Florian Café

 

A few weeks ago, one of Pete Wells’s reviews in the Times drew this plaintive comment: “Why can’t restaurants just serve regular food anymore?”

(That restaurant was Semilla, where your only option is a $75 mostly-vegetable tasting menu, with concoctions that some diners might find eccentric, like beets with bone marrow, or a cabbage sandwich.)

The comment was misguided: most NYC restaurants do serve what I assume was meant by “regular food”. They just aren’t as likely to get reviewed. For good or ill, critics exist to make news. The more straightforward the menu, the less there is to say about it.

That commenter would probably be happy at Florian Café, assuming he didn’t mind the prices, where you’re paying for more than just the “Spontaneous Italian” cuisine the website promises. You’re also getting walls decorated with imported Italian mosaic tiles, a white marble antipasto bar, and several larger-than-life cast bronze nudes in provocative poses. The owner himself, Shelly Fireman, made those statues, so you’re not allowed to dislike them.

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Park Avenue Autumn

As a general rule, I don’t believe restaurant spaces are “cursed”. Consecutive failures at the same address are usually attributable to explainable human errors, and not any supernatural intervention.

I might just have to revise my view if Park Avenue Autumn (and its three seasonal cousins) fails in its new home, which has seen four restaurant concepts in four years, all from the same ownership group, Alan and Michael Stillman’s Fourth Wall Restaurants. The company has a strong record of populist success (Smith & Wollensky, Quality Meats, Quality Italian), everywhere but here.

In its original home, almost forty blocks north, this restaurant lasted twenty-two years, first as Park Avenue Café, and starting in 2007, as Park Avenue what-have-you, with the name, signage, décor, servers’ uniforms, and menu changing with the season every three months. That lasted six years, before losing its lease at the end of 2013.

After General Assembly quickly flopped earlier this year, the Stillmans decided to re-launch “a more casual, accessible version” of their Park Avenue concept. Design firm AvroKO is on hand once again with a modular décor, which evokes the current season with pitch-perfect precision, but within a matter of days, can be swapped out for the next. It might be too Disney-fied for some tastes.

By the end of its run uptown, Park Avenue Season had matured into a solid two-star place: I liked my second visit (in 2011) quite a bit better than the first (2007). The restaurant was usually full at prime times. But that was in a much smaller space, and in a neighborhood where the locals don’t wince at entrées averaging in the mid-$30s.

Located at a comparatively dead spot on Park Avenue South, the massive floor plan worked to the disadvantage of Hurricane Club, Hurricane Steak, and General Assembly, the first three concepts the Stillmans tried here. In this cavernous labrynth of connected rooms, the charm of the original Park Avenue hasn’t quite survived. Meanwhile, the promise of a supposedly “more casual, accessible” restaurant does not apply to the bill: it’s as expensive as ever. (The online menu is posted without prices—a strictly low-class move.)

Zene Flinn and Benkai O’Sullivan are co-executive chefs. Flinn was with the team uptown, and the menu here is very much in the same spirit as the original, with most of the dishes inspired by the season. It might almost be called old-fashioned, with appetizers $15–19, entrées $19–38 (almost all over $30), and side dishes $10. The downtown crowd might be disoriented in a restaurant with no sharing plates, “large format” dishes, or tasting menus.

The ten-page wine list (available online with prices—such a concept!) doesn’t offer many bargains, but it is not unfairly priced in relation to the food. The 2004 Château Berliquet was $76, a shade over two times retail, and the sommelier decanted it—always a nice touch.

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élan

Note: Elan closed in February 2016. The restaurant was in a high-rent neighborhood, and it never really caught on.

*

For David Waltuck, it has been a long walk in the desert. His beloved Chanterelle, once a four-star restaurant, closed abruptly in 2009, in the depths of the Great Recession. Who’d have thunk he’d spend the next five years on forgettable consulting projects, before finally opening his own place again?

His new restaurant, élan, is a double palimpsest, with echoes not just of Chanterelle, but also Veritas, the last restaurant in this space, also felled by the financial crisis. Give Waltuck at least this much credit: he closed Chanterelle with his reputation intact, instead of spoiling what he’d achieved with a failed re-vamp, as the Veritas owners did.

