Sushi Dojo

 

Note: This review was written when David Boudahana was Executive Chef at Sushi Dojo. The owners fired him in late 2015 after a series of run-ins with the Department of Health. The restaurant’s other sushi chefs were excellent, so the restaurant should be able to keep running without missing a beat.

*

Was I imagining it, or have we entered a Golden Age of Japanese cuisine in New York? New York’s Adam Platt seems to agree: this week, he posted a roundup of six new entrants—and he still didn’t manage to hit all of them.

I won’t have the time or the money for such an extensive survey. If I could only do one, I wasn’t sorry that it was Sushi Dojo, which opened in the East Village in early June and was an instant hit.

 

The chef getting all the press is an unlikely one: 27-year-old David Bouhadana (above left), a Jewish kid from Florida who trained with Iron Chef Morimoto and apprenticed for four years in Japan. To this gaijin’s ears, his Japanese sounds like the real McCoy. (I remember him vaguely from Sushi Uo, where he worked briefly in 2009.) Joining him are Hiromi Suzuki (one of the few female sushi chefs in New York) and Makato Yoshizawa, the only one of the group born and raised in Japan.

The restaurant’s name, loosely translated, means “Sushi Education.” The chefs will talk about their fish until you’re ready for a Ph.D., but they can leave you alone, if you’d prefer. It would be pretentious to suggest that you can’t get your education elsewhere, but these chefs are more talkative (in a good way) than many others I’ve encountered.

There’s a menu of hot dishes from the kitchen, sushi and sashimi à la carte, and omakases at escalating prices. On the evening we were there, the top omakase was $80 per head (since raised to $90), which compares favorably to $135 at Neta a few months ago. Ingredients are everything in sushi: much of the bill at Neta was taken up with an insane serving of toro tartare and caviar, which is $48 all by itself when ordered separately.

The sushi itself at Neta was pedestrian; here, it’s the highlight of the meal. The chef said that about 70 percent of the fish they serve is imported from Japan, with the rest sourced from the likes of Boston, New Zealand, Montauk, San Francisco, and so forth. In our omakase, I thought the ratio was more like 50/50.

 

There are about 40 sakes on the menu. We discussed our preference with the sommelier, who brought out a selection of three for us to try, and then steered us to an inexpensive choice. We ordered the $80 omakase with Chef Suzuki (above right), and she went to work. A poached South African ocotpus (upper left of photo) had just come steaming out of the oven.

 

We started (above left) with a few pieces of that octopus; tuna tartare with wasabi, soy, and yam; and a British Columbia oyster. Then came a selection of sashimi (above right) with shrimp, hamachi, tuna, and yellowtail.

 

The heads of the shrimp were sent to the kitchen, and came back deep fried (above left). This is a terrific dish, if you don’t mind the gross-out factor. I’ve always eaten shrimp heads, but I realize that many people don’t.

The planned omakase included five pieces of sushi: madai, golden eye snapper (Japan), shimaji (Japan), Tasmanian trout, and fatty tuna otoro (Boston). I’ve shown the trout (above right); you can see every piece in the slide show below.

 

We didn’t feel quite ready to be done, so we ordered five extra pieces. A scallop (above), seared with the blowtorch and finished with soy and yuzu zest, was one of the highlights. We also enjoyed the Japanese spotted sardine, salted and cured; the Santa Barbara sea urchin; sea eel; and seared fatty tuna with lemon juice and salt.

The omakase did not include dessert or anything from the kitchen, aside from the deep-fried shrimp heads. If our experience is any guide, you’ll probably want a bit more. (The kitchen sent out a pot of tea in a clay pot, which does not normally come with it.) I ought to add that we dined at the publicist’s invitation, and although we paid for our meal, it was at a discounted rate.

There are 36 seats, which were mostly full by 9:00 pm (when we were wrapping up), but only 14 at the bar. As usual for such establishments, you need to sit at the bar to get the most out of the experience, or should I say, the education.

If you want sushi around here, the sky’s the limit. At Kurumazushi, you can spend $1,000 in 45 minutes, and they’ll serve you slabs of imported otoro the size of porterhouse steaks. Sushi Dojo occupies a more rational sphere. In its price range, it is one of the better Japanese meals I’ve had in New York.

