EXKi

EXKi is a fast-casual restaurant with an environmental conscience, serving a vegetable-centric menu with primarily organic ingredients, free-range chickens, and recipes free of additives or preservatives.

The name is short for the French exquis, meaning exquisite. That’s a lot to live up to.

The first EXKi opened in Brussels in 2001, eventually expanding to 77 restaurants in five Western European countries. Their first New York outlet is number 78, with another planned for later this year, and surely more to come if the concept succeeds.

Pret A Manger offers a good template for what EXKi could become, if it takes off.

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The Musket Room

The Musket Room opened in NoLIta in June 2013, after a build-out that took a year, and required an infusion of Kickstarter funding to pull over the finish line. I’d say the wait was worth it.

When we last saw this space, it was Elizabeth, a train wreck of a restaurant that endured a series of chef shuffles, and finally closed in early 2011. Its one redeeming feature was a lovely back garden with a retractable roof that annoyed the neighbors. To get community board approval, the chef had to agree not to use it. Musket Room has turned out so beautifully that it hardly matters.

Chef–Owner Matt Lambert came out of the stable of restaurants owned by the design firm AvroKO (Public, Saxon + Parole, and the now-closed Double Crown). He learned his lessons well. Musket Room feels just like an AvroKO spot, with its exposed bulbs, low lighting, reclaimed wood, and whitewashed brick/plaster walls. Seating is stylish and comfortable. A stately indoor cherry tree (or what looks like one) anchors the bar, which has cute little study lights plugged in every few feet.

Those design elements have been repeated in an endless number of restaurants, but I don’t remember very many that got them so right. The space strikes the right balance between casual and upscale. The sound track is soft rock, played at an unobtrusive volume. The space feels immediately comfortable.

The restaurant is named for the Musket Wars, a 35-year conflict fought 200 years ago between the Māori tribes of New Zealand, the chef’s homeland. A big musket hangs over the bar, and there are little bits of musket imagery throughout the restaurant.

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Après-ski Chalet at Café Select

There’s a mini-boomlet in ski-themed bars and restaurants, including the Haven Rooftop in the Sanctuary Hotel, and the Hudson Lodge at the Hudson Hotel, both in midtown. The Minus 5 Ice Bar is scheduled to open in the Hilton in March 2013—odd timing, to say the least.

The Après-ski Chalet at Café Select has less glitzy ambitions. It occupies a charmless back room behind the kitchen, gussied up rather sloppily with outdated ski equipment and old posters. The staff said it’s used as an oyster bar in the summertime, though it’s about the last place I’d go to eat oysters.

 

 

Three of us paid $22 per person, or a total of $66, for a fondue crock with melted cheese, a bowl of bread cubes for dipping, and some crudités.  In contrast, three of you could share the Grande Fondue at Artisanal, which I’m pretty sure is no smaller than Café Select’s version, and is almost certainly better, at $42.

You can add to the basic fondue package, and you should, with plates of meats and sausages, which are more sensibly priced. Still, it’s a lot of money for what felt like about eight dollars worth of food, in a room that doesn’t feel like any kind of Chalet.

The fondue at Café Select won’t change your life. There’s nothing wrong with it either. But there’s a sense of romance implied in the name “Après-ski Chalet” that this spot doesn’t live up to. If you’re suddenly in that fondue mood, go uptown to Artisanal and grab a seat at the bar.

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select (212 Lafayette St & Kenmare St, Soho)

Food: Unmemorable but acceptable fondue and accouterments
Service: Fine, but cash-only
Ambiance: A storage room hurriedly re-decorated as a 1970s chalet

Rating: Not recommended
Why? If you want fondue, there are better and cheaper options

Pier NYC on Roosevelt Island

Pier NYC offers a bit of summer fun, in a beautiful location with unbeatable Manhattan skyline views. The food isn’t bad, but it’s beside the point.

Oh yeah: it’s on Roosevelt Island, which I’d never been to. It’s one of those spots that sounds a lot farther away than it is. You can get there on the F Train or via a four-minute ride on the Roosevelt Island Tramway, from Second Avenue and 59th Street.

The island wasn’t always so appealing. Formerly known as Welfare Island (and earlier, Blackwell’s Island), it once housed a penitentiary, a lunatic asylum, and a smallpox hospital. If New York had had a leper colony, it probably would have been there.

