Jezebel

Note: After I wrote this post, the restaurant’s owner wrote a couple of nasty tweets about my reviewing qualifications. Turns out, I wasn’t so far off. About a month after our visit, the restaurant hired a new chef, Chris Mitchell, and changed its kosher supervision to the Orthodox Union, in order to broaden its appeal among kosher diners. The OU insisted that the restaurant change its name to “The J Soho,” since Jezebel (as noted below) is “a clearly wicked person” in the Bible. That strategy didn’t work. The J Soho closed in late 2013.

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Do you remember the TV series Chicken Soup, a 1989 sitcom that starred Jackie Mason in an improbable interfaith relationship with Lynne Redgrave? It was canceled after eight episodes.

If you apply the same idea to restaurants, you wind up with Jezebel, an expensive Glatt Kosher restaurant in Soho that looks like it was helicoptered in from the Meatpacking District.

In the Book of Kings, Jezebel is a Phoenician princess who was murdered by being thown out a window. She is also sometimes associated with false prophets and prostitution. Why they chose this name for the restaurant is beyond me. Perhaps there is a Talmudic connection I have missed.

Jezebel has a very clubby look. If I learned that the folks behind Lavo and Tao consulted on the design—to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t—I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. It occupies a bi-level century-old townhouse, with a plush lounge on the ground floor and a beautifully-appointed 100-seat dining room upstairs. It’s provocatively decorated with a Last Supper parody painting, with Woody Allen in the center chair. A loud Latin sound track seems out of place.

The host, hostess, and cocktail waitresses are all quite attractive. Cocktails are $16 apiece, and many entrées soar above the $40 mark, but they won’t transfer your tab. The staff hurry you to leave the bar and head for your table, even though neither space is full.

Jezebel was packed and exclusive for about three months, but it’s now on OpenTable and bookable most evenings, any time you want. (They’re closed Fridays, of course.) I can’t compare Jezebel to other kosher restaurants, but as a glam restaurant that just happens to keep kosher, Jezebel has very little appeal.

The website credits Bradford Thompson, the former Lever House chef, though the extent of his day-to-day involvement is unclear. The website also claims “extraordinary” and “innovative” cuisine. It is neither. Most of the dishes, in fact, are snoozers. Almost all are very expensive. A $110 steak for two headlined the menu, with no mention of quality or aging, whcih probably means it was unaged choice. (Do the laws of Kashrut even allow aging?)

I didn’t photograph the bread course, but there was hardly any need: unimpressive onion rolls. The Daily News review mentioned a carrot-and-chickpea spread that’s supposed to come with it, but our server seems to have forgotten it, and we didn’t know to ask.

An order of veal meatballs (above right) was priced in the high teens. You’ll eat them and quickly forget them. Another restaurant would put cream in the sauce, but Jezebel can’t.

 

Much the same is true of Salmon (above left) and Braised Short Ribs (above right): just fine, but you’ve had better, for less money. The short ribs, I believe, were $46.

In a new restaurant, I usually ask a server what he recommends. This one went straight to the most expensive item, that $110 steak, strictly an amateur-hour move. He also pushed the side dishes, which we skipped, as they would have been entirely unnecessary. All the other staff were friendly and helpful.

The wine list is better than the restaurant deserves. Some of the prices are just crazy, but there are good bottles under $60, like the 2007 Rioja we had. The rebbe who poured it was a real mensch, one of the highlights of the evening. There’s a cohort of Israeli wines, as you’d expect, but at the prices they’re asking I wasn’t about to risk trying one.

If your beliefs do not require you to eat this way, you’ll find this food very boring. There was, to be fair, nothing specifically wrong with it, except that, for what it is, it ought to cost a lot less.

Food: Boring and very expensive kosher steak and fish
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Reminds you of a restaurant connected to a nightclub

Rating: Not recommended, except for affluent machers.

