The restaurant has been open for five weeks, so perhaps some of these things will improve.

The decor is a confused jumble: three rooms, each of which looks as if it were entrusted to a different decorator. Some of the choices are odd indeed: blonde wood paneling and zebra-skin carpeting? That’s the back room. We were in the front room, which has bare brick walls, no carpeting, and colorful enamel dishes hanging from the walls.

Bread Service

With as many projects as Psilakis has in flight, you have to wonder how much time he spends in any of his kitchens. Yet, I’ve seen three menus—two on the Internet (here, here) and the one I brought home with me—and all are different. So it seems he still has time to innovate, or he has able deputies who do so in his stead.

Compared to the opening menu, most of the appetizers, pastas, and seafood entrees have changed, at least to some degree, and many of them considerably. (The meat entrees have remained pretty much the same.) The appetizer I ordered, which was perhaps the most remarkable item we tried, must be a new creation, as nothing even remotely like it is on either of the Internet menus. Psilakis continutes to astonish.

We liked the bread service, which came with two contrasting warm breads and a clove of warm garlic.

 
Bigoli (left); Warm Calf’s Tongue (right)

When I ordered Warm Calf’s Tongue ($10), I scarcely imagined what I was in for. Yes, there’s calf’s tongue, but also mushrooms, pecorino romano, a soft poached egg. That’s what the menu said, but there is apparently quite a bit more in there, including green vegetables and chili peppers. It’s a remarkable creation, and so hearty that it could almost be an entree.

My girlfriend was impressed with Bigoli ($11), thick pasta noodles with sausage, broccoli rabe, lentils, spicy chiles, and (again) pecorino romano. At least, that’s how it was served yesterday. Tomorrow, Psilakis may come up with something else.

 
Roasted Chicken (left); Roasted Red Snapper (right)

Psilakis does have a way with chicken. The preparation here ($17) is a bit less artistic than the version we had at Anthos, but just as tender and flavorful.

Roasted Red Snapper ($22) was the evening’s only disappointment. The fish was dull, and the skin (which could have imparted flavor) was too tough for my knife to penetrate. The cous cous underneath it were also bland, though mussels and merguez sausage were nice.

Even with side dishes, Psilakis gives you far more than you have any right to expect at the price. Spinach ($8), which could have served five people, was luscious, with béchamel and pecorino (a cheese that recurs in multiple dishes).

At Dona, portions were on the large side, and that’s true here, despite the bargain prices. Psilakis’s cuisine skews towards the beefy and hearty, and we left a bit overfed. We took most of the spinach home, and we were so full that we skipped our usual nightcap.

The wine list isn’t long, but it has plenty of budget-friendly bottles. We settled on a 2003 Chianti ($58). The first page of the list, with a pretentious list of Donatella’s favorites (“Wine I drink while watching my friends on television”), ought to be scrapped. Servers need a bit of training on wine etiquette (hint: pour the lady’s glass first).

Four out of the five things we ordered were excellent, and both appetizers and entrees were priced a good $5 apiece lower than they needed to be at this level of quality and ambition. If the service improves, and if Psilakis continues to lavish as much attention on the menu as he has to date, Mia Dona may rank among the city’s most remarkable restaurants.

Mia Dona (206 E. 58th Street between Second & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

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

Bruce's Cheese Emporium and Café

Bruce’s Cheese Emporium and Café is the ideal beginning of your day on the eastern North Fork of Long Island. It’s a cheese and baked goods store, with a café that serves breakfast and lunch.

They also make a damned good omelette. The specimen shown is soft and fluffy, with goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes.

Bruce’s Cheese Emporium and Café (208 Main Street, Greenport, New York)

Long Island Wineries

My girlfriend and I toured a bunch of Long Island wineries last summer. She drove, I did most of the drinking, and I took a day off from blogging. We were back last weekend, and though I didn’t shoot photos, we were at least a bit more systematic about recording what we saw, what we tasted, and what we liked.

The Long Island wine industry is only about twenty-five years old, though very few of the wineries go back even that far. New ones open every year. Most of the industry is on the more rural North Fork, where old potato farms are converted to vinyards as fast as rich folks can buy them.