It was converted to residential use in 1969, but was not reachable from the Manhattan side until the tram opened in 1976 and the subway arrived in 1989. (A bridge to Queens, opened in 1955, is the only vehicular route to the island; before that, there was an elevator to the Queensboro Bridge.) Originally dedicated to lower and mid-priced housing, recent construction on the island is considerably more upscale.

All of which brings us to Pier NYC, new to the island this summer, from owners Jonathan Hoo, Salvatore Hoo, and Alfonso DiCioccio (pictured above left), who opened the nearby Riverwalk Bar & Grill in 2009.

I guess they wanted some foodie cred, so they brought in well known names to cater the place: Josh Bowen of John Brown’s Smokehouse for barbecue; David Santos of Um Segredo Supper Club for seafood; and Alyssa Gangeri of AllyCakes for desserts.

Catering, really, is what it is. The menu is short and inexpensive, and most of it is made elsewhere.

 

We were invited to an opening party at the publicist’s invitation. We were served a few finger-food samples from the regular menu, probably not enough to judge it fairly.

 

Neither of the two barbecue offerings floated my boat: smoked beef brisket (above left) and smoked turkey (above right), both served on lightly toasted white bread. The regular barbecue menu (pulled pork, lamb sausage, house-made pastrami) sounds more interesting.

 

A rock shrimp roll (normally $12; above left) was a lot more impressive. Order this. If you have room for dessert, the Red Velvet Whoopie Pie (normally $3; above right) is well worth a try.

The one thing they don’t have is a first-rate mixologist. The cocktails are strictly beach stuff, like mimosas, screwdrivers, margaritas, and daquiris, along with a basic list of sodas, beers, and wines.

Pier NYC isn’t a dining destination, but it’s the first Roosevelt Island dining venue I can recall to have received any mainstream media attention at all. That’s progress. But the views are really the attraction here.

Pier NYC (Slightly North of the F Train and the Tramway, Roosevelt Island)

Lani Kai

Note: Lani Kai closed in September 2012. It has been replaced by The Dalloway, a Lesbian-themed bar and lounge.

*

When the Hawaiian-themed Lani Kai opened eighteen months ago in the old Tailor space, it got plenty of publicity, but the major critics ignored it. I dropped in for cocktails in late 2010, but never felt like going back for dinner. A favorable Times review last week made me wonder what I had missed.

Julie Reiner, the owner, is known mainly for a couple of excellent cocktail spots, Flatiron Lounge and Clover Club. But she is from Hawaii, so this seemed like the obvious choice for her first restaurant.

I gather it has been a struggle: the restaurant is routinely available on OpenTable, practically any day, any time. It’s on a dull block in Soho’s southwest corner that doesn’t attract a lot of foot traffic. The cocktails, naturally, are first-rate, but that isn’t enough, especially with a rather large bi-level space to fill.

I suspect that, to most people, Hawaiian cuisine doesn’t set the pulse racing. The image that comes to mind is the luau, often an over-priced, mediocre tourist trap.

Ms. Reiner hired a new chef recently, Japanese native Sawako Okochi, who worked previously as a sous-chef at Annisa. Her challenge is to make the food relevant, while staying within a fairly tight price point: appetizers and sharing plates are $7–15, entrées $19–26.

Cocktails are $13, a good $2–3 less than many locations get away with these days. During Happy Hour they’re even less. The Bearded Lady (below left) was just $10, the 808 State (below center) just $6. Both of these seemed like cruise-ship cocktails to me. I liked the Flatiron Martini (no photo) a lot better.

  

The wine list is pretty bare-bones. A Pouilly-Fuissé was $29; it came in a decorative wooden ice bucket (above right).

The Pu-Pu platter plus a side order of pork buns was enough for the three of us to eat. There’s a choice of seven items that can go on the platter, of which you choose four, but they all have a different à la carte price. The crab wantons ($8) were the best of these. Baby back ribs ($13) were thick and meaty. Chicken wings ($10) and Chicken yakitori skewers ($8) were just fine, as were the pork buns ($8 for two). The platter also comes with a mound of chips (which dominate the front of the photo).

But for the most part, this has the distinct feel of beach-resort food, prepared with a bit more care, but ultimately not very memorable. I say this without having sampled the entrées, but The Times thought that those were even less exciting.

