Zengo

There is no good reason why the East Midtown restaurant space at 40th Street & Third Avenue ought to be cursed. But cursed it apparently is. Four Jeffrey Chodorow places failed there—most recently Wild Salmon—before the Chod finally gave up.

Zengo is the latest to give it a shot. The hyperactive chef Richard Sandoval is in charge, but with fifteen other restaurants in five U. S. cities and three countries, I suppose I should put that in scare quotes, as in, “in charge.” In case you’re wondering—admit it, you were!—this is the third Zengo, after Denver and D.C.

With Sandoval in demand everywhere from Mexico to Dubai, he needed a solid hand in the kitchen, and he had one in former Elettaria chef Akhtar Nawab. But less than a month into the venture, Nawab took a hike. The reasons remain unexplained, but are easy to guess. Zengo is a dumb idea, sloppily executed. Any self-respecting chef would be embarrassed to be associated with it.

Although Jeffrey Chodorow is not involved here, his uncanny propensity for error hovers over the space like a death stink. A Latin–Asian restaurant that serves sushi rolls, dim sum, and tapas? Only the Chod would suggest something so obviously ill-conceived, so gimmicky, so pandering, so offensive to common sense. The menu is like something you’d find at an airport food court, offering a bit of everything without any sense of purpose. The cooking is better than at an airport, but the service isn’t.

From a meandering list of small plates in multiple categories, we started with the Peking Duck-Daikon Tacos ($12; above left), which was the best thing we tried. Thin daikon wafers passed for pancakes, which held slices of duck confit, curried apple, and an orange-coriander sauce. However, we ran out of daikon before we ran out of duck.

Braised Pork Belly ($13; above right) was swimming in a lentil sea. It is hard to overwhelm pork belly, but this plate managed it. You could barely taste the pork.

We ordered a bowl of fried rice ($8; below left) as a side dish, but the kitchen delivered it as a mid-course. At first, we thought this was intentional, but the server disabused us of that: “Your main courses will come out as and when they’re ready.”

Sure enough, “as and when” is the mantra here, often to the customers’ dismay. At two different tables, we saw plates sent back because diners had only just received their first group of appetizers. At one table, the server got into an argument, instead of just admitting the screw-up. Although the restaurant was not full, plates were shot out of the kitchen at machine-gun pace, as if the staff wanted to empty the room as quickly as possible.

We didn’t send anything back, but this was not a relaxing meal.

Neither of the entrées looked especially attractive on the plate: Grilled Colorado Lamb Loin ($27; above center), Braised Short Ribs ($24; above right). The lamb was wonderful, but we didn’t much care for the lazily-plated assortment of vegetables underneath it. The short ribs were slightly on the dry side.

Real thought went into the beverage program here. There is a wide selection of both reds and whites. At $42, the 2008 Cline Cashmere Meritage was a very good choice at the lower end of the list. There are over 400 tequilas and mezcals, and a separate downstairs lounge (La Biblioteca) in which to enjoy them.

The folks at AvroKO did their usual bang-up job with the décor, although the cavernous three-story space is bound to feel like a airplane hangar, practically no matter what you do with it. And it’s hard to imagine it will ever be full.

The opera singer Plácido Domingo is a partner here. One’s immediate reaction is that he ought to stick to music.

Zengo (622 Third Avenue at 40th Street, East Midtown)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Fair
Ambiance: Satisfactory
Overall: Satisfactory

Club A Steakhouse

I know what you’re thinking: “Another steakhouse? Wake me up when it’s over.”

Actually, that’s what I thought when Club A Steakhouse opened two years ago in a part of town that already had plenty of them. We paid a visit the other night on the spur of the moment, when our original Saturday evening plans fell through, and Club A was available on OpenTable at short notice.

From 1977 to 2008, the space was Bruno, a Northern Italian restaurant that appealed to the Upper East Side moneyed set. The owner, an Albanian named Bruno Selimaj, decided that it was time for a makeover. Whoever suggested the name “Club A” needs to have their head examined.

Luckily, it’s the only bad decision Mr. Selimaj has made. He is a gracious host, and still in charge. The man knows how to run a restaurant.

