Lina Frey

Note: Lina Frey closed in October 2012.

*

The gritty block on Houston Street that is home to Katz’s Delicatessen, is not where I would expect to find a new French bistro. Lina Frey (named for the owner’s grandma) opened there in June. With late hours and a menu designed for snacking, it’s perfectly situated for revelers to stagger into after pounding the club scenes in the East Village to the north, or the Lower East Side to the south.

If you show up sober, and at a civilized dinner hour, you will find Lina Frey uncrowded, the French food surprisingly good and amazingly cheap. Dinner and drinks came in at under $100, including tax and tip. There isn’t a thing on the menu over $12; most items are $8 or less. What’s surprising is not that there would be a cheap eats joint on Houston Street, but that it would be French, a cuisine that does not usually come to mind when you envision such a place.

When you see these prices, you quickly realize that these plates can’t be full-size, a fact the server didn’t disclose. Nevertheless, it’s not the usual tapas gimmick, where seemingly cheap prices are offset by the need to order double the amount. Six plates to share was ample for us, but even if we’d ordered a few more—the server made no attempt to upsell us—the meal would have remained shockingly inexpensive.

New York Journal’s camera is on the fritz—quelle domage!—so we’ll have to make do with a verbal description. Frisée aux lardons ($6) was a lovely salad. Zucchini & carrot ($5) was slightly more pedestrian, with a cilantro lime honey vinagrette.

Lamb chops ($12) were thick and hearty, with a tart honey mustard glaze. Marinated hangar steak ($9) was just a shade on the tough side, probably due to the source, not its preparation, which was just fine. Haricots vert with caramelized shallots ($4) was the best green bean dish I’ve had in a long time. The same price fetched a bucket of addictive hand-cut fries.

There were three flavors of excellent house-made sangria (pear, mango, and the traditional red), and that’s all we drank. The wine list, as you’d expect, is just functional.

All of the dishes were presented at once, which seemed like an odd service choice: the salads, which required no cooking, should have been delivered earlier. The kitchen here marches to the beat of its own drummer. We asked for an order of the Gratin Dauphinois, and the server said, “It isn’t ready yet.” We wondered, at 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening, exactly when they thought it ought to be ready? There were a couple of other minor service issues—earnest and friendly, but occasionally forgetful—that aren’t worth mentioning at a place where the vibe is so casual.

There is plenty of space in the dining room, but it wasn’t close to full. We suspect that their rush comes much later in the evening. (They’re open for breakfast, lunch, and brunch too.) The post-industrial décor is of a piece with the neighborhood. On nice evenings—there may not be many of those left—the front windows are wide open, as they were on Saturday. There is also a huge retractable skylight, which was closed.

This is by no means destination cuisine, but it is very well done, especially at the price: an unexpected little gem.

Lina Frey (201 E. Houston St. between Ludlow & Orchard Streets, Lower East Side)

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

WD~50

  

Note: WD~50 closed at the end of November 2014, giving way to a condo development. Chef Dufresne still has his casual restaurant Alder nearby, but at present he has no known plans to ressurect WD~50.

*

I probably spend far too much time seeking out the newest restaurants—which often aren’t that great anyway. Either they haven’t worked out the early jitters, or they just aren’t destined for excellence.

The Great Recession still casts a long shadow, and it’s harder than ever to find exciting new restaurants. That doesn’t mean I’ll stop looking, but perhaps it’s time to shift the balance a bit towards old favorites that are overdue for a fresh look.

WD~50 has been on my revisit list for a while, not because anything has changed, but simply for the pleasure of discovering the latest creations to come out of mad scientist Wylie Dufresne’s laboratory. His food might not be to all tastes, but in the avant garde niche he occupies, his work is without peer in New York City.

A few years ago, people wondered if Dufresne could keep the place going, but on a Saturday night, at any rate, it was packed. He has held a Michelin star for five years running, and two years ago Frank Bruni gave WD~50 a much deserved and overdue promotion to three New York Times stars.

The food is expensive, with most of the entrées over $30. Most of the bottles on the wine list are in three figures, and there is hardly anything under $65.