It’s not a business for the impatient: it takes several years for a vinyard to produce its first wines, and usually much longer than that to establish a reputation. It is still rare to see a Long Island wine in a New York City restaurant. Many vinyards are too small for restaurants to deal with, but most have their own tasting rooms and wine clubs.

Tastings used to be free (they would make it up on wine sales), but the vinyards found that too many guests were showing up to get hammered. For a nominal fee (usually around $5) you get small tastes of between three and five wines. Most places use only one glass for the entire flight. The better ones will at least provide a new glass when you switch from white to red.

Wine tours are now big business, especially in the summer. Groups hire stretch limos and ride around the North Fork all afternoon. The wineries are close together, and you can hit a large number of them in a few hours, provided you have a designated driver. This time I was driving, so we limited ourselves to four stops and one shared tasting between us at each place.

If you’re visiting, be sure to check opening days and hours. Most are open on weekends only. Typical closing time is 5:00 or 6:00 p.m., and sometimes they’re closed for private events, such as weddings. 

The Tasting Room
2885 Peconic Lane
Peconic, NY
http://www.tastingroomLI.com/

The Tasting Room is in an 1800s storefront (it was a speakeasy during prohibition), and is Long Island’s only multi-vinyard tasting room. Six boutique wineries are featured, including two of our favorites, Comtesse Thérèse and Schneider Vinyards. The owner is Theresa Dilworth; she’s “Thérèse,” but she’s no countess, just a tax lawyer from New York. She’s also the only female head winemaker in New York.

We visited the Tasting Room last year and wanted to come back, as we love the friendly atmosphere, less aggressive selling, and the chance to compare wines from multiple producers. We picked up two bottles of the 2005 Comtesse Thérèse Blanc de Noir, a fruity peach-colored wine that we’ve enjoyed before. It’s in the style of a rosé, made from Cabernet Savuignon and Merlot grapes.

Macari Vinyards
150 Bergen Avenue
Mattituck, NY
http://www.macariwines.com/

We were drawn here because of the great 2002 Macari “Bergen Road” that we’d enjoyed with dinner at the Frisky Oyster. Macari has a fairly new tasting room that reminded us of a Swiss chalet. They’re one of the larger wineries on the island, and they clearly didn’t stint on its construction: it’s one of the most elegant tasting rooms in the area.

Their tasting, $8 for four wines, was one of the most expensive we’ve encountered. The servers do spend a bit more time talking about the wines than they do at other places, but not really enough to justify these prices.

We loved the buttery 2004 Chardonnay Reserve ($20.99), barrel fermented with hints of honey and nectar. We were also impressed with their inelegantly named 2004 “Block E,” a velvety dessert wine, but we weren’t prepared to spend $39.99 for a half bottle.

Macari has some of the most expensive Long Island wines we’ve seen. Their 2005 “Solo Uno,” released only just a few months ago, is $100. Their 2004 “Alexandra” is $80. Neither of these were on our tasting. We did try the 2005 “Bergen Road,” but it was nowhere near as good as the 2002 we’d had the night before.

The shop sells all of the Macari wines, but they also have an impressive selection of wine decanters in many styles in the $50–70 range. The same decanters would sell for well over $100 in the city. We were tempted, but reality set in: we’re all out of storage space.

Martha Clara Vineyards
6025 Sound Avenue
Riverhead, NY
http://www.marthaclaravineyards.com/

Martha Clara Vineyards is owned and operated by the Entenmann family, they of the supermarket baked goods fortune. Their tasting room resembles a big barn. It attracts bigger crowds than many of the other tasting rooms, and it isn’t at all charming.

There’s a rectangular wrap-around tasting bar, and servers rocket back and forth between guests without taking much time to explain the wines. We chose a three-wine tasting for $4. We could have taken the glass with us, but I didn’t need a wine glass with the Martha Clara logo on it.

We were here last summer, and I vaguely remembered a pretty good Cabernet Franc, but this time none of the three wines rocked our world, and we left without buying anything.

