Lafayette

Lafayette is the fourth restaurant in chef Andrew Carmellini’s growing empire, joining Locanda Verde, The Dutch, and The Library at the Public Theater.

The theme is the all-day French brasserie, in the style that Keith McNally nailed at Balthazar and a bunch of other places. If McNally has proven anything, it’s that this type of restaurant can print money, if it’s done right.

So far, printing money is Lafayette’s major accomplishment. It reproduces the genre faithfully, and reasonably well by New York standards. If it can remain this good, after the critics have finished with it, Lafayette could even be essential. Of course, it could also become a mediocre tourist spot, like McNally’s Pastis. All options are open.

It’s hard not to be wistful at the thought of talent squandered. Carmellini at Café Boulud was one of the best three-star chefs in town, and his success at A Voce showed that it was no fluke. When he opened Locanda Verde, you could at least understand why he aimed low: the city was still recovering from the financial crisis. Despite that, Locanda Verde turned into a terrific place—as it still is—despite its modest aims.

But the financial crisis is no more. Michelin-starred tasting menus are sprouting up all over town, like spring ramps. Not that that’s the only way to aim high; but it is one of the ways. Carmellini no longer has to aim low. Apparently, he wants to. Whether Lafayette turns into another mediocrity, like The Dutch, or becomes a solid (if uninspired) asset, like Locanda Verde, remains to be seen.

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Nougatine

Nougatine is the casual front room at Jean-Georges, the analogue of such companion places as the Bar & Lounge at Daniel, the Lounge at Le Bernardin, the Bar Room at The Modern, or the Salon at Per Se.

These companion rooms vary widely: some are separately reservable, others are not. Some are far more casual than the multi-star restaurants they’re attached to; others don’t vary much at all. Some serve a completely different menu; others serve an à la carte version of the main dining room menu.

Nougatine is separately reservable, has a completely different menu, and is much more casual than its four-star companion. Of course, the word casual must be taken in perspective, on a menu where a $19 cheesburger shares the stage with $72 Dover sole. Most of the entrées, though, are in the $24–38 range that defines New York’s “upper middle,” while appetizers range from $12–23.

The space, originally a lounge for the adjoing Trump International Hotel, was long an afterthought, seldom professionally reviewed. Nougatine received its first New York Times review in late 2012 (Pete Wells, two stars), a mere fifteen years after the flagship next door received four stars from Ruth Reichl right out of the gate.

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Cocotte

What a wonderful time it is to be a Francophile in New York, with little French bistros and cafés opening all over town. I thought Frank Bruni told us that France was dead?

Welcome to Cocotte (“little casserole”), a delightful little Soho spot that opened last October. It’s a little slip of a space—”the size of a studio apartment“—seating just 35.

The dining room is a few steps down from sidewalk level, decorated in dark gray, with the menu written in chalk on the blackboard-colored walls. There’s a tiny bar and an even tinier counter in the kitchen that accommodates all of two guests at a time.

The chef, Sébastien Pourrat, serves tapas-style cuisine from the Southwest of France, near Basque country. It feels like half-French, half-Spanish.

There are about 25 items on the menu, priced $7–16, in eight categories (including desserts). Most are suitable for sharing (maybe not the soups). A terrific-looking bacon & Basque cheeseburger ($12), which we didn’t try, seems to be the only bail-out dish.

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Le Philosophe

Note: Le Philosophe closed in early 2016. “Too many French restaurants around,” the owner told The Times.

*

Welcome to Ground Zero of New York’s French revival: Le Philosophe, a mash-up of haute barnyard tropes (lists of purveyors scrawled on a blackboard) and a menu Escoffier might recognize.

So far the critics are loving it, which for a French restaurant is remarkable. Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice, Ligaya Mishan of The Times, and Adam Platt of New York are among those who’ve filed raves. (If Platt has ever liked a new French restaurant before, I cannot recall it.)

The space was recently the short-lived noodle shop Hung Ry. In a quick re-do, they left the bar and the open kitchen practically as-is, bringing in dark wood tables and decorating the walls with photos of famous French philosophers. Dinner is on the house if you can name them all.

The chef is Matthew Aita, who worked under Jean-Georges Vongrichten and Daniel Boulud. He serves dishes like Lobster Thermidor, Tournedos Rossini, and Duck à l’orange that probably haven’t been seen together on a restaurant menu since the Nixon Administration. It gives a whole new generation the chance to discover what they have been missing.