Sushi Dojo (110 First Avenue at E. 7th Street, East Village)

Food: Sushi front and center
Service: Personalized service from one of three sushi chefs
Ambiance: Austere but not too serious, in the traditional blond wood

Rating: ★★

Mighty Quinn's Barbecue

Barbecue is a cuisine I love, but all too rarely find the time to enjoy. Many of the recently acclaimed places have opened in Brooklyn or Queens, and I don’t love ’cue quite enough to head over there.

Mighty Quinn’s Barbecue is an exception, opening last December on a bright East Village street corner in the old Vandaag space. I had a mid-day appointment in the area, so I headed over at 11:30 a.m., when they open for lunch.

Good barbecue in NYC is still scarce enough that the better places can be packed at peak hours. Getting there early is a boon: I was served immediately. It’s not a huge space, and I’m sure at the dinner hour it’s packed.

The owners have put a high gloss on what is still, at root, a bare-bones operation. The space is bright, shiny, and comfortable. Nevertheless, you stand in a cafeteria line, and the food is served on metal trays.

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Alder

Note: Alder closed in August 2015. Wylie Dufresne, the chef and owner, did not explain the decision, but when we dropped in a couple of months earlier, we found the dining room almost empty on a weeknight. Earlier in the year, he instituted a tasting-menu format that, perhaps, didn’t go over as well as he’d hoped.

*

Give Wylie Dufresne credit. Give him double-credit.

When WD~50, his modernist—and not always approchable—restaurant, struggled during the Great Recession, he stayed open. For a while, he was doing just five nights a week, but he didn’t give up, and he never dumbed down the menu.

And for ten years, WD~50 was all he had. Unlike most chefs with three New York Times stars, he didn’t open a more casual restaurant that might’ve distracted him, or competed with the flagship for his attention.

In May 2012, WD~50 abolished the à la carte menu in the main dining room. Tasting menus are now all you can get. They’re also back up to seven nights a week. I guess the Great Recession is over. (Not everyone thinks the new format is an improvement.)

About that time, he started planning Alder, a new casual restaurant in the East Village, which finally opened in March 2013. Alder is à la carte and less elaborate than WD~50. It’s Dufresne’s take on classic pub food, recognizably in his style, but not as avant-garde as WD~50 sometimes can be. There are four cooks in the kitchen at Alder, as opposed to twelve at WD~50, so the food is a lot simpler.

Generally, you’ll recognize what you eat, which at WD~50 is not always the case. You can take grandma or perhaps even your picky Aunt Gertrude, provided she doesn’t mind the noise. Sound levels in the dining room can be punishing. We visited on a warm summer evening, and fortunately were able to sit outside. Indoors, I might like Alder a lot less.

But we ate outside, so I loved it.

The menu consists of eighteen items priced $8–24, served tapas-style, and suitable for sharing, with no explicit division between appetizer and entrée. Like most small-plates restaurants, it only seems inexpensive. Our fairly modest order of five plates, a cocktail each, and a $48 bottle of wine, ran to $177 before tax and tip.

 

Every meal at Alder begins with a serving of Giardiniera (above left), an Italian–American relish of pickled vegetables. It’s a bit odd, as several critics have noted, as it doesn’t really go with the rest of the food, and no bread is served with it. But it’s very good on its own terms: we made fast work of it.

“Pigs in a Blanket” ($13; above right), like so much of the food at Alder, is a play on the old classic, here made with Chinese sausage, Japanese mustard, and a sweet chili sauce. Consider it a must-order.

 

Sun Gold Tomatoes ($18; above left) are served with Peekytoe crab, fried naan, and edamame; but what comes through is mostly tomato, and not enough of the crab.

I could eat the foie gras terrine ($19; above right) all day. It was served with watermelon and shiso on a Ritz cracker. (Some critics have mentioned poached apple, so I think the recipe changes periodically.) But the Ritz cracker is a constant: who knew it paired so well with foie gras?

 

New England Clam Chowder ($16; above left) comes with “oyster crackers,” which you toss into the soup. It’s a terrific combination. A party of two need not worry about ordering this: they send it out in two bowls.

 

The kitchen aced the Roasted Chicken ($21; above left), served with oyster mushrooms and charred romaine. But Halibut ($24; above right) was bland and dry: I was more fond of the corn underneath it than the fish itself.