Diliberto Winery
250 Manor Lane
Jamesport, NY
http://www.dilibertowinery.com/

Sal Diliberto is another lawyer from the city who wanted to open a winery. For many years, he was making the wines himself at home in Hollis Hills, Queens. His Long Island winery is only a few years old, and his tasting room is the Island’s newest: it was still under construction when we drove by last year. It’s beautifully decorated in the style of an Italian piazza.

Diliberto has only been growing his own grapes for six years, but he’s already medaled in several competitions and has received favorable write-ups in the Times. He offers one of the more generous tastings: five wines for $5. The pours seem a bit more generous than they are elsewhere. You take a seat in his “piazza,” and a server comes over with each pour. It’s a lot more relaxed than standing at a bar.

Diliberto himself was on hand, and he came over to our table to chat. Extroverted and friendly, he loves his wines and loves to chat them up. His wines are only available from him directly: he’s too small for restaurants and stores to deal with.

We loved his 2003 “Tre” ($27), a Bordeaux-style blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. We might well have bought his 2001 Cabernet Sauvignon too ($27), but at that point we’d acquired enough liquor for one weekend.

We’ll be back in a few months to sample a few more wineries. 

Fat Food Bloggers

In today’s Times, Kim Severson has an article about — how do we put this? — fat food bloggers.

Exhibit A: Jason Perlow. As Severson tells it:

Back before everyone with a fork and a laptop started nursing a food blog, Mr. Perlow was a founder of eGullet, a pioneering online discussion forum that helped obsessed food enthusiasts find one another.

It put him at the center of a community where no food was too fatty and no field trip too extreme. Ferreting out the best place for an empanada or the perfect way to braise pork belly meant tasting countless versions, often in the same day. Being the first in the group to find it was golden.

Reality hit in October, when the 400-pound Perlow collapsed and spent three days in the hospital. He was diagnosed with diabetes and told he had five years to live.

Perlow’s eGullet co-founder, Steven A. Shaw (“Fat Guy”), who weighs 270 pounds, is unrepentant: “I think the whole diabetes thing is a major hoax. They are overdiagnosing it.” Presumably he believes Perlow’s hospital stay was a hoax too.

I have managed to avoid a weight problem only with difficulty. I weigh about 15 pounds less than my high, but about 10 pounds more than my low. A lot of my clothes (acquired at the low) just barely fit, and I do not want to replace them.

I spend a lot of time food-blogging, but fortunately I’ve never been as obsessed as Perlow. This week, I’m on a four-day stretch when I’ll eat only a very light breakfast and lunch, and no dinner. My first dinner of the week will be on Friday. I will most likely order just an appetizer, an entree, and a bottle of wine—no dessert. Despite that regime, which no one would call gluttonous, I am just barely treading water. If I ate out anywhere near as often I’d like to, I would be constantly gaining weight.

When I have a mid-week dinner on my schedule—anything on a Monday through Thursday—I know that it will be a tough week. I will probably end that week with a net weight gain. Just to tread water, I need to fast an awful lot. My metabolism is slow. What I lose the first four days each week, I generally gain back on the weekend, when I do most of my “dining out for fun.”

Next week will be challenging. I will be on vacation in Hawaii, and there will certainly be a temptation to eat out more than I normally would. To avoid gaining weight on the trip will require constant focus.

I am battling it every day.

The Payoff: La Sirène

Today, Frank Bruni awards one star to an “oddly compelling little bistro,” La Sirène:

I don’t want to oversell La Sirène, which opened last spring. It operates on a shoestring, doesn’t have a liquor license and doesn’t ace many of the dishes on its relatively short French menu…

And drawing attention to La Sirène runs the risk of overcrowding it. It has only about 25 seats and not an inch to spare, so if your table isn’t ready you have to stand outside, where you’re treated to an intimate view of cars streaming into the Holland Tunnel.

But this scrappy restaurant, where you can hear the bell every time a dish is ready and heat from the kitchen steams diners’ eyeglasses, will charm many people turned off by the vacuous polish and higher prices elsewhere. With no corkage fee, it’s a solid option for wine drinkers seeking liberation from restaurant markups.