You wonder why no one has thought of this idea before: reviving the classics in a modern casual setting that could have been a Momofuku with tables, Perla, or Cookshop.

The ambiance is a hybrid too: reservations are taken and coats checked, but at the bare-bones bar, the metal stools are the kind that make your thighs go numb.

There are about nine appetizers ($6–18), a similar number of entrées ($18–36), and a few vegetable sides ($6). Most of the mains are $25 and under, except for the lobster, the tournedos, and the duck.

Thursdays to Saturdays,, there’s a more limited late-night menu served till 1 am.

The wine list may be the most inexpensive I’ve seen in years, with bottles as low as the teens (though you could spend much more) along with a couple of dozen beers by the bottle. Wines by the glass are also inexpensive (as low as $6.50) and pours are ample, but the selection is meager.

The meal begins with two kinds of bread and soft butter (above right) — not made in house, as far as I can tell, but just fine for this sort of place.

 

Roasted Bone Marrow ($12; above left) was the third rendition of this dish that I’ve had in the last month, and I can’t imagine it done any better. A long bone trench is roasted, sliced in thirds, and topped with a spicy relish of shallots, lemon, capers, and watercress, with toasted warm country bread on the side. There’s oodles of gelatinous marrow, so rich and hearty it could be a meal in itself. Just wow.

Unctuous duck à l’orange ($27; above right) is sliced into triangles resembling hamentashen over a silky potato purée. The duck was just about perfect, but the orange sauce was too meek: it hardly made an impression.

Service was a bit on the slow side, but not to the point it became annoying. The restaurant was mostly full at 6:00 pm on a Sunday evening, which bodes well for the longevity of this place. Le Philosophe is a hit, and deserves to be.

Le Philosophe (55 Bond Street between Lafayette Street & Bowery, NoHo)

Food: French classics, modern preparation
Service: Can be slow when busy, but good enough
Ambiance: Benoit meets Cookshop

Rating: ★★
Why? For skillfully reviving classics that almost no one in town serves any more

Table Verte

Table Verte is the latest offering from chef Didier Pawlicki of La Sirène and Taureau. It opened under the radar, with about the worst timing possible, last October, just before Hurricane Sandy devastated the far East Village.

Pawlicki’s three restaurants couldn’t be more different: a traditional bistro (La Sirène), a fondue place (Taureau), and now a vegetarian spot (Table Verte, or “green table”). The cuisine of Pawlicki’s native France is the only tie that binds them together.

Table Verte occupies the former Taureau space, which became vacant when Pawlicki was able to move Taureau to a storefront next to La Sirène. Unlike the first two restaurants, his role here is as an owner–patron, with chef Ken Larsen running the kitchen full-time.

I’ve enjoyed both of Pawlicki’s places, but I probably wouldn’t have visited Table Verte on my own dime, as I’m not a vegetarian. I was there at the publicist’s invitation, and although I enjoyed the meal, I’m not the one to say how it ranks with the city’s other vegetarian restaurants.

The goal, as the chef explained it, was to serve enjoyable French-inspired food that “just happens” to be meatless. A mixed party of vegetarians, vegans, gluten-frees, and carnivores could dine here, without major sacrifices by anyone. There aren’t any gimmicks, or dishes tricked up to look like one thing, while actually being another. The food is straightforward, and mostly very good.

Though Pawlicki doesn’t cook here, his fingerprints are all over the place, from the spare décor, the odd menu prices (ending in .25, .50, .75), and the Franglais menu, occasionally with grammatical and spelling errors.

Nothing is expensive. Soups and appetizers are $3.75–9.50, larger plates $14.50–19.75, side dishes $2.00–6.00. Every dish is labeled vegan, gluten free, or in some cases neither. (Some dishes are made with butter and/or cheese.) The menu changes weekly.

A warm Rosemary Onion Focaccia (above left), baked in house, is so soft and flavorful that it doesn’t need butter (and none is supplied).

 

There are several “Plats Froids” (cold plates) on the menu, or you can have a selection of three for $7.00. For this arranged tasting, the chef sent out a quartet of them (above right): 1) Celery root marinated with lemon juice and dressed with house-made mayonaise; 2) Lentils vinaigrette with brunoise of carrots, celery and leeks with Dijon vinaigrette; 3) Beets with horseradish, seasoned with shallots, tarragon and herbs; 4) Assortment of carrots, with chickpease, leeks, and raisins in a lemon spiced vinaigrette.

