SD26

Note: Owner Tony May sold SD26 in March 2015. The new owners expect to remodel the space, and re-open it under a new name. In three visits to SD26 and its predecessor, San Domenico, I never had a wholly satisfactory meal. In this, my final review, I gave it zero stars. For an appreciation from someone whom I respect, check out The Pink Pig’s closing retrospective.

*

Remember SD26? Yeah, we’d forgotten it too.

I won’t rehash the whole background (see my 2009 review). In brief: faced with a $600,000 rent increase on Central Park South (in the space that’s now Marea), restaurateurs Tony and Marisa May (father and daughter) moved their downtown, to 26th Street at Madison Park.

What had been the somewhat stodgy, old-school, and not-very-good San Domenico, became the trying-to-be-hip, and still-not-great, SD26. Sam Sifton gave it one star in The Times. Some liked it better, but I don’t recall any outright raves. The chef left. Eater.com put it on deathwatch.

Three years after the move, and two years post-deathwatch, SD26 is hanging on, perhaps even thriving. It’s a Saturday evening, and the bar is thumping: a really unplesant place, where you struggle to get a bartender’s attention, and frankly you wouldn’t want a drink there anyway. The dining room is far more appealing, and well on the way to a nearly-full house, with a crowd of all ages. If the owners’ plan was to broaden the customer base, they’ve succeeded.

I called Massimo Vignelli’s interior design “stunning” last time I was here. I retract that. On a second look, it strikes me as a dining room designed by committee, one that cannot decide exactly whom it is trying to please. Some tables have tablecloths; others don’t. Some have chairs with backs; others don’t. Many of the design elements clash. It’s not a terrible room, but if I’d spent $7 million on it (as the Mays did), I wouldn’t be happy.

We ordered the five-course tasting menu at $85 per person.

 

The bread service is a highlight at this restaurant, with four kinds offered; we had the focaccia (above right).

 

The food came rather quickly, delivered by servers who were in such a hurry that they twice forgot to describe the dishes they’d just dropped off. I believe the first appetizer (above left) was a Sweet and Sour Mackerel, which we rather liked. Fettucine with lamb ragu (above right) had an appealing spicy kick.

 

Sea bass (above left) was poached, and served in a soup with zucchini, cous cous, tomato, and spicy broth.

A wheel-shaped serving of rabbit (above right) was a substantial failure, both dry and flavorless, with root vegetables that we could barely taste, and not much helped by an asparagus purée. It was a disappointing end to a meal that was, until that point, going well.

 

Dessert was just fine, a tartina (above left) with orange sauce and chocolate ice cream, followed by petits fours (above right).

Prices here are basically in line with all of the city’s top-tier Italian spots, except for the four-star Del Posto, which is in a league of its own. Otherwise, for similar amounts of food, you’ll pay about the same at Marea, Ai Fiori, Babbo, Lincoln, Felidia, or Ciano, within a few dollars.

But I’ve never visited SD26 or its predecessor, San Domenico, without experiencing at least one severe fumble—in this instance, the terrible rabbit dish served near the end of our tasting menu. All restaurants make mistakes, but there’s a pattern here. SD26 is capable of turning out great food, but you cannot count on it.

For its price point, the service is acceptable but not particularly good. We spotted Marisa May, but not Tony. She visited a number of tables, but apparently only those where she knew the diners. (She lingered quite a while at those tables.)

The wine list is a bright spot, running to hundreds of bottles. The iPad wine list functions better than the no-name electronic gizmo they had last time I visited, and the sommelier provided better service than any of the various captains and runners who rushed by our table. You could spend thousands, but the 2009 Valpolicella Superiori to which she steered us, at just $60, was excellent at the price.

I’ve written before that upscale Italian is the most over-represented genre in the city, having supplanted what upscale French used to be. If there were a French restaurant like SD26, I’d fret about its inconsistency, but I’d still consider it essential. There is no need to do that for Italian cuisine. There’s at least a half-dozen other places in town with nicer dining rooms and more consistent food, at about the same price.

It’s a pity that Tony and Marisa May can’t get their act together.

SD26 (19 E. 26th Street at Madison Square Park)

Food: Modern Italian cuisine that’s excellent, except when it isn’t
Wine: The highlight, a list hundreds of bottles deep
Service: Too sloppy, considering the price
Ambiance: A high-gloss modern over-thought room, designed by committee

Rating: Not Recommended
Why? So many others in its price range are more reliable

Prandial

 

Note: Prandial closed in August 2013, after a year in business. My doubts about its viability, expressed in the review below, turned out to be well-founded.

*

Prandial, which opened about a month ago in the Flatiron District, is my kind of restaurant. It has a serious chef in the kitchen, a legit. wine list, tables a generous distance apart, white tablecloths, and solicitous service.

So it’s a pity to report that the food was not very good on a recent Saturday evening. Here’s hoping the kitchen’s performance was atypical, perhaps a late-summer swoon, with the chef out of town and farmhands in the kitchen.

The chef, Pierre Rougey, was an instructor at the French Culinary Institute and earned a Michelin star in France, so presumably he knows what he is doing. I don’t know to what extent he is present here, or merely writing a menu for others to execute.

The owner, Mark Stern (formerly of the now-defunct “Village”) is presumably motivated to get it right, because he actually owns the space (previously the soul-food restaurant Justin’s, which closed in 2007). He spent a pretty penny on the renovation, a striking post-industrial dining room with an antique bar and back-lit subway tile.