The menu follows the “Luger-plus” model, with thick-cut Canadian bacon and sliced porterhouse for 2, 3, or 4 people as centerpieces, but with much more variety, better service, and a much more comfortable room than Luger itself.

We started with the bacon to share (below left)—surely the most inexpensive appetizer in midtown at $5. The kitchen divided it in two and sent out both halves on separate plates, each with its own serving of the house steak sauce. That’s not bad for $2.50 per person.

The porterhouse for two ($94; above right) was dry aged prime, a very good example if not the best I’ve seen. If we are to pick nits, it was cut a bit more thinly than I would like, and the chef erred on the side of rare, rather than the medium rare we’d asked for. It was a shade larger than the typical porterhouse for two, and we took a good bit of it home.

The side dishes—Five Cheese “Truffle” Mac ($10) and Sautéed Asparagus ($11) were both perfect.

I haven’t yet seen the steakhouse that serves a complimentary bowl of grapes on ice after the meal (right). I wonder where they got that idea? It wasn’t a comp, as we saw it on every table. After that, who needs dessert?

As part of the renovation after Bruno closed, the walls were redone in bordello red. The wall is covered with photos of past guests, perhaps the room’s least attractive features. But the tables are large and comfortable.

The restaurant has one of the best collections of wine decanters I’ve seen, and every bottle is decanted. Service is attentive and first-rate.

Although we got a Saturday night 8:00 p.m. reservation with ease, by 9:00 the room was nearly full. We are guessing that Club A has a cadre of neighborhood regulars, as there has been little publicity to speak of. It deserves to be better known.

Club A Steakhouse (240 E. 58th St. between Second & Third Ave., Upper East Side)

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

Mia Dona (Act III)

Note: Mia Dona’s luck finally ran out. The restaurant closed in August 2011.

Mia Dona is a luckier restaurant than most. With the talented but attention-deficited chef Michael Psilakis behind the stoves, and the talented but over-committed owner Donatella Arpaia running the house, there was always a danger that it would seem like a throwaway.

Amazingly enough, Mia Dona was a very good restaurant. We gave it two stars, and far more importantly, so did Frank Bruni in the Times. Thus ended Act I of our story.

Having launched the restaurant successfully, the danger was that Arpaia and Psilakis would direct their attention to other projects, and the restaurant would drift. Sure enough, it did. Upon a re-visit a mere months later, we found Mia Dona far less exciting. It was now serving “the kind of generic upscale Italian food that could show up on dozens of menus around town.” Thus ended Act II.

Most similarly situated restaurants would either be dead, or would begin a long slide into mediocrity and irrelevance. But at the end of September 2009, Arpaia and Psilakis had an amicable divorce (though they are still partners in three other restaurants). She closed briefly for some much needed renovations, softening the original kitschy, overwrought décor. Most curiously, she re-opened without a named chef, choosing instead to hire cooks she trained herself, along with her mother and her aunts. Thus begins Act III.

The cuisine is that of Apulia, in southern Italy, the region Arpaia’s family is from. She says that this is the cuisine she always wanted to serve at Ama, a restaurant in Soho that she was briefly associated with about four years ago, and that has since closed. As restauranteur and de facto chef at Mia Dona, she finally gets to do it her way.

If you are looking for the thrilling creations that made Act I of Mia Dona such a compelling restaurant, you will be disappointed. They don’t exist. What you get is a safe list of Italian classics that are well made, along with a service team that is far more polished than before.

With Mia Dona now being primarily a neighborhood place, the staff cannot afford the arrogance and slapdash service we have occasionally experienced at Arpaia’s restaurants. The crowd is younger than we remembered it, and they are not treated as if they are oh-so-fortunate to have the privilege of dining here.

Ms. Arpaia was not there personally on the Friday night we visited, and we suspect she seldom is; but the folks to whom she has entrusted the restaurant seem to know what they are doing. As before, she keeps prices remarkably low, with the maximum entrée price at $19. That is a bargain nowadays.

Neither the Meatballs ($9; above left) nor the Seafood Spaghetti ($17; above right) was especially memorable; they were done correctly, that is all.

The same is true of the Eggplant Parmigiana ($17; above left). We loved the Baby Chicken ($17; above right): the whole bird cooked simply but perfectly.