If you remember Chanterelle at its best, it’s hard not to be melancholy that such a wonderful place can no longer exist. But its charms came at a price: $95 prix fixe, and that was in 2006, the last time I visited. You needed an occasion to go there. Heaven knows what it would be today for comparable quality—certainly not the kind of restaurant where you could just pop in for a quick bite after work.

At élan, there’s no amuse bouche or petits fours, no cheese cart or service brigade. But you could drop in a couple of nights a week without breaking the bank. The cuisine is ambitious for the price, carefully prepared, and like no other in town. Waltuck’s French technique borrows liberally from Asia (“General Tso”), Greece (moussaka), and middle Europe (sauerkraut). Some items are just unclassifiable (foie gras lollipops). Starters and appetizers are mostly in the $14–19 range, main courses $27–33, side dishes $8.

If you hoped the owners bought out the Veritas wine list, you’ll be disappointed. The list here runs to about 100 bottles, with no particular viewpoint, most of them priced eccentrically at $20 increments: $45, $65, $85, $105,etc. Among the reds, $65 seems to be the sweet spot, but in the ten days since we visited, the 2008 Margaux we tried has apparently been replaced (on the online list) by the 2010 at the same price.

The bread service (above right) consists of warm, house-made “everything” pretzels with mustard butter. Finish them, and the server brings more. They’re so good, you might be tempted to skip dinner, and just eat these.

 

Waltuck’s guacamole ($16; above left) is like no one else’s, topped sea urchin. The seafood sausage was perhaps Chanterelle’s best dish, and the version served here ($18; above right) is every bit as good as I remember.

 

Duck fat appears in multiple dishes, here with fettucine and grilled scallops ($15 the small portion shown, above left). Salmon is usually the most boring dish on any menu, but Waltuck makes this version exciting, with tamarind spices and a crisp skin ($30; above right).

The space has been totally remodeled, with no remaining vestiges of the last, failed re-design at Veritas. There’s now a dining counter at the front window, where we sat (see photo at the top of the post). This is a comfortable place to perch on a warm evening, but random passersby may walk up to you, and chat you up while you’re eating.

As we had our backs to the dining room, I didn’t get a feel for how full it was, but in its opening couple of months, the restaurant has been solidly booked at prime times. Service was in line with comparable upper mid-range establishments.

For those who missed Chanterelle, David Waltuck’s return has been a long time coming. Welcome back!

élan (43 E. 20th St. between Broadway & Park Avenue South, Flatiron District)

Food: French technique; American chef; global influences
Service: Just fine
Ambiance: Upscale casual

Rating: ★★

The Gander

 

Four years after Recette charmed the West Village, chef Jesse Schenker has expanded to more upscale digs at The Gander, which takes over the space that briefly hosted the doomed Alison Eighteen.

I thought Alison Eighteen would last longer. It turns out the goodwill accumulated at Alison on Dominick and her Hamptons restaurants did not travel with her to the new location.

I mention this, because Schenker may have to overcome similar challenges. The restaurant is on a charmless, lightly-traveled block. The newly-remodeled space is attractive and comfortable, but so was Alison Eighteen.

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EXKi

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

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

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

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

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General Assembly

Note: General Assembly quickly flopped, and closed in September 2014. The transfer of the same owners’ Park Avenue [name-your-season] concept from its original location (where it lost its lease) has replaced it. This will be the third concept in the space in a matter of a few short years. Park Avenue was a long-term success in its first home, so if it fails here, I have to think the owners will give up on the location.

*

For about 10 minutes in 2010, it looked like Tiki Bars were going to make a comeback. Hurricane Club was the glitziest of them all, a 250-seat behemoth that could’ve put Tahiti out of business. If it had worked.

By mid-2013, it was called Hurricane Steak and Sushi, and by late 2013 it was kaput. What must’ve been the most expensive AvroKO design concept ever was hauled out to trash, and replaced with another expensive AvroKO design concept called General Assembly.

The bright, airy space is an Art Nouveau revival. The cuisine is either “a market-driven grill” or “a bistro with . . . French and Italian influences.” It’s a crowd-pleaser without a point of view. Craig Koketsu, the corporate chef at Fourth Wall Restaurants, has long since proven that he can run a competent kitchen, and he does so here. If there are no revelations on the menu, there are no weak spots either. It won’t enter the culinary conversation, but most diners in its target demographic will go home happy.