So far, diners aren’t flocking here. On a Saturday evening, albeit in late August, it was at best one-third full.

“Prandial” may not have been the best name, as the word is unfamiliar to many. (“What’s ‘pran-dye-uhl’?” was overheard at the bar.) And the restaurant’s slogan, printed beneath the logo — “relate to your meal” — is rather silly.

The proffer is American cuisine, purportedly with French technique. It’s inexpensive for the neighborhood, with a focused menu of ten appetizers ($9–15) and the same number of entrées (most in the $20s).

The wine list, dominated by the U.S., France, and Italy, runs to about half-a-dozen pages, with plenty of options below $50 and even a list of half-bottles. It’s a remarkable selection for a casual restaurant, especially a brand new one.

 

I might have liked the Pan Crisped Smoked Skate ($12; above left) with arugula and a fried quail egg. But the egg was slightly overdone, and not runny enough; and the whole contraption sat on a bizarre, chalky-green pancake.

An Artichoke Salad ($12; above right) was too cold, giving the impression of having been prepared earlier and allowed to sit in the fridge.

 

A hunky double-cut Pork Chop ($24; above left) was tough and dry. I ate less than half of it. If they’d only not overcook it, the pairing with spaetzle and Brussels sprouts would be promising. This left the Duck 2 Ways ($24; above right), with confit leg and pan-seared breast, as the evening’s only successful dish.

If the kitchen could catch up to the wine list, Prandial could be a worthwhile spot. But in the life of a new restaurant, there isn’t much time to fix such things before the crowd moves on. They’d better hurry.

Prandial (31 W. 21st Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: American cuisine with (supposedly) French technique and uneven execution
Wine: An impressive list for such a new, inexpensive spot
Service: Friendly, solicitous, and efficient
Ambiance: A smartly-renovated, spacious, post-industrial dining room

Rating: ★
Why? For the wine list; benefit of the doubt to the food, which needs to improve

Al Mayass

The New York Times fall restaurant preview issue had a Glenn Collins puff piece about “foreign” restaurateurs aiming to succeed in New York, headlined by Dr. Miguel Sanchez Romera, whose eponymous Romera was one of the quickest flops on record.

Let’s fervently wish better luck to the second restaurant that Collins named, Al Mayass, imported from Lebanan, but run by Armenians and serving the cuisine of both nations. The original Al Mayass opened in Beirut in 1997, with branches today in Abu Dhabi, Kuwait, Qatar, Riyadh, and now New York.

After much googling, I’m still not sure what the name means. The website says, “The essence of Almayass is best described ‘…when the hanging leaves dance to the rhythm of delicate breeze.’” The logo resembles a falling leaf, so perhaps that’s what it means.

The restaurant also has a tagline, credited to George Bernard Shaw. You’ll see it in the vestibule and on the menu: “There is no love sincerer than the love of food.” Thanks, guys, for clearing that up.

They spent $2 million on the build-out of a space that had been vacant for eight years; but they neglected to spend much outside. The entrance is so inconspicuous, I walked by twice before finding it.

A web search brings up the international Al Mayass site, almayass.com, one of the worst designed restaurant websites I have ever seen. It may take you a while to find the right site, almayassnyc.com.

Fortunately I was persistent.

Once you’re inside Al Mayass is lovely, with a spacious and elegant 80-seat dining room that could double as a modern art gallery. There’s a comfortable, but fung shui-challenged lounge: you have to pass through the back of the restaurant and take an abrupt u-turn to reach it.

Small plates, or mezzes, make up the bulk of the menu. There are about four dozen of them, divided into two groups, hot and cold, in a price range from $4–17 (but most around $8–15). There are about ten entrées ($22–34), most of them kebabs of various sorts.

When the mezzes outnumber the entrées four to one, it comes across as a signal to skip the entrées, and so we did. Five of the mezzes was about the right amount for two people—perhaps even a shade more than we needed.

There are fourteen wines by the glass and around a hundred by the bottle, mostly international, but including a few Lebanese ones. You can spend under $40 or hundreds. A 2007 Barolo was a bargain at $70. At first the staff said they were out of it, but then the manager found a bottle, for which I was charged just $38.

The bread service (above left) included pita and crackers with a dipping sauce. The first of our mezzes was the Soujuk Almayass ($11; above right), an appealing Armenian beef sausage canapé served cold, and topped with fried quail eggs.

Suberg ($8; above left) is an enjoyable oven-baked homemade cheese pastry. Sarma ($9.50; above left), or grape leaves, wrapped with rice and vegetables, were about average.

The Queen’s Delight ($16; above left) offered sliced filet mignon, sautéed in a sweet & sour cherry sauce that made more of an impression than the meat did. Mantee Traditional ($15; above right) consists of large ravioli filled with ground meat and a yogurt sauce, topped with sumac, a shrub frequently used as a spice in Greek cuisine.

Gael Greene visited Al Mayass on opening night — why on earth does she keep doing that? — and found slow, inattentive service. Our visit came a few weeks in, and we had the opposite problem. The five mezzes came rather quickly, and all at once, which is hardly the best way to appreciate them. The food seemed to me about average, though I think it would have made a better impression if it had been presented at a slower pace.

To Al Mayass’s credit, the food is relatively inexpensive, and the dining room is both quiet and comfortable. Business wasn’t bad on a Thursday evening, although it was not full. If they could only get the hang of pacing a meal, Al Mayass could be very good.

