Fiorini

   

Among families in the restaurant business, it is hard to find a starker contrast than the Arpaias: the under-publicized Lello; and his glamorous, photogenic daughter Donatella, who is often in the news, a fixture on the Food Network, and is seldom out of mind at her restaurants—because most of them are named after her.

But we never would’ve heard of Donatella, had it not been for her father, who has quietly put together a four-decade career at a series of upscale, old-school, classic Italian restaurants. He has closed a few, but they’ve all had multi-year runs, mostly successful, and without an outright failure. His current flagship is Fiorini, named for a monetary unit in nineteenth-century Tuscany. (Another Arpaia, Donatella’s older brother Dino, runs nearby Cellini.)

The few professional reviews of Fiorini are overly fixated on price. New York says it’s “Italian…aimed at the expense-account set.” Time Out says it’s “a neighborhood restaurant in a neighborhood with money to burn,” with “steep prices.” Menupages gives it five dollar signs ($$$$$), the same as Per Se. Zagat says “it’s ‘on the short list’ for ‘adult’ locals who don’t mind that checks are ‘a bit steep.’”

Time for a reality check. Antipasti and salads at Fiorini are $9–14, pastas $19–23, entrées mostly $24–30 (only two veal dishes surpass that amount). That’s about the same as you’ll pay at the city’s better known two-star Italian restaurants, such as Peasant, Locanda Verde, or Spigolo (to name a few), and no one has ever referred to those establishments as expense-account places.

And of course, you can easily pay far more than that for Italian cuisine in NYC, including some restaurants that are worth it (like Del Posto or Marea), and many that are not (like Nello or Harry Cipriani).

I would classify Fiorini as a bargain, assuming you’re in the market for what Mr. Arpaia is selling: very good traditional Italian cuisine in a comfortable, elegant, but slightly old-fashioned midtown dining room. This, to be fair, is a product that most of the city’s professional critics do not care for, which is why the prices grab their attention, when at any number of identically priced but more fashionable restaurants, they do not.

Full disclosure: I dined at Fiorini at the publicist’s invitation and did not pay for my meal. The kitchen sent out a nine-course “tasting menu”—a format the restaurant does not normally offer—consisting mostly of smaller-sized portions of dishes from their regular menu.

 

1. Polpo Ai Ferri (above left; grilled Mediterranean octopus, tomato, caper berries, olives, arugula, red onions). This was one of the better octopus dishes I’ve had in a while.

2. Burrata (above right; creamy imported mozzarella, roasted peppers, asparagus, prosciutto di Parma). This was some of the softest, sweetest burrata around, and I liked the textural contrast with the prosciutto.

 

3. Bucatini alla Matriciana (above left; San Marzano tomato sauce, imported pancetta, onions, Pecorino Romano).

4. Risotto ai Frutti di Mare (above right; Super fino arborio rice, jumbo lump crabmeat, diver scallops, ocean shrimp, calamari, seafood broth).

The reduced portion size didn’t quite do the two pasta/rice dishes justice; in particular, I couldn’t really make out all of the ingredients in the risotto, though the bucatini were pretty good.

 

5. Pesce Spada Livornese (above left; grilled swordfish, imported olives, onions, capers, and tomato sauce). The swordfish had a terrific smoky flavor, but in the smaller portion size was a bit too dry.

6. Cappesante (above right; pan-seared diver scallops, caper berries, lemon, white wine, fresh parsley). This was the best of the savory courses, aided by the plump, juicy scallop, with wonderful contrast from the caper berries and a candied apricot on the side.

7. Petto D’Anatra (below left; pan-seared duck breast with Bartlett poached pears in a dry vermouth sauce). This was a beautiful, rich portion of duck, though the sauce was not as memorable as the one given the scallop.

