Adour

[Rockwell Group]

Note: Adour closed in November 2012. A succession of executive chefs was not able to reclaim a lost Michelin star, or apparently, lost business.

*

My girlfriend and I thought it was near tragic when Alain Ducasse at the Essex House closed. It was the site of perhaps the best meal we have had in New York. When Ducasse announced that he was moving to the St. Regis, site of the former four-star Lespinasse, in a new restaurant called Adour, we hoped the magic would be moving with him.

Alas, the magic is nowhere to be found. Adour is a bore. A really crashing bore.

I don’t think three-star food has to be innovative: I find real pleasure in classics done well. But the menu here is downright soporific: one yawn after another. There’s no excitement on the plate at all. And if no longer priced in the stratosphere, as it was at the Essex House, the food at Adour is still very expensive. For entrées priced in the $40s, one expects at least some indication of the creative spark that earned Ducasse all of those Michelin stars.

The menu is printed on stiff boards glued into an upholstered cardboard folder. It is obviously not easily changeable. It makes Adour feel like a crass hotel restaurant. The subtle message it sends is: “The food isn’t changing anytime soon.” It is almost all in English. It apparently hasn’t occurred to Monsieur Ducasse that patrons at his restaurant might want, you know, French food.

Is this Ducasse’s way of saying “Screw you, New York”? Or, in his eagerness to pander—to give Americans what he thinks we want—has he forgotten to give us what he’s actually good at? We asked one of the servers what had happened to the great menu served at the Essex House. “It was time to move on,” he said.

To “move on” to this?

We certainly expected dialed-down luxury, given a price point about 50% lower than the Essex House. But there isn’t even an amuse-bouche here. If you order a cheese course ($22), there’s no cart, just a plate of four cheeses deposited on your table.

The wine service shines, though. The menu, after all, is supposedly designed to go well with wine, though I am not sure what that means. The list has plenty of compelling choices at decent prices, including multiple bottles of red under $50. We selected a 1996 Bricco Boschi Barolo at $105, which the staff decanted for us. I also liked the bread service, which came with a wonderful soft olive butter.

 
Sweetbread “Meunière”, Egg Purse (left); Foie Gras Tapioca Ravioli (right)

Sweetbreads with wild mushrooms ($24) were simply grilled, but I appreciated the egg purse in the center of the plate, which made a rich, runny mess. My girlfriend’s Foie Gras Tapioca Ravioli ($23) were dull. The taste of foie can always be counted on for luxury by default, but the dish made no attempt to offer any contrast.

 
Venison Medallions (left); Roasted Colorado Rack of Lamb (right)

Both Venison ($42) and Rack of Lamb ($48) were left basically to fend for themselves, with token vegetables offering little to amuse the palate. My girlfriend said that the side of risotto that came with her lamb was more interesting than the lamb itself.

 
Pear Clafoutis (left); Gala Apple Soufflé (right)

Neither dessert captured our imagination either, though at $14 apiece we didn’t feel cheated. The plates of petits-fours were generous, though we were full and didn’t touch them.

At Adour, the service team is no longer all French, as they were at the Essex House. Most of them seem capable, though we observed some minor snafus that no doubt will be worked out as the restaurant gets its legs. When we arrived, we appreciated that we were given ample time to peruse the wine list and enjoy our champagne. The restaurant wasn’t full, and the table appeared to be ours for as long as we wanted it.

The David Rockwell-designed space is comfortable and gorgeous. It could easily be one of the city’s most serene spots to enjoy a meal. But the food doesn’t live up to it. We can only hope Ducasse will take this milquetoast menu back into his laboratory, and return with some real excitement.

Adour (2 E. 55th Street at Fifth Avenue in the St. Regis Hotel, East Midtown)

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

The Stanton Social

OpenTable.com has a list of the Top 10 Booked Restaurants in New York. For a long time, the Stanton Social was on that list. It isn’t any longer, but I’m sure it’s not far off the pace. I almost pinched myself a few weeks ago, when I saw a 7:00 p.m. two-top on a Friday evening, and grabbed it.

If there’s a popularity checklist in the restaurant industry, the Stanton Social ticks all of the boxes. Its inexpensive tapas-style menu covers all the popular cuisines. Check. Kobe beef and foie gras are on hand to contribute an haute cuisine flourish or two. Check. Lower East Side vibe. Check. Eye-popping AvroKO décor. Check. An ear-thumping sound track. Check.

I arrived early, so I headed upstairs to try a few of the house cocktails. Black Magic ($10), a simple mixture of Guinness and Brut Champagne, was a complete failure. The bartender later admitted he hates it too: “Guinness and champagne can be good friends outside of work, but they don’t belong together at work.”

