After a deeply enjoyable lunch at Per Se recently, I started thinking about what it means to be a four-star restaurant.
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Most of us can’t afford a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, or a Maserati. Yet, most of us respect those cars. They captivate us. If offered a free ride in a Rolls, wouldn’t we all jump at the chance?
Not so with four-star restaurants. There’s a large sub-culture that finds these bastions of luxury actively worse — who wouldn’t care to visit them, even if they were free, and who certainly don’t find the stratospheric sticker prices remotely worthwhile.
Luxury restaurants coddle you. Some diners are stubbornly resistant to coddling. It’s not just that they’re willing to pay less, in exchange for the same food with worse service. They actually prefer it that way. Frank Bruni captured the ethos of the new generation in his first review of Momofuku Ssäm Bar:
Ssam Bar answers the desires of a generation of savvy, adventurous diners with little appetite for starchy rituals and stratospheric prices.
They want great food, but they want it to feel more accessible, less effete.
These comments captured the false dichotomy. If you don’t join them, you’re un-savvy and effete. Good service is a “starchy ritual,” a religious ceremony repeated endlessly for no logical purpose.
I remember when Hell’s Kitchen was home to vagrants, prostitutes, car dealerships, strip clubs, and idling buses. No more. The car dealers remain (nowhere else to go), but the seedy side of Hell’s Kitchen is history.
Walk the neighborhod now, and you find spanking-new Off-Broadway theaters, upscale apartment towers, boutique hotels, and trendy bars. There’s something new on almost every block. A restaurant boom promised in the Post two years ago hasn’t quite materialized. It’s getting better, but it’s not there yet.
Print Restaurant opened three years ago in the Ink48 Hotel, at Hell’s Kitchen’s most remote address, 48th Street and Eleventh Avenue. There’s nothing wrong with the neighborhood any more, but it’s a loooong hike from the subway.
You can guess the theme here, in this renovated printing plant. The rooftop lounge/bar is called Press, which I visited a while back. You’ll quickly forget the drinks, but the view is one of the city’s best. Even the NYT’s Frank Bruni loved it.
It’s pretty clear that Print was meant to be more than just a hotel cafeteria. Early publicity mentioned chef Charles Rodriguez’s past work with Thomas Keller and Charlie Trotter—maybe just a stage, but still. Starchitect David Rockwell, who never met a dark wood he didn’t like, designed the dining room.
But Print received scant critical attention: a perfunctory Dining Brief from Sam Sifton in The Times, and a “very good” from Serious Eats’ Ed Levine, each in 2010. Both mentioned the car dealerships, and little else in the neighborhood, which shows how much has changed in three years.
The Butterfly features cocktails by renowned mixologist Eben Freeman and cuisine by Michelin-starred Chef Michael White in a cozy, mid-century style space…
The distinct impression gained, is that this is mainly a cocktail spot, and by the way, you can nosh there too.
White and Freeman have gradually pivoted away from the original concept, an Olde Wisconsin supper club, and an homage to White’s home state. There actually is a “Butterfly Club” in Beloit, Wisconsin, where White once worked. Perhaps he remembers it fondly, but I doubt anyone else around here does.
The décor offers a re-imagining of “retro Wisconsin,” though you quickly forget about it. Waitresses wear old-school black dresses with blue lace trim. Bartenders (including Freeman himself) wear short-sleeve white shirts with thin plaid ties, tie clips, and pocket protectors. They probably decided all of this before the decision to dial down the Wisconsin theme.
Most of the emphasis now is on the cocktails. A couple of weeks ago, White told The Times, “Butterfly isn’t really a Wisconsin restaurant. It’s a New York place to have great cocktails — and something nice to eat.”
Ahmass Fakahany, the main investor in Michael White’s restaurants, added, “Michael and I wanted to showcase the talent of Eben Freeman.”
Freeman built a reputation for avant-garde cocktails at WD~50 and Tailor. The list here is fairly tame by comparison: most of the ten house cocktails have recognizable names, although Freeman tweaks them a bit.
