Bâtard

Bâtard-Montrachet is a grand cru appellation of Burgundy, producing wines of 100% Chardonnay. A bastard is “a contemptible, inconsiderate, overly or arrogantly rude or spiteful person.”

Both are applicable at Bâtard, the latest restaurant in the hallowed space that was once home to the beloved Montrachet, and more controversially, Corton. The constants at all three establishments have always been excellent cuisine, Burgundy-centric wine lists, and owner Drew Nieporent, the mayor of Tribeca, who also owns nearby Nobu and Tribeca Grill.

The list of chefs who cooked at Montrachet reads like a culinary Who’s Who. As they left one by one, to pursue other projects, Nieporent kept replacing them, holding onto three New York Times stars until the very end. Montrachet finally closed in 2006, re-opening two years later, named for another Burgundy appellation (Corton), with a much larger kitchen and the talented but difficult chef, Paul Liebrandt, at the helm.

Click to read more ...

The NoMad

You’ve got to hand it to Daniel Humm and Will Guidara, chef and restaurateur of the city’s hottest new restaurant, The NoMad: they know how to make an entrance, whether it be the Goodfellas-inspired promo video, or the publicity machine that generated eleven Eater.com posts in a nine-day span.

Humm and Guidara are the team behind Eleven Madison Park, which Frank Bruni elevated to four stars in 2009. The pair later bought out restaurant’s former owner, Danny Meyer, after they signed onto the NoMad project without their boss in tow. Meyer no doubt recalled a similar split, when Tom Colicchio opened Craft without him, while remaining the absentee chef at Gramercy Tavern: it was bound not to work in the long run, and this time Meyer chose not to delay the inevitable.

It’s news whenever a four-star chef opens a new place, but I don’t recall anything quite like the breathless coverage here. One month in, The NoMad is packed every evening, at almost any hour. It sets up gargantuan expectations that the restaurant might struggle to meet in the long run, after the excitement dies down and the chef is once again spending most of his time at the mother ship.

The NoMad is a major opening, no question about it. Although it lacks tablecloths, everything about it screams luxury. One of its five rooms, the Atrium, is “inspired by the great courtyards of Europe.” Another, the Parlour, is a “stately room featuring dark oak furnishings, richly textured fabrics and over 100 pressed antique herbs.” Yet another is an “intimate cove [with] the original fireplace imported from a great French château.” Or if not there, the “fully curated, two-level library connected by an original spiral staircase imported from the South of France.”

The staff, dressed in crisply pressed suits, look the part. Under GM Jeffrey Tascarella’s direction, they put on a well-choreographed show. I should note that Mr. Tascarella recognized me as soon as I arrived. I’d like to assume they do the same for everyone, but I can’t vouch for that: a couple in front of me was quoted a 45-minute wait to be seated for drinks in the library, whereas they accommodated me immediately. (At the bar, revelers were stacked three deep.)

The house cocktails ($15) are outstanding, including two of the best drinks with brown spirits that I’ve had in a long time, the Satan’s Circus (rye, chili-infused aperol, cherry heering, lemon) and the Old Alhambra (Islay scotch, vermouth, sherry, creme de cacao).

Like many a hotel restaurant, The NoMad will be serving three meals a day, plus (I assume) room service, which gives the owners many more meals over which to amortize their investment. Nevertheless, dinner is expensive here, with snacks $8–16, appetizers $14–24 and entrées $22–39. Only the vegetarian mains are under $30: Eater has already made its share of jokes about the $22 carrot entrée.

Breads, baked in-house, change daily. A flat mini-bread fried with fingerling potatoes and spring onions was as good as anything of its kind that we’ve had in a restaurant this year.

 

We started with one of the snack items, a rich Beef Tartare ($16; above left) with cornichons and horseradish, with crisp slices of toasted brioche to spread it on.

The house sent out a “Grande Plateau des Fruits de Mer,” normally $24 per person. I didn’t note the components, but it was far more impressive than your usual seafood platter, in that most of the items were composed, and were not just raw shellfish on the halfshell.