Kutsher's Tribeca

Note: It should surprise absolutely no one that Kutsher’s Tribeca closed in mid-2014. This is, after all, a Jeffrey Chodorow restaurant. Quick failure is his calling card. A branch of Almond is expected to replace it. The review below was under the opening chef, Mark Spanganthal, who left the restaurant in early 2013.

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When I heard that Jeffrey Chodorow, the prolific creator of failed restaurants, was opening a “Catskills Jewish” place in Tribeca, I thought: Mr. Gimmick has struck again. The idea seemed patently absurd.

Kutsher’s Tribeca isn’t absurd at all. It’s actually kinda fun, and the food isn’t bad. The Chod’s role is minimized: he’s an investor, leaving the running of the place to Zach Kutsher, a fourth-generation descendant of the family behind the eponymous Kutsher’s Resort and Country Club in Monticello, New York.

Zach Kutscher is an earnest and sincere fellow (nothing like the Chod), and you want only the best for him, but it is not quite clear how they’ll make it work. There are 167 seats to fill, in a huge space where Drew Nieporent failed twice, most recently with Mai House.

The popularity of the so-called Catskills Jewish cuisine is long past a zenith reached decades ago. The region was once considered a prime summer vacation spot for Jews, but it went into a long decline after the 1950s, owing to the three A’s: assimilation, airplanes, and air conditioning. Most of the resorts are now abandoned, no longer Jewish, or are run as summer camps for the ultra-orthodox.

Kutsher’s, in fact, is the last kosher resort in the Catskills still operating year-round—but just barely. A couple of years ago, Mark and Helen Kutsher were ready to shut down after years of declining business. They got a reprieve when Yossi Zablocki, a lawyer from New Jersey, took over the place and injected much-needed capital. But the resort is still in poor shape, suffering from decades of under-investment. Many of the reviews on various travel sites are downright terrible. If Zablocki hopes to recapture the glory, he will have his work cut out for him.

I never visited Kutsher’s, but my girlfriend did. She even worked there one summer. She says Kutsher’s Tribeca doesn’t resemble the Catskills place at all. I don’t know what a modern version of Catskills décor would look like, but this ain’t it. But it’s pleasant enough, bedecked in bright blonde woods and soft banquettes. There’s a slightly over-loud, but inoffensive soundtrack that, like the décor, could be found anywhere. Should Kutsher’s fail, Chodorow could install his next gimmick with a minimum amount of retooling. Indeed, this must be the plan at any Chodorow establishment, given that they fail at around a 75 percent clip.

If you’re Jewish, you’ll recognize a lot of the menu: charoset, knishes, latkes, gefilte fish, matzo ball soup, potato kugel, chopped liver. Most of these are re-interpreted, served not quite the way you remember them. There’s no traif, but the restaurant is not kosher. Chef Mark Spangenthal adds a handful of neutral items like tuna crudo, beet and goat cheese salad, grilled duck breast, and the Creekstone Farms bone-in ribeye for two that mysteriously finds its way onto every menu in town, regardless of cuisine. These dishes are like the maroon sweater in your closet: they go with everything.

To me, this menu has a great nostalgic appeal. It remains to be seen how it will play to non-Jewish diners. There is something slightly comical when you hear an obviously non-Jewish bartender say, “I just love the kreplach.” Really?

The bread service (above left) was somewhat perfunctory, but I appreciated the soft butter. The Crispy Potato Latkes ($9; above right) with apple compote and sour cream were slightly less hearty versions of the ones I remember from childhood.

For $18, you can get the latkes topped with caviar, an absurdity that has Chodorow’s fingerprints all over it. How good can nine-dollar caviar be? For photos of this monstrosity, have a look at Gael Greene’s blog.

My girlfriend had the Matzo Ball Soup ($11; above left), which she said was terrific.

On the bartender’s recommendation, I decided to take a chance on the Gefilte Fish ($12; above right). This was a considerable risk, as the traditional version is the most vile concoction legal for human consumption: “a tan lump sitting in goo,” as Chef Spangenthal explains. The last time I tried it, I nearly gagged.