 

8. Zucotto (above right; three chocolate and passion-fruit mousse cake).

9. Baba (below left; sponge cake, hint of rum, Marsala wine, Mascarpone cheese custard).

10. Plate of Biscotti (below right).

The desserts were exemplary (and were served in full-size portions). I especially liked the Zucotto. I haven’t many examples for comparison, but I finished all of it despite not being a chocolate lover. The Baba was just fine, but it’s hard to avoid comparisons with Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, where they brought around a cart with a dozen aged rums to choose from. It’s no fault of Mr. Arpaia that Fiorini can’t duplicate this. Here, they supply the rum on the side, and you decide how much to add: I poured in the whole glass, unapologetically.

 

As I have noted in past reviews, old-school upscale Italian is the most over-represented cuisine in the city. Even if this were not an invited review (with all of the freighted conflicts it brings), it would be difficult to articulate precisely how this restaurant sets itself apart from others of comparable quality. I’d need to spend a month eating Italian every night, before I could tell you that, so I’ll leave you with the following:

A meal here may give the impression of a trip in the wayback machine, given the trends in contemporary dining. But for old-fashioned Italian elegance there are few better than Lello Arpaia.

Fiorini (209 East 56th Street between Second & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Monkey Bar

The business cards at Monkey Bar say in small print, “Est. 1936.” Yeah, sure it was. The space in the Hotel Elysée is that old, but nothing has lasted there except the Simian-themed décor.

To give only the recent history: the Glaziers of steakhouse fame (Michael Jordan’s, Strip House) acquired the Monkey Bar in 1994 and hired the restaurant starchitect David Rockwell to give it a plush makeover. There was a succession of chefs, including John Schenk, Kurt Gutenbrunner, Patricia Yeo, Chris Cheung. At one time, Monkey Bar was one of the toughest doors in town.

Somewhere along the line, the Glaziers turned it into a steakhouse. By then anyone could get in, including me. I recall having a pretty good steak there in the 1990s or early 2000s: after all, good beef was one thing the Glaziers had in abundance. By 2008, it had fallen on hard times. Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter acquired the space and closed it for restoration, installing a spectacular Edward Sorel mural in the dining room.

Carter’s idea was to create a midtown version of what he’d already achieved in Greenwich Village, at the Waverly Inn: a restaurant masquerading as a club for publishing and advertising industry moguls, celebrities, and the well connected. By July 2009, The Times reported that Carter spent 20 minutes a day, 7 days a week, laying out the seating chart of the two restaurants:

Although hardly any critics have reviewed the Monkey Bar yet — and the first chef was fired — prime reservations are already nearly impossible for anyone other than the famous or well connected…

For a while, there was a phone number people could call to reach a reservationist. No more.

“We were getting 1,000 calls a day,” said Mr. Klein in an interview at the bar at the Algonquin Hotel on West 44th Street, next to a property he owns, the City Club Hotel. “It’s hard on the phone to say, ‘I’m sorry, we don’t have a place for you.’ It’s easier by e-mail. People get upset on the phone.”

So now there is an e-mail address…although 90 percent of reservations are made through the partners — that is, by people who know them or have some connection and reach them directly.

The one thing it lacked was food worth paying for. Within five weeks of opening, Carter fired the chef, Elliot Ketley, replacing him with culinary legend Larry Forgione, who was there only as a consultant until a permanent chef could be found. Forgione was on hand when Frank Bruni awarded a weak star, finding a menu strewn with “many mishaps.” That accomplished, Forgione gave way to Josh Moulton.

It turns out that there’s a limit to the number of people who will sign up for expensive, mediocre cuisine, and Monkey Bar had surpassed it. Before long, it was on OpenTable and reservable any day, any time, at short notice. Lunch service was dropped in the dining room.

Give Carter credit for recognizing that he’d run the restaurant into a ditch, and needed a full-scale talent make-over. To fix the place, he brought in the restaurant equivalent of the 1927 Yankees: managing partner and front-office genius Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig, The Breslin, The John Dory), chef Damon Wise (Craft, Colicchio & Sons), sommelier and GM Belinda Chang (The Modern), and cocktail whiz Julie Reiner (Flatiron Lounge, Clover Club).

The question is how long Carter can keep this team together. Wise admits that he plans to open a downtown restaurant in 2012. The Monkey Bar is in essence a stop-gap for him until that space is ready, though he insists he will remain executive chef here. Reiner is only consulting, and Friedman has places all over town, which leaves only Chang with a full-time commitment to the restaurant.