 

The kitchen also sent out two mid-courses, which I think were variants on the two vegetarian entrées on the normal menu: asparagus with button mushrooms; carrots and parsnip. These were the two best dishes we had all evening.

  

A whole chicken for two ($78) is the restaurant’s signature dish, the only large-format item on the menu. The whole bird is presented tableside (above left), then sent back to the kitchen for plating (above right).

It’s an impressive technical achievement, with truffle, foie gras, and brioche under the near-blackened skin. But just like the duck for two at Eleven Madison Park, one can’t help feeling that what comes back is rather meager, especially at the price.

There’s a whole Chowhound thread about the inconsistencies in this dish, which I wish I’d read in advance, as I might not have been so keen to order it. I didn’t really taste much foie gras or truffle. The chicken itself wasn’t bad, but the accompanying fricassee of dark meat (above) was not very pleasant at all. A few days later, we had the fried chicken at Peels, a much more satisfying dish that costs only $21.75.

We dined in the luxurious Parlour, which struck me as a much nicer space than the other main dining room, the Atrium, which is louder, and in which the tables seem closer together. There is much on this menu that I’d love to try. The chicken was a disappointment, but also an anomaly, as we loved everything else we tried.

The next evening, we dined at Café Boulud, which like The NoMad, is the next peg down the scale, below a four-star chef’s flagship. But whereas the former is small, quiet and understated, The NoMad is massive, brash, and a little exhausting. Messrs. Humm and Guidara must, of course, choose their own path, but it will be interesting to see if all of this excitement is sustainable.

The NoMad (1170 Broadway at 28th Street, NoMad)

Food: A focused Euro-American menu, just a notch below luxurious
Service: Crisp, correct, and attentive
Ambiance: An over-the-top dining palace, without the tablecloths

Rating: ★★
Why? Humm is a great chef, and there’s nothing in NYC quite like The NoMad

Eleven Madison Park

Note: This is a review of the 4×4 grid-format menu that Eleven Madison Park was using for a while. The restaurant has since changed to a more conventional tasting menu, which I have not yet tried.

*

A year ago, chef Daniel Humm and general manager Will Guidara of Eleven Madison Park “decided to fix what ain’t broke.” They jettisoned their à la carte menu in favor of a laconic square grid of sixteen ingredients. Unless you ask, you’ll have no idea if “Lobster” is a risotto, a bisque, a thermidor, or something else.

“Tasting menus are like monologues,” Guidara told The Times. “This is a dialogue.”

But as one Chowhounder put it (quoted in The Post), “I don’t want no stinkin’ dialogue! When I go to a world-class restaurant, I want the chef to take care of me.”

At Eleven Madison Park, you are, of course, welcome to have as much of a “dialogue”—or as little—as you want. This being a Danny Meyer restaurant, the server will stand there all night and explain every dish, if that’s what you want. But you don’t really want that, do you? You’re probably just going to select one ingredient from each row of the grid, communicate any allergies, and be done with it.

If the poor crybaby Chowhounder cannot be bothered to name four ingredients ($125), he can order the tasting menu ($195) and get whatever the chef chooses to send out. Another crybaby Chowhounder (they do moan a lot there) went so far as to call the new menu “a scam.”

Of course it is not a scam. Not even close. What it is, at least arguably, is a gimmick.

Eleven Madison Park is serving what amounts to a mystery tasting menu, where the appetizer, two entrées, and the dessert, can be chosen from a cryptic list of four items each. Plenty of restaurants offer tasting menus where none of the items are described at all. EMP’s own $195 menu operates that way. Plenty of others offer tasting menus where the ingredients are listed in some detail, but where most or all of the courses offer no choice at all.

This menu is a hybrid, a tasting menu with a few degrees of freedom, but with most of it a surprise unless you are awfully inquisitive. The gimmick is the “dialogue,” which doesn’t really exist—except in the sense it does at any restaurant that offers diners a choice, which is to say, most of them.