So Spangenthal set out to make a modern version that was…edible. For the usual mixture of pike, whitefish, and carp, floating in a jellied broth, he substituted sushi-grade halibut, bound with challah crumbs, beets, and horseradish. No jellied goo. He spent two months refining the dish. (There’s a longer explanation in New York.)

The good news is: he succeeded. This gefilte fish is actually enjoyable. I do wonder, though, how much appeal it’ll have for those who don’t have a nearly-inedible precursor to compare it to.

The Delicatessen ($16; left) came with three meats. Pastrami had a delicious smokey flavor (though not as good as Katz’s), but it was offset by listless veal tongue. The chopped liver was excellent.

I wasn’t able to properly enjoy the Romanian Steak ($26; right), as we had over-ordered. Whether Romanian Jews ever had steak like this is an open question. I was expecting something more like the flat strip served at Sammy’s. This version was sliced and served in a mound, topped with caramelized onions. The beef was cooked to a bright medium rare, and unlike Sammy’s, it was prime and without gristle. A mushroom knish on the side was rather dull.

We were too full for dessert; the meal ended with a packet of “Rabbi Mints” (left), the Catskills alternative to petits fours.

There are no traditional Jewish wines worth serving at such a restaurant, so the wine list here is a generic mix that could be served anywhere: once again, the Chod protects himself against failure.

The cocktails (all $12) have witty names, like “Bug Juice” and “Bungalow Bunny.” Bug Juice is better remembered in the non-alcoholic version of your youth. Try the Milton’s Mark (Maker’s Mark, sweet vermouth, maple syrup, Amargo pisco bitters).

The staff is knowledgeable about the menu and reasonably attentive. The relentless upselling for which Chodorow’s restaurants are so well known, is held mostly in check.

The dining room was about 2/3rds full by 8:00 p.m. The question for Kutsher’s Tribeca is how many of those guests will want to return. Will this be a go-to restaurant, or a gimmick to try once? The answer to that question will determine whether Kutsher’s is still on the scene a couple of years from now.

Kutsher’s Tribeca (186 Franklin St. between Greenwich & Hudson Sts, Tribeca)

Food: ★
Service: ★
Ambiance: ★
Overall: ★

Octavia's Porch

Note: Octavia’s Porch closed in May 2011 after just six months in business.

*

It’s Hanukkah! Which put me in the mood, the other day, to visit chef Nikki Cascone’s new Jewish-themed restaurant, Octavia’s Porch.

Cascone is Jewish on her mother’s side. (She’s also a Top Chef alum, having been eliminated mid-way through Season 4.) She told the Times, “I want people to understand Jewish food that goes beyond the New York deli.”

The menu is a mixture of obviously Jewish dishes (Gefilte fish, Kreplach, Latkes), and a few others you could find anywhere (roasted chicken; a veggie club sandwhich). The only nod to the other half of her heritage (her father’s Italian side) is a buckwheat tagliatelle entrée. There is certainly enough to please those for whom the Jewish dishes hold no appeal.

It’s all offered at Avenue B prices, so appetizers are mostly $10 or less, sandwiches $12, entrées $18–22, desserts $6–7. Cocktails seem like a great deal at $10, until the bartender tops off your Mojito from a soda gun, sending it to a watery grave.

The warm, house-made bread could be Robert Atkins’ public enemy #1. Serving such a gorgeous specimen to a solo diner is almost criminal. Most three-star restaurants don’t serve bread this good. The only explanation I got out of the server was, “She just uses a very high quality flour.”

Kreplach, as Wikipedia tells us, “are small dumplings filled with ground meat, . . . usually boiled and served in chicken soup.” The Kreplach here ($8; below left) are an error of both conception and execution. Made with beef and veal, they quickly fell apart, with the meat filling not adhering to the dough. Worse yet, the traditional chicken soup was replaced with an inauthentic dipping sauce of soy and scallions. These were not the Kreplach of my youth, nor were they an improvement.