For now, though, let’s enjoy what they have accomplished, which in a few short weeks is something remarkable, given what they started with.

Chang’s wine list is just a few pages long. Reprinted daily, it comes in a cardboard folder with the leaves stapled together. About equally balanced between the United States and France, I assume it is a work in progress. You won’t find much below $50, whether red or white, but if you’re willing to spend a bit more, there are some older Bordeaux worth a look.

Perhaps the 2001 Château La Vieille Cure was a hold-over from prior management. At $80, it qualifies as a bargain on this list. Chang has stocked the place with proper Bordeaux glasses, but not decanters, and a wine this old really ought to be decanted. After a while, it opened up beautifully, and was well worth the price.

Wise’s menu is a complete departure from the brasserie food that Monkey Bar was serving a couple of years ago, with a fairly close stylistic resemblance to Colicchio & Sons, his last stop after many years previously at Craft. It’s priced for the midtown corporate crowd, with appetizers and pastas mostly $19–23, entrées mostly $29–36. There are a few outliers, like the ubiquitous côte de boeuf for two ($135) and pasta with truffles ($55): this is a Graydon Carter restaurant, after all.

But with an excellent bread service, an amuse bouche, and petits fours at the end, you are getting your money’s worth. In the early days, the menu is promising. If the execution isn’t quite perfect, it’s certainly miles ahead of Colicchio & Sons, in a far nicer room.

The amuse bouche (above left) was a small cup of celery root soup with diced apples. To start, we shared the Braised Pork Belly ($21; above right) with crispy deep-fried oysters and kimchee, a well conceived but slightly cloying dish.

Both entrées were impressive productions, though verging on the edge of over-worked. Halibut ($31; above left) was a lovely dish, served with heart of palm, chorizo, squid, and oyster velouté. Long Island Duck ($32; above right) came with salsify, black mission figs, and oyster mushrooms. The breast was a shade on the greasy side, and would have benefited from being cut in thicker slices. These are the kinds of adjustments I expect will be made in the coming weeks.

There is apparently not a full-time pastry chef on duty, but that didn’t stop the kitchen from turning out wonderful, sugar-coated beignets (above left) and petits fours, including the insouciently named “monkey balls” (above right).

Without Graydon Carter’s rolodex to rely on, Monkey Bar now needs to earn business the way most new restaurants do: by attracting repeat customers. As of last week, it had its work cut-out for it, although the publicity cycle was only just beginning. I made a last-minute reservation on Friday evening and changed it twice, all without any trouble. The dining room was about half full, although the bar was doing brisk business.

Service was smooth and assured. If you think of Monkey Bar as a two-week-old restaurant, this is a strong start. If you think of it as a place Graydon Carter has been tinkering with for three years, then you wonder if the latest move is just desperation. If Belinda Chang sticks around and Damon Wise’s downtown restaurant is delayed a little longer, Monkey Bar might just grow into something special.

Monkey Bar (60 E. 54th St. between Madison & Park Avenues, East Midtown)

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

Update: Inside Park at St. Barts

Three years ago, I thought that Inside Park at St. Barts was the best new restaurant no one had heard of. I wrote:

Folks, you must visit this restaurant. It is crazily good. Oh, and the space is gorgeous too.

Having said that, I never thought that my recommendation alone would make much of a difference. It didn’t. The Times never reviewed it, and Adam Platt in New York gave it just one star because the room had few customers. Silly me, I thought that the role of criticism is to draw attention to neglected gems, rather than to assume they’ll sink like the Titanic.

Anyhow, the reviews were what they were, and chef Matthew Weingarten did what he had to. The menu is now slightly less expensive. Bread service, amuses bouches and petits fours are all eliminated. The food remains good: Weingarten didn’t forget how to cook. But it is no longer as interesting.