The Social Tea ($12), with Stoli Citros, green tea and orange-honey marmelade was appealing in a generically sweet way. But the best of the three I tried was the bartender’s recommendation, the Blood Orange Jalapeño Margarita ($12), with a house tequila that marinates in jalapeño peppers for about two weeks.

The menu, as noted, is entirely tapas-style: “Rather than offering individual starters and main courses, The Stanton Social serves dishes that are designed for sharing and are brought to the table steadily and continuously throughout the meal.”

Awarding one star in the Times, Frank Bruni commended chef Chris Santos’s “determination to find readily divisible finger food where no chef has found it before.”

Our server advised 5–6 dishes as being about right for two people. That was pretty reasonable advice. We chose five (out of a menu offering nearly fifty), including all three that she recommended. While we waited for our food, the kitchen brought out crisp bread with chipotle garlic butter (above right). We would easily have eaten more than one slice apiece, had there been more.

 
Duck Confit Empanadas and Potato & Goat Cheese Pierogies (left); French Onion Soup Dumplings (right)

It’s safe to assume that the kitchen’s greatest hits are mostly pre-assembled, as our first two plates came out after only five minutes or so. We loved Duck Confit Empanadas ($9), which had a nice tang, the blood orange dipping sauce offering a sweet-sour contrast. Potato and Goat Cheese Pierogies ($8) were less interesting, and my girlfriend (who’s half-Polish) felt that these deep-fried dumpling-like creatures weren’t pierogies at all. [Sorry about the washed-out photo.]

We also wondered why, on a menu designed for sharing, the kitchen would send out three empanadas and three pierogies. Most of the parties at the Stanton Social are even numbers of people. Would it have been that hard to create dishes in twos or fours, rather than threes?

French Onion Soup Dumplings ($11) admirably show off the chef’s talent for going where sharable plates have never gone before. Served in an escargot dish, there are six dumplings, each on a skewer with its own crouton, a hot onion soup center, and Gruyère slathered on top. Even more admirably, there are six of them.

 
Kobe Beef Sliders and Fries (left); Braised Short Rib Soft Tacos (right)

Kobe Beef Sliders are one of the few dishes not designed for sharing: they’re $7 apiece, and a wonderful tender gooey mess. The server recommended a bowl of fries ($6) to go with them. They were hot and not greasy, but over-salted. Beef Short Rib Soft Tacos ($19) weren’t very flavorful, and seemed somewhat “flat” compared to everything else we tasted. Once again, there were three of them—an odd design in more ways than one.

Tapas-style restaurants usually send out plates when the kitchen is ready, no matter what the customer may want. I don’t know if we got lucky, or if the Stanton Social is more enlightened, but the pace of our meal was just about right. Plates were delivered, cleared, and delivered anew on schedule, without us having to deal with mountains of food we weren’t ready to eat.

Of course, that “schedule” needs to be construed in the terms of a restaurant designed to turn over the tables quickly, and where no food item is meant to be lingered over: we were in and out in under 75 minutes. Given the din of the sound system, we weren’t eager to spend any more time there than necessary.

Although we snagged a 7:00 p.m. table, no one should conclude that the Stanton Social is losing its popularity: the place was packed. The small-plates format is still a winning one, and there are many clever choices to tempt you. If one or two are less successful, you’ll still have several others to enjoy. A larger group could very well try most of the menu.

We weren’t quite impressed enough, however, to endure again the crowds, the noise, and the difficulty of getting a reservation.

The Stanton Social (90 Stanton Street between Orchard & Ludlow Streets, Lower East Side)

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

The Payoff: Le Cirque

Yesterday, Frank Bruni awarded the expected three stars to Le Cirque. Even so, he made no attempt to conceal his disdain for the classic luxury that this restaurant has always represented:

At Le Cirque you will indeed eat too much food…at a sometimes ludicrous expense.

But that has long been the way of certain restaurants, which exist to be absurd, to speak not to our better angels but to our inner Trumps, making us feel pampered and reckless and even a little omnipotent, if only for two hours and three courses with a coda of petits fours.

And while I’m not calling for the spread of these establishments…, I’m charged with noting when one of them fulfills its chosen mission with classic panache. Le Cirque now does.

Has a NYT critic ever called a restaurant “absurd”, noting he’s not keen to see any more like it, while awarding three stars?

What’s absurd is that Frank Bruni would describe the restaurant in those terms, when all Le Cirque is doing is what it has always done, which in the past the Times has considered a three or four-star experience. The only thing that has changed is the critic.