I’m not necessarily complaining about how expensive WD~50 is, merely putting the restaurant in context. Dufresne’s cuisine is well worth the tariff. It is also labor intensive, and Dufresne has only five services a week in which to cover his fixed costs: he doesn’t serve lunch, and he is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.

The restaurant sells a lot of tasting menus at $140, up from $105 just three years ago (though I think it had fewer courses then). We had it, and so did the tables on either side of us. At a restaurant where so much of the food is unfamiliar, it is better to try a dozen items, as you do on the tasting menu, than to guess which two or three you’ll like.

Our tasting menu was one hit after another, with only one dud among twelve courses. I’m not going to try to describe every one, but I’ll list them all and describe the highlights. (The staff deposited a printed souvenir copy on our table before it began, so that we could follow along.)

The bread service (above) might seem initially disappointing, but sesame flatbread is surprisingly addictive. Before the end of the evening, it was all gone.

 

1) Veal brisket, honeydew, black olive, fried ricotta (above left)

2) Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese (above right)

These dishes, like everything else on the menu, derive their success from unusual and often surprising combinations of ingredients that just happen to work perfectly. The “everything bagel” is actually a small donut-shaped circle of deep-fried cream cheese.

 

3) Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery (above left). When you see a disc of foie gras on the plate, you assume it’s a terrine. In fact, Dufresne has managed somehow to stuff the foie with passionfruit, which runs out when you cut into it.

4) Scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, kindai kampachi (above right). No Dufrene tasting menu would be complete without an egg dish, and this one was masterful.

 

5) Cold fried chicken, buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco, caviar (above left). We didn’t much care for the cold fried chicken. I’m sure Dufresne has a reason for serving it cold, but it was beyond our comprehension.

6) Striped bass, chorizo, pineapple, popcorn (above right). The striped bass was perfectly cooked.

 

7) Beef and bearnaise (above left). I think this was meant to be a neighborhood-appropriate play on matzo ball soup.

8) Lamb loin, black garlic romesco, soybean, pickled ramps (above right).

 

9) Chewy lychee sorbet, pistachio, yuzu, celery (above left).

10) Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate, chicory (above right).

12) Rainbow sherbet, rhubarb tarragon, orange, olive oil (no photo).

I have less to say about the desserts individually. Alex Stupak is the pastry chef, and he is every bit Dufresne’s match and alter-ego in the mad science department.

We wrapped up with Cocoa packets, chocolate shortbread, and milk ice cream (right), which took the place of the usual petits-fours.

The standard wine pairing is $85. We didn’t want to drink that much wine, nor was there a particular bottle that caught our fancy, so we asked the sommelier to choose four wines by the glass, and space them out over the two-hour duration of our meal, which he was perfectly happy to do. Like everything else at WD~50, his choices were off the beaten path, but excellent nevertheless.

Although WD~50 is a casual-looking place, the service is as polished and professional as at almost any three-star restaurant in the city. If you haven’t visited, you must. If you haven’t visited lately, it’s time to go back.

WD~50 (50 Clinton Street between Stanton & Rivington Streets, Lower East Side)

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

The Meatball Shop

A quarter-century ago, an apprentice cook at Le Bernardin would hope someday to open his own classic French restaurant. Daniel Holtzman has opened The Meatball Shop.

No new restaurant captures The Moment, the now, better than The Meatball Shop. In a hundred years, restaurant archaeologists might pick this place as the apogee of dining in the Great Recession. If there’s a time capsule, The Meatball Shop has to be in it.

In a tiny package, The Meatball Shop touches all the bases, with its homespun menu founded on hearty recipes mamma would serve, a classically trained chef sourcing ingredients from artisanal farms, and everything made in house. Naturally, there are no reservations, and the room is dominated by a long communal table and food served at the bar.

And it’s a big hit, with manager Michael Chernow telling Eater.com that the wait on Saturday evenings at 8:00 p.m. stretches to 2½ hours. For meatballs. I expected to get in easily at 6:30, but it was already full. Luckily, we arrived just in time to get a table after about five minutes. We heard 25 minutes, and later 45 minutes, quoted to several other parties that arrived after us.