The lengthy descriptions give an idea of the kind of effort that goes into these salads. They are all worthwhile. I also enjoyed the Yam Cake ($3.75; nine o’clock position in the photo, above right), made with layers of sweet potatoes, seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon.

 

I disliked the Vegan Cassoulet ($14.75; above left), as I couldn’t put out of my mind what it lacked: the combination of duck confit and pork sausages, or the like, that a cassoulet traditionally requires. If you love real cassoulet, you’ll feel that something crucial is missing.

Gnocchi Parisian au Gratin ($19.75; above right) is the chef’s marvellous interpretation of mac and cheese, made with 180-day-old swiss cheese, shallots, and black truffle. This is a much better bet for carnivores, as you won’t wish the dish contained anything else. (We were served tasting-sized portions; the full entrée sized portion is enormous and should probably be shared—it is that rich.)

 

Dessert was “my grandmother’s semolina wheat cake” with crème anglaise, rum and raisins ($5.50; above far left), gluten-free chocolate ganache with rice, almond and raisin crust ($8.75; above middle), and a Banana Brûlée ($6.50; above right). Once again, the gluten-free chocolate was the least successful (for this carnivore), because I was reminded of what it lacked. The other two were excellent.

The intimate space seats just 38. The chef works with just one assistant and serves many of the dishes himself. As far as I could judge, other tables got the same good service that we did; the space wasn’t full on the weeknight we visited, but this being the East Village, it operates on very different hours than I do. The restaurant is currently BYOB; a wine license is expected in the spring.

Table Verte isn’t a fancy spot, but it’s rustic, hearty, and enjoyable. I probably won’t be back on my own, but if I were entertaining a vegetarian friend, it would have my business. As far as I can tell, it’s a success for what it’s trying to be, and should build a strong East Village following.

Table Verte (127 E. 7th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, East Village)

Bistro Le Midi

 

Note: At the time of this review, Chip Smith was the chef. He has since moved onto The Simone. We’ve not been back to Le Midi since he left.

*

French cuisine is making a small comeback. It never really went away, but for a long time in the mid-aughts, new French restaurants were more dreamt of than seen.

I’ll believe France is really back when a French restaurant like Ai Fiori or The NoMad opens, and gets three stars. Otherwise, chefs are just doodling around the margins of excellence, fearful of critic backlash.

But there is plenty to enjoy in the meantime. Enter Le Midi, a new casual bistro near Union Square. It offers the sort of hearty, rustic French menu that I love. The space is modern-looking, and a bit austere, despite the white tablecloths. Old movies play silently on a screen above the bar.

The menu offers bistro standards, with a few announced specials. Soups and starters are $8–14, mains $18–28, sides $5–6, plus the obligatory burger at $14. Fries didn’t come with any of the dishes we had, but should you order them, the portion size is ample, and they looked irresistible.

The wine list is better than it has to be. We were surprised to find a 2005 Médoc for $48 (above left). New places in this restaurant’s price range tend to have very little older than 2009, or so. We ordered that, and were quite pleased with it.

The bread service (above right) was humble, but at least served warm.

 

My fiancée nominated a warm Frisée aux Lardons ($12; above right) as an early candidate for Salad of the Year, with a luscious poached egg and a musky bacon flavor. A duck terrine ($12; above right) was fine, but not as memorable.

 

Duck Leg Confit ($21; above left) and Coq au Vin ($21; above right) were good renditions of classic dishes—not the best you’ve had, but at this price well worth your trouble.

We ordered dessert (a rarity for us), a perfectly respectable Strawberry Shortcake ($9; left).

I didn’t make note of the cocktails we ordered at the bar before our meal, and there isn’t an online list, but my recollection is they were a good deal better than you’d expect at such a place. They wouldn’t transfer the tab, a lapse I’ll forgive at Le Midi’s price range. Once at the table, the server was attentive, his ordering advice dependable.

The restaurant, doing comfortable business but not full on a Wednesday evening, attracts what appears to be a neighborhood crowd. So far, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice is the only professional critic to have noticed it. He departed a happy man. So did we.