During our visit, the restaurant was subjected to one of the few forms of legalized terrorism, a visit from the Department of Health. For the record, GA’s predecessor, Hurricane Club (with the same operators), earned an “A” grade a year ago. A repeat visit in January netted just 2 violation points. Three of its four sister restaurants currently have “A” grades; one has a “B”.

Despite this exemplary record, an inspector shut down the whole restaurant between 6:00 and 8:30pm on a Friday evening. No parties were seated. At the bar, the staff tossed all of the prepared sodas and syrups, apparently as a precautionary measure. Wine and beer were served on the house, while they awaited the all-clear. After a couple of hours, runners brought out canapés, free of charge. I was determined to support the restaurant, but by then many parties with reservations gave up and left. General Assembly passed its inspection, but I’ll bet the visit cost them $10,000 or more in lost business and food/drinks both given and thrown away.

This is not the first time I’ve visited a perfectly safe restaurant during a DOH inspection, and it is not unusual. In 2013, the DOH shut down La Grenouille twice during dinner service (once with then-Mayor Bloomberg present), both times renewing its “A” grade (see stories here, here). These terror inspections at perfectly clean establishments ruin dinner for dozens or even hundreds of people, and impose huge costs on restaurant operators.

Due to the length of our wait, and perhaps because I was recognized, General Assembly comped the entire meal for our party of four. (I couldn’t tell for sure if anyone else was comped.) The online menu does not show prices, and we didn’t receive a bill. As I recall, prices were in line with other Fourth Wall places, with entrées generally in the $20s and $30s, and some steaks above that level.

 

The bread (above left), served warm in a cast-iron pan, was terrific. We started with the Raclette (above right), which came with sliced meats, grilled potatoes, and pickled vegetables.

 

I didn’t try the Sea Bass with avocado, snow peas and shiitake (above left), but our friend seemed pleased with it. Lamb Ribs (above right) were terrific, but the menu failed to state that this is an extremely spicy dish, which I wouldn’t have minded, but the companion who ordered it did.

 

Wendy wasn’t that hungry, so she ordered a soft-shell crab appetizer as her main course (above left), and was quite satisfied. I ordered the duck confit with gingered kumquats and apricots (above right), a good preparation of this classic dish.

  

Three of us ordered desserts. I didn’t note the description of the first two, but my own choice, the lemon–blueberry chiffon ice cream (far right, above) was a fine way to end the meal.

A DOH visit makes for a stressful evening. The staff handled it calmly, keeping us abreast of the situation while we waited, and serving us promptly after it was over. I wouldn’t call General Assembly an ambitious restaurant in any sense, but it offered exactly the kind of experience our guests wanted. It took two hours more than we’d planned, but I’m glad we offered our support while the health department terrorist inspector shut down a perfectly safe restaurant for no reason.

General Assembly (360 Park Avenue South at 26th Street, Gramercy/Flatiron)

Manzanilla

Note: Manzanilla closed in February 2014.

*

Spanish cuisine is on the upswing in New York, with places like Boqueria, Salinas, Terdulia, and Barraca receiving strong reviews in recent years.

As the Observer’s Joshua David Stein notes, their successes must be weighed against high-profile flops, like Gastroarte, Romera, and Ureña.

Perhaps the chef Dani Garcia and owner Yann de Rochefort (of Boqueria) had those flops in mind when they opened Manzanilla near Gramercy Park two months ago. Garcia has a Michelin two-star restaurant in his native Andalucía, but here he aims a lot lower, bargaining that Manhattan diners aren’t ready for his $150 tasting menu.

It’s a pity that chefs don’t feel they can bring their best work to New York, but that’s the world we live in. I can’t blame the chef for opening an unabashedly populist spot that will succeed, in lieu of a more ambitious one that probably wouldn’t.

Manzanilla, a close twin of one of Garcia’s restaurants in Southern Spain, styles itself a brasserie. It’s mid-priced by Manhattan standards, with snacks (7 items; $8–29), appetizers (8 items; $13–18), entrées (10 items; $26–40) and side dishes (3 items; $8).

You could put together a “tapas” meal from the snacks portion of the menu, but they’re not the focus; unlike most of the competition in New York, there are no paellas to be found. Most of the dishes, at least as described, come across as fairly tame, but in our small sample, they were all executed well.

 

Tomato Tartare ($8; above left) is as much of a pun as the chef will allow, but it bursts with robust flavor.