Al Mayass (24 E. 21st St. between Broadway & Park Avenue, Flatiron District)

Food: Traditional Lebanese/Armenian, with an emphasis on small plates
Service: Friendly but too fast
Ambiance: A comfortable, upscale, modern room with tablecloths

Rating: ★
Why? We’re not persuaded it’s a destination, but worth a look if you’re nearby

La Quenelle

 

Note: La Quenelle closed after an extremely brief run. The chef, Cyril Reynaud, says he hopes to re-open in a “more intimate setting.”

*

During the Great Recession and its long aftermath, one chef after another substituted grand ambitions for humbler ones. You can’t blame the chefs for this: they have families to feed. Still, you can’t help cringing every time it happens. Or celebrating the opposite.

Enter La Quenelle, chef Cyril Renaud’s return to his métier after three years serving crêpes and flipping burgers.

The backstory in brief: Renaud worked for six years as chef de cuisine at Bouley and another four as executive chef at La Caravelle, where he earned three stars. Then in 2000, Renaud opened Fleur de Sel in a jewel box space in the Flatiron District. William Grimes awarded two stars; a Michelin star followed. I dined there twice, the first an ill-advised Christmas Eve (the usual rule about holiday meals) and a much better visit in 2006, to which I gave three stars.

In 2009, the chef added a casual spot around the corner, Bar Breton, dedicated to savory crêpes (called galettes), small plates, and of course a burger. We liked it—for what it was—but no one would mistake it for his flagship. But shortly thereafter, Fleur de Sel closed; unsurprisingly, the chef cited the economy.

Almost three years to the day, Renaud shuttered Bar Breton and re-christened it La Quenelle, returning to the more elegant classic French cuisine he was known for in the first place. (It’s named for the quenelles, a dish for which he was especially well known at La Caravelle.)

La Quenelle is necessarily a compromise, in many respects. It’s built on the bones of a much less elegant space, though he’s added tablecloths, lowered the lighting, and decorated it with his own paintings, which Grimes (at Fleur de Sel) called “wobbly efforts in the manner of van Gogh.” I’m not sure if the chandelier (above left) built from inverted glassware is Renaud’s work, but it’s a beaut.

He’s trying to bring back a more elegant class of service that Fleur de Sel had nailed, but the staff are still learning. When asked if he could transfer the bar tab to our table, the bartender took on a pained look, as if his dog had just died. “We prefer that you settle it here.” But after a conference with the manager, he transferred it anyway.

Memo to staff: no restaurant should tell you what it prefers: if you can accommodate what the customer has requested, just do it; better yet, offer before they ask. (When the Pink Pig dined here, a few days before we did, a similar request was not granted.)

The menu resurrects memories of Fleur de Sel to a considerable extent, but at a lower price point. Tellingly, although all the mains are above $25, only one surpasses the psychologically crucial $30 barrier. Appetizers are $13–17, and a five-course tasting menu is $75. In contrast, the last meal I had at Fleur de Sel was $79 prix fixe for three courses—and that was six years ago.

The lower prices probably limit the quality of the ingredients in ways I’m not able to articulate, but to me, this meal was a pretty good approximation of Fleur de Sel’s best.

 

I started with a Foie Gras trio ($18; above left), with a torchon, a terrine of glazed artichoke and black truffles, and another with smoked almonds. My girlfriend had the Burgundy Snail & Polenta ($15; above right) with a red wine maple sugar reduction and parmesan tuile. Both dishes were labor intensive, beautifully plated, and excellent.

 

So too were Maine Sea Scallops ($30; above left), with curry roasted carrots, fresh grapefruit, curry foam, and artichoke chips. The Quenelle de Brochet ($29; above right) is the chef’s signature dish, as well as the restaurant, so it is no surprise it’s superb: a delicate fish dumpling in a seafood and roots risotto, and bathed in a lobster foam.

When we don’t want a meal to end, we order dessert. The Mascarpone Banana Mousse ($12; right) with langue du chat, coffee ganache, and a white chocolate crisp, could do battle with the best of the dessert card anywhere in town.

The wine list could be broader and deeper. A 2002 Saint Emilion at $47 was one of the few bargains at the lower end. As they did at Fleur de Sel, the staff kept the wine on a cart in the middle of the dining room, a system that can only work if they are attentive about refilling empty glasses—which they were.

The only reviews so far are from Gael Greene and the aforementioned Pink Pig, both of whom had mixed, although largely positive, reactions. They also sampled more of the cuisine than we did.

Is La Quenelle the rebirth of Fleur de Sel, or a last gasp? Time will tell, but this cuisine is a notoriously tough sell with the professional critics. In the early going, Renaud can fill the place with old friends. Longer term success depends on reaching a new audience.

La Quenelle (254 Fifth Ave. between 28th & 29th Sreets, Gramercy/Flatiron District)

Food: Classic French, beautifully done, by a master of the trade
Wine: Mostly French, with some good bottles, but could use more breadth
Service: An approximation of the old Fleur de Sel, with some rough spots
Ambiance: The casual Bar Breton space, made more elegant and slightly redressed

Rating: ★★★
Why? If you treasure this cuisine (as we do), where else have you to go?

Alison Eighteen

Note: The opening chef, Robert Gurvich, severed his ties with the restaurant in July 2012. The restaurant closed in December 2013 after a short and undistinguished run. A new restaurant by Jesse Schenker of Recette is expected to move into the place.