The pacing of the meal was just right; silverware was replaced after every course.

There’s about 40 bottles on the wine list, plenty of them below $50. The server decanted our 2010 Morgon ($48), which was served at the correct temperature, but in juice glasses. For a check that rises above $200 after tax and tip, you’d think they could afford wine stems.

Out of five dishes, I count three hits, one dud (the Halibut), and another in between (the tomatoes with crabmeat and edamame). That’s pretty much what everyone says about Alder: Dufresne and his team don’t hit a home run with every dish, but there’s more than enough to make the restaurant hugely worthwhile.

Alder (157 Second Avenue at E. 10th Street, East Village)

Food: A modernist take on pub food
Service: Very good; would be great if they’d bring in real wine glasses
Ambiance: East Village chic, and too noisy: east outside while you still can

Rating: ★★

Momofuku Noodle Bar

Whip me with a wet noodle, if you must. I suppose I deserve some kind of penance for the following confession: Until recently, I had never been to Momofuku Noodle Bar.

Blame it on the lines, which at dinner times often snake down First Avenue. I was eager to visit, but not eager enough to go that far out of my way, and then wait for a bar stool. (Reservations aren’t taken, except for the large-format chicken meal, which feeds 4–8 people. I saw an order go out while I was there: four people would need to be awfully hungry to finish it.)

I rectified this shocking omission in my culinary travels on a recent Friday afternoon, when I dropped in for a late lunch at about 3:30pm. There was still plenty of business, given the oddness of the hour, but it was delightfully uncrowded. If it were always like this, I might come more often. But if it were always like this, it wouldn’t be Noodle Bar.

The Momofuku story is so well known that it hardly needs re-telling. After graduating from the French Culinary Institute, David Chang worked his way through the fine-dining kitchens of Jean-Georges Vongerichten (Mercer Kitchen), Tom Colicchio (Craft), and Daniel Boulud (Café Boulud). Then, he left fine dining and opened a noodle shop.

The original Momofuku Noodle Bar, which opened in 2004 with 27 seats, was such a hit that Chang followed it up with Momofuku Ssäm Bar in 2006. After another two years, Noodle Bar moved into its present 65-seat space down the street. Momofuku Ko, Chang’s Michelin two-star spot, moved into the old Noodle Bar. The empire now includes four restaurants, a chain of dessert shops, and a cocktail bar in New York; outposts in Toronto and Sydney; and a culinary lab.

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Feast

You know what a prix fixe menu is, right? And you know what a “small plates” menu is, right? If the two get married and have children, what do you get?

Meet Feast, a prix fixe restaurant with menus structured like a sequences of small plates. We loved it. To us, it was the best of both worlds—though others might not be so fond of it. Such is the case when a restaurant tries to fiddle with tradition.

The main menu offers a choice of three “feasts.” As of last week, the options were the Farmer’s Market Feast ($38), the Scallop Feast ($49), or the Nose-to-Tail Lamb Feast ($48). According to a recent email from the restaurant, the scallop feast will shortly switch to soft-shell crabs, and lamb will morph to pork. And so on.

Each feast consist of an appetizer course with four plates, an entrée course with another four, and a dessert. All prices are per-person, and the entire table must order the same feast. There’s also a separate (and small) à la carte menu, which the restaurant is clearly trying to downplay. Most tables seemed to be ordering feasts, which is the whole point of the restaurant.

So you get nine plates, served as three courses, at a pretty damned good price. Unlike a tasting menu, it doesn’t go on for hours. Unlike a small-plates restaurant, there’s no guessing how much to order, nor upselling from servers trying to entice you into ordering more than you need.

The chef is Christopher Meenan, a former chef de cuisine at Veritas. The food is not as ambitious, but it’s pretty good, and you get dinner for just about the price of an entrée at Veritas. It just might be just about the best meal for two, under $100 (before tax, tip, and drinks), that we’ve had in quite a while.

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Spina

Spina is an off-the-radar trattoria on a bright corner lot in Alphabet City. Opened in 2009, it wasn’t reviewed professionally, but it managed to attract a 25 food rating on Zagat, good enough for the top 7 percent of Italian restaurants city-wide. To put that in perspective, Marea is a 27, and Babbo is a 26.