We had a quite early reservation on a Tuesday evening and had the place mostly to ourselves, except for a rather loud group taking up most of the communal table. I spotted Ms. Reiner briefly, but she was working mostly out of sight.

The space has been remodeled slightly, but the bones of the old Tailor space are quite apparent. There is now a small bar on the ground floor at the back of the dining room, and as before, a large cocktail lounge downstairs. I assume that this space gets a lot busier later in the evening and on weekends.

I might drop in again one of these days, more for the cocktails than the food, although there is plenty to snack on if you don’t want to drink on an empty stomach.

Lani Kai (525 Broome Street between Sixth Avenue & Thompson Street, SoHo)

Food: Populist Hawaiian cuisine that transports you to a Honululu beach
Cocktails: The real reason for coming here, but I’d avoid the cruise-ship ones
Service: Fine
Ambiance: Upscale Club-Med

Rating: ★
Why? Good for cocktails — but so are a lot of places 

The Hurricane Club

Note: The wind blew Hurricane Club out of town. It closed in late 2013, having been previously re-branded Hurricane Steak and Sushi. General Assembly, a “market-driven grill” (yawn) from the same owners, replaced it in 2014. This too quickly failed. Next up in the space is the transfer of Park Avenue [Season] from its original address, where they owners lost their lease.

*

Resistance is futile. That was my immediate reaction to The Hurricane Club, the new Polynesian-themed restaurant from the Quality Meats/Park Avenue Autumn team.

It is pointless to wish it were something else, to wonder why, or to belittle the concept. Just submit to its charms, or don’t go.

Apparently, these places were once popular in Manhattan. Sometimes called “tiki bars,” one of them even had three stars. By the 1990s, the genre once exemplified by Trader Vic’s at the Plaza, was practically dead.

This year, restaurateurs are banking on a revival, with three tiki joints set to open. Hurricane Club is probably the most elaborate of these.

To call it “Polynesian” isn’t quite accurate. It’s about as authentic as Fantasy Island, lacking only for Ricardo Montalbán and Hervé Villachaize screaming, “The plane! The plane!”

There is a protective gauze over all of the windows, and the doors are covered top-to-bottom, so that nobody outside can catch a glimpse of the space. Once inside, it’s an AvroKO playland, a South Pacific dreamscape that would make Club Med jealous.

The enormous 250-seat space has 20-foot ceilings, about six dining rooms and lounges, and a wrap-around bar with a life-size Buddha draped in pearls.

It’s hard to tell if you’re in a restaurant or on a cruise ship. Servers are dapper in their all-white, crisply pressed dinner jackets. Cocktail waitresses sport barely-there thin black dresses.

The cocktail list in ten categories is so long that you order by number. I practically never order frozen drinks, but here…why not? The #37 (left; $11) with cucumber and mint was pretty good. Most of the choices are $12 or less, which these days is pretty reasonable.

The liquor program goes well beyond cliché, with a list of about a hundred rums: they don’t come cheap, with prices ranging from $39 to $1,999. The five-page wine list emphasizes the Pacific Rim. It was hard to find bargains there, either.

In the lounge and at the tables, there’s a gimmicky “Pu Pu” menu, listing a dozen items—all finger food, $12 each, with 3 or 4 pieces. With the little pencils provided, you’re to write down how many of each thing you want; or, you can just order the Pu Pu Platter ($28/$58) and get a large sampler.

I didn’t bother to write anything down, and just asked the server for an order of the Peking Duck Tea Sandwiches ($3; below left), which tasted exactly as you would imagine.

The two-page dinner menu offers items in seven categories, none labeled “appetizer” or “entrée.” The starter-like substances are $9–17, the mains (or apparent mains) $17–44. Yes, that is a wide range. Portions seem to be very large, and there is a danger of over-ordering.

Rice Paper Shrimp Rolls ($14; above right) spent too little time in the deep fryer, and came out slightly mushy.

The server correctly advised that Crispy Peking Pig ($44; above), although listed as a single entrée, would be more than enough for two people. Basically, it’s a pig prepared in the style of Peking Duck, with the traditional accompaniments and pork buns to wrap it with. This was the best suckling pig preparation we have had in quite a while, but it came out not quite warm enough.

The pig is listed in its own box, a feat of menu engineering designed to make it Hurricane Club’s most often-ordered dish. Based on our observations, it seemed to have worked: we saw orders of the pig flying out of the kitchen. It is not a bad deal for two or three people, but if you order much else you’re liable to leave part of it unfinished—as we did.