For a restaurant that serves only meatballs, there are many options to consider. There are five kinds of balls (beef, pork, chicken, vegetable, and “special”) and four kinds of sauces (tomato, spicy meat, mushroom gravy, and parmesan cream). They’re offered four different ways: in a bowl, sliders, heroes, and a “meatball smash” (two balls on a toasted brioche bun).

It begins to sound like “Colonel Mustard in the Libary with the Lead Pipe.” To avoid confusion, you mark your choices with a dry-erase marker on the laminated menu, which the server carries back to the kitchen. After they’ve got your order, they wipe the menu clean and it goes to another table.

The weekly special was goat, which my son and I both tried. He had the meatball smash ($8; above left) with parmesan cream sauce and mozzarella cheese. I had four meatballs in a bowl ($7; above right) with the spicy meat sauce. The goat was much more tender than I expected, full of flavor and not at all gamey.

There are six sides and six salads available ($4 ea.), including what must surely be the city’s best four-dollar risotto (above left). My son loved the meatballs so much that he ordered a slider by itself ($3; above right).

The desserts are as simple as can be, but wonderful for what they are: ice cream sandwiched by two cookies ($4). I think I had the the caramel ice cream and walnut meringue cookies (above right); I’ve forgotten what flavors my son had.

For such a busy place, the service was friendly and reasonably attentive. You can see why this place is popular. Dinner for two, including lemonade and two glasses of sangria, was just $49 before tip.

The Meatball Shop (84 Stanton St. between Allen & Orchard Sts., Lower East Side)

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

Sushi Uo

Note: Sushi Uo closed in December 2010. The owner planned to continue operating it as a private event space. The review below is under chef David Bouhadana, who left the restaurant in February 2009.

*

Sushi Uo opened several months ago on the Lower East Side. Its peculiar conceit is that the 23-year-old chef, David Bouhadana, is an American from Florida. He has trained at several Japanese restaurants, most recently Morimoto; still, it takes guts to try something like this.

Most restaurants want to be found. Sushi Uo takes the opposite approach. There is no outdoor sign at all, and the entrance is up a flight of stairs that would seem to lead to tenement apartments. If you haven’t done your advance research, you’ve no prayer of stumbling on the place. Once inside, a narrow, dark room greets you, decorated in black. The soundtrack is hip (by my standards), but not excessively loud. If you’re looking for a date spot that serves sushi, look no further.

The menu offers cooked plates from the kitchen ($4–14), à la carte sushi and sashimi (mostly $3–6 per piece), and rolls ($6–11). Combination platters range from $19–46. These are good prices for sushi in Manhattan. We had an abundance of food for $85, and that included two orders of Fatty Tuna ($8 ea.).

There were also a couple of extras: a terrific potato and spinach soup served in a shot glass as an amuse-bouche, and a large helping of boiled edamame (normally $4). But beyond that there was very little to rush back for. The most expensive dish we had, a Mixed Tempura ($11.50), was pedestrian, but we loved the Wasabi Gnocchi ($9.50). The various sushi, sashimi, and rolls were well made, but you’ll find something comparable in most neighborhoods.

Sushi Uo (151 Rivington Street between Clinton & Suffolk Streets, Lower East Side)

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

Katz’s Delicatessen

Katz’s Delicatessen is one of the seminal NYC restaurants that everyone is supposed to try. Then again, many New Yorkers haven’t been to the Statue of Liberty either, and it has been here longer than Katz’s—just barely.

Over the Christmas holiday, we finally rectified that omission. Deciding what to order wasn’t a challenge. The menu sprawls a bit—perhaps more than it should—but the pastrami sandwich is the signature item. In a one-star review for the Times in 2007, Frank Bruni reported that the pastrami out-sells the corned beef two-to-one; they make 1,000 of them a day.

The setting is bare-bones, and the cavernous space is far from charming. As you enter, you’re handed a little blue ticket. We aren’t sure what it is for, but a sign warns that if you lose it, you’ll pay an extra $50.