Both Eater and New York Journal considered the trifecta a sure thing this week. We both win just $1 on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$63.50		$79.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+1.00
Total	$64.50		$80.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	29–13		30–12

Rolling the Dice: Le Cirque

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 one of the city’s few remaining grand dames of French glory, Le Cirque. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 9-1
One Star: 8-1
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: EVEN √√
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: Our view is the same as Eater’s: any outcome except three stars would be extremely surprising. Let’s roll out the BruniTrends^®:

This is the fourth time Bruni has re-visited one of his own past reviews—his first review of Le Cirque was just over eighteen months ago. In each prior case (Eleven Madison Park, Craftsteak, Alto), the result was an upgrade. Indeed, most of Bruni’s re-reviews—even when the prior review was by another critic—have resulted in a change of rating.

No one has suggested that Le Cirque has gotten worse over the last eighteen months, and there is quite a bit of evidence that it has gotten better. As Adam Platt noted in his year-end round-up for New York, “perhaps the most impressive kitchen overhaul of all has taken place at Le Cirque, where Sirio Maccioni’s latest chef, Christophe Bellanca, has expanded the pricey, formerly stolid menu to include a whole variety of sophisticated, radically pricey new treats.”

We also rated Le Cirque three stars when we visited late last year.

If this review turns out as we are predicting, other BruniTrends^® will need to be re-calibrated. In over 3½ years on the job, Bruni has never yet awarded three or four stars to a classically luxurious French restaurant, unless he was re-affirming (or reducing) a prior critic’s rating. One could safely have assumed that it was not a format that interested him. After tomorrow, we may no longer be able to make such assumptions.

To the best of my recollection, this is the first time Eater has set even-money odds on any outcome, and I believe it is also the largest gap between the most likely and second-most likely outcomes. There are good reasons for this: everything points to three stars this week.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award three stars to Le Cirque.

Veritas

 

Note: This is a review under chef Ed Cotton. Click here for a review under the current chef, Sam Hazen.

Ten years ago, Park. B. Smith figured out that if he opened one bottle a day from his massive wine collection, it would take 119 years to drink it all. It was that scary thought that led him to open Veritas, the lovely 65-seat wine-themed restaurant in the Flatiron District.

Acclaim came quickly, with a three-star rating from Ruth Reichl in the Times, and much later a Michelin star. Veritas has hummed along quietly, less publicized than showier restaurants, but still doing a brisk business. In October, founding chef Scott Bryan left suddenly, “with no destination decided.” Ed Cotton, who was to have opened Bar Boulud for Daniel Boulud, replaced him.

As it was a decade ago, wine is the story at Veritas. Even then—when it was far less common—Veritas’ wine list was available online. It is divided into two sections, a smaller and less expensive “market list,” and the longer “reserve list.” The large volume is one of the heftiest in New York; you could get lost in it for hours. There are bottles under $60 and bottles over $10,000. We chose the 1998 Le Crau de ma Mère ($115) from the reserve list. It’s a Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Park B. Smith’s favorite French wine.

While we were ordering, we couldn’t help overhearing the spectacle at the next table. An elderly solo diner was presented with his bill, $999, which had to have been mostly wine. And the bottle on his table, which must have cost $800, was still half full. The gentleman, clearly a Veritas regular, left without settling his bill (he was short of cash), telling the staff that he would be back for dinner the next evening. The wine he left over was, we are sure, shared and enjoyed by the restaurant staff.

The menu is $82 prix fixe, with tasting menus available at $110 (five-course) or $135 (seven-course). There are ten appetizers, eight entrées, and six desserts.

 

The amuse-bouche (above left) was house-cured salmon with a small vegetable medley. My girlfriend and I both started with the Wild Game Bolognese (above right) with butternut squash, wild chestnuts, and house-made cavatelli.

 

I enjoyed the Red Wine Braised Short-Ribs (above left), though they were slightly stringy. My girlfriend adored the Slow Baked Loch Duart Salmon (above right).

 

Finally, there was a terrific Banana Cream Tart (above left), while my girlfriend had the Chocolate Caramel Torte (above right).

Petits-fours

Service was smooth, alert, friendly and professional. Our wine was, of course, decanted for us, a practice that too many fine restaurants have abandoned.

The cuisine at Veritas might be described as safe and traditional, but everything we tried was beautifully assembled, impeccably prepared, and just complex enough to be interesting.

The wine’s the show at Veritas, but it’s served in a serene setting, with food more than good enough to deserve admiration and praise.

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

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

The Payoff: Ilili

In tomorrow’s Times, Frank Bruni awards one star to Ilili:

In addition to its considerable charms, intermittent disappointments and svelte-letter palindrome of a name, the new restaurant Ilili presents a case study: how do you try to turn a medium-profile cuisine into a big-time event?