Of course, to claim that this is the cuisine of any recognizable Polynesian nation is nonsense, but it is a very good dish, and who cares where it comes from? Chef Craig Koketsu (Quality Meats, Park Avenue [name your season]) is a proven talent, who will probably get more right than wrong.

The attentive service is excellent, bringing an air of seriousness to a place that could easily devolve into a tourist trap. Despite the hokey concept, there appears to be a legitimate attempt to do it right—whatever that might mean for a tiki bar (I am frankly not sure).

Hurricane Club won’t be for everybody. We suspect it will attract a lot of big groups, tour buses, families taking in a matinée, and so forth. There certainly are questions whether quality can be maintained in a 250-seat place: those soggy shrimp rolls are an early warning sign. Inevitably, some meals will seem mass-produced.

If you buy into the concept, just get on the boat, and enjoy the ride for what it is. There is some fun to be had.

Hurricane Club (360 Park Avenue South at 26th Street, Gramercy/Flatiron)

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

Lunch at Prime Meats

 

To visit Prime Meats for dinner, you need the Goldilocks plan. A couple of months ago, I arrived at 6:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening, when the wait was quoted as two hours. That was too late. (I dined at the same owners’ Frankies Spuntino instead.) Last week, I was so over-eager that I arrived at 4:45 p.m., which is considered the lunch shift. That was too early. Maybe next time will be Just Right.

In any event, I had traveled an hour to get here from Washington Heights, and I was not going to waste the opportunity. Prime Meats at 4:45 is almost empty, which is delightful. You can sit back, relax, enjoy the late afternoon sun, and not feel guilty that a hundred other people want your table.

With its Germanic Alpine theme, Prime Meats is an odd follow-up from two guys who opened a pair of Italian snack & sandwich places, both called Frankies Spuntino. It shares with them its rustic homespun décor, a commitment to locally-sourced ingredients and making as much as possible in-house.

They also share a no-reservations policy, and until recently credit cards weren’t taken either. Sam Sifton spent four paragraphs of an otherwise glowing two-star review complaining about that, and within a week they caved. American Express is now accepted.

At lunch, Prime Meats serves a much abbreviated version of its dinner menu, and the items in common are a dollar or two cheaper. (Click on the image above for a larger version.)

I’m sure that either Steak Frites ($25) or a burger ($15) would be just fine, but I wanted a better example of the restaurant’s Teutonic theme, so I decided on the Vesper Brett ($14), an “Alpine tasting board” with mixed charcuterie.

It’s a bit like a sandwich without the bread—an Atkins-friendly appetizer. I won’t try to describe the different meats, all excellent, which included everything listed on the menu and more (e.g.,duck prosciutto, fanned out in the lower-left quadrant of the photo).

Like the charcuterie boards at most restaurants these days, the Vesper Brett works best for sharing: it’s really too big to be an appetizer for one. As I was alone, I settled for that and a side dish of sautéed spinach with garlic ($6)—again, too much for one person, but very good for what it was.

 

The bread service, though, was underwhelming.

There is an alcoholic punch of the day ($5), which on this occasion featured gin, mint, and lime, with a hint of grapefruit juice. It came in an itsy bitsy glass, and even with the restaurant empty, it took a long while for the server to notice I was ready for a re-fill.

If you don’t live in Carroll Gardens, and you’re not keen on waiting for an hour or more, it’s hard to find the right time for a visit to Prime Meats. One of these days, when the time is right, I’ll try again.

Prime Meats (465 Court St. at Luquer St., Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn)

508 Restaurant & Bar

Note: 508 Restaurant & Bar closed in late 2014. A restaurant called The Houseman from Prune alumnus Ned Baldwin is supposed to replace it in early 2015.

*

508 Restaurant is in that out-of-the-way district that some call West Soho or Hudson Square. Destination dining hasn’t proven itself here. The places that succeed are those that attract a repeatable neighborhood crowd.

Maybe we need a new term for restaurants like 508: “neighborhood-plus.” The economics of West Soho are what they are, but the food here is a lot better than you’d expect for a local place. The restaurant has been open for just over a year, and the owners are now trying to raise its profile, hence the publicist’s invitation to dine here on a recent Friday evening. 