I can report that artichoke fritters ($9), a pork chop ($29), and a crab cake ($26) were all enjoyable, if not worth traveling for. But the restaurant now has what it lacked: guests. Plenty of them. On a recent warm summer evening, all of the service was in the outdoor courtyard, which was packed. Loud music blared on the speakers.

I suspect that the lovely indoor space is better, when they start using it again in cooler weather. Meantime, I’m glad Weingarten found a way to stay in business. Perhaps, if the customers keep coming, he’ll be able gradually to bring back the food he clearly wanted to serve. There is nothing wrong with what Inside Park at St. Barts has become, but it’s not what it was.

Inside Park at St. Bart’s (109 E. 50th Street at Park Avenue, East Midtown)

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

Alfama

In the restaurant industry, second chances are rare. The Portuguese restaurant Alfama got one, re-opening in East Midtown in late May after losing their lease in the West Village two years ago.

They’ve done a handsome job of building out their new digs. It’s a bright, comfortable (if casual) space. The small dining room has a West Village-y intimacy, despite a location where restaurateurs tend to build big.

But it’s not on a block that gets a lot of foot traffic, so they’ll need good word-of-mouth to build a following. The restaurant wasn’t busy on a Friday evening, but as it was Fourth of July weekend, I wouldn’t draw any conclusions.

The chef, Francisco Rosa (same as at the previous location), has installed a menu with a mixture of crowd-pleasers and more challenging dishes. No one at my table was willing to share the rabbit meatballs, despite my assurance that they’d taste “just like chicken.” Chicken gizzards anyone?

It’s not terribly expensive: dinner for three was about $120 before beverages, tax, and tip. Appetizers are $4–16 each, entrées $21–32, sides $4–7, desserts $7–10.

The amuse bouche (below left) was a bit of spicy tuna tartare on a spoon.

Both appetizers were very good. Flambéed Portuguese Sausage ($10; above right) arrived literally on fire: the server advised us to let it burn for a couple of minutes before blowing out the flame. We also liked Pulled Lamb crostini ($14; below left).

Grilled Sardines ($19; above right), an announced special, made a good simple entrée.

Mariscada Alfama ($32; above left), or seafood stew, is probably the most complex of the entrées. Red Snapper ($25; above right) was of the simpler variety, although I especially liked the crisped skin, along with the tender fish inside.

Abade de Priscos ($10; above left) is one of the stranger desserts I have had in quite some time, described as: “A Mystifyingly dense Custard of Egg Yolks, Sugar, Port Wine and Prosciutto, served with a Prosciutto tuille and Lemon Sorbet.” Prosciutto makes just as bad a dessert ingredient as it sounds. I left this creation half-uneaten. Pasteis de Nata ($9; above right), or traditional Portuguese custard tarts with cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar, were a much better bet.

The restaurant had gained its liquor license only a day or two before our visit, and there were only a handful of bottles on the wine list. The one we had ($39) was unmemorable, but fine enough at the price. In any case, more are coming, and according to The Times, the selection will be heavily Portuguese, as it should be.

It’s nice to see another solid option in a cuisine that is under-represented in Manhattan. To keep the rent affordable, the owners had to settle for a mediocre block. Here’s hoping that diners take a few extra steps out of their way, to give Alfama a try.

Alfama (214 E. 52nd Street, east of Third Avenue, East Midtown)

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

WallE

Note: WallE closed without fanfare in February 2012. It never caught on, and my 1½-star rating was probably a half-star too high.

*

I have fond memories of Chin Chin, the upscale Chinese restaurant in East Midtown where we held the rehearsal dinner before my wedding. The marriage didn’t work out. The meal was fabulous.

Last year, Wally Chin, who co-owns Chin Chin with his brother Jimmy, announced he’d be opening a modern Chinese place nearby. It was delayed almost a year while he dealt with health problems, before opening in March.

He calls it WallE (wall–EE), a play on Mr. Chin’s first name. Or, to give the full name, WallE Restaurant & Lounge. The website plays up the “lounge” aspect of it, which might not be a wise choice. There’s a casual front room with a TV behind the bar that’s tuned to ESPN, and a more formal dining room where we were initially seated. There was a loud private party, so we asked to move up front, where not many tables were taken.