You can get in line for counter service, or get table service. Fans will probably tell me that if you haven’t been to the counter, you haven’t been to Katz’s. We chose table service anyway.

Bruni warned that table service is “not that efficient,” and he was right. A waitress plopped down a plate of pickles soon after we arrived, but we sat quite a while before she took our order, and quite a while longer for our drinks to arrive. I warned my son, “Drink your root beer slowly, because we might not be able to get another one.”

When the food finally came, the staff never seemed to know who had ordered what, or even which table to serve.

That pastrami sandwich almost makes up for it. At $14.95, they’re not giving them away, but you get an ample portion of thickly cut, fatty, smoky beef. There is really nothing more to it than that. A side of fries is extra ($4.50), though they do them very well. A Reuben ($15.75) wasn’t quite as impressive: the bread needed to be toasted, or at least warmer.

Although Katz’s is a Jewish deli, we didn’t notice any employees who appeared to be Jewish. The décor consists of many photos of famous customers, and signs that have been around since before most of those employees were born. One of these (mentioning that Katz’s caters parties) still carries a telephone number that pre-dates all-digit dialing.

We were fortunate to visit when there was no line, and were seated immediately. Good thing, too. This is not the most pleasant place to consume an expensive pastrami sandwich, but at least it is a good sandwich. I will be in no rush for the next one.

Katz’s Delicatessen (205 E. Houston Street at Ludlow Street, Lower East Side)

Falai

Note: Falai closed in August 2011. The chef, Iacopo Falai, cited changes in the neighborhood, implying that the upscale clientele the restaurant catered to was no longer coming to the Lower East Side. The space is now Pig and Khao.

*

It’s a sad consequence of Frank Bruni’s blatant Italian bias, that when he delivers a rave review of an Italian restaurant, I promptly ignore it. Of course, sometimes I’ve been to those restaurants already, and sometimes I go for other reasons. But I’d never choose an Italian place on his recommendation.

So it was with Falai, which received the deuce from Frankie two-stars in June 2005. Duly noted and ignored. Then, about a month ago, we walked into Falai Panetteria when a reservation at another place fell through. We were surprised at how good it was, which made us think that perhaps the mother ship deserved Frank’s deuce after all.

The chef at both places (and a third in Soho, to which we haven’t been) is Iacopo Falai, a former Le Cirque pastry chef. Here, at his main restaurant, he serves a focused Italian menu of just five appetizers ($12–16), seven pastas ($13–19), and six entrées ($25–27). The small semi-open kitchen probably can’t accommodate any more.

The all-white décor would be tough on the eyes if the lights were turned up, but the staff wisely keeps them dim. The narrow-but-deep room is a typical Lower East Side storefront. The floor tile looks at first as if it could be original, but then you notice that it embed’s Falai’s logo (above right). The staff all dress smartly, imparting an upscale vibe that makes the place feel like it belongs elsewhere.

Fortunately for Falai, diners don’t seem to mind visiting a fancy restaurant that is across the street from a pawn shop. On a Saturday evening, women were wearing their high heels and fancy summer dresses. At 8:00 p.m., the dining room was empty, as most diners had chosen to sit in the outdoor garden out back. But by 9:00 the room was mostly full. 

The white interior gave my camera fits. Shots with flash looked like nuclear winter, so I shot in ambient light, which played havoc with contrast and color balance. The amuse-bouche (right) was much better than the photo shows. I believe it was yogurt and roe with a pea-shoot broth poured table-side.

Of our appetizers, we were most impressed with Pici ($18; above left), with egg-less pasta, Italian cinnamon sausage, Brussels sprouts, and pecorino cheese. It was both an unusual and an intensely flavored dish. Gnudi ($16; above right) were an excellent rendition of a classic, with ricotta cheese, baby spinach.