The chefs, husband and wife Jennifer Sant’anna Hill and Anderson Sant’anna De Lima, have restaurants like Lupa, Del Posto, and Aquavit on their resumes. Jennifer’s father and mother, Fred and Lynn Fisher Hill, both retired lawyers, are co-owners. Fred also serves as wine director.

The menu is loosely described as Rustic Mediterranean. (Click on the image for a larger copy.) That strategy plays out in a long list of tapas qua appetizers and as many pastas as entrées. There is also the obligatory Pat LaFreida burger and barbecue spare ribs. I am not sure which Mediterranean country they come from.

I am told that everything is made in-house, except for the ice cream.

If you’re tempted to order three savory courses, as you would in an Italian restaurant, you’ll need to be hungry. The pastas are entrée size, and they’re excellent. If Andrew Carmellini served them at Locanda Verde, he’d be hailed as a genius. Come to think of it, he’s been hailed already.

The mains are arguably a bit expensive, with most of them $25 and over, but the portions are enormous, and they are quite good indeed. We were less impressed with the two tapas we tried.

Ham and Manchego Croquettes ($10; above left) left a curiously flat impression. Truffled Mac and Cheese ($14; above right) was good enough, but probably not worth the fifteen-minute wait for it to be made to order.

Spinach and egg fettuccini ($19; above left) came piled with roasted duck and skin cracklings, pine nuts, spinach, Brussels sprouts, and pancetta. Gnocchi ($18; above right) might be the lightest in town, as they’re made from celery root rather than potatoes, and served with lamb, Italian sausage, mushrooms, smoked tomatoes, and sage, in a creamy parmesan sauce.

It is not often that you find so many ingredients in a pasta dish, and yet find that all of them make a distinct impression. These are among the best pastas we’ve had all year.

The Beef Long Rib ($28; above left) should be on many more menus. It is basically a whole short rib on the bone in a red wine-cranberry braise, with corn pudding and a terrific sautéed broccoli rabe. It takes guts to serve Miso Glazed Black Sea Bass ($26; above right) on a cuttlefish ink lemon risotto, but these chefs pulled it off.

The wine list has 30 bottles priced between $30 and $50, although the top end goes up to $300. I am not sure who will be spending that kind of money on this food, but it never hurts to have the option. Wine choices by the glass are ample, with a dozen reds and a dozen whites. There are 25 beers and also a very good sangria.

The space seats 60, including a small lounge up-front and a 12-seat communal table near the open kitchen at the back. The exposed brick walls are decorated with wine bottles and knick-nacks. We weren’t there as civilians, but service seemed to be attentive at all of the other tables I could see.

With its marketing position as a “neighborhood joint,” the owners here are being careful not to portray 508 as anything more than what it is. But even if you go out of your way to get there, 508 is more than good enough to justify the effort.

508 Restaurant & Bar (508 Greenwich Street near Spring Street, West Soho)

Macao Trading Co.

[Horine via Eater]

Note: This is a review under chef David Waltuck, who is no longer at the restaurant. His replacement is Josh Blakely. We also note that Macao now has a prominent sign—which it didn’t when this review was written.

*

Most restaurants want to be found. Macao Trading Co. takes the opposite approach. It’s on a crazily obscure block in TriBeCa, without so much as a sign to let you know it’s there. The door looks like a service entrance. Even if you’re looking for Macao Trading Co., you’re liable to miss it—as I did the first time. If you just happen to be walking by, you’ll keep on walking.

That’s not stopping people from patronizing Macao Trading Co., which was doing a brisk bar business even at 6:00 p.m. last night. They serve food and drinks until 4:00 a.m. in an allegedly “semi-private lounge” downstairs called the Opium Den. There’s a built-in clientele, thanks to the same owners’ acclaimed cocktail bar cum restaurant, Employees Only, another peculiar place that makes virtue out of the perception of inaccessibility.

The story is completely different at the perpetually-empty Dennis Foy next door, as it was at Foy’s short-lived predecessor, Lo Scalco, which not even a star from the Michelin Guide could rescue. There aren’t any “bad blocks” in Manhattan, but some are bad for certain types of restaurants. In this place, Macao Trading Co. fits right in.