We had no trouble getting a reservation the same day, but the place filled up in a hurry. There seemed to be only one server for the entire front room. Fortunately, she was extremely competent; Donatella had hired wisely.

We doubt that we’ll be back to Mia Dona unless we happen to be in the neighborhood, but we are happy to report that it is friendly, dependable, and apparently successful in its newly minted, much lower ambitions.

Mia Dona (206 E. 58th Street between Second & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

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

La Mangeoire

Note: This is a review under chef Christian Delouvrier, who retired at the end of 2014. He spent four years at La Mangeoire, but was not able to attract the city’s main restaurant critics to review it.

*

What a strange, strange trip it’s been for Christian Delouvrier. In the 1980s and ’90s, he was arguably the city’s most successful French chef, winning three stars at Maurice (1981–89), three at Les Celebrites (1991–98), and four at Lespinasse (1998–2003), where he replaced the legendary Gray Kunz.

When Lespinasse shuttered (one of the few restaurants ever to close with four stars), Delouvrier was temporarily sidelined until he took over as executive chef for Alain Ducasse at the Essex House (which ironically occupied the old Les Celebrites space) in 2004. Ducasse canned him within days after Frank Bruni demoted the restaurant to three stars the following year.

Things haven’t quite been the same for Delouvrier since then. He cooked at La Goulue in Boca Raton and Bal Harbour from 2006–09, with a couple of consulting gigs on the side. Last year, David Bouley hired Delouvrier to rescue his failing brasserie, Secession. We found the restaurant much improved, but the disastrous pre-Delouvrier reviews were too much to overcome, and Secession promptly closed.

Bouley offered Delouvrier a job at one of his other properties, but you sensed that wasn’t going to work out. Without much fanfare, he turned up last October at La Mangeoire, a neighborhood Provençal bistro on the Upper East Side that, as far as I can tell, has never had a Times review despite decades in business. “With this job I have returned to my roots,” he told the Times in December, when the news finally leaked out.

Our immediate reaction: “This is what Secession should have been.” The restaurant’s three small rooms immediately convey the feeling of a village restaurant in Provence. There are lush flower bouquets, hanging copper pots, French artwork on the walls, starched white tablecloths, wine racks in plain view, and a friendly maitre d’ who happily seated me, even though I was 20 minutes early.

La Mangeoire is not going out of its way to publicize its new chef. His name does not appear on the website or on the printed menu. You have to figure that for a guy who once had four stars, this is a come-down, and perhaps he still has his eye on something bigger. Or perhaps Delouvrier, now in his early 60s, simply wants to relax, and to cook the food of his youth.

The menu, which does not appear to be reprinted frequently, consists entirely of French standards. The appetizers ($10.00–13.50) number about a dozen; so do the entrées, each of which is offered in portions small ($13.50–22.00) or large ($19.50–33.00). The prix fixe is $28.

There was a long list of recited specials. One of these, an appetizer of scalloped potatoes with onions and goat cheese ($12; right), sounded so good that we both ordered it, and were delighted with the choice.

I’ve never been a fan of Coq au Vin ($24.50; above left), but I thought it would be a good test of the kitchen: sure enough, this preparation felt exactly right. The chicken was as tender as it should be, the sauce tart but not overpowering. Blanquette de Veau ($28.00; above right) was another recited special. The sauce seemed exactly right, as well, the veal more tender than I recall in past versions of this dish.

The Provence-heavy wine list shows some real thought, but when you ask a server for wines by the glass, he merely says, “Merlot, Cabernet, Malbec, Pinot Noir,” as if it didn’t matter which Malbec, Cabernet, etc., you were getting. A couple of the by-the-glass selections turn out to be not even French, which undermines the whole purpose of dining at the restaurant. Once we got a look at the list, we were pleased with a 2002 Dom Bernarde from Provence, for $44.

I have no idea whether hiring a well known chef has brought in new business. The restaurant was full on a Friday evening. Some of the patrons were clearly from the neighborhood; others, we couldn’t tell. It certainly wasn’t a stereotype old-fashioned uptown crowd, but a healthy mix of old and young. The location is technically in Turtle Bay, but the feel of the restaurant is Upper East Side.