Branzino wrapped in zucchini ($26; above left) was the more impressive entrée. It tasted as lovely as it looked. In contrast, Peking duck breast, or Anatra ($27; above right) was pedestrian. The skin had neither the crispness nor the spicy taste of traditional Peking duck, and the little dollops of ingredients scattered on the plate weren’t properly integrated into the dish. It’s a pity that the most expensive item on the menu is also the least interesting.

Pre-dessert was a tiny panna cotta (above left). We don’t normally order a dessert, but as it’s Chef Falai’s speciality we couldn’t resist. Profiteroles ($10; above right) were terrific.

To drink, we had a 2003 Copertino from the Puglia region of Italy ($52), with which we were perfectly satisfied. Service throughout the evening was attentive and polished.

Falai (68 Clinton Street between Rivington & Stanton Streets, Lower East Side)

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

Falai Panetteria

Note: Falai Panetteria closed in December 2011. It rebooted briefly and then closed once again. It is now Marm Cafe.

*

Last Saturday, Falai Panetteria helped turn a near disaster into one of the best casual meals we’ve had in quite a while. We had reservations elsewhere, but after our taxi driver took a wrong turn and got stuck in traffic he never should have been in, we were half-an-hour late. Just as he pulled up to the restaurant’s front door, the host called to say that they wouldn’t be able to accommodate us.

There may be a recession going on, but it hasn’t hit the Lower East Side. One restaurant after another was jammed—all except for poor THOR, which looked like it was ready to host a funeral. As we got to the corner of Rivington & Clinton, I saw Falai Panetteria with a couple of empty tables. I vaguely recalled that Falai was supposed to be good, so we walked in and were seated immediately. (Not that Falai Panetteria is doing badly: the remaining empty tables were taken within a few minutes.)

It turns out I had my Falai properties confused. There’s a fancy sit-down place down the street that got two stars from Frank Bruni in mid-2005. That’s the one I remembered, but Falai Panetteria is the casual follow-up that earned a rave from Peter Meehan in $25 & Under the following year.

Both Lower East Side restaurants, and a third that has since opened in SoHo, are the work of Iacopo Falai, a former pastry chef at Le Cirque 2000 who has graduated far beyond desserts. At Falai Panetteria, he can feed you all day long, from croissants and turnovers at breakfast, to sandwiches at lunch, to pastas and other hot entrées at dinner. It apparently does a lot of take-out business during the day, but there are also eight tables with space for around twenty diners. They take reservations, but it appeared to us that most of the clientele were walk-ins.

The menu is a short document, with five salads ($9–13), six antipasti ($5.50–14), three soups ($6–8), four pastas ($12–14), and just four entrées ($11–15). The restaurant was BYO when Meehan reviewed it for the Times, but it now has a beer & wine license. We had an enjoyable Chianti for around $40.

Of the pastas we tried, we liked best the squid ink tagliolini ($14; above right), with prawns, calamari, tomato sauce and red pepper. It had a strong, spicy flavor, without any of the ingredients overwhelming the others.

Pappardelle ($12; above left) caught my eye because it was supposed to include Brussels sprouts (one of my favorite vegetables), but there was barely a hint of that ingredient, and the dish seemed to be missing something.

For the entrée, we both had the veal meatballs (above left). I’ll allow myself the food-writer’s sin of calling them ethereal, because Peeter Meehan did too. They were soft, tender and buttery. If there’s a better meatball dish in town, we can’t imagine it. And they’re a whopping $11, up from $7 when Meehan reviewed them.

Naturally, there’s an abundant dessert menu, which we’d normally skip, but given Falai’s reputation we had to have one. Tiramisu ($5; above right) was wonderful, especially at the price.

For a restaurant this inexpensive, I cannot really complain about the service. There was a nice basket of bread and olive oil. Plates came out and were cleared at a reasonable pace. About the only solecism was the failure to replace silverware after the appetizers.

The space is one of those priceless Lower East Side storefronts, with an old tile floor, pressed tin ceiling, and chandeliers that probably date from the Hoover administration. For what it is, Falai Panetteria is a gem. Now we need to schedule a visit to the flagship down the street.