But Long Island Duck Breast ($19; above right) was wonderful, with glistening meat wearing a sensuous coat of fat and skin. Spiced vanilla–apple sauce was unsubtle, but just fine. It comes with a latke, and though I didn’t mind that it was made with sweet potato, it won’t put Russ & Daughters out of business.

The space is bare-bones, particularly in the rear dining room, but old-school chandeliers and sconces make it feel like home. Menus are presented in a laminated sleeve, which means they don’t have to be replaced as often, but which also makes them look a bit cheap. The wine list is unmemorable. Service was reasonably smooth, for a restaurant that had been open just three days. The restaurant was full, and with clearly more than just an Avenue B crowd.

I am sure there will be adjustments to the menu. Cascone understands the idiom and there is no question she can cook. The bread and the duck entrée show promise of how good the restaurant can be. The kreplach show that there is still some work to do. I would certainly go back, if I lived anywhere nearby.

Octavia’s Porch (40 Avenue B between E. 3rd & E. 4th Streets, East Village)

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

Your Seder Could Be Here

With Passover starting tomorrow, I doubt that anyone who cares about celebrating a Seder is still looking for restaurant suggestions. Still, I thought I’d share my research.

I was surprised how many serious restaurants are offering Seders or Passover-themed meals this weekend:

• At Savoy, chef–owner Peter Hoffman cooks the Sephardic-accented meal and leads the Seder himself. Price: $110.
• At Tabla, Floyd Cardoz celebrates Passover Indian-style. Price: $95.
• At Compass, Neil Annis mixes a modern American and traditional Jewish menu. Price: $110.
• At Capsouto Frères, which has offered its Seder for 20 years, the menu is Sephardic-themed, and the proceeds are donated to charity. Price: $150.

These are all wonderful restaurants—places I’d be pleased to recommend any day of the week. On paper, Tabla appears to have the best deal, not merely because it has the lowest price, but because it’s the best restaurant of the bunch.

But the pièce de resistance is Passover at Sammy’s Roumanian, where the watered-down Seder (just 20-minutes long) costs $190. Just three years ago, they were charging only $90 for it. We were actually considering Sammy’s—the 20-minute service is right up our street—but at the inflated price we’ll take a pass.

So where are we going instead? L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Same price as Sammy’s; food from another universe.

Sammy's Roumanian

There are some New York institutions for which traditional criticism is irrelevant. You accept them for what they are—or you don’t. Prime among these: Sammy’s Roumanian, the iconic Jewish steakhouse on the Lower East Side.

This is the third Roumanian-Jewish restaurant at the same address. It was once called Parkway, before that establishment moved first to Allen Street and later to Restaurant Row. One of its waiters, Sammy Friedman, re-opened with the identical menu, and promptly failed. The landlord then leased the space and the name to Stan Zimmerman, a Romanian Jew from the Bronx, and in this form the restaurant has thrived ever since.

In a September 1976 two-star review—the first of three she wrote—Mimi Sheraton of the Times reported that Sammy’s attracted “a cross section of serious eaters, including Gucci- and Vuitton- trimmed uptowners, devotees from Queens and New Jersey who pull up in white Cadillacs and black Continentals, blue-jeaned artists and bearded bohemian types, union officials, politicians, judges, out-of-town buyers with showroom models and theater personalities.”

By March 1978 (still two stars), Sheraton would report that Sammy’s was a “huge success, lively, Bohemian, with a mixture of customers that include judges and politicians, union officials and artists in blue jeans, uptowners dressed to the teeth in Gucci trademarks and a double-parked row of white Lincolns and black Cadillacs that can be seen almost any night of the week.”

Wanting a piece of this success, the original Sammy opened up a competing place in midtown, which he called the Original Sammy’s Emporium. Zimmerman went to court, and obtained an injunction preventing Sammy from using that name.

Counting Parkway, there were thus at least three restaurants in Manhattan following more-or-less the identical format, which was probably two more than New York needed. Those others are long gone, leaving Sammy’s Roumanian as the city’s lone entry in the genre.