As Spina gets no substantial food press, I imagine its popularity is drawn mainly from the neighborhood, and it is easy to see why. The décor out of the faux rustic playbook is comfortable and inviting, the menu is inexpensive, the food good for the price, and the wine list well worth exploring.

Spina is on its third chef in four years (currently Joe Marcus, a Picholine and Café Boulud vet), but it is not struggling by any measure: the dining room was nearly full by 8:00 pm on a Tuesday evening. Nevertheless, we were invited to come in for a tasting (and did not pay for our meal).

The concise one-page menu offers various appetizers and salads ($8–14), pastas ($16–22), mains ($19–24) and vegetable sides ($6). With nine pastas to just four mains, it’s clear that the former are meant to be the restaurant’s focus. The work station where the noodles are made in-house is in the dining room itself.

 

A wonderful poppy seed focaccia (above left) is also made in house; they serve it with a soft, truffle ricotta butter.

The winter salad ($11; above right) was well above the routine, with shaved brussels sprouts, avocado, cranberries, apples, pumpkin seeds, parmigiano reggiano, and lemon dressing.

 

The unusual wild mushroom goat cheese polenta ($11; above left) was the best of the appetizers, well above anything you’ll find in the average trattoria.

It seems everyone has to offer meatballs these days. Spina’s rendition of them ($8; above right) is acceptable but not distinguished: veal, beef and pork, with a light tomato sauce and parmagiano reggiano. Still, it’s worth noting that we paid $15 for meatballs at The Cleveland a couple of weeks ago, for a recipe that wasn’t as good.

We concluded with a tasting of three pastas. From left to right: 1) black pepper pappardelle with wild boar ragù ($18); 2) basil malfati with house-smoked tomato, eggplant, garlic, and fresh ricotta ($16); and malloreddus ($17), a saffron-infused corkscrew pasta called gnocchetti with a veal and pork tomato ragù.

None of these will put Michael White out of business, but the execution is well beyond the average neighborhood trattoria. If you can order just one, try the malloreddus, which you aren’t going to find just anywhere. The malfati are also worthwhile. The pappardelle with wild boar ragù struck us as a tired cliché, but a neighborhood spot needs to offer some comfortably familiar items.

The 16-page international wine list is remarkable, with prices ranging from $32 to $465. A steady stream of high rollers must justify the higher end of the list, but there is plenty for those who want wines priced in line with the food. Wine director Matthew Harrell has made a specialty of the Finger Lakes region, but his eclectic tastes range from Slovenia, Lebanon, and Greece, to Austria, France, and of course Italy.

We can’t comment directly on the service, since this was an invited visit, but Harrell seemed to spend as much time evangelizing the wine list at other tables as he did at ours. He served us ad hoc pairings of several wines by the glass, which I assume he does at other tables, as well.

With hundreds of Italian restaurants in the city, it is difficult for any to attain destination status. Spina is certainly a very good one, and in conjunction with the excellent wine list, certainly well worth exploring if you’re anywhere near the East Village.

Spina (175 Avenue B at E. 11th Street, East Village)

Table Verte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Paprika

I’ve ranted about the over-exposure of Italian cuisine in New York City. And one might think that Paprika in the East Village is just another neighborhood Italian spot, of which the city has about 80 dozen.

Turns out, one would be wrong. Paprika offers something special. The restaurant had been around a decade or so, mostly below the radar, before the chef/owner, Edigio Donagrandi, tossed out the old menu a few months ago and installed the cuisine of his native region, Valtellina.

No, I hadn’t heard of Valtellina either. It’s a mountainous area on the Swiss border, where the pastas are made with buckwheat, vegetables are pickled for the long winters, and the salads are heavy on dandelion and kale, potatoes and leeks. If any other chef in town is serving the cuisine of Valtellina, I haven’t heard of it.

The restaurant occupies a broad, sun-drenched storefront on St. Mark’s Place. The decor is somewhat bare-bones: wooden tables, white brick walls adorned with farm implements, and a back wall painted paprika red. There wasn’t much of a crowd on a mid-week evening.