Falai Panetteria (79 Clinton Street at Rivington Street, Lower East Side)

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

White Slab Palace

Note: White Slab Palace closed in October 2011. As of May 2012, the space is Grey Lady, a New England-style raw bar.

*

White Slab Palace has been open since late February on the Lower East Side. The cuisine is vaguely Scandinavian, but the vibe is more like a “bar that serves food” than a true restaurant. The narrow space has a long, high counter with tall bar stools. The there are about a dozen low-slung wooden tables next to the tall windows facing out on Allen & Delancey Streets.

A forthcoming expansion into the neighboring space promises a more formal dining room, but we decided not to wait for that. Alas, we should have waited, or better yet, skipped White Slab Palace altogether. This was one of the most disastrous meals we’ve had in a long time.

Food took about 45 minutes to arrive. “Sometimes, we need to give the kitchen a nasty stare,” the server admitted. At last, our main courses were delivered, bypassing the appetizers entirely. We had both ordered the meatballs—just four smallish things the size of golf balls, dried out and over-cooked. No wonder they took 45 minutes.

A moment later, a plate of deep-fried stuff arrived. We thought it might be an appetizer. Then we had a taste. It was a fish-like substance, apparently a herring, just as parched as the meatballs. There were other deep-fried fishy things on the plate, none of which we could stand after more than one bite. Our server circled back: “You didn’t order that, did you?” Nope.

We weren’t sure what was happening next, but finally the appetizers came. An order of shrimp tasted like it had been swimming too long with the herring. We tasted one shrimp apiece and gave up. A hunk of lamb was so densely packed with gristle that my knife could not get through it. This was apparently a cheap cut that needed braising it hadn’t gotten.

That was the end of White Slab Palace for us. The server conceded that it was a rough night, but didn’t offer to comp anything to make up for it. Food, beer and cocktails set us back $117, including tax and tip. Oh, and they don’t take credit cards.

White Slab Palace (77 Delancey Street at Allen Street, Lower East Side)

Food: awful
Service: slow
Ambiance: it’s a bar
Overall: awful

Shang

Note: Shang closed in October 2011. As of April 2012, the space is Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya.

*

New York is often unkind to imported chefs. New York’s Adam Platt, the city’s most clueless critic, once declared, “If I were them, and I had a successful restaurant elsewhere, I would not come.”

True enough, there have been some well publicized flops, especially where the itinerant chef is not in permanent residence: Lonesome Dove, anyone? Alain Ducasse has failed twice here, and at two current restaurants (Adour and Benoit) he has brought in new chefs after less than a year in business. Yet, had Thomas Keller and Joël Robuchon followed Platt’s advice, we would not have the exquisite Per Se or the sublime L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.

Still, these are tough waters to navigate. So it took a dash of audacity for Susur Lee to close his internationally acclaimed Toronto restaurant, Susur, and open Shang on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Like those other chefs, Lee won’t be here full time (he still has another restaurant in Toronto), though he is a partner at Shang and presumably has a lot riding on its success.

In Toronto, Lee was best known for his “reverse degustation” tasting menu, which “began with robust, heavier dishes and grew progressively lighter as the evening went on.” At Shang, he wisely chooses not to demand that kind of commitment. He offers instead an à la carte menu of tasting plates, most of them (except the soups) suitable for sharing.

The menu has 35 items in various categories, priced $3–29, but most are from $13–20. The “small plates” format is notoriously prone to upselling and over-ordering, but the server’s recommendation of four to six dishes for two people was exactly right—we settled on five, plus a half-order of bread, for a total of $88.50, which is remarkable for food this good.

Shang avoids other pitfalls often encountered at this type of restaurant. Sometimes, plates advertised for sharing are actually difficult to share—e.g., three sliders for two people. Here, every dish was evenly divisible by two. (One eGullet poster, though, was annoyed when Shang served six lamb chops for a party of seven. A server ought to have noticed that.)

The other pitfall is timing. At some restaurants, the plates come out in crashing waves, drowning you in food you’re not yet ready to eat. You often wonder if the kitchen’s convenience has trumped the diner’s. Here too, the staff got it just right. We started with a salad—the immense Singapore Slaw ($16; right)—then two appetizers, and finally two main courses, all paced appropriately.