The answer isn’t revelatory to anyone who’s been foraging in trendy, splashy New York restaurants in recent years.

You throw foie gras at the problem. Raw tuna, too. You write a menu that permits diners to build a nibble-of-this, nibble-of-that meal from a lengthy succession of small plates. You add pulsing music and lavish décor.

For what it’s worth, this review may have set a record for the earliest posting in the Bruni era: it was on the Times website before 6:00 p.m., about 3–4 hours earlier than usual.

After a three-week losing streak, we decided to throw out all the BruniTrends^®, and just went with our gut. As a result, the streak ends: we win $2, while Eater has now lost two in a row.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$64.50		$77.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+2.00
Total	$63.50		$79.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	28–13		29–12

Rolling the Dice: Ilili

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 reviews the new big-box Lebanese restaurant with the palindromic name, Ilili. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 3-1
One Star: 2-1
Two Stars: 4-1 √√
Three Stars: 50-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: We are riding a three-week losing streak, so we aren’t going to trot out any BruniTrends^®. Let us simply say that, to us, Ilili felt like a one-star restaurant.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star to Ilili.

First Look: Adour by Alain Ducasse

Note: Click here for a full review of Adour.

Adour Alain Ducasse at the St. Regis opened this evening. I stopped in for a drink at the bar, where another patron informed me I was the sixth customer.

The electronic menus have received most of the press. You find your wine by navigating a touch screen that displays on the surface of the bar, projected from above. To get to Burgundy reds, for instance, you’d tap “Wines,” then “Red,” then “France,” then “Burgundy,” and then you can scroll down the list. For any given wine, you can retrieve tasting notes, producer history, and so forth.

It sounds good in theory, but the mechanism is finicky. If your touch is off by even a little, the mechanism misbehaves. After a while, I just gave up, and I noticed that others were frustrated too. I don’t think bar patrons—even at a high-class bar like this one—want to learn a new technology just to order a glass of wine. Within six months, I suspect they’ll be back to traditional paper and ink.

Selections by the glass were ample, and I enjoyed a wonderful Southern Rhone blend for $13, along with a cup of Yuzu Sorbet for just $4. If you’re thinking that those don’t sound like Ducasse prices, you’d be right.

There are about a dozen bar snacks, ranging from $9–16. It’s a remarkable selection at a bar that seats only four, and the guys next to me loved everything they tried. One of them was so taken with the Yuzu Sorbet that he asked the manager if the restaurant could supply a quantity for his Super Bowl party. (The manager replied that he was not sure the pastry chef could have quite enough of it made by Sunday.)

In the main restaurant, there are nine appetizers priced from $17–29, ten entrées at $32–49, and six desserts at $14. The cheese course is $22, and the five-course tasting menu is $110. Though clearly not bargain-priced, this is still a good deal less than the predecessor restaurant at the Essex House, where the prix fixe was $150 and the tasting menu $225.

I’m looking forward to dining there in two weeks’ time.

Adour Alain Ducasse (2 E. 55th Street at Fifth Avenue in the St. Regis Hotel, East Midtown)

The Florida Primary

Tomorrow, Florida holds its presidential primary.

The Republican race is hotly contested, with John McCain and Mitt Romney running neck-and-neck in the polls. Although Romney actually has more delegates up to this point, McCain is the front-runner nationally. If McCain wins in Florida, his momentum going into Super Tuesday, a week from tomorrow, would be all-but insurmountable. If Romney wins, we will still have a race.

Regardless of the outcome, I think tomorrow is the end for Rudy Giuliani’s presidential campaign. Florida was supposed to be his “firewall”. But having not only lost, but badly lost, in the first six states, he surrendered whatever advantage may have had. He now trails the front-runners, not only in Florida, but everywhere else.

The Democratic contest in Florida is technically uncontested. The national party stripped Florida of its delegates, after the state scheduled its primary a week earlier than the official rules allowed. That strikes me as a short-sighted strategy. The Democrats need Florida. It is one of the few states “red” states that the Democrats have a realistic chance of winning in November. (Some people call it a “purple” state.)

Nevertheless, Hillary Clinton is on the ballot and is expected to win, just as she did in Michigan, the other state penalized by the national Democratic party. In all likelihood, these two states’ delegates will wind up getting seated at the convention. I just can’t see the Democrats freezing out their most passionate supporters in two battleground states.