Though he loved the place, only five paragraphs mention the food. The rest is about the cramped ambiance and chef Didier Pawlicki’s penchant for responding personally to Internet critiques on sites like citisearch.com.

But I loved the review anyway. It was one of the rare Bruni reviews that called attention to a worthy restaurant that all the other critics had missed. Usually, he just follows breadcrumb trails already well paved by others.

And it was one of the rare one-star reviews that was actually positive. Too often, Bruni’s one-star reviews read like a list of regrets that he couldn’t award a higher rating. One star is supposed to mean “good,” and there ought to be no shame in that.

Lastly, as I mentioned yesterday, this seems to be the first time that Bruni has actually gone out of his way to review a French restaurant. I don’t want to celebrate prematurely, but perhaps he is finally expanding his interests beyond Italian, Asian and Steakhouses.

In the betting department, we’re a loser again this week. We acknowledged that one star was the most likely outcome, but with Eater offering 15–1 odds on the higher rating, we couldn’t help but take the chance, though we must admit it’s a betting strategy that has never yet worked. But because this was such a good week for Bruni, we actually don’t mind losing. The review was at the higher end of one star, as we expected, but one star nevertheless.

Eater wins $4, while we lose $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$74.50		$85.67
Gain/Loss	+4.00		–1.00
Total	$78.50		$84.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	34–14		33–15

North Fork Table & Inn

The North Fork Table & Inn is a charming bed & breakfast on the North Fork of Long Island, with a restaurant that has food addicts buzzing. It opened two years ago, after four Manhattan restaurant veterans decided they were sick of the big city.

Their credentials are impressive. Gerry Hayden (Aureole, Amuse) is executive chef. His wife, Claudia Fleming (Gramercy Tavern and numerous others), is pastry chef. Their partners, Mike and Mary Mraz (Hearth, Gramercy Tavern), run the front-of-house.

The upstairs had been a B&B under a succession of owners, while various French restaurants had occupied the dining room. The old building needed a gut renovation. The kitchen was too large, the bathrooms inconveniently located. One of the support beams was sagging.

As of 2006, it has all been redone in an understated post-colonial austerity. Both the dining room and the guest rooms are dominated by whites and light tans, with the walls mostly bare. The dining room is elegant and upscale, if you don’t mind floorboards that creak a little bit. There’s a handsome bar which can also accommodate walk-ins for dinner.

The four guest rooms are large, comfortable, and recently renovated. There’s Wi-Fi access and a flat-screen TV. Each room has its own bathroom, also renovated.

The house actually has rooms on two levels, but alas, those on the third floor aren’t available to guests. Had they been renovated too, the North Fork Table & Inn would have been considered a hotel under the zoning laws, rather than a B&B, and a different set of building codes would have applied. The owners considered it, but the cost was prohibitive.

The restaurant garnered plenty of attention, including positive reviews from Andrea Strong, Gael Greene and Newsday. Dining there was the main reason for our trip, though we also took in wineries, visits with my girlfriend’s family, and dinner at another, equally compelling restaurant, The Frisky Oyster.

“Northforkopoly” (click to expand)

We chose to visit in late winter, mainly because we wouldn’t have had a prayer of getting in during the summer. Had we been bored, we could’ve settled in for a game of Northforkopoly, the local version of Monopoly (board and pieces supplied) though we’d need to have our heads examined if we could find nothing better to do.

We arrived to find bucket with a bottle of water on ice, but there’s no mini-bar or coffee maker. For that you have to go downstairs. Breakfast is served from 8:00–9:30 a.m., though when we wandered down much later than that, coffee and plenty of Fleming’s breakfast pastries were still available.

Dinner is served Wednesdays through Mondays, lunch Saturdays and Sundays. The lunch menu is similar to the dinner menu, though a bit less expensive and with smaller portions. At dinner, appetizers are mostly $12–18, though the foie gras starter is $25. Mains are $32–38. The five-course tasting menu is a bargain at $75, and though we didn’t order it, we noted that the portion sizes were generous. These prices are quite expensive by Long Island standards, and the restaurant is dependent on being regarded as a “destination” for out-of-town visitors.