The menu is inexpensive by today’s standards, with salads $9–10, starters $11–14, pastas $15–17, entrées $18–25, and side dishes and desserts $7. Portion sizes are generous. The all-Italian wine list runs to about thirty bottles (ten by the glass), many of them off the beaten path, and most below $50.

The publicist arranged our visit and we didn’t pay for our meal. As always, I don’t issue a formal rating in these circumstances.

 

Soft polenta made with cornmeal and buckwheat ($14; above left) is served with three regional cheeses. It’s an unusual starter, better for sharing. The polenta, coarser and grittier than usual, takes some getting used to.

 

We loved the Dandelion Salad ($10; above left) with pickled red radishes, spring onions, and crescenza, a soft Northern Italian cheese. Where I grew up, dandelions were considered weeds. I’ll never think of them that way again.

Bresaola ($13; above left), a salted air-dried beef, originated in Valtellina. I’ve seen it in many Italian restaurants, but not served the way it is here, with pickled oyster mushrooms and red radishes. I loved this combination, but my girlfriend was not fond of it.

 

Beef Crudo ($13; above left) is served on a slice of crusty garlic bread with a chicory salad on the side. I can’t comment on its authenticity, but it looked like an uncooked hamburger patty and wasn’t much more interesting than that.

Pizzoccheri Valtellinese ($16; above right) was the best of the three pastas we tried, and like nothing I’d had before. It’s a buckwheat tagliatelle with Savoy cabbage, casera cheese, potatoes and garlic.

 

Gnocchi ($15; above left) were a close second. They’re hand-rolled and pan-crisped, but perhaps outclassed by the wonderful roasted mushrooms and sage.

We were less enthralled with Buckwheat Lasagna ($17; above right). Again, I can’t comment on the authenticity, but to our taste the dish needed more flavor than braised leeks and casera cheese could supply.

We tried only one of the entrées, but it was spectacular: the Grilled Trout ($23; above). The trout is filleted, spread open, and brushed with a pine nut parsley pesto, spring onions and braised fennel. Then it’s folded back on itself, roasted and charred on the grill. Michael White could put it on the menu at Marea, charge $40, and be hailed as a genius.

 

The two desserts we sampled, Panna Cotta ($7; above left) and Tiramisu ($7; above right) were more conventional. Both are solid renditions of Italian classics, but you’ve had them before.

I can’t remember the last time I visited an Italian restaurant, and had so many unfamiliar dishes. There were a couple I didn’t care for, though for all I know they may be perfect renditions of favorites from the chef’s homeland. But most of the food is top-notch, and it’s hard to think of another Italian restaurant that is so full of pleasant surprises.

Paprika (110 St. Mark’s Place between First Avenue & Avenue A, East Village)

Calliope

Note: Calliope closed in April 2014. A restaurant called Contrada, has replaced it. The review below was written under founding chefs Eric Korsh and Ginevra Iverson, who left the restaurant in January 2014 in a dispute with owner Eric Anderson. Once that happened, the restaurant had lost its reason to exist. Korsh is now the chef at North End Grill.

*

Calliope is a cute restaurant with a terrific head start. It’s on a lively East Village street corner, and some smart, knowledgeable people are behind it. The chefs, husband & wife Eric Korsh and Ginevra Iverson, come from the Waverly Inn and Prune respectively. Their partner, Eric Anderson, comes from Prune as well.

The space was formerly Belcourt, and I can’t think of any good reason why it failed—except that the chef, Matthew Hamilton, went on to greener pastures. The space hasn’t changed much, and didn’t need to: it was already the perfect bistro spot.

The cuisine is vaguely in the French style, but except for a few (Provençal tomato tart, Tête du Porc) it’s all in English, and much of it could be on any menu in town. In the restaurant’s early days (it’s just three weeks old), the chefs clearly don’t aspire to challenge the audience. It’s bistro cuisine done well.

The prices are right, with snacks and appetizers $6–14, entrées mostly in the $20s. Only the ubiquitous dry-aged strip steak, at $32, is above that range. The wine list is also fairly priced, with plenty of bottles below $50: we ordered a 2008 Barbera d’Asti for $47.

 

They were out of that Provençal tart, but the server recommended a fine warm octopus salad (above left) at the same price ($10; normally $14). There was not quite enough of the promised white anchovy, but fingerling potatoes and celery more than kept up the bargain.