Heaven only knows whether Christian Delouvrier will stay put for a while, but we can only hope he does. For now, La Mangeoire is your go-to place for Provençal classics. [Update: Chef Delouvrier called us, and assured us that he intends to remain at La Mangeoire for many years.]

La Mangeoire (1008 Second Avenue at 53rd Street, Turtle Bay)

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

The Café at Le Cirque

Like most luxury restaurants these days, Le Cirque has a formal dining room and a dressed-down café, where reservations aren’t taken and the menu is a bit more approachable.

Since our meal in the main dining room almost two years ago, Le Cirque has acquired a new chef: Craig Hopson, formerly of Picholine and One if By Land, Two if By Sea. None of the city’s major critics has reviewed Le Cirque since Hopson took over. It holds three Times stars, courtesy of a Bruni re-review in February 2008. It almost pained him to dine there:

At Le Cirque you will indeed eat too much food, of a kind that neither your physician nor your local Greenpeace representative would endorse, in a setting of deliberate pompousness, at a sometimes ludicrous expense.The ravioli, all three of them, are $35.

But that has long been the way of certain restaurants, which exist to be absurd, to speak not to our better angels but to our inner Trumps, making us feel pampered and reckless and even a little omnipotent, if only for two hours and three courses with a coda of petits fours.

And while I’m not calling for the spread of these establishments (or the massacre of Chilean sea bass), I’m charged with noting when one of them fulfills its chosen mission with classic panache. Le Cirque now does.

Has ever a critic awarded three stars to a restaurant, while saying that he would prefer to see no more like it?

I had an evening commitment on the Upper East Side during Restaurant Week, and as Le Cirque would be on the way, I decided to drop in. The Dining Room was fully committed, even at 5:45 p.m., but the adjoining café was empty (it would begin to fill up later on). The website advises: “Jackets are required for gentlemen in the dining room and suggested in the café.” I was wearing one, but it did not seem to matter.

The café is a comfortable space, dominated by a huge cylindrical wine tower. In the oddly-shaped room, two of the walls have ceiling-height windows that face on Third Avenue and 58th Street, admitting plenty of natural light.

Lately, the owners have been struggling to fill the café. Evidently, the idea of dropping into Le Cirque for an order of sliders hasn’t caught on. Offers to drop in for free fried chicken to watch major sporting events (sixth game of the World Series; Thursday night Jets–Bills game) have dropped in my mailbox with regularity.

There is a dizzying array of options at Le Cirque. The main carte offers a pre-theatre prix fixe at $48, a tasting menu at $120, and a regular prix fixe at $95. You can also order à la carte, which I don’t recall before, with some of the highest prices in town: appetizers $25–30 (most in the high 20s), pastas $28–38, mains $42–70.

The café menu, also called the wine bar menu, has tasting plates from $14–35, along with a three-course “restaurant week” prix fixe for $35, which was available all summer long. Apparently you can order from any of these menus in the café, but the server gave me only the restaurant week menu, as they said it’s what most of the café visitors want.

No one should be under the illusion that they’re getting a $98 value for $35. When the price for three courses is less than the cheapest dining room entrée, you’re obviously not going to get the restaurant’s best stuff. None of the three dishes I had is shown on the main dining room carte. But I did have a modestly satisfying meal at a respectable price, with two forgettable dishes and one I would happily order again.

Gnocchi with tripe ragu (above left) was pedestrian, but I loved (at the price) the pavé of veal with zucchini, tomato, and pecorino romano (above right). The veal was nicely crisped, but tender on the inside. I was afraid of another humdrum tomato broth, but both the tomato and the zucchini were vibrantly flavored. The cheese didn’t add much, though.

Dessert, a lemon merengue pie, was competently executed but rather ordinary, and the accompanying sorbet paired with it poorly.

Café diners get the same bread service as the main dining room—not that it is anything to write home about. Coffee ($4) came in its own silver pot. Service overall was attentive and pleasant. The café has its own pared-down wine list (though I’m sure you can get the bigger one), and prices by the glass are reasonable. A 2003 Haut Médoc was $15.

It may not offer the main dining room’s culinary fireworks, but the Café is a fine way to enjoy an inexpensive dinner if you happen to be in the area.