 
Raw Hamachi and Seared Foie Gras (left); Potato Gnocchi in a Braised Veal-Tomato Ragout (right)

The menu relies on locally sourced ingredients wherever possible, though in the winter practically everything came from elsewhere. Chef Gerry Hayden paired Raw Hamachi with Seared Hudson Valley Foie Gras ($25), accented with glazed daikon, radish syrup, mustard cress and fleur de sel. I’m not sure if it was a mistake or a considered decision, but the foie gras was more crisped than seared, but its warm, crunchy texture was a terrific foil for the hamachi.

My girlfriend had the Potato Gnocchi in a Braised Veal-Tomato Ragout ($15), which was rich and hearty, but made with a heavier hand than some of the better gnocchi we’d had in the city recently.

 
Long Island Duck Breast (left); Shinn Estate Vinyards “Wild Boar Doe” 2005 (right)

You can’t get any more local than Long Island Duck Breast ($34), which we both chose as our main course. It was painted with a wonderful soy-honey glaze, and the duck slices had a hefty rim of wonderful fat, but I didn’t see the point of the accompanying crisp jasmin rice roll, which was too dull to share the plate with such assertive company.

The wine list is brief and fairly priced. Keeping with our determination to drink only local wines, we chose the wonderful and wittily-named Shinn Estates “Wild Boar Doe” ($55), a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. Once again, we found that blends are dependable choices on Long Island, especially when you’re ordering a wine you’ve never heard of.

 
Cheese Plate (left): Coconut Tapioca (right)

We finished with the Cheese Plate ($12), which offered three American cheeses: a firm, raw sheep’s milk cheese from California, a crumbly raw cow’s milk cheese from Oregon, and a soft sheep and cow’s milk cheese from the Hudson Valley. The kitchen also sent out servings of the Coconut Tapioca with Passion Fruit Sorbet (normally $11), a terrific end to our meal.

I can’t close without commenting on a remarkable coincidence. A short while after we sat down, the table next to us opened up, and the next couple to arrive was the same couple that had been seated next to us at the Frisky Oyster. It’s not quite as improbable as if it had happened in Manhattan, but the chances of it happening are still awfully low.

Naturally we got to talking, and comparing notes about our meals on consecutive evenings. Which was better, the Frisky Oyster or the North Fork Table & Inn? The North Fork is fancier, more romantic, and more elegant. But what about the food? It’s awfully close, but several of us thought the Frisky Oyster had the North Fork beaten by a nose. Even between the four of us, we tasted only a fraction of the menus at both places, so it’s not a definitive judgment, by any means. You can have—check that, you will have—a terrific meal at either restaurant.

We loved our visit to the North Fork Table & Inn. The owners are outgoing and accessible. This is their passion, and they will do everything they can to make your visit a happy experience. Service is attentive and flawless, as you’d expect in a restaurant with so many Gramercy Tavern alumni in its midst.

We certainly hope to be back.

North Fork Table & Inn (57225 Main Road, Southold, Long Island)

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

BruniBetting: La Sirène

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 has an under-the-radar special: La Sirène. The Eater oddsmakers have set the odds as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 3-1
One Star: 4-1 √√
Two Stars: 15-1
Three Stars: 75-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: It’s hard for a reviewed restaurant to be more obscure than this one. La Sirène—that’s French for The Mermaid—has been in business for nine months, and I can’t find a single professional review. How did it even come to Bruni’s notice? Well, it does seem to be popular in the gay community. (I am not suggesting that that’s its only attraction.)

The Eater odds today are really crazy. Frank has never pulled a restaurant “out of nowhere” to give it zero stars. It makes no sense to waste a reviewing slot on a place the critics have already ignored anyway, only to suggest that it’s not worth our time.

When Frank reviews a small, earnest restaurant that’s off the beaten path, the rating is usually two stars. After all, one star in the Bruniverse isn’t much of a compliment for restaurants above the level of a deli. One star used to mean “good,” but the truly good one star review is a rarity nowadays.