*

“Just fine” is a label I often use when I’m served capably executed food which neither excites me nor fails in any articulable way.

Alison Eighteen is “just fine.”

The décor is modern and stylish. Service is attentive and professional. The wine list offers better breadth and depth than you usually see at a new restaurant, with plenty of reasonable choices below $60. Food prices are slightly on the medium-to-high side, but certainly not extortionate for the neighborhood.

The owner, Alison Price Becker, is a former actress who rose through the ranks at Rakel and Gotham Bar & Grill, then opened her own place, the much loved Alison on Dominick Street. Bryan Miller of The Times awarded two stars in 1989 and again in 1992, both under founding chef Tom Valenti, who is now at Ouest. Scott Bryan replaced him, also receiving two stars from Ruth Reichl. Dan Silverman (later of Union Square Cafe, Lever House, and now the Standard Grill) replaced Bryan. James Beard Award winner Michelle Bernstein cooked here at one point. Those are some impressive names.

The lesser known Robert Gurvich replaced Silverman in 1999. By now Alison was a franchise, with a place in Sagaponack (Alison by the Beach; 1998–2004). Alison on Dominick closed in 2011 after the 9/11 attacks, as diners stopped coming downtown, and for a while the site (located hard by the Holland Tunnel exit) could not even receive truck deliveries. She opened another restaurant (just plain “Alison”) in Bridgehampton in 2006, again with Gurvich, who is likewise chef at Alison Eighteen.

Ruth Reichl called Alison on Dominick “one of the city’s most romantic restaurants.” No one would say that about the new one. It is, as FloFab put it, “lighter and airier,” with a more overtly commercial intent. Still, there is a cool elegance and obvious care in the design: Ms. Becker even created her own wallpaper.

I suspect she’ll attract fans of the old Alison on Dominick, plus those who’ve gone with her to Sagaponack or Bridgehampton, and Elaine’s refugees. The restaurant is open for three meals a day and should do a brisk breakfast and lunch trade in this neighborhood.

The old Times reviews suggest that the cuisine here was never cutting-edge, but it was always executed with care and skill, and it remains so today. Even in 1992, Bryan Miller would write: “If there is a minor shortcoming here, especially for repeat customers, it is a moderate-size menu that usually lacks more than one special supplement.”

Twenty years later, with American locavore restaurants found on every half-block, the menu at Alison Eighteen may seem a bit old-fashioned: serving spit-roasted chicken without saying which farm the chicken came from? Shocking!

The menu fits on one broadsheet, with nine appetizers (mostly $12–19, but Foie Gras “A La Plancha” is $28), eight entrées (mostly $26–34, excluding a 35-day aged sirloin, $45), and half-a-dozen sides ($9).

That old standby, the Raw Yellow Beet Salad ($15; above left) shares the plate with slices of escarole and honeycrisp apple (neither very flavorful), with watermelon radishes and cider vinaigrette. It was a dish that read better than it tasted.

Sardine Crostini ($16; above right) were an annouced special, with a list of about ten ingredients that I won’t even attempt to recall. This was a considerably more exciting dish, the kind Alison Eighteen needs more of.

Both entrées were competently executed, if unexciting: Black Bass ($32) with artichokes, cannelini beans, cockles and a bit of chorizo; Spit-Roasted Lamb Shoulder ($32) with roasted vegetables. The server tried to upsell us into a side dish, which neither of these mains required.

The bread service (baguettes and olive oil) could be better, but petits fours (below right) were a nice touch, and I especially appreciated the (mostly French) wine list. We had the 2006 Pascal Granger Juliénas, a Beaujolais I suspect you won’t find in many other NYC restaurants.

Many of the city’s pro critics thumb their noses at restaurants that exist mainly for social reasons, and thereby miss their real merits. There is a need for places that serve reliable menus in stylish surroundings, with upscale service. I won’t run back to Alison Eighteen, but for the intended audience it fulfills its mission well.

Alison Eighteen (15 W. 18th St. between 5th & 6th Ave., Flatiron District)

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

Veritas

Note: Veritas closed in October 2013. A restaurant called élan, from former Chanterelle chef David Waltuck, is expected to open there in 2014.

*

The owners of Veritas must have been frustrated with their Odyssean quest to find a chef worthy of their four-star wine list.

Founding chef Scott Bryan left in October 2007 with no destination in mind (he is now at Apiary). Journeyman Ed Cotton replaced him, couldn’t get reviewed, and was fired after just eight months. His replacement, the excellent Gregory Pugin, served the best food Veritas ever had, but he couldn’t get reviewed either, and the owners pulled the plug after two years and declining customer interest.

This time, there were no half-measures. One day in August 2010, management locked out the staff and closed abruptly for “renovations.” I assumed “renovations” were a prelude to winding up the business—it usually works that way. But three months later, the “new” Veritas duly re-opened with Sam Hazen as chef and partner, along with the original owners (mainly, wine mega-collector Park B. Smith).

I thought that this was total capitulation. Despite some pretty impressive restaurants on Hazen’s C.V. (Quilted Giraffe, Le Gavroche, Quatorze, La Côte Basque), he spent the last decade wallowing in mediocrity (Todd English Enterprises, Lucy’s Cantina Royale), and had created Tao, possibly the worst restaurant of the century, if measured by the number of copycats (all terrible) that it has inspired. If you had to pick one restaurant that encapsulates everything wrong with contemporary dining in New York City, it would have to be Tao.