There was a bit of France in beef tongue ($9; above right) with sauce gribiche, sweet white onions, and lettuce mache.

 

Whole grilled turbot ($27; above right) is a large portion that two can easily share, as we did. Deboning it was a bit of work, but well worth it, especially for the rustic, smoky skin. There is no cheese course as yet on the printed menu, but the kitchen did a damned fine job of improvising one at our request ($10; above right).

We sat outdoors on practically the perfect evening. The restaurant was a shade over half full at 9:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening: we walked in and were seated immediately. Service, in the familiar casual East Village style, was pleasant and correct.

The current menu is a bit timid, but in the restaurant’s infancy you can hardly blame them: better to build an audience with solid food, well prepared, at a good price. That’s exactly what this is. I would certainly go again.

Calliope (84 E. 4th Street at Second Avenue, East Village)

Food: Solid French-inspired (but not too French) bistro cuisine
Service: Casual, friendly and correct; typical of the neighborhood
Ambiance: The perfect bistro; not much changed from the Belcourt days

Rating: ★
Why? Not really adventurous, but a very good deal from two very good chefs

Goat Town

Note: Goat Town closed in July 2014. After remodeling, it re-opened in September with a new menu and a new name, GG’s.

*

When Pete Wells, restaurant critic of The New York Times, wasted a review slot last week on Shake Shack — an over-exposed chain that is not a restaurant, has been reviewed before, is not very good, and would remain perpetually packed no matter what he said — it raised an obvious question: what is not getting reviewed?

Submitted for your approval: Goat Town.

I don’t want to overstate the case for Goat Town. It’s an earnest, casual American bistro in the familiar farm-to-table mold, somewhat resembling the Brooklyn restaurant that its chef and owner came from, The General Greene. Almost every neighborhood has one now; across the river, they’re on every block.

But it plays the game well, is not entirely derivative, hasn’t been much reviewed (except for Sietsema in the Voice), and it offers at least one good dish you don’t find everywhere. In other words, it beats Shake Shack on every count, and by a wide margin.

The menu fits on a single sheet of paper. It’s inexpensive by today’s standards, with appetizers $5–14, entrées $17–26, side dishes $5–7, and desserts $5–9. From the beginning (late 2010), there has always been a goat dish on the menu, though there’s a double ententre in the name Goat Town: it’s the original meaning of the word Gotham, a long-forgotten insult coined by the writer Washington Irving.

 

If you want Bread & Butter (above left), you have to order it and pay an extra $2. I get the idea: it doesn’t break the bank, and that way they don’t send out unwanted bread that will go to waste. But for two bucks I thought they could have made a more bountiful presentation.

My son and I both ordered the Smoked Goat ($23; above right), served here with braised white beans and a parsley salad. I failed to re-orient the plate, so the photo shows mostly greens and beans. I can assure you the goat is there: two generously portioned loin chops, resembling lamb, but with a more pungent taste.

I always assumed that goat is frequently used in stews because it would be too chewy, but this goat was just fine, making a strong case that this meat doesn’t always need to be served in cubes with heavy curry sauce.

 

A side of Brussels Sprouts ($7; above left) was a bit sad looking, but the kitchen did very well by Roasted Carrots ($6; above right).

And a shared Coffee Caramel Sundae ($9; left), with coffee ice cream, a chocolate brownie, pecans, ice cream, and caramel sauce, was excellent.

The restaurant has a beer and wine license, but they make some worthwhile cocktails despite that limitation. The Abbott ($9), with white wine, Cocchi Americano, bitters, and lime, was ample and refreshing.

Goat Town takes reservations. We were able to walk in at around 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening, though that is early for the East Village. An hour or so later, we would have had to wait.

The décor is attractive for purpose, with a long bar along the left-hand side of a narrow space, leading to an open kitchen in back. Tables are made of reclaimed wood, with booths made of subway tile. Despite appearances, it didn’t get unbearably noisy. Service was fine.

Goat Town isn’t a destination, but it’s a good realization of its genre and well worth a visit if you’re nearby.

Goat Town (511 E. 5th Street, east of Avenue A, East Village)

Food: ★
Service: ★
Ambiance: ★

Overall: ★