The Café at Le Cirque (151 E. 58th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Le Relais de Venise

Le Relais de Venise “L’Entrecôte” garnered a bit of press—only a little—when it opened last summer in East Midtown— oddly enough, on the same block as the Four Seasons. The few reviews it got told of a “meh” steak in a “meh” sauce, and that was that.

Then Sam Sifton shocked us all by choosing the place for his fourth review, pronouncing it “terrific,” and awarding one star.

The concept at L’Entrecôte is simple enough. There is only one order: salad and steak frites for $24. Across the street, at the Four Seasons, you can’t even get an appetizer for that.

Desserts are extra, but not exorbitant, at around $5–7 each. A glass of the house Bordeaux is just $5.75. None of that is expensive by Manhattan standards, where at most top steakhouses the steak alone is around $40—more at some places.

Still, even if you skip dessert (as I did) and drink just one glass of the wine, you’ll approach $40 with tax and tip. There are plenty of cheap eats at that price, and when only one item is served, it ought to be great. It is not.

What’s served here is better called “nourishment” than cuisine. As Sifton noted, you could be out in twenty minutes, and there is no reason to linger any longer. The space is cavernous, and neither warm nor especially inviting. I wonder how often they’ll fill it?

Despite all that space, there is no coat check.

The menu announces, “Today, trimmed Entrecôte Steak [i.e. rib steak] ‘Porte Maillo’ with its famous sauce, French fries and Green salad with walnuts.” I love that word Today, as if you could get something different tomorrow. You can’t.

A waitress dressed in a French maid’s uniform asks if you’ll have your steak blue, rare, medium, or well. I choose rare, and she writes a big “R” in magic marker on the white mat that covers the table. With so little to keep track of, do they really need an aide memoire?

That house wine arrives. It is certainly not over-priced, at $5.75. But one glass of it will be enough.

The salad (below left) comes within minutes— fast enough to make me suspect a bunch of them are made up in advance. After a few bites of the soggy lettuce, my fears are confirmed.

In contrast, the steak seems to be prepared to order. The waitress serves about half of it onto your plate, and ladles on the sauce. The other half is left on a warming tray at a serving station nearby. When you’ve finished your first helping, she’ll bring over the tray and serve the rest. It’s a gimmick, as the portion is not so large that it would get cold if it were all served at once.

The meat, as you’d expect, is not the best, but it is certainly edible, and cooked correctly to the rare I had asked for. The fries are decent. The sauce is a secret, but the consensus is that it includes chicken livers, mustard, and pepper. I thought I tasted mushrooms, too. It is good enough to conceal the fact that the beef is nothing special.

The servers are plenty attentive. You could argue that the place is over-staffed, given how little is expected of them. The restaurant fulfills its modest aims acceptably, but I’m sure you can find more interesting ways to spend $40.

Le Relais de Venise (590 Lexington Avenue at 52nd Street, East Midtown)

Food: Acceptable
Service: Decent
Ambiance: Acceptable
Overall: Satisfactory

Pera

I keep a running list of restaurants to try, but some of them stay on the list for a long time. Pera is one of those. Its location, in the shadow of Grand Central Terminal, is one we seldom visit. The opening reviews, respectful but not ecstatic, suggested it could wait until we had an excuse to be in the area. Frank Bruni awarded one star in February 2007.

Pera is better than we expected. It isn’t quite destination cuisine, but the space is comfortable, the service is excellent, and everything we tried was prepared with care. The cooking isn’t especially ambitious, and the menu is static, but what they serve they do well.

We walked in on a Saturday evening on the way back from a Mets game at Citi Field. I chose Pera partly because I was sure we could walk in without a reservation. To my surprise it was nearly full. It turned out that nearly all the patrons were part of the same wedding rehearsal dinner party. Pera strikes us as not a bad place for that type of party.

Captioned a “Mediterranean Brasserie,” the menu straddles the Greek–Turkish axis. It includes Small Plates & Mezes ($6–19; sampler $22), snack plates called pidettes ($4 ea.), salads ($11–15), grilled meat & fish ($19–36), and side dishes ($6–11). A tasting menu of sorts, labeled the “Pera Tradition,” is $45 pp.

