Degustation

Degustation is the newest restaurant in Jack & Grace Lamb’s East Village mini-empire, anchored by the Michelin-starred sushi emporium, Jewel Bako. The two restaurants are located at adjacent storefronts, and they are physically connected via a narrow passageway. But they couldn’t be more unalike.

The menu at Degustation is loosely reminiscent of a tapas bar, although many of the dishes are well adrift from their Spanish moorings. Small plates range from $4–15, and the server suggests that three or four is enough for a meal. There’s also a tasting menu for $50, offering five savory courses plus dessert, and we went that route. (Click on the thumbnail at right for a full-size image of the menu.)

Slow poached egg, rice cracker crusted asparagus (left); Scottish langoustine (right)

The first course was arguably the best: a slow-poached egg with Serrano ham in a cheese foam, with rice cracker crusted asparagus. We were oohing and ahhing at the progression of flavors. Up next, a Scottish langoustine (shown on the menu as Cigalas) was split and cooked on the plancha. Nothing more was done with it, and it was gone after a couple of bites.

Grilled Spanish Mackerel (left); Grilled Quail (right)

Grilled Spanish Mackerel on a bed of apples had a crunchy crust, but was perfectly moist and tender inside. Grilled quail with pistachios and endive was delightful, yielding more meat than I expected from such a tiny bird.

 
Grilled Ribeye (left); Apple Tart (right)

For the last savory course, grilled ribeye was once again topped with foam, a needless repetition. Not much was done to the meat, but it was top-quality beef and perfectly prepared. The dessert, an apple tart, was not especially memorable.

The restaurant is tiny, with just 19 seats at a rectangular bar that “wraps around” the kitchen. Three chefs and three servers struggle a bit to avoid tripping over each other, but most of what they produce is delightful. We were seated right next to the finishing station, and we received a miniature culinary education while watching many of the dishes receive their finishing touches.

Most of the clientele are couples, as the bar line-up doesn’t really work for larger parties. Degustation is sometimes listed as a romantic restaurant, but I wouldn’t really think of it that way, unless you’re plotting a foursome, as the next couple is only a few inches away.

Not long after Degustation opened, Frank Bruni awarded two stars in the New York Times, in a double-review that conferred just one star on its older sister restaurant, Jewel Bako. There’s other evidence that perhaps Jewel Bako is no longer the main attraction. While we were there, we saw servers carrying plates out of the bar area. It turns out that Jewel Bako takes Degustation’s overflow.

We had a terrific time at Degustation. At $50 for five courses plus dessert, the tasting menu has to be reckoned one of the better deals in town.

Degustation (239 E. 5th St. west of Second Avenue, East Village)

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

Momofuku Ssäm Bar

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Momofuku Ssäm Bar.

Is it possible to be hotter than Momofuku Ssäm Bar? Well, I suppose you could be The Waverley Inn. Aside from that, Momofuku Ssäm Bar is about as hot as it gets, with practically monthly mentions in New York magazine, the Times, and elsewhere.

The restaurant, an offshoot of the successful Momofuku Noodle Bar, also in the East Village, is named for ssäm—basically a Korean burrito. The chef, David Chang, can be commended for his guts in choosing a name that sounds like moth-er fuck-you, although it means “Lucky Peach.” He can also be commended for having one hell of a publicist.

The concept has changed almost monthly since Momofuku Ssäm Bar opened last summer. At first, it was just a lunch burrito bar. When Dana Bowen reviewed it in the Times, late-night dinner service had only just started, and then, only after 10:30 p.m. The starting time for dinner kept moving earlier, and now it is served at the times normal people eat. Like 7:30, which is when my friend and I showed up yesterday, when there was about a 5-10 minute wait for seats at the bar.

The menu is in a bunch of categories; you are encourated to order tapas-style, and share. The server recommended that we choose six items, and as usually the case with such recommendations, it was probably one too many.

Seasonal Pickles ($9) had a lively taste, with the ones pictured on the left packing quite a bit of heat.