For instance, his Highball ($14; above left) isn’t just any bourbon and soda, but Michter’s Rye and Coca-Cola smoked with alder and cherry woods. His Boiler Maker ($16; below right) is not just any beer and whiskey, but a house-made raisin shandy and Dewar’s infused with pumpernickel raisin bread and carraway seeds.
Freeman told The Times that the cocktail offerings will expand as the restaurant gets its sea legs. The bar certainly has all of Freeman’s toys: we’re not in Wisconsin any more. If you’d prefer to drink wine, then I wouldn’t bother: the list is perfunctory.
About half the menu features comfort-food classics that may well have been popular in 1950s Wisconsin, like a fish sandwich, a patty melt, and shrimp cocktail. Others are just generically popular items that you could find anywhere: a strip steak, fried chicken, a caesar salad.
White elevates these classics above their usual mundane selves. That patty melt is not just any patty: it’s dry-aged beef. That chicken isn’t just any chicken: it’s organic chicken from Bell & Evans.
Most of the menu is inexpensive, by Michael White standards. Hors d’oeuvres are $8–16, salads $11–14, sandwiches $15–17, entrées $19–27, side dishes $5–8, desserts $9–10. The whole menu fits on one page, and the smaller plates dominate: a dozen hors d’oeuvres and salads, against just six sandwiches and entrées.
A $17 patty melt may seem dear, but early reports are rapturous, and it’s in line with many of the city’s high-end burgers. If you believe that no one should ever pay $17 for a burger, you shouldn’t eat here.
I was sorely tempted to try it, but an aged prime patty melt is not so much cooked as curated. I wanted to try the more unusual items, so I ordered four of the hors d’oeuvres.
You might start with the Reuben Croquettes ($9; above left), little fried balls of corned beef (not enough of it) and sauerkraut with thousand island dipping sauce. Zucchini Pancakes ($13; above right) are a terrific snack—little bursts of flavor, with crème fraîche, shallots, dill, and trout roe. I don’t think there’s much of Wisconsin in this dish.
Pork Rinds ($8; above left) are flecked with rosemary and pepper, one of the better renditions of this dish that I’ve encountered, but for a solo diner they’re too much of a good thing. The Bratwurst Sliders ($13; above right) offer plump little house-made sausages, slit lengthwise, with spicy mustard and sweet peppers on potato rolls.
Service was friendly and polished, as it has been at all the White places I’ve visited: silverware was replaced after every course, plates delivered and cleared promptly. I dropped in quite early in the evening, with customers only just beginning to wander in, but I suspect they’ll be able to cope with the volume when the place is full.
Any restaurant from these gentlemen is going to attract a crowd, at first. I do think they’ll have to expand the menu pretty soon, if they want to attract repeat customers. I work near here, so I could easily imagine dropping by the Butterfly from time to time. The food isn’t destination material; the cocktails could be, once Freeman brings out more of his repertoire.
The Butterfly (225 W. Broadway at White Street, TriBeCa)
Food: Retro Wisconsin comfort food, liberally interpreted Service: First-rate for such a casual place Ambiance: Retro Wisconsin too, but you’re not really going to notice
For an impressive pedigree, you can’t beat the two guys running Betony, the new New American restaurant in West Midtown.
The chef is Bryce Shuman, a former executive sous chef at Eleven Madison Park. The GM is Eamon Rockey, who ran the cocktails at EMP before helping to launch Compose, Atera, and then Aska.
The owner, Moscow native Andrey Dellos, inspires less confidence. He’s the guy behind the Meatpacking District horror Manon. He also owned Betony’s predecessor in this space, the lavish Russian-themed Brasserie Pushkin, which got mixedreviews, was ignored in The Times, and lasted just nine months.
In turning to Shulman and Rockey, Dellos apparently realized that he needed a team with New York street cred. Their presence more-or-less guarantees that the critics will at least visit the place.