Le Midi (11 E. 13th Street between University Place & Fifth Avenue, Union Square)

Food: French bistro standards
Service: Casual, but just fine at the price range
Ambiance: An austere, modern space, where tablecloths don’t feel old-school

Rating: ★

La Villette

Note: La Villette closed in October 2014. The space is quickly approaching “cursed” status (having also hosted another flop, 10 Downing), though there is nothing wrong with the location other than poorly executed concepts. As of January 2015, the space is home to an American market restaurant called Café Clover.

*

La Villette opened in late October, on the edge of the West Village. It offers a solid but sleepy incarnation of French Provençal cuisine. There’s nothing wrong with a restaurant like this—I wish my neighborhood had one. But there’s a distinct lack of dishes that set the pulse racing, and the execution isn’t so exemplary that it demands attention on its own.

On the face of it, this ought to be an ideal location, on a busy corner lot, close to several subway stations. But a number of restaurants on this block have struggled, including La Villette’s predecessor, the appropriately named 10 Downing.

If you’re the owners of La Villette, perhaps the best news of the year is that one of the fall hits, El Toro Blanco (which replaced another failure, Sam Bahri’s Steakhouse), just opened down the block. El Toro was packed at 7 pm on a recent Wednesday evening.

Perhaps La Villette will get some of the spillover crowd, eventually. Or perhaps not. We found La Villette’s dining room mostly empty. I don’t believe they seated more than five tables while we were there, although the bar was mostly full.

The layout of the old 10 Downing space hasn’t changed, but it has been re-decorated like a typical French bistro, with subway tile, old French movie posters, and distressed mirrors. The dining room seats 85, with another 60 outdoors in good weather. That’s a lot of chairs to fill, a challenge that 10 Downing seldom met.

The current menu is not available online. The restaurant emailed me a menu about a month ago, but as of our visit it had already been pared down. That’s never a good sign. On the message boards (Yelp, etc.), there’s a smattering of unrealistically fawning message board reviews that are obvious shills.

On top of the food (mostly good), my Old Fashioned cocktail was well prepared. The wine list, though not extensive, is mostly French, offers fair value, and goes well with the food. The warm bread service (served with olive oil, not butter) a great start.

 

A Tomato Watermelon salad ($12; above left) was just fine, although December is a strange month in which to be serving it. I’d heartily recommend the Puff Pastry Tomato Tart ($9; above right), one of the better renditions of that dish.

 

Mussels are offered in two sizes, and each size with either of two sauces (White Wine or Tomato, i.e., Provençale). My girlfriend ordered the Provençale ($19; above left), which had her nodding with approval. I didn’t try the mussels, but the fries (below left) were wonderful.

La Villette sources its beef from the Ottomanelli Brothers, with three cuts offered: a ribeye, filet mignon, or veal filet mignon. I was modestly displeased with the Veal Filet ($32; above right), which was drowned in a humdrum shower of mushrooms and frisée.

 

Despite my carping, we weren’t ready for the meal to end, so we ordered the Cheese Plate ($20; above right), a good selection for this type of restaurant.

Although the dining room was mostly empty, the kitchen was quite slow, and the meal took over two hours. The table next to us received inordinate attention: an older guy with a trophy date and three cell phones. If you’re into people-watching, it wasn’t bad entertainment. We received what was, I suppose, the more usual service, which aside from the kitchen’s slow pace, was as friendly and proper as it ought to be.

I’m sorry if that comes across as too negative. We actually liked our visit to La Villette. We probably won’t rush back, not for any drawbacks of the place as presently conceived, but because French cuisine of this middling quality is available at many other places.

La Villette (10 Downing Street at Sixth Avenue, West Village)

Food: Provençal, generally well prepared, if a bit lacking in excitement
Service: Solid, friendly, reliable, but a bit slow
Ambiance: A typical brasserie, with subway tile and old French movie posters

Rating: ★
Why? This is the kind of French restaurant every neighborhood should have.

The Pitch & Fork

Note: Pitch & Fork closed. The space is now a Mexican restaurant called Epazote.

*

On the Upper East Side, where the restaurant scene has been quietly improving, welcome to The Pitch & Fork. It’s not destination dining, but another solid option in a neighborhood that the media always considered dining-deficient.

In truth, the media perception of Upper East Side dining was always more myth than fact. East of Third Avenue, the residents are younger, edgier, and far more likely to be single. They’ve all gotta eat. Restaurants up here still struggle to pull crowds from outside the neighborhood, but many of them do solid local business.

That appeared to be the case on a recent Saturday evening at The Pitch & Fork, which opened in late June. There’s a small outdoor café, a dark tavern-like dining room, and a quiet outdoor garden (where we ate), which supposedly will be open year-round.