Wellfleet Oysters ($15 for half-a-dozen) were cool and fresh.

Three contrasting hams are offered on the menu. We had the Edwards’ Wigwam Smoked Ham ($10) from Surrey, Virginia. This was fresh and light to the taste, but we needed more than the two slices of bread that came with it.

The restaurant claims that they serve “no vegetarian-friendly items.” This isn’t strictly true, as Brussels Sprouts ($11) and a number of other dishes (like the pickles) demonstrate. Of course, perhaps there’s more to this dish than meats the eye. It was so crisp and smokey that it could almost have been bacon. [See update below.]

Finally we got to one of the dishes Momofuku Ssäm Bar is named for: Hanger Steak Ssäm ($19). To eat, you place a piece of steak on a leaf of lettuce, add rice and sauce, and wrap the whole thing up like a soft taco. It’s a little unwieldy, but a pleasure.

I was full by this point, and barely tasted Seafood Stew ($29). My friend loved it though, calling it a spicy bouillabaisse. A pair of small-tined forks would have been helpful, for prying the meat out of the mussels.

There is much more to explore at Momofuku Ssäm Bar. If you can muster a crowd, consider ordering the whole pork butt ($180), which is slow-braised all day. We saw one at an adjoining table, and our mouths were watering. The party of seven couldn’t finish it.

Although it is crowded and loud, service is friendly and fun. The servers are well informed about the menu, and patient about explaining it. The kitchen doesn’t really know how to pace the food. Like most tapas-style restaurants, plates come out when the kitchen is ready, not when you want them. Our first four courses appeared rather quickly, but there was a noticeably long wait for the fifth and sixth. In the meantime, we enjoyed a bottle of sparkling shiraz ($35), an oddity I don’t remember seeing anywhere else.

Momofuku Ssäm Bar (207 2nd Avenue at 13th Street, East Village)

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

Update #1: My statement about the restaurant’s purported absence of vegetarian choices sparked a few comments. Yes, I am aware that a vegetable dish may have come into contact with an animal-based product during its preparation. Similar items appear on menus all over town. Unless the restaurant has told you so (and most don’t), one can never assume a complete absence of animal derivatives. I therefore thought that the unusual comment on Momofuku’s menu was worthy of a mention.

“Vegetarian” is an umbrella term that covers many different approaches to eating. (See Wikipedia.) Many people who call themselves vegetarians would eat a number of items on Momofuku’s menu. The strictest vegetarians might not, but they would probably find themselves frustrated at many restaurants in New York. I have no reason to think that Momofuku is in a category by itself.

One commenter seemed to think that this was “Bad, incomplete reporting” on my part. I am not writing Consumer Reports, just a journal of my impressions of restaurants I’ve visited. I don’t claim to be exhaustive, as I think would be obvious to just about anyone. And I cannot imagine that any strict vegetarian would be depending on me (a confirmed carnivore) as her source for restaurant recommendations.

Update #2: After posting this entry, one commenter wondered how my 1½-star rating could be reconciled with my apparent enthusiasm for the restaurant. I’ve responded to that in a separate post. After thinking about it, I did update the food rating from 1½ stars to two, but the overall rating remains at 1½ stars.

Hearth

Note: Sommelier Paul Grieco, who is mentioned prominently in this review, is no longer affiliated with Hearth. Late in 2014, he and chef Marco Canora ended their collaboration, with Canora retaining Hearth, and Grieco retaining the Terroir wine bars.

*

My first visit to Hearth was a couple of years ago. My enthusiasm fell short of the rapture on the food boards, and the restaurant wasn’t high on my list for a return visit. The rapturous comments never died down, so last night I thought it was about time I gave Hearth another look. Boy, am I glad I did.