At our excellent dinner last Friday evening, we weren’t at all affronted by the 4×4 grid. It isn’t very helpful, either. Wouldn’t it be better to write down the choices the way a conventional restaurant would? The kitchen clearly has a preparation in mind for each of the sixteen ingredients. It doesn’t make them up on the fly. So why not tell us?

*

The service is practically the best of its kind. On entering, the greeter asked for the name of our reservation. When I said “Shepherd,” he said to my friend, without missing a beat or consulting a list, “Welcome. You must be ____.” To memorize every booking is impressive enough. To know my companion’s name is unheard of. At the table, a handwritten birthday card was waiting for her.

As you’d expect, plates and flatware were set and cleared seamlessly, every request honored instantly, every need anticipated. It is a performance perhaps half-a-dozen restaurants in town can match.

The meal begins with something like four or five flights of amuses. I didn’t note them all, but the tour de force was a “clam bake,” with four delicate canapés and a broth that the server pours into a contraption heated by hot rocks, simulating a beach clam bake in miniature.

From the first row of the menu grid, my friend and I both chose “Rabbit,” which I correctly guessed would be a luscious, creamy terrine, as it was in the position on the grid that I know (from other reviews) is usually represented by a foie gras terrine. Without the advance research I did, no other diner would know this.

Had the meal ended here, I would give Eleven Madison Park the same four stars that Frank Bruni did. Instead, I was reminded of Bruni’s comment at the end of 2008, that: “one in every three dishes didn’t measure up to the others (though nothing — nothing — was wholly undistinguished).” It seemed there were two restaurants here, with a completely different kitchen responsible for everything after the appetizer.

The statement that “nothing — nothing — was wholly undistinguished” could apply to my friend’s Loup de Mer, her Pork, and my Chicken. But I would not call them distinguished either. Somewhat more impressive was Lobster wrapped in fat, rich noodles, a lasagne of the gods. It was the only savory dish that I would care to see again. There was nothing wrong with the others, but there was no wow! in them.

Even less memorable were pastry chef Angela Pinkerton’s desserts, “Berries” and “Apricot, and the petits fours were noticeably less impressive than at the other four-star restaurants. We weren’t served a birthday cake, either—just a lit candle poking out from the dessert we had already paid for. I didn’t actually need another cake at that point, but see my reviews of Asiate and Del Posto for how the pastry departments in comparable restaurants usually honor such an occasion.

Wine pairings are $95 per person, and if you ask the sommelier to “be creative,” he will. I lost count, but I believe there were six or seven pours, ranging from beer to sake to cocktails, and of course wines, all with decent age on them; most were off the beaten path. Where my friend and I ordered different items, the wines were different also. For one course, the sommelier couldn’t decide between a cocktail and wine, so he gave both.

The final pour, as many reviews have noted, is a bottle of digestif that the sommelier leaves on the table for you to take as much as you would like. It is a safe bet that most normal folk will be too full to abuse the privilege. This must be the best wine pairing in the city, aside from Per Se, which charges at least double for similar service.

If my review seems harsh, it is not. I adore Eleven Madison Park. This is my third visit since chef Humm came on board (here, here). The four-course menu at $125 is one of the best dining deals in town, given all the extras that come with it. What I don’t see, however, is the leap to four stars that other publications have claimed.

Eleven Madison Park (11 Madison Avenue at 24th Street, Flatiron District)

Cuisine: Hard to classify; extraordinary at its best, but occasionally falls flat
Service: Incomparable; arguably the best in the city
Ambiance: Superb; an elegant, high-ceilinged space in a landmarked building

Rating: ★★★

Hospoda

Note: In July 2013, Hospoda hired chef René Bastien Stein, a former chef de cuisine at Seäsonal. The Czech theme was abandoned, in favor of New American beer-inspired cuisine—whatever that meant. That didn’t work, and Hospoda is now closed. As of February 2014, the space is Bay Kitchen Bar (BKB), a Hamptons-themed restaurant.