Whatever happens in Florida, the Democratic race is still wide open. Hillary Clinton has a wide lead in delegates over Barack Obama, and she leads the polls in most of the Super Tuesday states. It will be interesting to see if the endorsement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy, which Obama captured today, will make a difference. Historically, endorsements seldom matter very much, but Kennedy is obviously in a category unto himself.

It’s worth considering the different opportunities and problems the two leading Democrats would have in November.

Almost 100% of voting Americans have heard of Hillary Clinton, and know what they think of her. And a pretty high percentage of them (about 48%) don’t like her, and cannot be persuaded to like her, no matter what she may say or do.

That doesn’t mean the remaining 52% will vote for her. It only means they’re “persuadable”. But when you start with a ceiling of 52%, there isn’t much room for error. I mean, both Al Gore and John Kerry started with a higher ceiling than 52%, but they ended up with less than that. This is because some people who are willing to consider voting for you, end up not voting for you, not because they don’t like you, but because they like the other guy better. Or because they just stay home.

So for Hillary to win in November, she needs to hold onto that last 2.1% that will get her over the hump. And historically, that’s tough to pull off. In electoral college terms, she needs to win every state that John Kerry won, and pull away at least a couple of states from the Republican camp. There are only 3 or 4 states where she has even a chance of that, and it is only a chance.

Obama starts out with a much higher ceiling, because there are very few people who actually say they don’t like him. Even the staunchest Republicans — those who have never voted for a Democrat in their lives, and won’t vote for Obama — at least say that he’s a likable guy.

So that means that most Independents — the people who actually settle a presidential race — will at least consider him. So whereas Hillary starts with a ceiling of something like 52%, Obama starts with a ceiling more like 60–65%. Mind you, he wouldn’t get 60–65%, or anything close to it. As in any election, some percentage of those folks would eventually choose the other guy. But the point is they’re available to be persuaded, and for Hillary they’re not.

The problem for Obama is the thinness of his record. The most that his supporters can say, is that he stands for “change” in some vague way. But what kind of change is it? Most voters don’t know. As his background and his proposals start to get better known, uncomfortable truths could seep out. So whereas Obama has a higher ceiling, he has a lower floor. The bottom could really drop out if there are skeletons lurking in his record.

In contrast, we already know Hillary’s skeletons. After her 20 years in the public eye, it’s doubtful we’ll find out anything worse about her than what is already known. So with Hillary, the worst that happens is that she loses a little worse than Kerry and Gore did, and the best that happens is that she ekes out a narrow victory. With Obama, almost anything is possible.

Bobo

Note: This is a review of Bobo under chef Jered Stafford-Hill, who was replaced by Patrick Connolly in mid-2008, and then by Cedric Tovar in early 2012.

*

Tenth Street in the West Village is quickly turning into a new Restaurant Row, with p*ong and Bar Blanc, and now Bobo, which opened in September, within steps of each other.

Things didn’t exactly start out well for Bobo. There was a Ducasse-trained chef, Nicolas Cantrel, in the kitchen, but Bobo was panned. The Restaurant Girl said that “Bobo…is a no-no.” Gotham Gal didn’t like it either. Cantrel left in December. It was described as an amicable parting, but something is amiss when the chef leaves after less than two months.

Rick Jakobson and Jared Stafford-Hill were brought in to revamp the kitchen, though as of last Friday the menu still seemed to be basically the same as Cantrel was serving. Despite the early hiccups, we thought we’d give Bobo a try.

If Bobo can settle down, it could easily become one of the most romantic spots in town. It has the loveliest dining room we have seen in a very long time. The name, derived from bourgeois bohemian is admittedly a bit precious, and so is the concept:

…inspired by European dinner parties, celebrating the shared experience of dining with family and friends in a warm setting. So that, even at 5 o’clock in the morning, your guests haven’t even considered leaving.

But Bobo really grows on you. The food isn’t consistent enough yet, but perhaps it’s getting there.

 

I started with a wonderful spaghetti appetizer (above left), and a codfish entrée (above right) was first-rate. My girlfriend found the foie gras terrine satisfactory, but Chicken Grand-Mère—a holdover from the Cantrel era—was slightly overcooked, as indeed other critics had found it.

There are several enjoyable house cocktails: I especially liked Bobo’s Mead (Plymouth gin, Lime, Lavender-infused honey). The staff transferred the bar tab to our table, as all decent restaurants should, but alas, many do not. We were also pleased to see a real choice of decent red wines below $50. Service was just fine, aside from slightly stale bread rolls.

Bobo is a restaurant you want to root for. The early negative press doesn’t seem to have hurt very much, as the space was close to full on a Friday evening. I look forward to visiting again after the new chefs have their own menu in place.

Bobo (181 W. 10th Street at Seventh Avenue South, West Village)

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