These prices are a tad on the high side, especially if you order at the upper end. However, there are also some bargains, and portions are large. The wine list somewhat compensates for the food prices, with plenty of bottles at $45 or less.

The meal began with soft house-made bread (above left), served with crumbly feta cheese.

An order of Chicken Livers ($8; above left) came from the Small Plates section of the menu, so I didn’t expect much. It actually came with four nicely-seasoned grilled livers and a small side salad. In the photo, the food is obscured by a leaf of pita dough, which you can use to build your own sandwich. Pita dough seems to be a theme at Pera, but I just ate the livers with my knife and fork.

A salad of Grilled Vegetables & Halloumi Cheese ($15; above right) was also pretty good, although the cheese seemed a bit over-crisped. 

Two of our entrées showed a distinct lack of ambition: Lamb “Adana” ($26; above left) and Filet Mignon Medallions ($33; above right), both sent out with leaves of pita and garnishes (not shown). Both were uncomplicated but well prepared, and there is something to be said for that.

The quotes in Pasta “Moussaka” ($23; above right) signalled that we would not be getting the traditional Greek version of the dish. It was more like a deconstructed version of a classic moussaka, with pappardelle pasta, lamb and eggplant ragu, and shaved parmigiano. For all that, it was probably the best item we tried, and it was certainly the most creative.

Pera isn’t a “drop everything, you must go” kind of restaurant, but I would certainly visit again next time I’m in the vicinity.

Pera Mediterranean Brasserie (303 Madison Avenue between 41st–42nd Streets, East Midtown)

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

La Fonda del Sol

Note: This is a review under chef Josh DeChellis, who left the restaurant in May 2011. The new chef is Christopher DeLuna.

*

La Fonda del Sol was one of the iconic NYC destination restaurants of the 1960s, often mentioned in the same breath as The Four Seasons (which is still around) and Forum of the Twelve Caesars (which isn’t). The restaurant closed in the early 1970s. Fans still mourn the loss of Alexander Girard’s striking design (see this fansite).

Now Patina Restaurant Group, which owns the rights (inherited from the old Restaurant Associates) wants to re-capture the magic. A new Fonda del Sol opened six weeks ago in the Met Life Building. Except for the name, it has little to do with its predecessor. Adam Tihany’s design could be just as opulent as Girard’s, but it’s his own, not a re-do. The menu, under Josh DeChellis, is Spanish, rather than Latin American.

The new Fonda was conceived before the recession. It is one of the most luxurious openings we’ve seen in quite a while. The large bi-level space offers a casual tapas restaurant facing Vanderbilt Avenue and an elegant formal dining room. The tapas space was totally empty on Saturday evening, except for a couple of people drinking at the bar. The location doesn’t lend itself to weekend walk-ins, but the staff claim they’ve been doing well on weekdays, with Grand Central just a half-step away. The dining room looked to be about 80% full at 9:00 p.m.

Reviewers will obsess over the clash between the luxurious space and the tanking economy. Gael Greene is the only active critic who dined at the old Fonda, and she’s smitten once again. In the Daily News, Restaurant Girl awarded four out of five stars. Those are the kinds of reviews La Fonda del Sol will need, as it is on the expensive side and could have trouble attracting a crowd without good word of mouth.

We liked nearly everything we had. The amuse-bouche (top left) was a thin slice of cured ham with a daikon radish. We then tried three tapas: the Potted Duckling and Pork ($11; above right), Tuna Tacos ($9.50; below left) and Veal Terrine Croquettas ($9; below right).

The potted duckling, resembling a pâté, was luxuriously rich; the tuna tacos with avocado and jalapeño pickled onion packed a flavor punch. The croquettas, however, were rather forgettable.

Suckling Pig ($28) was a masterpiece, with a constellation of unmentionable pig parts rolled up and covered in pig skin, served with smoked dates, almonds, and charred brussels sprouts.

We loved a side dish of spicy potatoes ($9; right), but a server ought to have told us that the pig already came with brussels sprouts, as we certainly didn’t need a separate side order of it ($7).

The after-dinner petits-fours were as impressive as nearly any restaurant we’ve been to in New York, especially as the entire box was left at our table (many places ask you to choose, then take the box away). We were obviously not going to finish anywhere near all of that, but it was an impressive selection.