*

There’s always a place in my heart for restaurants that come out of nowhere—that neither set nor follow any discernable trend; that exist, for no other reason than someone believes in an idea.

Hospoda (“beer hall”) is such a place. Featuring Czech cuisine, it’s located in the newly renovated Bohemian National Hall, a landmarked building owned by the Czech government itself. No market survey could have inspired the idea; no restaurateur is likely to copy it.

I have visited no other Bohemian beer halls for comparison. This is probably a slightly more fancy version of the genre, with its striking black and gold panels and a glass floor in front of the bar that gives view to kegs of beer down below.

The company that operates the restaurant has 15 others in the Czech Republic. The executive chef, Oldřich Sahajdák, makes his home at one of these, La Degustation, which, according to a reliable report on Mouthfuls, is more upscale.

There is some evidence of cold feet, as a March post on DNAinfo.com mentioned a $76 prix fixe, later abandoned. That might have been a tough sell in a conservative neighborhood, when neither the cuisine nor the chef is well known.

In lieu of that, at least for now, the restaurant is offering two plates for $32, a remarkable deal. Each additional course is $12; desserts are $9. Somewhat confusingly, there’s also a separate beer menu that lists à la carte “beer plates” at $8 each, perhaps intended for snacking before dinner, although there is no bar at which to try them. The purpose of these wasn’t really explained, and we didn’t order any.

(Click on the beer menu (above right) or the full menu (left) for larger images.)

There’s only one kind of beer, Pilsner Urquell, but they serve it four ways, varying only in the ratio of foam to liquid. The foamiest, called “Sweet,” of which a sample is given as amuse bouche, is practically all head. The other extreme, called “Neat,” has practically no head at all. For $19, you can sample all four—not a bad deal, as it’s almost two full pints before you’re finished.

Right now, the wine list is almost a nullity, consisting of just two reds and two whites. Pours are stingy, but at $8 apiece one can’t complain. (The server told us that we could have brought in our own wine for free, but call ahead to ensure this policy is still in force, as they may not be so generous after their own list is beefed up.)

There is a nice bread selection. First comes a plate of sourdough slathered in cream cheese and topped with radishes (above left), then a dish of plain bread and rolls (above right), though without butter.

On the main menu, there are seven appetizers and seven entrées, each consisting of a list of three to five ingredients, with no indication of what is done with them. Fortunately, the servers know the menu well and answer questions patiently. An example is: “duck breast, celery, pear, sour cream” (above left): a thin, and somewhat bland, slice of breast, served cold, wrapped around a pear salad and topped with a celery foam.

Our other appetizer, “white asparagus, warm mayo, quail egg, bacon,” was breakfast topped with asparagus—fine for what it is, but unremarkable.

Lamb leg (above left) was the evening’s best dish, a tender (although small) piece of lamb in a carrot purée with thyme sauce and a bit of spinach. Beef oyster blade (above right) tasted like the inexpensive cut of meat that it is, but the creamy dill sauce was very good, as were the barley dumplings.

Macaroons (right) were served with the check. The dining room seemed to be about half to two-thirds full on a Thursday evening. Service was good, for a ten-day-old restaurant.

Hospoda is enjoyable, especially at the current price, and we appreciated a menu that’s entirely free of clichées. The chef isn’t working any miracles: the ingredients aren’t the best, and portions are on the small side. The cuisine is neither upscale nor rustic, but something in between.

With the Czech government invested in the restaurant’s success, presumably they’ll be given time to work out the kinks. I would dine here again, but I have to wonder how such an odd concept will play in the long term, after the curiosity-seekers have come and gone.

Update: As I expected, Hospoda continues to improve. On a subsequent visit, a substantial and fairly priced wine list had arrived, with suggested wines by the half-glass or full glass that pair with the menu, which is reprinted daily. Prices remain compelling: two courses for $32, three courses for $45, or a seven-course tasting for $88. I loved a snow pea salad (greens, kirby cucumber, peach, malt biscuit) and slow cooked rabbit (bacon, red cabbage essence, dumpling).