A foie gras terrine ($18; above right) is decorated with caramelized goat cheese, green apple purée, and raisins. It doesn’t bust any culinary boundaries, but foie gras junkies will go home happy. The chef gets no extra credit for burnt slices of toast (right), half of them with holes a baby’s hand could slip through.

 

I’ve less to say about Striped Bass ($27; above left). Suckling Pig ($34; above right) was one of the better renditions of a classic dish that I’ve had in a while.

There’s a bustling bar area up-front. The cocktails are terrific, although you might wait a while to get a bartender’s attention. The Spanish-heavy wine list is excellent for a new place. There aren’t many bargains, but there are many good selections to be had above $60.

In the early days, the kitchen at Manzanilla is operating at a high level, allowing for the limitations inherent in the format. The question with these types of places, is whether they can sustain that after the review period is over and the founder returns home to tend the rest of his empire.

Manzanilla (345 Park Avenue South at 26th Street, Gramercy)

Food: Classic Spanish cuisine, classic execution
Service: A shade on the slow side, but mostly very good
Ambiance: A bustling brasserie with a large bar and an open kitchen

Rating: ★★

The Lamb Feast at Resto

 

Note: Resto closed in August 2016. From the Eater.com story, it seems that the closure is just a re-branding. The space will re-open as Cannibal Liquor House, with the same executive chef as its successful sibling next door, The Cannibal. The two restaurants were always similar, but Resto was the slightly—and I do mean slightly—more formal of the pair. They will now, probably, be a lot more similar.

*

Restaurants, unlike cats, usually don’t usually have nine lives. So it is remarkable that Resto, now on its third executive chef, is not just alive, but better than it was in 2007, when Frank Bruni of The Times gave it two stars.

The decision to open with Ryan Skeen, the peripatetic chef who seldom spends more than fifteen minutes at any restaurant, ought to have killed Resto if nothing else did. We visited in 2008, after Skeen’s departure, finding entrées that were pedestrian and poorly executed. But a visit late last year to the sister restaurant next door, The Cannibal, made us wonder if Resto was worth another look.

Oddly enough, we decided to visit on New Year’s Eve—a risky day at any restaurant. We paid a shade under $200 per person (tax and tip included), including wines, which the restaurant poured generously. The portions were enormous, and there wasn’t a dud among them. The couple seated next to us—strangers at the time—suggested we might like to try one of Resto’s whole animal feasts. We exchanged email addresses, and gradually assembled a party of 10 (the minimum is 8, the maximum 20). Five options are offered (beef, pig, goat, lamb, or fish), and at least one week’s notice is required.

We settled on the lamb, our New Year’s Eve server’s recommendation. The menus on the website describe them as four-course meals, but “endless” is a more apt description.

 

The first course was a quartet of lamb appetizers (above left): merguez sausage, lamb rillette and chives on grilled bread; lamb tartare with aioli and quail egg; and curried lamb meatball on a skewer.

A kale salad (above right) was strewn with feta, scallion, cucumber, dill, and luscious strips of lamb.

 

Excellent lamb ribs (above left) were served in an ancho chili with caramelized garlic. Rack of lamb (above right) didn’t really work for me, as the small lamb pieces were too chewy.

 

By the time roasted leg of lamb (above left) and confit lamb shoulder (above right) came out, the momentum was flagging at our table, and neither platter was finished. I thought both were quite good, but there were some whispers of dissent.

 

Most people took a pass on buttered lamb brains (above left), as it can be difficult to get past the fact that it’s a lamb cranium, sawed in two, with the teeth and tongue clearly visible. Once the kitchen is done roasting it, there isn’t much left of the brain, which tastes like a creamy pâté. The tongue, however, was not very good: the server explained that the high heat required to cook the brain leaves the tongue nearly inedible. There were no complaints about the vegetables (above right), roasted Brussels sprouts and crisp fingerling potatoes.

Dessert was a first-rate apple cobbler (right), like what Mom makes at home, which is Resto’s usual way of ending one of these feasts.

The price was $85 per person before tax and tip, which these days is a bargain for that much food. Beverage pairings are available, but we decided to order à la carte from the wine list, which has grown over the years, and is much improved over the rather perfunctory list offered in 2008. There is also an excellent beer selection.

Naturally, one of these large feasts gets plenty of attention from the serving staff, who are knowledgeable and enthuisiastic. But it took the bar quite a while to fill a cocktail order, and there was a long pause before the final entrée course came out. The meal ended on a slightly sour note, when one of our party was refused an order of coffee, because our 2½-hour time slot was up, and they needed the table for another feast.