But the renovations are a half-measure that, I fear, has not gone far enough. Having invested enough in Brasserie Pushkin to buy a small château (around $5 million), Dellos apparently wasn’t willing to lose all of his sunk costs. So Betony is Brasserie Pushkin lite, the décor revised but still recognizably the same space.
I like a spot like Betony, with its plush chairs, soft lighting, and crisp tablecloths. I’m in the minority these days. I worry that the downtown crowd that know Shulman and Rockey from their previous gigs will take one step in the door, and find it an instant turn-off. They shouldn’t, but I’m a realist. If Betony needs to rely mainly on a midtown audience, I wonder if perhaps the food is too intellectual for the less adventurous diners that populate West Midtown near Carnegie Hall.
The owners of The Greenwich Project, a new restaurant in Greenwich Village, must be commitment averse. Their corporate name is The Project Group, and all of their restaurants are The ______ Project. With names like that, you can do anything. All options are open.
They have a candidate for the world’s worst restaurant website, which cannot be bothered to transmit basic information like hours of operation or menus.
Their facebook pages are slightly more informative. Slightly. As I gather, The Mulberry Project, in Little Italy, is known mainly as an inventive cocktail den. The Vinatta Project (in the former Florent space), is a cocktail and comfort food spot. Or perhaps I’m mistaken. It’s hard to tell.
The Greenwich Project aims higher. There’s talent in the kitchen: Carmine di Giovanni, a former chef de cuisine at Picholine and David Burke Townhouse. Those places aren’t cheap, and this one isn’t either. With appetizers $15–21 and entrées $28–39, you’re going to drop some coin to dine here.
There’s no doubt Manhattanites will pay those prices at the right restaurant, but there’s not much margin for error. They’ll need a cavalcade of strong reviews and word-of-mouth to keep the place full.
Andrew Carmellini is one of those chefs who can do anything, and get coverage. No doubt the Public Theater realized that, when they invited him to open a new restaurant in their newly-renovated building, the former Astor Library.
The theater gave him a gorgeous, cloistered space, dimly lit with dark paneling and comfortable seating. Once you’re inside, it doesn’t look at all like a restaurant attached to a performing arts center. It’s open most days till midnight, Thursdays to Saturdays till 2:00am — hours clearly intended to attract more than just a pre-theater audience.
What’s missing is a reason to go. The food is competent, of course, as you’d expect at any Carmellini place. But it feels phoned in, as if Carmellini spent fifteen minutes on it before turning his attention to the next project.
The menu is divided in three “Acts,” with various snacks ($6–13), appetizers ($12–15) and entrées ($17–27). Perhaps they were worried about pushing the metaphor: desserts are labeled, simply, “desserts” ($7–9). All of it is fairly obvious stuff.
You know what a prix fixe menu is, right? And you know what a “small plates” menu is, right? If the two get married and have children, what do you get?
Meet Feast, a prix fixe restaurant with menus structured like a sequences of small plates. We loved it. To us, it was the best of both worlds—though others might not be so fond of it. Such is the case when a restaurant tries to fiddle with tradition.
The main menu offers a choice of three “feasts.” As of last week, the options were the Farmer’s Market Feast ($38), the Scallop Feast ($49), or the Nose-to-Tail Lamb Feast ($48). According to a recent email from the restaurant, the scallop feast will shortly switch to soft-shell crabs, and lamb will morph to pork. And so on.
Each feast consist of an appetizer course with four plates, an entrée course with another four, and a dessert. All prices are per-person, and the entire table must order the same feast. There’s also a separate (and small) à la carte menu, which the restaurant is clearly trying to downplay. Most tables seemed to be ordering feasts, which is the whole point of the restaurant.
So you get nine plates, served as three courses, at a pretty damned good price. Unlike a tasting menu, it doesn’t go on for hours. Unlike a small-plates restaurant, there’s no guessing how much to order, nor upselling from servers trying to entice you into ordering more than you need.