To the best of our recollection, this is the first time Bruni has reviewed a French restaurant that wasn’t, in some sense, “compelled.” La Sirène is a restaurant he could easily have skipped—after all, every other critic did. When Bruni goes out of his way, it’s usually Italian, Asian, or Steak. So what’s going on here? Bruni must really have been smitten.

We hesitate to jump on the deuce train. For one thing, it’s BYOB, and that’s a rare deficiency in a two-star restaurant (though not unheard of in the Bruni era). Also, what is the probability that there’s a two-star restaurant that every other critic completely overlooked? Assuming that chef Didier Pawlicki’s cuisine is worthy of Frank’s attention, the rating could come down to service, and we have no reliable data points from which to judge.

Our usual practice here is to bet on the most probable outcome, which we believe is one star. But we are positive that if Bruni bothered to put this restaurant on his reviewing rounds, he must have found something extremely compelling, and he would just love to pull the two-star trigger if he could. Therefore, Eater’s 15–1 odds on that outcome are just as crazy as Eater’s 3–1 odds on a goose egg.

Perhaps Eater is just toying with us, but we can’t leave an attractive 15–1 spot hanging like that.

The Bet: Although we believe one star is the most probable outcome, we are laying a wager on the huge payday that the Eater oddsmakers have offered, and are betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to La Sirène.

The Frisky Oyster

This weekend, we took a break from New York City to head out to the North Fork of Long Island, where my girlfriend grew up. On our culinary tour, first up was The Frisky Oyster in Greenport. The restaurant has been open since 2001, and has received generally glowing reviews (New York Times, Newsday).

Despite the name, seafood accounts for only about 40% of the menu, which changes daily. Indeed, when we asked our server for ordering advice, she said that several entrees and appetizers were new that day, and she hadn’t tried them yet.

The vaguely New American menu has some standard-issue favorites (steak frites; beet and goat cheese salad), but more than a few dishes that combine ingredients in unexpected ways: cannelloni with goat cheese cream; scallops with eggplant purée. 

The space has comfortable tables and banquettes, and there’s a lively bar scene in the front of the restaurant. The flowery red wallpaper is a bit gaudy, but the restaurant feels warmer in person than the photo above would suggest. The dining room is on the loud side, with solid surfaces and uncarpeted floors that allow the sound to reverberate.

The vibe feels very much like the West Village, and we surmised that most of the clientele were from out of town. Prices are high by local standards, but visitors from Manhattan will feel at home, with appetizers $9–15 and entrees $25–35.

 
Oysters ‘Friskafella’ (left); Lobster and Corn Quesadilla (right)

Several reviews mentioned that The Frisky Oyster often has no oysters on the menu, but on Friday night they were present and accounted for. I started with the Oysters ‘Friskafella’ ($15), a play on the old classic, Oysters Rockefeller, made here with spinach, garlic and chipotle, and covered with a sheet of parmesan.

My girlfriend had the Lobster and Corn Quesedilla ($15).

 
Halibut with “clams oreganata” (left); Striped Bass (right)

I was especially impressed with the entrees, which can often be a letdown. Both fish we tried were impeccable. Halibut ($28) was topped with Clams Oreganata (crushed clams, bread crumbs, oregano, parsley, mint), on a bed of asparagus. The combination worked perfectly. My girlfriend had the Striped Bass ($28) with an artichoke, potato, shitake ragout.

The wine list is brief and eclectic. Naturally we wanted a Long Island wine, so I chose the Macari 2002 Meritage Bergen Road ($55). This is a Bordeaux-style blend, which I find is more dependable than the Long Island wines that rely upon a single grape. This one had matured nicely, and it wasn’t too overbearing to be enjoyed with fish.

We’ve heard reports of service issues at this restaurant, including long waits for food. That didn’t happen to us, but there were only two servers for the whole dining room (more than half full), and it could be a very different story during the high summer season.

Even if you do have to wait, it is well worth it for seafood so beautifully prepared.

The Frisky Oyster (27 Front Street near Main Street, Greenport, Long Island)

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