Hospoda (321 E. 73rd Street between 1st & 2nd Avenues, Upper East Side)

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

Vandaag

Note: This is a review of Vandaag under chef Philip Kirschen-Clark, who left the restaurant in August 2011 in a dispute with the owners, who apparently wanted a more casual and less ambitious restaurant. That strategy failed, and Vandaag closed in May 2012.

The space is now Mighty Quinn’s Barbecue.

*

In a town where most of the restaurants are boring copies of things you’ve seen before, welcome to Vandaag. It serves Dutch cuisine, a curiously under-represented genre, given the city’s origins. Indeed, if you trust Zagat, it is literally the city’s sole example of its kind.

The décor, like everything else at Vandaag, isn’t a copy of anything else in Manhattan. Unassuming from the outside, it’s decked out in a sleek, minimalist design that instantly feels like a modern classic. Years from now, the architect’s rendering might hang in a gallery at the Museum of Modern Art.

You’ll do well on the mostly all-Dutch wine list, but the cocktails caught my eye. There are separate sections for cocktails made with beer, akvavit, wine, and beer.

Who else serves a Popeye ($11), with Fresno chili pepper, Akvavit, spicy tomato, pilsner, and fennel pollen? What about a Vikingo ($12), with Viking blood mead, dry amontillado sherry, resposado tequila, and a maraschio cherry? No one. That’s who.

The chef, Phillip Kirschen-Clark, came from Corton via Jimmy’s No. 43 and Pegu Club. His menu isn’t terribly expensive, given the quality, with appetizers $8–14 and entrées mostly $21–28; the “ham” burger is $15, the dry-aged ribeye for two $100. A tasting menu (not served weekends) is $80.

The trade-off is that bread isn’t free. It’s $6 on a section of the menu devoted to snacks ($4–6). Instead, we had the Juniper Pecans ($5; above left), a wickedly good treat that could easily ruin dinner. The amuse bouche (above right) was a smoked salmon rillette with sauerkraut, served on a striking black slate platter.

We were slightly misled about the size of a soft-shell crab appetizer ($18; above left): it was enough for two people to share, and wonderful to boot. Gravlax ($13; above right) was a work of art, mostly for the clever and labor-intensive plating. The juxtaposition of salmon with beets, yogurt, spruce buds and roe was spectacular.

The “Ham” Burger ($15; above left) is a house-blend burger girdled in bacon with gouda cheese—a hefty portion, but my friend liked it.

Black Chicken ($25; above right) was a roll of the dice for me. I’d describe it as interesting, rather than good. Considered a delicacy in China, it is seldom served in the west. It leaves a funky aftertaste that isn’t altogether appealing. Though no fault of the chef’s, I am not eager to try it again.

Service was top-notch. The restaurant was less than half full at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, as one would expect in the East Village, which doesn’t start to hop until much, much later on. As the owners haven’t packed every square inch of the place with tables, as (say) a Keith McNally might have done, I suspect it doesn’t become unpleasant, even when full.

From this admittedly small sample size, Vandaag strikes me as an essential restaurant, one that fills its unusual niche extremely well.

Vandaag (103 Second Avenue at E. 6th Street, East Village)

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

Brats & the Little Cheese Pub

Note: Brats closed in May 2011, and the Little Cheese Pub expanded into the space. The Little Cheese Pub has since been sold.

*

Brats and the Little Cheese Pub, though technically separate restaurants, might as well be discussed together. They have the same chef, occupy adjacent Chelsea storefronts, and opened within three months of one another.

And they share a theme seen a lot lately, common to places like Macbar, the Meatball Shop, and Crif Dogs: a narrow focus on many versions of just one dish: wieners and sausages at Brats; cheese at the Little Cheese Pub. The chef, Daniel Angerer, has a serious, full-service restaurant, the Austrian-themed Klee Brasserie. I found it underwhelming, but that was four years ago, and much may have changed since then.