The chef is Christopher Meenan, a former chef de cuisine at Veritas. The food is not as ambitious, but it’s pretty good, and you get dinner for just about the price of an entrée at Veritas. It just might be just about the best meal for two, under $100 (before tax, tip, and drinks), that we’ve had in quite a while.
4) It has a French name (Le Philosophe, Le Midi, Lafayette), even if the connection to French cuisine is, at times, tenuous.
5) It serves austere Nordic-style plates, many of which consist of vegetables arranged like abstract art (Frej, Aska, Acme).
Despite the feeling you’ve been here before, Le Restaurant manages to seem new, and not quite derivative. Even if some of the trends are recycled, no one could say they played it safe. Not when the only menu is a $100 tasting, served just three days a week (Thursdays to Saturdays).
The good news is: the Great Recession is officially over, if places like this can open and thrive. And thrive, I hope it will. New York needs more restaurants willing to take chances, even if this one misses the mark.
The chef is Ryan Tate, formerly of Cookshop and Savoy, where he was chef de cuisine.He told Grub Street that his approach “is really just meant to get people to relax,” a peculiar aim. I never before thought that people needed $100 tasting menus to accomplish that.
I wish I could endorse it. They’re such nice people here, clearly trying hard, clearly eager to please.
And they’ve done such a lovely job decking out the post-industrial basement, in the bowels of Tribeca’s new upscale grocery, All Good Things. It’s a comfortable, minimalist, quiet space, admitting plenty of natural light from an outdoor garden.
But ultimately, the chef must be held accountable for his $100-per-head 7-course tasting menu (over $200 after drinks, tax, and tip). There was only one outright dud, but most of the remaining courses were more “interesting” than good.
Note: I had my doubts about the viability of this place, and it turns out they were justified. Cherrywood closed in August 2013 after less than six months in business. Hudson Square has been very tough for restaurants, and even by that neighborhood’s standards, this place was poorly located and not enough of a crowd-pleaser.
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Cherrywood Kitchen is a cute new neighborhood spot that could bring good food and great fun to an area that has been historically under-served.
A lot of restaurants have struggled to find a following here, in Hudson Square, the neighborhood bounded by the Holland Tunnel, Houston Street, Sixth Avenue, and the Hudson River. Some people call the area West Soho, but it’s far enough west that people don’t tend to wander over without a good reason.
Cherrywood’s entrance, on a side street, isn’t ideally placed. You’re not likely to stumble upon it. Once you get there, you’ll probably enjoy it. The cuisine isn’t meant to be pathbreaking, but a couple of dishes have the potential to be knock-outs.
The owners have gone all-in on the cherry wood concept, which features not only in the cooking but also the décor. Inside, it isn’t quite as red as the photos (above) would suggest, but the space could use a dash of whimsy.
The publicity materials emphasize chef Chris Cheung’s apprenticeship at Nobu and Jean Georges, but more recently he’s taken turns at quite a few other places, including a stint at Monkey Bar (pre-Graydon Carter), and the short-lived WallE with the Chin brothers. He has been, perhaps, ill-served by some of these projects.
The eclectic menu here is concise and takes a decidedly populist bent, with dishes labeled snacks ($5–14), small plates ($11–14), large plates ($21–46), sides ($5–8), and desserts ($8–11). The cuisine spans many cultures while being beholden to none; an Asian accent is detectable at times, not a surprise given the chef’s background.
With such dishes as Salmon Head Salad and Eel Stuffed Freshly-Killed Chicken, he’s not afraid to challenge the diner, though many other dishes are far more straightforward (braised lamb shoulder, smoked ribs). Most of the entrées are under $30. They are, in general, not unreasonably priced for the area, but a $21 burger strikes me as audacious.
The house-baked ciabatta, the size of a large grapefruit, with blue cheese butter (above left), is a highlight, instantly entering the pantheon as one of the best bread services in town. Lobster Tacos ($14; above right) offer a crunchy snack, although I wanted more flavor out of the lobster.