And they chose this guy??

Gone was the $92 prix fixe, replaced by a menu said to be “more affordable.” Now, I’m all for affordability, but the open question was whether Hazen could offer anything better than over-priced stoner food, to go with co-owner Smith’s incredible wine collection. A three-star review from Sam Sifton was the first indication that, perhaps, Hazen was capable of better thngs than his resume suggested.

That new “affordability” is all relative. On Hazen’s New American locavore menu, appetizers are $13–22, entrées $29–49, desserts $11–13. That’s hardly bargain dining. But our food bill at the new Veritas was $107 for two (that’s before alcohol, tax, or tip), and we skipped dessert, an option the old menu wouldn’t have permitted. Remember, at the old Veritas it was $92 for one.

They’ve also banished the tablecloths. To be fair, even when table linens were fashionable, décor was never the strong suit at Veritas. The Brooklyn design firm Crème (Red Farm, Marc Forgione, Danji, La Promenade des Anglais) created a striking new look with painted white brick, stained wood accents, dark wood floors, filament bulbs, and floor-to-ceiling wine racks stocked with empty old bottles. It feels like a slightly derivative, more upscale version of what the one- and two-star restaurants are doing these days. But it is not unpleasant.

To my surprise, chef Hazen is serving very good, serious food, at the new Veritas. How he ever became involved with a shitshow like Tao is utterly beyond me, but the man hasn’t forgotten how to cook for real, and it seems he really is here to stay: he was in the house on a random Tuesday evening in January, with the restaurant about half full.

Wine is and always was the main point of dining at Veritas. Co-owner Park B. Smith told The Times that, to the 75,000 cellar that was already one of the city’s best, he’d added a “market list” with “quite a few choices for around $50 a bottle.” That is not really true: the majority of the market list is $60 or more (often way more), and you soon find yourself in the fifty-page reserve list, where practically all bottles are in three, four, and five figures.

Hazen’s menu is certainly as good as Veritas has served for most of its history (the all-too-brief Pugin era excepted), but it is not good enough to justify a visit unless you’re prepared to spend—and spend big—on wine. Even at a budget of $100 a bottle, 98 percent of the list will be out of your reach. It’s a pity that the $50–75 range is so anemic, but if you’re a wine lover you’ll drool with envy at the reserve list. Budget accordingly.

Châteauneuf-du-Pape remains a Veritas specialty. The section of the list devoted to it goes on for 3½ dual-column pages, with prices ranging from $105 to $5,500, and years ranging from 1978 to 2007. That nothing younger is offered (and indeed, the 2007s are not numerous) suggests that the restaurant is admirably waiting for younger bottles to mature before offering them for sale.

Anyhow: Châteauneuf-du-Pape is my own personal favorite, so there was no doubt what I would order. The 2000 Panisse Noble Révélation at $105 was sublime. (The staff decanted it, as they have done on past visits.) It only makes me wish I could afford more.

The amuse bouche (above right) was a warm winter vegetable soup. A choice of three breads was offered, along with soft butter. We both chose the house-made olive brioche, which was excellent.

Ibérico Ham ($19; above left) was offered as an announced special. Although there was nothing wrong with it, I thought that Hazen had defaulted to a luxury ingredient without doing much to augment it. In contrast, Merguez & Farm Egg ($15; above right) was superb, a hearty mix of spicy stewed tomatoes and lamb sausage.

Both entrées were well conceived, but were a bit less succulent than they ought to be. Striped Bass ($36; above left) is served crisp with the skin on, with eggplant, sweet peppers and sauce vierge. Wooly Pig ($37; above right), having a slightly more gamey flavor than other breeds, is brined in maple syrup overnight and served with a breaded stick of pork confit, which was excellent.

The evening ended with a plate of petits fours (right), and the staff gave us muffins to take home for breakfast. (The pastry chef is Emily Wallendjack, formerly of Cookshop.)

The staff are inclined to upsell, which we resisted. Sommelier Rubén Ramiro, having been asked for a recommendation around $100, suggested a bottle priced at $135. And the server had the temerity to encourage us to purchase a third entrée to share—the vegetarian item—although both entrées came with vegetables already.

Although it is easy enough to ignore the staff’s attempts to extract more money from the customer, it comes across as greedy and low-class, at a restaurant that is already very expensive.

But perhaps these compromises are the necessary evils to keep Park B. Smith’s extraordinary wine collection in the public eye. The “Brooklyn plus” décor is inoffensive; Chef Hazen’s cuisine is pretty good and might even be excellent on the right day. The service, aside from upselling, is acceptable.

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

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

La Mar Cebicheria Peruana

La M.C.P. closed in August 2013 after two years in business. I am not surprised: as discussed in the review below, there were many reasons to be skeptical.

*

On either the website or the printed menu at La Mar Cebicheria Peruana, the first thing you see is the list of cities where the restaurant is franchised: eight of them to date. In all, chef Gastón Acurio has thirty-three restaurants on three continents, most of them duplicates trading under a handful of names, like Astrid and Gastón, Tanta, and La Mar. He makes Jean-Georges Vongerichten look like a small-time operator.

I guess Chef Acurio never got the memo: New Yorkers don’t take kindly to imported franchises and chefs. He would have been far wiser to open under a new name, giving at least the impression that he was creating something unique. It could have been a complete sham, but who would know?