That Angerer would open a cheese pub is ripe with irony, as he is best known for putting a recipe for breast milk cheese (his wife’s) on his blog. After the story was picked up in the Post, the health department told him to take the human cheese off the market. He later denied he had served it in his restaurant, but Gael Greene got a private tasting:

Surprise. It’s not the flavor that shocks me—indeed, it is quite bland, slightly sweet, the mild taste overwhelmed by the accompanying apricot preserves and a sprinkle of paprika. It’s the unexpected texture that’s so off-putting. Strangely soft, bouncy, like panna cotta.

If you’re not paying close attention, you could easily walk into the Little Cheese Pub expecting Brats, or vice versa. Indeed, I’d already taken a seat, and had to ask the server why the Cheese Pub menu seemed to have none of the wieners I was looking for.

The Little Cheese Pub resembles a conventional wine/beer bar, with its dark wood faux rural chic décor. There are several long communal tables and a number of two-tops with bar stools. You can order composed cheese platters, cheeses à la carte, or one of a half-dozen varieties of mac & cheese. The French Man Mac ($13; below left), served in a hot skillet, is better than it looks, with morbier cheese, balsam onions, and a hefty duck meat ball.

At Brats, there are eight sausage and wiener entrées, all house-made, $6.95–10.95, from a conventional bratwurst to a French duck sausage. An entertaining illustrated menu shows photos of the dogs, alongside models in seductive poses, with balloon quotes showing “wiener” double ententres.

The server said a similar menu is on the way for the milkshakes, which include such flavors as vanilla with bacon confetti, PB&J with honey popcorn, and the Volcano (not for children), infused with tobacco.

I ordered the Dragon (above right), a pork sausage with pickled kimchee cabbage, pea shoots, and a spicy sriracha mustard—not your standard hot dog, but I enjoyed its slow, tangy burn.

There’s a variety of side dishes (none of which I tried), and a generous selection of wines and beers. They’re all under $10, which makes sense, bearing in mind that this is basically an upscale hot dog stand. Most of the seating in the narrow space is at the bar.

Brats (362 W. 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Avenues, Chelsea)
The Little Cheese Pub (362½ W. 23rd St. between Eighth & Ninth Avenues, Chelsea)

Why April Bloomfield Rocks

  

The other day, I was browsing the online menus of several West Village restaurants, trying decide which one to visit for dinner. Their unrelenting sameness depressed me. It’s not that I’ve tired of the classics, only that I doubted they’d be done really well.

Then I decided on The Spotted Pig, and I remembered why the chef, April Bloomfield, really rocks. Her menu—particularly the list of daily specials—is packed with dishes that don’t resemble anyone else’s. She isn’t serving kidneys on toast because there is great demand for them, but because this is her food.

I started with an order of Shito Peppers ($5), lightly fried and dusted with sea salt, each one packing a different heat intensity, depending on how many seeds remained inside. It was just a five-dollar bar snack, but full of flavor, and not duplicated in any other pub I know of.

Then I had a Butter Cup Squash Salad ($15; right) with golden chard and sorrel—a simple, impeccably prepared salad. Who else is serving one with these ingredients?

That’s why April Bloomfield Rocks.

The service here was excellent, as always, bearing in mind that it’s basically a gussied-up pub. But there are a lot of staff here—surely enough for a two-star restaurant, despite the superficially casual box they’re squeezed into.

One minor complaint: I was seated against the back wall, with the daily specials—there are always more than a half-dozen of them—written on the mirror behind me. Given that the menu is reprinted daily, why must it omit so many items, especially as there are so many seats, like the one I was in, where the mirror can’t easily be seen?

The Pig was the least crowded I’ve ever seen it. Don’t cry for April and her business partner, Ken Friedman: the place was full by 6:30 p.m. on a Thursday evening. But it was the first time I’ve been there that it actually took a full hour to seat every table.