The chef, Chris Cheung, has worked at a bunch of Chinese/Asian restaurants, and even Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar. His menu here is Chinese with American inflections: thus, there’s a burger sandwiched between scallion pancakes, and buns with foie gras.

You will eat like a king, for not very much money. “Small plates” (heaven forbid they call them appetizers) are $7–16, “large plates” (entrées) $16–29, rice dishes $12–19, side dishes $4–9. It’s not cheap the way Chinatown is cheap, but it’s not bad at all for a good midtown address.

Portions are huge, starting with a superb bread selection (above left) that, for me, could be dinner most nights all by itself. Likewise a Pu Pu Platter ($10 per person; above right) with an assortment of lobster rolls, dumplings, and rock shrimp.

   

The aforementioned burger ($16; above left), made from Pat LaFreida dry aged beef, has a compelling, smoky flavor. You can’t tell from the photo, but it’s enormous: I ate just half. Shoestring fries that came with it (above center) were pretty good.

A hefty portion of tender Baby Back Ribs ($23; below left) came with a huge side of macaroni & cheese (above right) that we barely touched.

It is a pity that we had almost no room for a rice dish we shouldn’t have ordered, Shanghai Belly ($12; above right) with three luscious hunks of pork belly and a fried egg. The small taste I had of it was wonderful.

The minimal wine list is adequate, though certainly not a draw on its own. The cocktail menu features the likes of a Mai Tai and drinks that end in “–tini” without the “mar–” prefix. Service was good, but the server ought to have advised us that we had ordered far too much food.

I don’t deduct points for décor I dislike, but I found the space sterile and charmless. The restaurant seats 120, but it has a “big box” feel that might have been fashionable about ten years ago. It is as if Mr. Chin were regurgitating decorating ideas that were cool for 15 minutes in 2002, and that he were utterly oblivious to anything that has happened since.

WallE may ultimately succumb to an identity crisis. The owner wans to appeal to the “lounge” crowd, but the space is far too passé for that to work. The chef hopes to serve modern, “interesting” food (and largely succeeds), but the people who’d be attracted to it might find the lounge vibe off-putting.

WallE (249 E. 53rd Street near Second Avenue, East Midtown)

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

Rum House and The Lantern's Keep

The formerly desolate midtown cocktail scene is improving, with several new bars that bring the downtown bespoke mixology revolution to the Times Square area. I tried two of these last week, Rum House and the Lantern’s Keep.

Rum House is in the Edison Hotel, although it also has its own street entrance. There’s been a Rum House here for decades, but it closed in 2010 after 37 years. I never visited the old Rum House, which was described as a dive. The new version has been brightened up and remodeled, though it retains bits and pieces of the old décor, and there’s a piano for live entertainment (not in use when I visited).

The folks from the Tribeca cocktail lounge Ward III are in charge, and there’s no denying they know their cocktails. But the space, which seats 60, is more raucous than most downtown lounges, with a large crowd clogging the bar at happy hour. Its Theater District location attracts a lot of tourists who drink beer and merlot and gin & tonic. The bartender is almost relieved when a real cocktail customer walks in the door.

To its credit, Rum House charges only $12 a drink, which is at least $2 lower than any other serious cocktail lounge I’m aware of at the moment.

The Lantern’s Keep is in the boutique Iroquois Hotel, a few blocks east of the Times Square mêlée. It’s in a quiet back room, with no indication of its existence at street level. Nevertheless, its 25 seats (21 at tables; 4 at the bar) were packed on the Thursday evening before Easter weekend, and like many downtown lounges (including the Raines Law Room, whose staff run it), standees are not admitted.

I returned on an atypical Saturday, the night before Easter Sunday, to find it nearly empty: staff outnumbered the customers. The quiet, luxurious vibe is very much like Raines: if you like one, you’ll like the other. I started with a Poet’s Dream, an orangy gin-based cocktail resembling a martini, then went off-menu with a Paper Plane, a bourbon-based drink that originated at two other downtown places, Milk & Honey and Little Branch.