The service impressed us in other ways. Our first half-bottle of wine was slow to arrive. That shouldn’t happen, but the server handled it the right way: by telling the kitchen to slow down, so that we wouldn’t be drinking water with our appetizers.

We asked for an order of the Whole Wheat Manto Bread ($3; left). Without prompting, the server offered to cut it down to a half-order, as a full portion is more than two people would normally eat. We certainly had no way of knowing this, and many servers wouldn’t be alert enough (or honest enough) to point it out.

That Singapore Slaw comes in a volcano shape (there’s a photo on Gael Greene’s blog) before a server tosses its 19 ingredients tableside. I won’t try to describe the blizzard of flavors; you have to try it. The menu describes it as a portion for two, though four could easily share it.

The Mantou Bread is roasted to order, and the server warned it wouldn’t come out for about 20 minutes. It’s absolutely wonderful, but given that it’s only 37½ cents a slice, I wonder why the restaurant doesn’t just send out an order at the front end of every meal?

Chef Lee’s cuisine has been described as Chinese fusion. Everything we tasted was ablaze in flavor and impeccably prepared. Most of it you would find in no other restaurant.

Vegetable Potato Dumplings ($13; above left) wore a crusty cloak—yes, there are four individual dumplings on that plate. Lobster and Shrimp Croquettes ($18; above right) were in a delicate puffy jacket, each resting on a slow-cooked wedge of daikon.

Mongolian Lamb Chops ($20; above left) were as tender and flavorful as I’ve experienced in any restaurant lately, along with glazed bananas and a chili mint sauce. A cold carrot cardamom chutney would have been better omitted. A Young Garlic Chicken ($20; above right) yielded six pieces of plump meat, cooked perfectly.

I was pleased to see an ample selection of half-bottles of wine, an option far more restaurants should offer. It gave us the chance to sample two halves for a total of $41, less than we normally pay for a full bottle. (Now that I look back on it, I think they charged us less for the wine than the prices listed.)

Though Shang is a casual restaurant, the service team would be at home in a more formal setting. Fresh plates and silverware, and extra serving utensils, are provided for each course. Chopsticks are enamel, rather than the disposable wood most places use. Even the starched white napkins are delivered with a flourish.

Some glitches still need to be worked out. The large bar area was practically deserted. Yet, when I asked for a cocktail list, the inattentive and seemingly bored bartender gave me the bottle service list instead, which listed only two cocktails. Only when we got to the table did we realize the restaurant offers a dozen others. Our bar tab was not transferrable to the dining room.

The dining room itself was about 25 percent full when we arrived at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, and about 75 percent full when we left. That’s probably not as good as they’d like, though not bad in a neighborhood that doesn’t come alive till late.

Shang is located in a luxury boutique hotel, the Thompson LES. The space is as gorgeous as it is comfortable. If you’ve been around a while, you have to pinch yourself before you believe you’re at the formerly desolate corner of Houston and Allen Streets. The restaurant’s advertised address—a separate entrance on Orchard Street—is not yet open. You get there via the hotel entrance on Allen Street.

No restaurant opening today can be assured of success, but if Chef Lee keeps his eye on the kitchen, Shang should do very well indeed.

Shang (187 Orchard Street between Houston & Stanton Streets, Lower East Side)

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

The Marshall Stack

 

The Marshall Stack is a sophisticated Lower East Side bar, named for a brand of guitar amplifier. Hung behind the bar is a photo of The Who’s Keith Townshend smashing his guitar on a Marshall Stack. The barely-labeled space is unfancy, but the bartender knows his beers. I counted 42 in all, including 20 on tap. There’s even a Sixpoint Craft Obama ale, made in Brooklyn, NY. Who knew there was an Obama tribute beer?

I was there early, before the kitchen staff arrived, so I didn’t sample any of the food. I was headed off to dinner anyway. But the Marshall Stack is certainly worth another visit.

The Marshall Stack (66 Rivington Street at Allen Street, Lower East Side)