Then, there’s the location, the former home to Tabla. Even Danny Meyer didn’t survive here. It’s a large space on two levels, in a high-rent building. Only a well-capitalized operator who was very sure of both himself and his concept would have considered it. But restaurants need to fit the personality of their neighborhoods, and La Mar (named for the sea) feels like a cruise ship past its prime. Does that work at Madison Square Park? Only time will tell.

Wikipedia proclaims Chef Acurio “a true culinary visionary who has put all his effort into rediscovering Peruvian cuisine.” (Apparently the Wiki Police have not yet gotten around to censoring this clearly biased article.) Besides nearly three dozen restaurants, he hosts a television show in Perú and is author of various cookbooks and magazines. That’s a lot to live up to.

The menu is in six categories, a layout that blurs the line between appetizers and entrées, and seems calculated to provoke over-ordering. The traditional appetizers are $11–18, the main courses $26–42, which makes La Mar a rather expensive restaurant, especially if you accept the tacit invitation to order from each group.

We did the opposite, eschewing the so-called appetizers and entrées entirely. In the meantime, it’s easy to fill up on fried plantain chips (above left) with their appealing hot dipping sauce.

The Cebiches ($15–28), the so-called national dish of Perú, lead off the menu. There’s much more variety here than the Mexican ceviches commonly seen on New York menus. The “Tigre Tasting” ($15; above left) offered three drinkable shot-glasses: fish, shrimp, and octopus, all fairly spicy. But I liked the “Popular” ($18; above right) better, with salmon, shrimp, ocotpus, and crisp calamari in a tart green sauce.

Tiraditos (raw fish) are Perú’s answer to sashimi, though to me Italian crudi seemed like a more apt analogy. Three kinds are offered (all $18), of which we tried two (above left), the Nikei (Toro tuna with chile pepper, tamarind, and sesame oil) and the Chaifa (wild salmon belly and cilantro in passion fruit).

Carapulcra is a Peruvian dish akin to a potato stew. It was offered as a recited special, with pork belly as a decidedly non-traditional extra ingredient. The dish as presented ($26; above right) didn’t resemble a stew at all. Was it meant to be an appetizer or an entrée? After multiple failed attempts to get an explanation, we decided to take our chances. It was pretty good, but it’s difficult to ruin pork belly.

The wine list features an ample selection of Argentinean, Brazilian, and Chilean wines, along with more familiar fare from Spain and California. The price range is in line with the food, with decent options below $50, though they were out of my first choice.

The space has a bright new design from starchitect Stephanie Goto (Corton, Aldea). I don’t think it’s her best work, but maybe this tired look is what the client wanted. The layout is the same as Tabla, with a bar and lounge on the ground floor and the main dining room up a flight of steps. It was about half full on a Saturday evening; still, we had trouble hearing our server’s recitation of the daily specials.

The food was all at least pleasant and inoffensive, but it is nothing I am dying to have again. Add two glasses of sangria at the bar ($13 each), and a bottle of Malbec at the table ($52), and we were well above $100 a head, and that’s without ordering traditional entrées. Absent more excitement on the plate, I am somewhat skeptical that the restaurant can build a long-term following at these prices, and in such a sterile space.

La Mar Cebicheria Peruana (11 Madison Ave. at 25th St., Gramercy/Flatiron District)

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

Eleven Madison Park

Note: This is a review of the 4×4 grid-format menu that Eleven Madison Park was using for a while. The restaurant has since changed to a more conventional tasting menu, which I have not yet tried.

*

A year ago, chef Daniel Humm and general manager Will Guidara of Eleven Madison Park “decided to fix what ain’t broke.” They jettisoned their à la carte menu in favor of a laconic square grid of sixteen ingredients. Unless you ask, you’ll have no idea if “Lobster” is a risotto, a bisque, a thermidor, or something else.

“Tasting menus are like monologues,” Guidara told The Times. “This is a dialogue.”

But as one Chowhounder put it (quoted in The Post), “I don’t want no stinkin’ dialogue! When I go to a world-class restaurant, I want the chef to take care of me.”

At Eleven Madison Park, you are, of course, welcome to have as much of a “dialogue”—or as little—as you want. This being a Danny Meyer restaurant, the server will stand there all night and explain every dish, if that’s what you want. But you don’t really want that, do you? You’re probably just going to select one ingredient from each row of the grid, communicate any allergies, and be done with it.

If the poor crybaby Chowhounder cannot be bothered to name four ingredients ($125), he can order the tasting menu ($195) and get whatever the chef chooses to send out. Another crybaby Chowhounder (they do moan a lot there) went so far as to call the new menu “a scam.”

Of course it is not a scam. Not even close. What it is, at least arguably, is a gimmick.

Eleven Madison Park is serving what amounts to a mystery tasting menu, where the appetizer, two entrées, and the dessert, can be chosen from a cryptic list of four items each. Plenty of restaurants offer tasting menus where none of the items are described at all. EMP’s own $195 menu operates that way. Plenty of others offer tasting menus where the ingredients are listed in some detail, but where most or all of the courses offer no choice at all.

This menu is a hybrid, a tasting menu with a few degrees of freedom, but with most of it a surprise unless you are awfully inquisitive. The gimmick is the “dialogue,” which doesn’t really exist—except in the sense it does at any restaurant that offers diners a choice, which is to say, most of them.