The Spotted Pig (314 W. 11 Street at Greenwich Street, West Village)

The Breslin

Note: Click here for a later review of The Breslin.

Time was, the cuisine of the British Isles didn’t travel well. No one went to England for the food, and no one opened serious English restaurants anywhere else.

April Bloomfield may be the chef who, more than any other, has proven that the food of her native country can be exported. It began at the Spotted Pig, a West Village hit six years ago that remains impossibly busy at practically all times (and does not take reservations).

Bloomfield and her business partner, Ken Friedman, stumbled at the John Dory, a seafood restaurant in Far West Chelsea that won good reviews, but couldn’t stay in business. Friedman attributed the failure to the lack of lunch traffic in that neighborhood, and inefficient use of the space due to the decision to accept reservations, which he says he regrets.

The Breslin, a gastropub like the Pig, opened last fall. The neighborhood presented a bit of a risk, as West 29th Street is neither a nightlife hotspot nor a residential district. It’s in the unnamed gray space on the Manhattan map, north of Chelsea but south of Midtown. Restaurants too numerous to name have failed here. Nevertheless, they vowed not to take reservations.

By opening in the boutique Ace Hotel, Bloomfield and Friedman at least hedged their bets. Hotel restaurants are usually subsidized, since most establishments feel they must offer their guests a place to eat. A failure would mean leaving the space vacant for a prolonged period, which an upscale hotel would likely consider intolerable. The built-in captive audience gives the restaurant a cushion to rest on.

Not that the Breslin shows any sign of failing: it was arguably the hottest of the fall openings. It was less than half full on a recent Saturday evening, but I hesitate to draw conclusions during a summer weekend. But if this persists I suspect the no-reservation policy will get a second look.

Whether you like the Breslin or not, you have to take off your hat to Ms. Bloomfield, to this extent: She isn’t serving a Scotch Egg or a Beef & Stilton Pie because the market demanded them. No menu consultant gave her the list of obligatory standards that every place in town is serving. When you dine at Bloomfield’s restaurants, you’re getting her cuisine, and nobody else’s.

In a somewhat unflattering one-star review, Sam Sifton complained that too much of the menu sings in the same key: it’s heavy on salt and fat, and as he indelicately put it, tough on the digestive tract. It’s somewhat unfair to penalize the restaurant because he needed to fart, but it is a heavy menu. There is no denying that.

The menu is divided into snacks ($4–8), appetizers ($12–18), entrées ($17–32), and sides ($7–8). Terrine boards are $25 or $42, and you cannot order their contents individually. Even crazier is a ribeye for two at $139; no steak for one person is offered.

I visited the Breslin alone, and tried too little of the menu to form a definite impression. Boiled Peanuts Fried in Pork Fat ($6; above left) is a crazy dish that no one else serves. Whether due to boiling or saturation in fat, the shells are edible, and just as good as the nuts inside.

The Lamb Burger with Feta ($17; above right) is rich and flavorful, but I like the Spotted Pig’s beef burger with roquefort even better. It comes with addictive chips that, in keeping with the theme, are thrice fried.

The service is top-notch, at least by pub standards, as I have found at every one of Ken Friedman’s places. For a former record industry honcho, he seems to understand how to recruit and train a staff. They all dress casually, and indeed, you might have trouble telling them apart from the customers.

Friedman has done his usual bang-up job on the décor, assuming you don’t mind a Disneyfied version of what a real English pub looks like. The space is quite a bit more comfortable than the Spotted Pig, with the advantage of being built from scratch, and not having to fit into a landmarked neighborhood.

The Breslin is, alas, too far out of my way to be on the regular rotation. But there is much more of the menu that I am eager to try, if only to find out if the rest of the food tastes as good as it reads.

The Breslin (16 W. 29th Street between Broadway & Fifth Avenue, West Midtown)

Employees Only

We visited Employees Only last week as a backup, after our original choice cancelled service due to a busted water pipe. I’d never been, but it had always struck me as a dependable fallback when one has no other plans.

It strikes me that way still.