The restaurant is on two levels. On the Sunday night that we visited, the lower level was rented for a private party; we were seated on the upper level, which was doing a surprisingly brisk business, but was not full.

The “rec room” décor is so kitschy that it demands multiple photographs. The walls are plastered with snapshots of past visitors. Many of them left their business cards in the interstices of the ceiling panels. The cards are mostly faded, and have probably been there for decades. The balloons and streamers seem like the remnants of an old Bar Mitzvah party. Even when it was new, Mimi Sheraton said that it “could hardly be called attractive.”

A Jewish entertainer plays the synthesizer and sings a mixture of Jewish and pop standards. Some couples get up to dance, as if this were a cruise ship. One particularly loving couple must have been up five or six times while we were there. With his navy blue double-breasted suit, pink tie and matching breast pocket square, he looked like he had walked in from another era.

I would tell you that Sammy’s is only for Jews, but for the curious fact that many of the patrons appeared to be gentiles. The menu consists of a couple of mimeographed sheets stapled to manilla file folders. Except to raise prices, that menu surely has not changed for many years—if, indeed, it ever did. Then again, why should it? What Sammy’s does, it does very well indeed.

 
The home-made chopped liver before mixing … and then afterwards.

Chopped liver ($9.95), finished tableside, came with warm bread and was positively addictive. I would quite happily have finished the entire bowl, had it not been that I knew a huge steak was coming.

The signature dish, Roumanian tenderloin (really a skirt steak), comes in three sizes. You’re looking at the small portion ($33.95, if I recall correctly), which is larger than the photo suggests, as  several inches of steak are folded back on itself at the left edge of the photo. It is easily double the portion that many steakhouses would serve, although no steakhouse I know serves a steak this way.

My mom and my son placed the identical order to share. Their steak was chewy and had too much gristle, but mine was just about perfect. However, both steaks were expertly broiled to the requested temperature and slathered with garlic butter.

Silver dollar home-fried potatoes ($5.95) were delightful, but far more than we could finish, given the bounty of food on the table.

There were multiple food runners, but as far as we could tell, just one waitress for the full room. However, she was witty, cheerful, and remarkably efficient. When we told her that one of our steaks was a dud, she promptly comped us an order of Rugelach (dessert pastries), which were wonderful.

Prices at Sammy’s are reasonable by New York standards, but extras can run up the bill in a hurry. There’s a $3.95 per person cover charge, and if two people want to share an entree, it’ll set you back another $8.95.

Vodka, the house drink, is served out of a bottle of Ketel One frozen in ice. (I didn’t think quickly enough to snap a photo when our waitress served us.) One shot will set you back $9.95. They’ll also sell you the whole bottle for $99.95.

Wines are limited to Roumanian labels. My mom smelled a rat, and asked for a taste of the pinot noir, which she found hideous, but the pinot grigio was acceptable. Don’t ask for cappuccino or espresso. When I asked the waitress about coffees, she said, “Coffee? Schmoffee? We have coffee.”

Mimi Sheraton of the Times loved Sammy’s. In her final review, published in May 1982, she would report that “the Cadillacs and Rolls-Royces are still double parked along the otherwise dark and deserted street,” with “the line of waiting customers spilling onto Chrystie Street.” Finding the food “fresh, savory and greaseless,” with staff “cool, efficient and graciously goodhumored,” she awarded three stars. That assessment remains pretty much true today.

No Times critic since Sheraton has re-reviewed Sammy’s, so it remains technically a three-star restaurant. How do you rate a restaurant for which there is no comparison? A star system, if it is helpful at all, is meaningful only when comparing similar establishments. For one-of-a-kind restaurants like Sammy’s, the rating is beside the point. Either you want the unique experience that Sammy’s has to offer, or you don’t.

Sammy’s Roumanian (157 Chrystie Street near Delancey Street, Lower East Side)

Food: ★★
Service: ★
Ambiance: unratable
Overall: ★★