At our excellent dinner last Friday evening, we weren’t at all affronted by the 4×4 grid. It isn’t very helpful, either. Wouldn’t it be better to write down the choices the way a conventional restaurant would? The kitchen clearly has a preparation in mind for each of the sixteen ingredients. It doesn’t make them up on the fly. So why not tell us?

*

The service is practically the best of its kind. On entering, the greeter asked for the name of our reservation. When I said “Shepherd,” he said to my friend, without missing a beat or consulting a list, “Welcome. You must be ____.” To memorize every booking is impressive enough. To know my companion’s name is unheard of. At the table, a handwritten birthday card was waiting for her.

As you’d expect, plates and flatware were set and cleared seamlessly, every request honored instantly, every need anticipated. It is a performance perhaps half-a-dozen restaurants in town can match.

The meal begins with something like four or five flights of amuses. I didn’t note them all, but the tour de force was a “clam bake,” with four delicate canapés and a broth that the server pours into a contraption heated by hot rocks, simulating a beach clam bake in miniature.

From the first row of the menu grid, my friend and I both chose “Rabbit,” which I correctly guessed would be a luscious, creamy terrine, as it was in the position on the grid that I know (from other reviews) is usually represented by a foie gras terrine. Without the advance research I did, no other diner would know this.

Had the meal ended here, I would give Eleven Madison Park the same four stars that Frank Bruni did. Instead, I was reminded of Bruni’s comment at the end of 2008, that: “one in every three dishes didn’t measure up to the others (though nothing — nothing — was wholly undistinguished).” It seemed there were two restaurants here, with a completely different kitchen responsible for everything after the appetizer.

The statement that “nothing — nothing — was wholly undistinguished” could apply to my friend’s Loup de Mer, her Pork, and my Chicken. But I would not call them distinguished either. Somewhat more impressive was Lobster wrapped in fat, rich noodles, a lasagne of the gods. It was the only savory dish that I would care to see again. There was nothing wrong with the others, but there was no wow! in them.

Even less memorable were pastry chef Angela Pinkerton’s desserts, “Berries” and “Apricot, and the petits fours were noticeably less impressive than at the other four-star restaurants. We weren’t served a birthday cake, either—just a lit candle poking out from the dessert we had already paid for. I didn’t actually need another cake at that point, but see my reviews of Asiate and Del Posto for how the pastry departments in comparable restaurants usually honor such an occasion.

Wine pairings are $95 per person, and if you ask the sommelier to “be creative,” he will. I lost count, but I believe there were six or seven pours, ranging from beer to sake to cocktails, and of course wines, all with decent age on them; most were off the beaten path. Where my friend and I ordered different items, the wines were different also. For one course, the sommelier couldn’t decide between a cocktail and wine, so he gave both.

The final pour, as many reviews have noted, is a bottle of digestif that the sommelier leaves on the table for you to take as much as you would like. It is a safe bet that most normal folk will be too full to abuse the privilege. This must be the best wine pairing in the city, aside from Per Se, which charges at least double for similar service.

If my review seems harsh, it is not. I adore Eleven Madison Park. This is my third visit since chef Humm came on board (here, here). The four-course menu at $125 is one of the best dining deals in town, given all the extras that come with it. What I don’t see, however, is the leap to four stars that other publications have claimed.

Eleven Madison Park (11 Madison Avenue at 24th Street, Flatiron District)

Cuisine: Hard to classify; extraordinary at its best, but occasionally falls flat
Service: Incomparable; arguably the best in the city
Ambiance: Superb; an elegant, high-ceilinged space in a landmarked building

Rating: ★★★

Gravy

Note: This is a review under chef Michael Vignola, who left the restaurant in December 2011 to re-join Strip House. The restaurant closed in July 2012.

*

Gravy is a bright, spacious restaurant that opened in a prominent Flatiron District storefront in late April. The cuisine is billed as “New Southern,” a genre for which I have no points of comparison. Indeed, the website claims that there are no other examples of it in New York City.

Despite a featured FloFab post in The Times before it opened (a boon few restaurants get), Gravy has received no professional reviews to date. A restaurant that well publicized usually gets at least a look from the main critics. I’m guessing they weren’t impressed, and decided not to invest in additional visits.

The chef is Michael Vignola, who came from Michael Jordan’s The Steakhouse, clearly not the best endorsement. But Gravy is actually pretty good. Perhaps it has worked out the early kinks. At least the menu is interesting, and not a clone of anything else that has opened lately.

Prices are moderate for the neighborhood, with appetizers $10–17 and entrées $21–31. The ubiquitous “table shares” are $10–15, side dishes $8–9.

House-made charcuterie ($15; above left), with pickled vegetables and home-made brown butter mustard, is an excellent way to start. Two can easily share the dish. The bread was warm and crisp, with each slice individually toasted, but it is a lot of bread for one evening. (Earlier, there were warm rolls with soft butter: bread is clearly a strength of this kitchen.)

The Sullivan’s Island Bog ($26; above right), with shrimp, crawfish, mussels, squid, scallop, andouille, charred tomatoes, and Carolina red rice, is a good modern take on a Jambalaya.

Spice Rubbed Venison ($28; above left) was slightly tough, but still plenty flavorful, and I liked the contrast of roasted baby beets and bing cherries. Grits are offered three ways—honey, cheesy, or porky ($8 for one; $16 for all three). The porky grits (above right) had very little pork that we could detect, and tasted like not-very-good oatmeal.