The name strikes an aura of faux exclusivity: you don’t need to be any kind of employee to get in, though you may find chefs and waiters there late, as the kitchen stays open until 3:30 a.m.

At the more civilized hour that we visited (7:00 p.m. on Friday evening), the bar was full, but the tables, of which there are fewer than a dozen, were empty. Bartenders, or perhaps I should say bar chefs, wore crisp white toques.

Employees Only was a speakeasy before everyone started doing it. You’d better memorize the address, because the name isn’t posted outside. There’s a tiny E.O. logo, which you could easily miss. A seemingly bored doorman stands guard, but he ignores you. A lady dressed as a psychic sits at a table just beyond the door. Once you’re fully inside, the the schtick is over, and the place functions as a normal restaurant.

The menu offers straightforward renditions of continental comfort food classics, all solidly done, if not especially imaginative. Salads are $7–12, appetizers $11–23, entrées $19–27, side dishes $7. Cocktails are on the expensive side, mostly $14–15, though you ought to try one.

The Serbian Charcuterie Plate ($21; above) was ample for two to share. It eludes me how Serbian charcuterie is distinguished from other kinds, but it was a fine selection.

I had to try the Elk Loin ($32; above right), if only because there’s nowhere else to get it. Elk is lean and not gamey, which means it doesn’t have a ton of flavor on its own. It was fun to have once, but I wouldn’t order it again. Orecchiette ($19; above left) was a competent preparation, with house-made Italian sausage, arugula, and parmesan.

Service was friendly and attentive.

Employees Only isn’t quite convenient enough for me to drop in regularly, nor important enough to be a destination, but if you’re hungry and don’t have other plans, it’s nice to know it’s there.

Employees Only (510 Hudson Street between Christopher & W. 10th St., West Village)

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

Knife + Fork

Note: Knife + Fork closed in late 2010 after a brief, ill-fated re-boot on Avenue A.

I had dinner at Knife + Fork about three years ago, and thought, “I really like this place.” Unfortunately, when a restaurant isn’t in my neighborhood, it takes me a really long time to get back.

I finally returned last week, to find that Knife + Fork is just as good as I remembered it. The background is in my original review, and I won’t repeat all of it. Prices are still quite reasonable for the quality, with appetizers topping out at $16 and entrées at $26. There’s a $24 prix fixe, and the six-course tasting menu remains $45. Small plates at the bar are just $8, or you can enjoy wines by the glass and snack on a gratis bowl of mixed olives.

There is no hard liquor license, as a school is nearby, but there are plenty of bottles in the $20s, $30s and $40s, and an ample selection by the glass, priced at $9–14.

On the night we visited, Chef Damien Bressel was a one-man band, as his wife was out of town and the waiter had called in sick. At least his prep guy was there, but Bressel was greeting customers, waiting tables, and cooking the food without help. He seemed preternaturally calm about doing three jobs at once, and gave better service than many waiters who have nothing more to do. To be fair, we were there quite early, and there were not many customers on a Wednesday evening.

To start, I ordered the Carrot Risotto with ginger purée, topped with a wild chervil salad (above left). My friend had the Foie Gras Torchon (above right).

For the main course, I had the Salmon (above left), my friend the Duck (above right). We didn’t taste each other’s dishes, but mine were both terrific. It’s not easy to make routine dishes like risotto and salmon stand out on a prix fixe menu, but Bressel pulled it off.

For dessert, crème brûlée was more pedestrian—nothing wrong with it, but not memorable either. Bressel comped a separate order of it for my friend. (He hadn’t ordered the prix fixe, and would normally have had to pay an extra $8 for it.)

It’s no small accomplishment to keep a “mom & pop” restaurant in business after three years. The accolades haven’t exactly poured in (the Times never reviewed it), but there must at least be a local following. Knife + Fork deserves wider exposure than that. The impressive food and the charming atmosphere remain compelling draws.

Knife + Fork (108 E. 4th St. between First & Second Avenues, East Village)

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