Cocktails at the Lantern’s Keep are $14 apiece. I’m more likely to return here, as it is a more focused cocktail place, and it’s far enough away from the Theater to deter the casual visitor who just wants a beer.

Rum House (Edison Hotel, 228 W. 47th St., near Broadway, Theater District)
Lantern’s Keep (Iroquois Hotel, 49 W. 44th St. btwn 5th & 6th Ave, West Midtown)

Tenpenny

Note: Jeffrey Tascarella, managing partner at Tenpenny when this review was written, left the restaurant to join the Daniel Humm/Will Guidara venture at the NoMad hotel. Two months later, chef Chris Cipollone left too. As of June 2013, Safet Kurtovic (of the Central Park Boathouse) is GM and Kay Choe is the chef.

*

The new restaurant Tenpenny hopes to disprove the rule that midtown hotel restaurants are for tourists. Named for a kind of carpenter’s nail, it has the chic rusticity that’s normally more at home south of 14th Street.

Tenpenny is in the boutique Gotham Hotel on 46th Street between Fifth and Madison. It’s in a quiet, dimly-lit, windowless room well back from the street. A comfortable bar anchors one side of the oblong room, with bare wood tables and a long banquette along the other.

There’s real talent at the helm, with Jeffrey Tascarella as managing partner and chief explicator of wines and cocktails. His resume includes Fiamma, Scarpetta, and Faustina. The chef, Chris Cipollone, also worked at Faustina, the now-shuttered Devin Tavern, and remains in charge at Tribeca’s Dylan Prime.

The website describes Tenpenny as an American restaurant, but both the menu and the wine list have a distinctly Italian accent—not surprising, given the principals’ backgrounds. Prices are about average for a 2011 opening, with appetizers $12–17, entrées $23–36 (all but one under $30). Tasting menus are offered at $68 for six courses, $115 (seven plus beverage pairing), or $125 (ten).

There are just seven choices each for the appetizer and the entrée, plus a couple of recited specials—always a good sign that the chef is focusing on doing a few things well. There is no burger (except at lunch), no steak, nor any of the big-ticket proteins-for-two that are routine on Manhattan menus these days.

The server brings pretzel bread (above left), literally the taste of a pretzel in the shape of a dinner roll. It’s warm and buttery, with soft honey butter and a wickedly hot mustard on the side. You could eat these all night.

Cipollini soup ($13; above right) is a riff on traditional French onion soup, with caramelized cipollini onions, fontina cheese, and a thick wad of croutons under the hood. It was too salty for my taste, and the cheese disappeared too quickly. And aren’t we about a month too late for it to still be on the menu?

Tortellini Nero ($24; above left), is a rich, spicy dish—also arguably a shade on the heavy side for spring—but a success nonetheless, with a smoky barbecued octopus ragu, green sage, tomatoes, and other vegetables. The meal ended with petits fours (above right), an unexpected luxury.

The staff were attentive and well trained, but the restaurant was only about 20 percent full on what was probably an atypical Saturday, the day before Easter.

Early reports from bloggers, yelpers, and the like, are mostly raves—remarkable for a location that is not really “on the way” to anything. It will be interesting to see how the restaurant evolves, as early popularity and an intimate space ought to allow the chef the opportunity to branch out from what is now a well prepared but slightly timid menu.

Tenpenny (Gotham Hotel, 16 E. 46th Street between Fifth & Madison, East Midtown)

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

First Look: Social Eatz

Note: Social Eatz closed in March 2013. Another concept from the same chef is expected to replace it.

*

Social Eatz is the new restaurant from Top Chef alumnus Angelo Sosa. After coming within a whisper of winning Season 7, he came back for the current “All Stars” season, and was eliminated about two-thirds of the way through.

He has bounced around a bit. His last place, a sandwich shop called Xie Xie, lasted only a shade over a year, although a problem with air conditioning in the building—not any deficiency in Sosa’s food or its popularity—was the reason it closed.