I’m a sucker for appetizers that feature freshly poached eggs, and this one ($14; above left) didn’t disappoint, here served with smoked asparagus and a generous helping of Serrano ham. The table gave nods of approval to the Garlic and Shallot Soft-Shell Crabs ($26; above right) with baby artichokes.
“Fresh-killed” chicken has been turning up on menus lately. (Jeff Gordiner, in a piece for The Times, explained exactly what that means.) At Cherrywood, perhaps more notable than the chicken’s death certificate is the eel stuffed under the skin, which imparts a terrific smoky flavor.
A side of French Fry Ends ($7; above right) with a bacon crumble sounded better than it was. Better eaten with a spoon than a fork, it needed a binder, perhaps cheese, to prevent its constituent parts from rolling away.
The wine list is a typical starter set of about 20 bottles (per the website; I think it was fewer when we visited). If you’re at the bar, order the excellent sangria (normally $12/glass, although we weren’t charged).
The restaurant was not crowded, although a Wednesday evening, at a restaurant that was only about a week old at the time, is hardly an indication of a typical crowd. We were treated well: it’s only fair to note that I was recognized.
The chef’s experiments aren’t all successful, but there are enough hits to make Cherrywood Kitchen well worth a visit if you’re in the area.
Cherrywood Kitchen (300 Spring Street, west of Hudson Street, Hudson Square)
Food: An eclectic American menu with global accents Service: Friendly, enthusiastic Ambiance: A handsome, dark-wood look; a comfortable space
The Cleveland is a straightforward seasonal American neighborhood restaurant on the Soho–NoLIta border, where the John Fraser pop-up What Happens When used to be.
It’s redecorated in the over-familiar “rec room chic,” with exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, bare wood tables, mix ’n match chairs, flower arrangements in small mason jars, and napkins that resemble dishrags.
The chef, Ken Corrow, was a sous at Anella and Acme. I gather this is his first solo venture. Like the décor, the cuisine suffers from a lack of purpose. All FloFab could make out from the press release, is that Corrow “takes vegetables a creative distance.”
Pedestrian, rather than creative, is the word I’d use to describe the opening menu of just four small plates ($8–11), five mains ($17–26), and three sides ($6). The mains, for instance: steak, chicken, cod, papardelle, and risotto, none with any unusual take on vegetables that I could make out.
If the aim is to serve the neighborhood with hearty, inexpensive fare, it is undermined by the brief wine list. When three out of five entrées are under $20, the median price of a bottle of red needs to be below $60. I can’t find an Internet price for the 2011 Beaujolais we drank, but it didn’t taste like a fifty dollar wine.
Lamb meatballs ($15; above left) were overdone and under-seasoned. Cod ($21; above right) was bland.
Barley risotto with shredded duck confit, braised prunes, and caramelized onions ($17; above left) was too oily. A side of sautéed kale, herbs, pears, and pancetta chips ($6; above right) was too dry.
We had no trouble getting a weeknight 7 pm reservation at short notice, though by 8:30 pm the 34-seat dining room was close to full. (A 40-seat garden will open in back, when the weather warms up.) The server was attentive at first, but seemed to forget about us later on.
I’m sure the chef can do better, but we have to call it as we see it: we didn’t much care for any of the dishes we tried, and though they were inexpensive, the over-priced wine list practically doubled the bill.
The Cleveland (25 Cleveland Pl. between Spring & Kenmare Streets, NoLIta)
Food: Unadventurous seasonal New American Service: Enthusiastic but occasionally inattentive Ambance: Rec-room chic, right out of the playbook
Rating: Not recommended Why? The food was not very good; the wine list was over-priced
Tuesday, August 6, 2013 at 08:00AM 
;)
Most of us can’t afford a Rolls Royce, a Jaguar, or a Maserati. Yet, most of us respect those cars. They captivate us. If offered a free ride in a Rolls, wouldn’t we all jump at the chance?