The only real disappointment was the bread service. What is the point of offering two different kinds of rolls, when both are rock-hard? Our server was a bit wet behind the ears. When I asked for a wine list, she said, “You mean, by the bottle?” Hmm…what else would it be? The list could use a few more options below $50. I found an acceptable Spanish red at $38, but it didn’t have much company.

With judicious ordering, we managed to keep the bill to $143 before tax and tip. That’s not bad at all for a restaurant as elegant as this one. This is a restaurant we’ll be rooting for.

La Fonda del Sol (200 Park Avenue at 44th Street, Met Life Building, East Midtown)

[Note: Despite the Park Avenue address, the entrance to the restaurant is actually on Vanderbilt Avenue.]

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

Felidia

By coincidence, I dined at Babbo and Felidia on consecutive evenings last week. The two restaurants are related, as Felidia is owned by Lidia Bastianich, while her son Joe is a partner in Babbo.

We had the pasta tasting menu at Babbo, and as I noted in my blog post, the savory courses ended in a whimper. There’s no reason why a progression of five pastas can’t all be terrific, but in this case there was a failure of imagination at the end of the sequence—nothing bad, but too bland. And the bread service was disappointing, with neither butter nor olive oil in sight.

At Felidia, we had the five-course market tasting menu (~$75)—one of several multi-course fixed menus the restaurant offers. I wasn’t taking notes that evening, but we started with an excellent beef carpaccio; then a salad-like substance that was the only dud; then an excellent quinoa risotto and an even better duo of squab. I wouldn’t rush back for the bread service, but with several spreads in lieu of butter, it was at least acceptable.

The wine list has moderated a bit since my last visit. There are plenty of budget-busting bottles, if you want them, but I had no trouble finding reasonable options under $50.

Service was excellent, but for one serious faux pas at the end. Our server said, “We need the table for another party, but please feel free to have a drink at the bar.” I don’t think any three-star restaurant has ever asked me to vacate a table, and I don’t believe we lingered longer than one normally would at this type of restaurant.

But if they’re going to invite you for a drink, they should at least follow through. Instead, we were left to fend for ourselves, and when we got downstairs the bar was packed three deep. It was obvious that the offer of a drink was only a ploy to turn the table. I am glad that Felidia is not struggling for customers, but this should have been handled better.

Felidia (243 E. 58th Street between 2nd & 3rd Avenues, East Midtown)

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

Le Bernardin

Note: The photo above pre-dates a 2011 renovation of the dining room.

*

I hit a milestone this year. No, it’s not my 48th birthday. It’s that I’ve now visited every one of the city’s four-star restaurants at least once. Of the five restaurants currently holding that distinction, Le Bernardin is the one to which I’m most eager to return.

It’s not that Le Bernardin is the best of the bunch—though it very well may be—but that it’s the most versatile. I loved my meals at Per Se and Masa, but both are crazily expensive, and their long tasting menus don’t change much. Daniel and Jean Georges are both excellent, but neither one impressed me quite as much as Le Bernardin. On top of that, there are enough menu options to dine frequently at Le Bernardin without repeating anything. Based on the sustained quality of the Chef’s Tasting Menu we had, it appears you can’t go wrong here. If I could afford it, we’d be here once a month.

Le Bernardin is the oldest of New York’s top-rated restaurants, having won four stars from Bryan Miller of the Times in March 1986, when it was less than three months old. It was a near-clone of a Paris restaurant run by chef Gilbert Le Coze and his sister, Maguy, who watched over the front-of-house. They closed their Paris restaurant in December 1986 to focus on New York full-time. Bryan Miller awarded four stars yet again in February 1989. (In those days, the Times re-reviewed major restaurants far more quickly than it does today.)

Gilbert Le Coze died in July 1994 of a sudden heart attack. He was only 49, but a youngster named Eric Ripert, then 29, had already been in charge of the kitchen for over three years. Times critic Ruth Reichl took another look in April 1995, finding Le Bernardin still worthy of four stars. The paper’s most recent review came from Frank Bruni in March 2005. You guessed it: four stars.