The restaurant is named for Macao, a former Portuguese colony on the Chinese mainland. The décor is tricked out like the 19th-century trading warehouse of our dreams. If Disney had a Macao ride, it would look like this. The spectacular back-lit bar is the visual highlight, and it’s the culinary highlight too. The cocktail list is impressive; the food feels like snacks that are meant to dilute the alcohol.

David Waltuck of Chanterelle is responsible for the fusion menu. Many dishes are shown in pairs, where you can choose either the Portuguese or the Chinese version of the same ingredient, such as meatballs, prawns, or ribs. Each table is set with a knife and fork, and chopsticks.

There are appetizers and entrées, but the menu seems to be evolving more towards small plates and snacks. The server steered me in that direction, suggesting I order two of the small plates. That wasn’t quite enough for a meal, so I later ordered a third, followed by dessert.

Mackerel Escabeche ($8; above left) was like a deconstructed ceviche, served cold. It tasted fresh and mildly tart, but slightly bland. Portuguese lamb balls filled with cheese ($8; above right) were tender, but overpowered by a flood of tomato sauce. The identical green-flecked leaves seem to be the default seasoning for both dishes.

Mushroom croquettes ($12; above left) benefited from a generous helping of truffle oil, but I thought the barren plate needed something to dip them in. Fried milk ($7; above right) was one dish that didn’t need any more help. A dusting of cinammon and a light honey citrus salad on the side worked perfectly together.

The cocktails are impressive, though expensive at $14 apiece. I’ll leave it to the cocktail specialists to describe them. The wine list seems to be an afterthought. There was just one token red available by the glass, and they served it in a water glass.

Service was attentive, though I was there quite early and had their mostly undivided attention. I especially appreciated the server’s modest ordering advice, as restaurants that specialize in small plates usually try to sell you more than you need.

All four of the items I tried struck me as enjoyable complements to the cocktail menu, but I wouldn’t come here for the food alone.

Macao Trading Co. (311 Church Street between Walker & Lispenard Sts., TriBeCa)

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

Bondi Road

Note: Bondi Road closed in October 2012, to make way for a new location of Calexico.

*

Bondi Road and The Sunburnt Cow are a pair of Australian-themed restaurants operated by chef/owner Heathe St. Clair. They are both fairly casual, with nothing on either menu above $16. Bondi Road, the newer of the two, opened on the Lower East Side sixteen months ago to fairly positive reviews (New York,  RG).

I get the sense that Bondi Road was meant to be a bit more ambitious than it is now. Restaurant Girl mentioned a $30 tasting menu that no longer seems to be on offer. The restaurant does not take reservations, but we had no trouble getting bar seating at 8:15 p.m. on a Saturday night. The space was already starting to clear out by 9:30, which is not a good sign, and may explain why I received a publicist’s invitation to dine there.

  

Fried foods are the kitchen’s strength. My son loved Coconut Shrimp ($9; above left), and everyone was dipping into my order of “Salt N Pepper Squid” ($9; above center). The breading was just light enough to add flavor without overwhelming the squid. But Tuna Tartare ($12; above right) was a real dud. The tuna was not sushi quality, and an unattractive lump of it wasn’t rescued by a mango chilli yogurt sauce or an olive tapenade.

 

My son thought that an order of New Zealand Mussels ($10; above left) were “just okay.” My girlfriend and I both ordered the Barramundi ($15; above right), which comes grilled, breaded or fried, and with your choice of side dish. I asked for it grilled, but it came out fried anyway, and I decided to give it a try. I thought they nailed it, but my girlfriend found her order too greasy. However, everyone agreed the french fries were excellent.

Blue curaçao figures in several of the mixed cocktails. I had one called the Wipeout  ($9), a mixture of blue curaçao, sprite, and several white liquors, served in a tall glass. One or two more of those, and they would have needed to carry me home. My girlfriend was less impressed with Sex on Bondi Beach ($9), which sounded like fun, but tasted like a bland orange–grapefruit juice.

The food at Bondi Road is fun (if a bit uneven), and some of it is even very good, but the format works against it. The space, dominated by the bar, is cramped and dark, and the small, high tables would be more suitable for an ice cream parlor. Australian waitresses and a loop of beach videos playing on a projection TV are the only real reminders of “Down Under.” However, with $9 appetizers and $15 entrées, it’s a good budget-conscious choice if you happen to be nearby.

Bondi Road (153 Rivington Street between Suffolk & Clinton Streets, Lower East Side)