The man in charge is Jacques Ouari, whose clutch of restaurants includes Jacques Brasserie at 85th & Third and Jacques 1534 in NoLIta. The menu here offers French-accented pub fare, where burgers, hot dogs and ribs could share the table with moules frites and steak au poivre.

Soups, salads and appetizers run $7–16, main courses $15–26, side dishes $6–7. The wine list is not much of a draw, but you’ll find something acceptable. The bottle of red Zinfandel pictured above was $53.

Not many restaurants serve a platter of Schaller & Weber choucroute these days, so we ordered that. It comes in two sizes ($16/$22), and the larger of these was more than we could finish, a bounty of bockwurst, weisswurst, frankfurt, pork belly, sauerkraut, and potatoes.

 

A very good poached Brook Trout ($22; above left) was stuffed with spinach, shallots, and wild mushrooms. But under-seasoned Roast Chicken ($21; above right) had a flat, mushy taste.

Some of the servers here are a bit shaky on the finer points (where to put silverware, how to pour wine), but they were attentive enough, and the outdoor garden is lovely. I’d like to hope that chicken was an anomaly, as otherwise the Pitch & Fork is a pleasant spot.

The Pitch & Fork (1606 First Avenue between 83rd & 84th Streets, Upper East Side)

Food: French-accented American pub fare
Service: Informal but sufficiently attentive
Ambiance: A bustling tavern with a quiet outdoor garden

Rating: ★
Why? Another solid option for the area, but not noteworthy enough to travel for

Jeanne & Gaston

Jeanne & Gaston is an under-the-radar contemporary French bistro on the southern edge of Chelsea. It’s in the upmarket casual idiom that, for Italian cuisine, has become so common that another one opens every week. But as it’s French, Jeanne & Gaston is a far scarcer breed, and therefore worthy of some attention.

This is the second restaurant for chef Claude Godard, whose first spot, Madison Bistro, opened in 1998. The two places are extremely similar, though the careful eye might detect a few slightly edgier dishes at Jeanne & Gaston (named for the chef’s grandparents), which opened in December 2011.

Budget-conscious diners will smile at either establishment, where the three-course prix fixe is just $40, with about a dozen choices of both appetizers and mains, and half-a-dozen desserts. (A few items have $2–3 supplements.) If you prefer to order à la carte, most appetizers are $13, mains $26, desserts $10.

The menu offers a mix of classic French bistro cuisine, specialties from the chef’s native Burgundy, and a few of his own inventions. It is very good for the price point.

The restaurant’s hidden ace is a delightful 40-seat outdoor garden with its antique sculptured limestone fountain, cloistered between two residential buildings and closed off with a wood fence. You should by all means dine there if the weather permits. And if not, there is always the 32-seat dining room, which is charming and unobjectionable, but could be faulted for a lack of personality.

We dined at the publicist’s invitation and did not pay for our meal. The chef served a five-course tasting menu with portion sizes adjusted, for which I believe he ordinarily charges $55.

 

Baguettes (above left) are made in-house and were served warm. The charcuterie plate (above right) came with prosciutto, garlic sausage, and chicken liver mousse. I’d give it a pass next time, as cured meats of comparable quality are available all over town.

 

The dish of the evening was the Napoleon (above left), which the chef says is his own creation. It was certainly new to me: a tower of wafer-thin pasty discs with crabmeat salad sandwiched in between and an avocado mousse around the edge of the plate.

I also enjoyed the sea scallops (above right) with “Tarte Tatin” Provençale. The scare quotes are on the printed menu, so I assume irony is intended, perhaps because tarte is usually a dessert.

 

The chef serves Duck Magret (above left) at both of his restaurants. Uptown, he serves it with potatoes; here with vegetables tempura and a mango emulsion. “Magret” refers to the force-fed ducks that produce foie gras, so you know it will be fatty and flavorful. I was not fond of the vegetables, which were a hair too greasy.

We finished with a duo of desserts (above right), a chocolate soufflé and the chef’s interpretation of that old classic, the floating island. You won’t go wrong with either one.

The price point at Jeanne & Gaston is both a strength and a limitation—the latter because there’s only so much you can do for forty bucks. But. Seriously. Forty bucks for three courses or $13/$26 for appetizers and entrées à la carte? If it were served in a garage in Brooklyn, they’d be lined up out the door.