If Resto’s various incarnations have one thing in common, it’s owner Christian Pappanicholas’s commitment to carnivory. With the new chef Preston Clark and ex-Momofuku service whiz Cory Lane at the front-of-house, he’s finally got the right team.

Resto (111 E. 29th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, Gramercy)

Food: Belgian for carnivores
Service: Much improved over the years, with the occasional off-note
Ambiance: Casual, and a bit noisy as the dining room fills up

Rating: ★★

Aldea

 

Note: Just a month after switching to a prix fixe-only format, chef George Mendes flip-flopped after regulars told him they preferred the à la carte menu. So Aldea now has the same menu every day (though there is still a $95 tasting menu). Ironically, the switch to prix fixe is what drew me back to Aldea, but obviously with the customers who mattered, it wasn’t popular.

*

Last week, Ryan Sutton, Bloomberg’s restaurant critic, reported that Aldea has switched to a prix fixe-only format on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The chef, George Mendes, told Sutton that the new format would “mak[e] Aldea better” and although it’s a price hike, it’s “more about the ingredients and what I’m offering.” The chef also said that he’d eventually like Aldea to be a prix fixe restaurant every night.

I hadn’t written about Aldea since shortly after it opened, in mid-2009. I gave it 2½ stars at the time. Every pro critic in town gave it two or three. It also won a Michlen star in 2011, which it has maintained. The Sutton piece made me curious to see what has changed.

The space remains, as I described it four years ago, “flat-out gorgeous.” It’s on the casual side of formal, but comparatively serene by today’s standards. The sound track is quiet enough not to interfere, and consists mostly of items a guy my age would recognize.

The à la carte menu remains relatively brief, with six Petiscos, or snacks ($8–16), five selections of hams and terrines ($9–18), eight starters ($11–21), and eight entrées ($27–38). By way of comparison, four years ago $27 was the most expensive main course, rather than the least expensive. That was, of course, right in the teeth of the financial crisis, and Aldea was an unproven restaurant then.

On weekends, your choices are a $75 three-course prix fixe (probably with an amuse or two, though the menu doesn’t say that) or a tasting menu at $95. Given such a small difference, the tasting menu was the obvious choice. (Click on the image, left, for a larger copy of the menu.) We also ordered the wine pairings, which add another $50 per person, bringing the total for two to $376 including tax and tip.

The wine list remains a weakness. As it was from the beginning, it’s just one sheet of paper, printed on both sides. It’s a decent selection, and fairly priced, given that limitation. But you’d think, after four years, critical acclaim, a Michelin star, the economy in better shape, and the restaurant well past its probation, that they’d have upgraded it.

The printed tasting menu listed nine courses. Fifteen items were sent out, although many (especially early in the meal) were rather small—essentially just bites.

 

The amuse bouche was described as a “mojito meringue” (above left). This was followed by a number of small courses, several of which appear on the regular menu as “Petiscos.” First up was a trio of items (above right): an Island Creek oyster with Steelhead trout caviar; a terrific mussel soup with fennel and chorizo; and a Bacalhau Croqueta with roasted garlic aioli.

 

Then a beet floret with goat cheese sitting in moss (above left) and a dellicate poached quail egg (above right).

 

Finally, a remarkable warm stew of roasted bacalhau (codfish), scrambled egg, crispy potato, and black olives, served warm inside a hollowed-out egg (above left); and a dish that I believe has been on the menu from the beginning, the sea urchin toast (above right).

 

There was a rich Foie Gras Terrine (above left) with cranberry jam and an apple poached in vanilla. The toasted brioche (not pictured) was a considerable improvement over the untoasted country bread that the chef sent out four years ago, but he sent out only two slices of it, when four were needed.

A Diver Scallop (above right) was the evening’s one blunder. The delicate flavor of the poor scallop was overwhelmed by a bitter black radish sitting on top of it, and not redeemed by glazed turnips and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms.

 

A crisped brick of suckling pig (above left) suffered no harm from accompaniments of little neck clams, pickled cauliflower, carrots, and savoy cabbage; but I didn’t feel like those extra items enhanced the pig, either.

The cheese course (above right) was a Kinderhook sheep’s milk cheese from the Hudson Valley, with a wheat cracker and spice fig marmelade. (Sorry about the awful photo.)