My mom and I decided to order different things and swap plates, so each of us had a taste of two appetizers and two entrees. To start, I ordered the Snapper Crudo ($12). Five small pieces of snapper were topped with lemon, red pepper and rosemary. Amanda Hesser, in her 2004 review for the Times, complained there was “lots of flavor, none from the snapper.” Perhaps they’ve improved the dish, or Hesser doesn’t understand crudo. I thought it offered a well judged mix of contrasting flavors.

Having said that, if you’d like something more tangy, go for the Grilled Sardines ($13). My mom found the sardines slightly fishy, but I really enjoyed their crunchy warm exterior mixed with the accompanying salad of crosnes, black radish, raisins, and pine nuts.

The most expensive entree is the Braised and Roasted Domestic Lamb ($33), with lamb sausage, squash, and chanterelle mushrooms. It also might be one of the best lamb dishes in the city. Three tender medallions of lamb loin come with a strip of braised lamb shank so tender that the bone is nearly liquefied. The sausage is terrific. We also tried the pork belly, a special not on the printed menu ($28). This came with two ample squares of crisp pork belly.

My mom and I debated whether the lamb or the pork belly was better. We each slightly preferred the one we had started with—the lamb in my case, the pork in hers, but we agreed that both dishes were excellent. We hadn’t planned it this way, but it turns out we ordered the same dishes at Blue Hill three weeks ago: pork and lamb. Hearth did a better job at both, and Hearth also had the better appetizers.

Hearth also has a much better wine program than Blue Hill. It might be one of the better wine programs in the city, short of the four-star and a handful of the top three-star restaurants. Co-owner Paul Grieco, a former beverage director at Gramercy Tavern, has a lot to say about his wines, and he’s not shy about it. Many of the wine list’s 33 pages come with their own mini-lecture. One page has five paragraphs about a single $85 bottle. Other pages compare various wines to Tom Cruise, Brittney Spears, Ann Coulter, Wayne Gretzky, and even former U. S. Senator Jesse Helms. I am not sure who really has the time to read all of this during dinner, but when all the talking is over with, Grieco has a great wine list—a tad pricy for this type of restaurant, but lots of fun. We settled on a cabernet franc at $47 (Les Picasses, Olga Raffault, 2002), and I was sorry the bottle wasn’t bottomless.

Service was a little slow. I didn’t put them on a clock, but it seemed we were left with menus in our hands for quite a while before anyone came over to speak to us. (The menu is a single loose sheet of placemat-sized paper; surely they could do better than that.) Only then were we told about the off-menu pork belly special, after we’d already been pondering our choices for quite a while. The server then disappeared for another long interval so that we could ponder the pork belly option. Luckily, we had that long wine list to read. At some point, the server dropped off the amuse bouche, a shooter of delicious hot parsnip soup. But it was another long interval, and we still hadn’t ordered. Anyhow, once orders were taken, the rest of the service proceeded at a decent pace.

The ambiance at Hearth is casual, with wooden tables, exposed brick, and a ceiling painted a peculiar shade of burnt red. There is no actual hearth visible, but the name is appropriate for its suggestion of home comfort, which Hearth provides. It’s the perfect setting for Marco Canora’s excellent cuisine, which I look forward to sampling again soon.

Hearth (403 E. 12th Street at First Avenue, East Village)

Food: ★★★
Service: ★½
Ambiance: ★★
Overall: ★★½

Knife + Fork

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Knife + Fork.

The new restaurant Knife + Fork (spelled thus) has attracted a lot of attention lately. Andrea Strong gave it a great review in late July, and it was the recipient of a somewhat longer-than-usual blog post by Frank Bruni a few days later.

Knife + Fork turns out food of unusual ambition for its neighborhood. It’s a small space in the East Village, owned and operated by chef Damien Brassel and his wife. The six-course tasting menu for just $45 puts the shame to other restaurants’ offerings at double the price. Although Bruni complained about the over-use of truffle oil (something we did not notice) he added, “I’m hard pressed to think of another restaurant in New York that packs as much ambition into a price that restrained.” He clearly liked the place, as he mentioned having paid several visits. I suspect he’s going to give Knife + Fork time to shake out the kinks before considering a formal review in the newspaper.