Jeanne & Gaston (212 W. 14th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Chelsea)

The Purple Fig

Note: After a brief late-summer closure in late August 2012, the Purple Fig re-opened in September with a “more simple” menu. We liked our visit (when the original menu was still available), but the consensus of most other reviewers was negative.

By December 2012, the space had reverted back to its former name, P. D. O’Hurley’s. That experiement lasted less than three months, before the restaurant was seized by the marshall, presumably for non-payment of taxes. The space was closed as of June 2013, but the 70-year-old Emerald Inn is expected to relocate there.

*

You’ve got to give credit to the team behind The Purple Fig, the cute new French bistro on the Upper West Side. Nothing they’re serving, nor the style in which they are serving it, is remotely fashionable. So they’ve opened this new restaurant for the best possible reason: because they believe in it.

But one must ask where the customers will come from. It’s too fancy to bring the kids, not quite good enough to be a destination, not edgy enough to attract a younger crowd, a tad too far from Lincoln Center to be an obvious pre-theater place, and too expensive to be a neighborhood standby.

After you subtract all the potential guests I’ve just excluded, are there enough remaining to make a go of it? I hope so. The Purple Fig, though not yet great, is promising. In a town where new French restaurants are scarce, you want to root for every one.

Prices, for this location, are a bit dear, with appetizers $9.95–20.95, entrées $23.95–36.95, and side dishes $5.95. Every price ends in “.95,” an outdated and unendearing conceit.

The chef, Conrad Gallagher, was last seen in New York at the now-closed Peacock Alley. A rendition of the Purple Fig in Dublin won him a Michelin star.

Calling it a “modern bistro,” he serves an eccentric menu, with concoctions like: Deep Fried Soft Duck Egg with Polenta, Soft Blood Pudding, Frisée Salad with Prosciutto, Lemon Oil Emulsion.

That’s just one dish. Most others feature similar long lists of ingredients. And you wonder: How’s that going to work?

One might begin with that old standby, the “Goats [sic] Cheese Salad,” served here with wild rocket, confit tomatoes, toasted garlic, pumpkin seeds and marinated figs ($9.95; above right).

Here, the goat cheese sits atop a tiny puff pastry, instead of being integrated into the salad. I don’t consider that an improvement, though I must report: my girlfriend loved the dish.

 

I much admired a Goose Liver Parfait ($12.95; above left), with fig marmalade, spinach salad, apricot compote, and hazelnut aioli, served with perhaps the best brioche I’ve ever been served with this type of dish (above right), so thick and hearty it could have been French toast.

 

My girlfriend and I had the same entrée, the Roasted Muscovy Duck Breast ($26.95; above left), with poached figs, butternut purée, lentils, a quail egg, and green apple salad. She liked it far better than I did. The duck was fine enough, but the lentils tasted bitter, and the dish felt like a pile of unintegrated ingredients. I wasn’t fond (and have never been fond) of the blob of baby food shaped like the point of a spear.

The chef has a fondness for figs: quite inadvertently, they figured in all three dishes we ordered. I guess the place has “fig” in the name for a reason.

The kitchen sent out a plate of the French Fries with Truffle Aioli (normally $5.95; above right). I assumed they came with the duck or were comped, until they appeared on the bill—removed, in all fairness, after I pointed out the error. I’m glad I didn’t pay for them, as they were soggy and not warm enough.

The wine list, as at many new restaurants, doesn’t have much personality. Running to just a page, it’s a list of safe, unremarkable bottles, with no geographic or thematic unity. It isn’t even majority-French. I suspect a consultant put it together.

The space is smartly decorated, in a purple motif that isn’t at all obtrusive, but with its white tablecloths and dim lighting, the space feels fancier than it needs to be. The dining room was about half full on a Friday evening. A handsome long bar wasn’t occupied at all.

Some early message board reports complained about the service, but two months in those issues have been rectified. The staff (most speak with French accents) now seem on top of their game. Aside from the one dish billed in error, we had no complaints. The restaurant is a work in progress, but good enough to be worth a second visit a few months from now.

The Purple Fig (250 W. 72nd St., west of Broadway, Upper West Side)

Food: Modern “eccentric” French
Wine: A generic unfocused list; adequate, but could be better
Service: Mostly very good
Ambiance: An upscale spot that feels fancier than it needs to be

Rating: ★
Why? Not destination cuisine, but worth keeping an eye on