 

The pre-dessert (above right) was exactly what such an intermezzo should be, a vanilla custard with mango sorbet and mint granita.

The dessert (above left) was a lemongrass and coconut-milk panna cotta with a blizzard of other ingredients: poached kumquat, coconut-Thai basil granita, and coriander-fennel crisp. This struck me as a bit too citrus-y. Your mileage may vary. There was a plate of petits fours (right) that we were far too full to fully appreciate.

The service was excellent. The meal took about 2½ hours to complete, which is a reasonable pace for this amount of food. The wine pairings were well chosen, given the constraints of the list, but I am not going to itemize them. There were seven generous pours, which was more than enough alcohol for one evening. I can’t evaluate the economics of the chef’s prix fixe experiment, but I had no trouble getting a prime-time Friday evening reservation the same day. The dining room was doing a good business, but was not full.

As is so often the case, the smaller courses at the beginning of the meal (the petiscos and appetizers) pleased us more than the main courses, although the scallop was the only dish that failed outright. No chef is going to send out fifteen courses that please everyone. Among tasting menus available in New York, this is surely one of the better ones below $100.

Aldea (31 W. 17th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: Modern Portuguese cuisine, liberally interpreted
Service: Upscale but not formal
Ambiance: A beautiful, fairly quiet, modern room.

Rating: ★★★

Maysville

I’ve long since given up on making it to all of the great Brooklyn restaurants I read about. Most of them don’t fit into my schedule, are too far away, don’t take reservations—or all of the above.

Char No. 4 is one of those places: mention whiskey, and you have my attention. But I haven’t made it over there, and I’m not sure I ever will. Thank goodness there’s Maysville, a new restaurant from the same owners. It takes reservations and I can walk there after work. Sounds good so far.

The two restaurants are similar: Southern cuisine, with more whiskeys in stock than you’ll try in a lifetime. The owners wisely hired a separate chef, rather than trying to run two places with the same staff. Kyle Knall, an Alabama native and former Gramercy Tavern sous chef, runs the kitchen here.

The menu is concice: raw and chilled seafood platters, plus half-a-dozen appetizers ($12–16) and an equal number of entrées ($23–28). It’s largely free of clichés. There’s nary a fried chicken or barbecue rib platter in sight, though they’d surely be best-sellers if the chef offered them.

In fact, although I wouldn’t call the meny edgy, there’s really no bail-out dish for the unadventurous customer that most Manhattan restaurants have to accommodate. If you check back in six months and there’s still no basic green salad or cedar-plank salmon on the menu, then you’ll know the strategy has worked.

The bread service consists of small cornbread muffins (above left). Three of us shared an appetizer, the Brussels Sprouts ($12; below right) with crisp pig ears, quail eggs, lemon and buttermilk dressing. This dish was so good, we were still talking about it three days later.

 

Coincidentally, all three of us ordered fish entrées. I tried a bit of each one, and they were all just about perfect, especially at these prices. I’d order any one of them again: the Striped Bass ($26; above right) with mushrooms, squash, and crab; the Grilled Sturgeon ($27; below left) with roasted cauliflower, capers, and veal jus; and the Whole Smoked Trout ($24; below right) with watercress, charred red onions, and pickled mushrooms.

(If we’re being picky, I could have done with a bit less of the watercress leaves, which smothered the trout. They were easily shoved to the side, but I didn’t need that many of them.)

 

The meal rounded off with a bit of peanut butter candy (right).

I arrived before my guests to find the bar packed, probably with an after-work crowd. It thinned out considerably at about 8:00 pm, so we decided to eat at the bar, where service was just fine. I drank only cocktails, mostly re-interpretations of bourbon-based classics.

The name, by the way, is inspired by Maysville, Kentucky, which is said to be the birthplace (or one of many birthplaces) of American bourbon. The restaurant would probably be a destination for its bottle spirits alone, even if the food menu were no more than potato chips.

When you add a chef who knows what he’s doing, you’ve got a winner.

Maysville (17 W. 26th Street between Sixth Avenue & Broadway, Flatiron District)

Food: Southern-inspired, not at all cliché, and very well done
Service: Professional, competent, and friendly
Ambiance: Smart casual, dominated by a 60-foot bottle wall behind the bar

Rating: ★★
Why? Every dish we tried was excellent; plus a first-rate whiskey list