The menu at Social Eatz is casual and inexpensive, with all of its various categories ending in a ‘z’, like “soup’z,” “salad’z,” “app’z,” “burger’z,” “taco’z,” and so forth. The most expensive item is $12—the Bibimbap (Korean for “mixed meal”) Burger. You’d have to try really hard to spend more than $25 a head.

Sosa has been giving out a lot of free food, especially at lunch time. Last Thursday, the restaurant’s first night officially open, they weren’t charging anyone. I think I was recognized, but the staff said that every meal was on the house.

The cuisine is somewhat difficult to classify, with a mixture of American and Asian influences, and yes, tacos. Culinary styles are cross-polinated in most of the dishes, an approach that could crash and burn if the spices get even slightly out of whack. I liked both items I tried, and I have to assume Sosa is really cooking here—at least for now—as I didn’t see him schmoozing in the dining room.

Hot Wings ($9) are glazed in a tamarind, garlic, shallot, plum sugar, and Japanese togaroshi sauce, the latter incorporating red chili, roasted orange peel, and black sesame. You can’t make out all of the individual flavors, but they work together brilliantly. In Korean Beef Tacos ($9), tender skirt steak is marinated in a sweet/savory sauce and served in a house-made soft tortilla with spicy bean sprout kimchee.

Service was very good, especially for a restaurant this inexpensive. The host checked my coat, and there were cloth napkins. Staff seemed to know the menu well. After I finished the wings, the server brought out a hot towel for me to wipe off the barbecue sauce. That’s not bad for a place where the food bill would have been $18. (Alcohol wasn’t available, as the liquor license hadn’t come through yet.)

I’m not sure why Sosa is content to do this kind of food, when he is clearly capable of much more. For now, this is the idiom in which he chooses to work. His brand of fusion cuisine won’t be to all tastes: to some, his palate may be too sweet, or not tart enough. But you’ve got to hand it to a guy who is serving food of this quality, in a decent-looking midtown space, for about $20 a head.

Social Eatz (232 E. 53rd Street between Second & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Ai Fiori

The career of chef Michael White is at an inflection point. He reached heights that few chefs even dream of, with a trio of haute Italian restaurants carrying nine New York Times stars and five Michelin stars between them.

But his partnership with the restaurateur Chris Cannon hit the skids late last year and dissolved in January, with Cannon taking the two restaurants that pre-dated his association with White (Alto and Convivio), while White and his investor Ahmass Fakahany took the others.

White now lacks the solid front-of-house organization that Cannon supplied, while he plans new restaurants at a frenetic pace. We liked Osteria Morini, the final restaurant that White opened with Cannon’s assistance, but some critics have complained of inconsistency there.

In November, just two months after Morini, came Ai Fiori (“Among the Flowers”) in the Setai Fifth Avenue hotel. It’s another in the haute Italian genre shared by all of his restaurants except the casual Morini. The food is impressive, but to maintain it as a three-star establishment may require more attention than he is now capable of.

It’s a lovely, elegant, romantic space, although some critics will complain that it’s a generic hotel dining room that could be anywhere—as they did at the other Setai restaurant in New York, SHO Shaun Hergatt. Don’t listen to them! Ai Fiori is the most beautiful new restaurant built since the Great Recession.

You can order à la carte or, the better bet, four courses for $79. This turns out to be a remarkable deal: individually, the starters range from $14–27, pastas $18–25 (not counting a $55 truffle-studded outlier), mains $32–49, and desserts $13–14. Nearly all are orderable on the prix fixe without supplements.

The cuisine purports to be that of the Italian and French riviera, but you wouldn’t guess that by looking at the menu, or for that matter the room. The connection to the riviera is so tenuous as to be practically non-existent.

The amuse bouche, a warm sunchoke soup (above left), was an excellent start. My friend loved the fluke crudo (above right) with sea urchin, lemon oil, and sturgeon caviar.

Mare e Monte (below left) is one of the more original dishes, an alternating stack of diver scallops, celery root, and black truffles, with bone marrow and thyme, served inside of a hollowed-out bone. It’s an instant classic.