We weren’t in a tasting-menu mood, but our selections from the à la carte menu convinced us that Brassel is doing great things. The amuse was a shot of clear, hot tomato soup. Seared foie gras sent me into orbit, and it was about double the portion size that many restaurants serve. My friend had a warm goat cheese and polenta appetizer that she pronounced amazing. I found a Mahi Mahi entrée a bit stringy, although I enjoyed the crisp skin. I’m not sure whether it was entirely the chef’s fault. I would have preferred a regular knife to cut it with; fish knives are always a burden, except with the most pliant flesh. My friend found lamb loin almost revelatory. Platings were all attractive and creative.

With starters all $15 or less, and mains $25 or less, Knife + Fork delivers an outstanding value. Because it is near a school, there is no hard liquor license, but they do serve wine. Actually, the establishment bills itself as a “restaurant and wine bar.” The list is very reasonably priced, with about a dozen choices by the glass.

Brassel and his wife are practically a two-man band. Brassel does all the cooking. His wife and one waitress do all the serving. Another hand in the kitchen washes dishes and does light prep work. I didn’t do an exact count, but it looks to me like the restaurant can seat about 30–35 people. When it starts to fill up—as it’s doing more and more, as the word gets out—Brassel has trouble keeping up. We were there at a slow time, but we can well imagine what happens on Saturday nights. His wife mentioned that he’s considering adding another hand in the kitchen, although one look at the space tells you that it will need to be someone who’s used to working in close quarters.

I’ll look forward to giving Knife + Fork another try.

Knife + Fork (108 E. 4th St. between First & Second Avenues, East Village)

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

Hearth

Note: Click here for a more recent (and more favorable) report on Hearth.

I post this review with some trepidation. The foodie community loves Hearth. I had dinner there in early October with two collegues, and was underwhelmed. I ordered:

FOIE GRAS TORCHON ($18)
with Endive, Mission Figs, and Brioche Toast

STEAMED BLACK BASS ($27)
Heirloom Tomatoes, Leeks and Fine Herbs

The foie gras was extremely bland (I enjoyed the toast more), and the bass practically devoid of taste. The bread service was also a disappointment (tasted stale; the butter wasn’t spreadable).

My colleagues did enjoy their meals, so perhaps I just ordered the wrong things.

Hearth (403 E. 12th Street at First Avenue, East Village)

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

Brick Lane Curry House

When this restaurant opened in 2002, the verdict over at eGullet was: “Spicy food and slow service”. Three years later, Brick Lane Curry House has its act together. My friend and I arrived at 6:20 Saturday night and were out by 7:35, which was sufficient time for us to order drinks, appetizers, and entrées. The restaurant is now on OpenTable, which was what brought it to my attention.

I started with Aloo Chaat, which is described as: potatoes tossed in a yogurt and mint sauce with spices. At $6 this is a bargain, as the portion is almost big enough to be an entrée. My companion ordered the same thing with chickpeas, rather than potatoes. It has a lively flavor, and just enough heat to prepare the palate for the curry to come.

Most of the curries come in a variety of preparations, usually chicken, lamb, goat, fish, shrimp, paneer, tofu, and vegetable, priced from $12–19. We both had vindaloo: she the lamb ($17), I the goat ($18). I’m not a curry expert, but there was enough heat to bring sweat to the forehead, water to the eyes. I found the bones in the goat a bit annoying. We ordered two preparations of rice and another of spinach to round out the meal, and had more food than we could eat.

For the record, vindaloo is the restaurant’s second-hottest curry. The hottest is Phaal, which is described thus:

An excruciatingly hot curry, more pain and sweat than flavor. For our customers who do this on a dare, we will require you to state a verbal disclaimer not holding us liable for any physical or emotional damage after eating this curry. If you do manage to finish your serving of curry, a bottle of beer is on us.

Brick Lane Curry House (306–308 E. 6th St. near Second Avenue, East Village)

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