How has Le Bernardin remained on top of its game for more than two decades? Few restaurants in its class would have survived the death of the original chef, and most seem to rest on their laurels after a while. Even fans of Jean Georges admit that the menu has hardly changed in ten years. But Vongerichten now leads a worldwide empire of almost twenty restaurants. Eric Ripert has taken on the occasional consulting gig, but Le Bernardin has his nearly undivided attention.

And he is still innovating. As Bruni noted, “Asian accents are scattered throughout a menu that bears scant resemblance to the one in 1995.” In a recent Feedbag post, Ripert noted that the staff have meetings every week to try new recipes, and “Maybe one in three dishes makes it onto Le Bernardin’s menu—if that.” Grub Street published a list of the maître d’s 129 Cardinal Sins for Waiters, an admirable opus that every new employee at Le Bernardin must study, and that ought to be mandatory reading at most other restaurants.

The atmosphere is lovely, but it certainly isn’t as romantic or as picturesque as the city’s other four-star restaurants. Frank Bruni exaggerated when he compared the dining room to “a first-class airport lounge.” I wonder what airports Bruni’s been visiting; I’ve never seen one like this. But the space certainly lacks the serenity of other restaurants in its class. On the Le Bernardin website, the background sound is the hubbub of diners chattering—accurate enough, but an odd choice. (I don’t like restaurant websites with a sound track anyway, but if you’re going to have one, why that?)

The format here is a four-course prix fixe at $109, nearly all seafood. The savory courses are in three groups: Almost Raw, Barely Touched and Lightly Cooked, with about a dozen choices for each. There’s also, “upon request,” squab, lamb, Kobe beef ($150 supp.) or pasta. It’s hard to imagine that anyone would come here for the steak, but Ripert told Grub Street that he sells 50 orders of it a night—an astonishing total at a seafood restaurant.

There are two tasting menus: seven courses for $135 or eight more luxurious ones for $185. As it was my birthday, we had the latter, along with wine pairings for an additional $140 per person. The wines were certainly very good, but in terms of real value you could probably do better by the bottle or half-bottle.

The amuse-bouche (left) was a mushroom soup of startling clarity, with hunks of succulent lobster at the bottom of the cup. The bread service was excellent, with several house-made varieties.

 

The first course was a remarkable thinly-pounded salmon carpaccio with a dollop of caviar tucked inside, all perched on a wafer-thin toasted brioche (above left). You don’t get much closer to perfection.

Seared Japanese blue fin tuna (said to be the world’s first of the species that’s “sustainably raised”) was beautifully balanced with parmesan crisp, sun-dried tomato, and black olive oil (above right).

 

The fireworks continued as the kitchen somehow managed to fill sautéed calamari with sweet prawns and shiitake mushrooms (above left). Lobster was paired with asparagus a hollandaise-like sauce (above right). As an aside, this was one of the few dishes that prominently featured a vegetable. Most of Ripert’s dishes put vegetables, if he uses them at all, far into the background.

 

The closest thing to a letdown was the Escolar, or white tuna, poached in extra virgin olive oil with sea beans and potato crisps (above left). It had a flat, bland taste. But crispy black bass (above right) was excellent, as was the surprisingly good parsnip custard that came with it (below left). Who knew parsnips could be so good?

 

Each dessert seems to revolve around a simple idea, beautifully executed. I loved the roasted fig with goat cheese parfait, hazelnut, red wine caramel, and bacon ice cream (above right).

 

A chocolate ganache (above left) brought approving nods from across the table, but I’m not fond of chocolate, so I asked for a substitute. They gave me a choice of anything on the dessert menu, and I chose the carrot cake (above right), which I’d be happy to have any day. You can’t read it in the photo, but that’s “Happy Birthday” written in chocolate in front of the tiny cake (below left). We concluded with the usual petits-fours (below right).

 

Service was first-rate: If any of the maître d’s cardinal sins was violated, we didn’t notice it. There are more romantic settings in New York, but everything on the plate was extraordinary.

Le Bernardin (155 W. 51st St. between Seventh Ave. & Broadway, West Midtown)

Cuisine: Modern French seafood, possibly the best in the universe
Service: Classically elegant
Ambiance: A slightly old-fashioned fancy room (remodeled since this review)

Rating: ★★★★