Oddly for a Michael White menu, the pasta and risotto section of the menu lists just six items. Risotto (above right) with escargots, parsley, parmigiano, garlic chips, and cotecchino was good but unmemorable. My friend thought the Trofie Nero (below left), squid-ink pasta tossed with shellfish, was the better choice.

The butter-poached lobster (above right) deserves the praise heaped upon it in just about every Ai Fiori review that I’ve read. Normally $37 if ordered on its own, it’s available on the prix fixe without a supplment: remarkable.

White hired pastry chef Robert Truitt away from Corton. His work here is less impressive. Baba al Rhum (above left) tasted stale not very rummy. However, my friend loved the chocolate sformato cake (above right) with its molten core. The kitchen sent out an extra dessert (below left), the description of which I didn’t note, and the meal ended with a plate of petits fours (below right).

The wine list runs to 43 pages, and you can do some serious wallet damage, but there are also plenty of reasonable choices in the $40s and $50s. We took the sommelier’s recommendation for an $82 Gewurtztreminer and weren’t disappointed.

The bar is one of the more comfortable, civilized places for a drink in midtown, and well worth a visit in its own right. Eben Freeman (formerly of the now-departed Tailor) is responsible for the cocktails, which are expertly made, as you’d expect, but lack the whimsy that he’s capable of.

On a Friday evening, the space appeared to be around 2/3rds full. Reservations at Ai Fiori have generally been available at just about any time: it is not the immediate hit that Marea was. I suspect that’s a product of too many high-end Italian places opening in a short time span, and perhaps some Michael White fatigue. The location, at Fifth Avenue and 36th Street, is something of a dead zone, and the restaurant’s presence is not obvious from the street. (You enter the hotel and then up a spiral staircase to reach it.)

My meal here was probably the best I’ve had at any of White’s restaurants. To produce at this level consistently, White will need competent deputies who can operate it on his behalf.

Ai Fiori (400 Fifth Avenue at 36th Street, in the Setai Hotel, East Midtown)

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

The National

Who am I to tell Geoffrey Zakarian that he should be doing More Important Work? Although he clearly has the talent, or at least used to, the chef who gave us Town and Country is now content to consult on phoned-in hotel menus.

He has opened two of these in the last few months, The Lambs Club and The National. The Lambs Club purports to be a much fancier place, and therefore its unevenness and lack of ambition are harder to forgive. At The National, with entrées hovering in the mid-twenties, you can be happy with unoriginal ideas skillfully executed, and that’s what you get.

The National has a prominent street-level perch in the Benjamin Hotel, but I doubt it was hotel guests alone that accounted for a packed dining room on a Thursday evening. Just steps away from the busy 6 Train stop at 51st & Lex, The National is in the perfect location to be a cafeteria for the East Midtown office crowd, and I suspect that’s where many of the guests came from.

At 7:00 p.m., there were no tables and only a couple of bar stools available. It’s the kind of place where the bartenders are so busy that they won’t open a tab without taking custody of your credit card, and where I never got to order a second drink because they were too preoccupied to notice that I’d finished the first one.

But the kitchen serves a great pork chop (above left), especially bearing in mind that it’s only $24, and it comes with broccolini and a side of excellent cheese grits. One doesn’t really need another vegetable, but I had to try the Crispy Brussels Sprouts ($7; above right) with pancetta and whole mustard, one of the best sides I’ve had in a while.

The diner to my right invited me to take a photo of his steak frites ($28; above). I didn’t taste the steak, but it was a thick hunk of New York Strip, and it appeared to be perfectly cooked to medium rare. I did try the hand-cut fries, which were great. Another diner gave me a taste of her Baby Artichoke Sandwich ($13) with feta, hummus, eggplant, and pepperoncini. I would never order that, as I dislike eggplant and only tolerate artichokes, but I have to admit it was tasty.

If The National doesn’t attempt very much, it is at least good at what it purports to do, and it doesn’t charge very much. The David Rockwell interior looks like half-a-dozen other places he’s done, but it’s fine for what it needs to be.

The National (557 Lexington Avenue at 50th Street, East Midtown)

Food: *
Service: Satisfactory
Ambaince: *
Overall: *