The wine list is mainly American, as it should be, and if not overly long, is well suited to the cuisine. I don’t recall my original selection, but the wine director advised against it, and offered me an off-list Conway Family 2008 Deep See Red, an unobjectionable Shiraz blend, at the same price. It sells retail for $28, so the restaurant’s $46 (a 64 percent markup) is fair.

The dining room was around three-fourths full, and the kitchen was quite slow. At one point, I wondered if they’d run out of deer, and had sent a posse into the Catskills to shoot another. Even a cocktail took so long to make that, by the time it arrived I no longer wanted it. (They were quite willing to take it off the bill, without my even asking.)

The space is modern-looking and attractive. There are no table cloths, but the tables are more generously spaced than they have to be. Ambient noise was energetic, but not oppressive.

It seems to me a pity that when someone opens a restaurant that actually attempts to do something new, it gets so little critical attention. Fortunately, Gravy seems to be doing fine without the critics’ help, but it deserves more notice.

Gravy (32 E. 21st Street between Park Ave. S. and Broadway, Flatiron District)

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

Duo

Note: Well, I predicted this thing wouldn’t last, and it hasn’t. Just two months in, opening chef Hok Chin is out, replaced by Bradley Anderson. That didn’t fix it either, and Duo closed in January 2014.

*

I hope that Sabina and Lorraine Belkin, owners of the new restaurant Duo, enjoy reading this positive review. Because I don’t think there will be very many of them. Yes, I liked my meal at Duo. But I’ve seldom been more sure that critics would hate a place.

You’ll either love, or loathe, Duo’s over-the-top décor, with massive, lushly-painted murals depicting the owners in sensuous poses. Oh, but there’s so much more. Haute Living tells us, “Gold-leaf accents and crocodile-skin columns are scattered about the space, while the velvet walls sparkle with hand placed Swarovski crystals.” With a seven-foot-tall crystal chandelier and mohair bar stools, it all feels very luxurious. There are purse stools for the ladies, with an army of footmen to carry them in and out of the dining room. (They really got a work-out when a party of six women sat down.)

A restaurant needs menus, but for Duo, not just any menus would do. So they imported, custom-made, backlit menu folders, designed for reading in low light. At first, you think they’re iPads; then you realize they’re far too large for that, and they’re static—the text doesn’t change. It’s just an electric appliance that turns on when you open the cover, and off again when you close it. But they are heavy, and far too big for the table. With two of these and a wine list, there is no room to put them down without knocking something over.

The establishment’s full name, Duo Restaurant & Lounge, suggests the type of crowd it hopes to attract. So too does the owners’ last place, Duvet, a quasi-restaurant where most of the “tables” were beds. The State Liquor Authority closed it down in late 2009 after multiple incidents, the last being a rape in a bathroom stall, perpetrated by an ex-con hired as a bouncer. Duo is altogether more serious than that, but when you see a DJ perched high above the dining room floor, you wonder how serious?

They spent millions here. Although I liked it, I think most critics will loathe it.

They sure are trying hard. The service is attentive, and against all odds the food is pretty good. The chef, Hok Chin, isn’t exactly a household name. He has worked at Solo, and also at Sugar on Long Island, yet another place that seems to be more of a club than a restaurant. The menu is eclectic and somewhat difficult to characterize. I suppose it has a slightly Mediterranean lean, with such dishes as Black Truffle Pizza and Braised Veal Osso Bucco Tortellini, along with basics like Organic Free Range Chicken and a 20 oz. Aged Prime Ribeye.

Prices are in a wide range, with appetizers $10–20 and entrées $22–42. You could get out of here inexpensively, if it wasn’t for the wine list: most of the bottles are way over $50. It is not a very long list either, and one assumes it can never be more than two facing pages, or else it would outgrow their imported, custom-made, backlit menu folders.

The meal begins with lovely, just-out-of-the-oven bread loaves (above right), marred by freezing cold, just-out-of-the-fridge pats of butter.

A Vegetable Tartlet ($13; above left) in lemon tarragon beurre blanc was wonderful. What was billed as a Golden Beet Terrine ($17; above right) was really just a deconstructed beet and goat cheese salad. While the plating was lovely, the ingredients lost something by being served in separate pieces.

Hanger Steak au Poivre ($31; above left) was another triumph of plating technique, the steak resting impossibly on a tower of roasted fingerling potatoes and wild forest mushrooms, with a very good green peppercorn sauce and a stack of onion rings. The steak itself was just average.

Glazed Duck ($28; above right) on a bed of French lentils and baby carrots was wonderful, but when you bathe the duck in caramelized peaches and honey-ginger ponzu, it can’t help but taste very rich indeed.

They have 120 seats to fill here, and less than half of them were occupied at 9:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. It was only their fourth day in business: they have their work cut out for them. Most people in the food community will assume that Duo is not a serious restaurant, for all the reasons I gave at the top of this post, and the nightlife community is notoriously fickle—assuming you can even get their attention. The location is a difficult one for restaurants, as the prior tenant, Olana, quickly discovered.

I liked Duo, and its plush luxury didn’t bother me at all. The food, if not uniformly great, was not bad for a restaurant in its first week of service. But to break even, they probably need 300 covers on weekends, and I am not sure where they’ll come from.

Duo (72 Madison Avenue between 27th & 28th Streets, Flatiron District)

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