Butter

Note: Butter “closed for renovations” in late 2013. The closure turned out to be permanent, as such closures often do. The space is now home to the revived Asia de Cuba, whose original incarnation closed in October 2011.

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I mentioned to a friend that I’d be dining at Butter on Saturday night. She replied, “Butter used to be a huge celeb hotspot about 2 years ago.” We saw no celebrities, but the place was packed. On entering, I was greeted by the same attitude Eric Asimov noted in his one-star review for the Times shortly after Butter opened in 2002:

From the outside, it’s difficult to fathom why Butter, which opened not long ago a few doors down from the Public Theater, requires a pair of grim hosts posted like sentries in a glass-walled vestibule, their arms mentally crossed. As with London beefeaters, I felt compelled on a recent visit to try to make them laugh, but I decided that they must have serious work to do, like fending off people who want to be seated before their full party has arrived.

Butter’s survival shows that a one-star review need not be fatal. Butter is still humming along, despite food that we found quite uneven.

The amuse bouche was a spoonful of undistinguished orzo with truffle oil. The bread service came with a small triangle of butter that looked like it was spiced with chives. I was intrigued, but it turned out to be nothing special. You’d think a restaurant called Butter could find a way to hit a home run with—the butter. For the appetizer, we both started with the foie gras terrine, which was above average.

For the main course, my friend ordered the ribeye steak, a slab of meat the size of Pittsburgh. Alexandra Guarnaschelli, the executive chef, previously cooked at Nick and Stef’s Steakhouse, and at least she can get a steak to the right temperature. But the accompanying bed of mushy kale was practically inedible. It tasted like it was made hours earlier and left sitting under a heat lamp. My pork chop brought even less joy. It was tough and over-cooked, and came with a vegetable medley that had suffered the same sad fate as the kale.

Far too much of the wine list was priced over $50 a bottle. We took our revenge by ordering from near the bottom of the list, a $40 Blaufränkisch (the only Austrian wine on the list). We should do that more often. It was delightful; indeed, better than anything the kitchen sent out.

As we were leaving, we peered into the kitchen, and found it a cluttered mess. “Messy kitchen = mediocre food,” we concluded. I don’t recall the prices of everything we ordered, and the menu on the web is outdated. Appetizers were in the $10–21 range, and entrees $19–35.

The physical space at Butter is visually arresting. The high vaulted ceiling dissipates some of the sound, but it still gets rather noisy when the restaurant fills up. On the lower level, there’s an informal cocktail lounge with a DJ. Halfway through our meal, my friend said, “A hundred people must have gone downstairs since we’ve been sitting here.” But the dining room was full too, which means people must find more merit to the place than we did.

Butter (415 Lafayette Street between Astor Place and E. 4th Street, NoHo)

Food: Fair
Service: Acceptable
Ambiance: Attractive, but noisy
Overall: Don’t bother

Five Points

Note: Five Points closed in August 2014 after fifteen years in business. It re-opened in October as Vic’s (named for Vicki Freeman, one of the partners), where chef Hillary Sterling (formerly of A Voce) servces an Italian–Mediterranean menu.

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Five Points is one of those restaurants that New York Magazine calls an “haute barnyard,” specializing in seasonal ingredients sourced from local providers. Cookshop in Chelsea, owned by the same team, is a close soulmate, serving many of the same menu items. Five Points is a bit more romantic, with its candle-lit room, leafy décor, and a table layout that emphasizes seating for couples.

I started with a grilled mushroom salad that seemed to be almost an afterthought to the kitchen. The mushrooms were just dumped on the plate with mixed greens. They tasted fine, but the plating was uninspired. My friend’s house-made country pate was a large portion, but I found it similarly uninspired.

For the main course, we both had the double-cut pork chop with a roasted apple sauce and pepper cress, which I rated an improvement on the appetizers: a comfort food competently prepared.

Five Points may not be a leader in its category, but the food is respectable and the space is easy on the eyes. Prices are quite reasonable, with appetizers from$8.50–13, and main courses from $17–28.

Five Points (31 Great Jones Street between Lafayette & Bowery, NoHo)

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

Colors

Note: Almost two years after I wrote this review, Colors was soldiering on, largely ignored in the restaurant press, and apparently no great success. A New York Times article suggested that it was struggling to survive. My award of a star was overly generous; the colleagues I dined with later said it was the worst restaurant recommendation I’d ever made.

Since then, there have been multiple closings and re-openings. Most recently, Colors closed in 2012 and re-opened in 2014 after a re-vamp. The original concept of a cooperative, with recipes suggests by the employees’ family backgrounds, has been abandoned. The new chef is Colt Taylor (One if by Land, Two if by Sea), with chef de cuisine Aaron Stein (Manzo, Perla).

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Colors is a restaurant you want to root for. It’s a cooperative run by former employees of Windows on the World at the World Trade Center. According to the manifesto on the website:

COLORS’ mission is to build a worker-owned cooperative restaurant dedicated to food quality, service excellence and employee welfare.

Chef Raymond Mohan and his kitchen team offer a global menu inspired by the diversity of the staff and their family recipes reinterpreted for New York diners. COLORS is committed to sustainable agriculture, purchasing locally grown foods and sourcing free trade vendors whenever possible. The winelist spotlights small wineries and producers from emerging regions, featuring great values from around the world.

I dined at Colors on Wednesday evening with two colleagues. It is an attractive space, even if the international theme hits you over the head (you can’t look anywhere without seeing a map). There are white tablecloths. The staff, in general, are highly professional and smartly dressed.

The bread service was as good as, or better than, many three-star restaurants I’ve been to. The menu is a mongrel, with dishes composed from many cuisines and styles, and no recognizable theme uniting them. Among the entrees, for example, you’ll find steak, goat curry, and a Japanese bento box. The offerings are said to be “inspired by favorite family recipes” (i.e., of the staff).

To start, I ordered the Colors House Cured Duck Breast ($13). The menu says it’s “Citrus flavored, hardwood smoked, served on raisin bread with porcini jelly.” The porcini jelly tasted more like a horseradish spread. The duck, an ample portion for an appetizer, came stacked on three small slices of bread. It was a little unwieldy to pick up and eat, but the rewards were ample.

One of my colleagues had an oyster appetizer that looked wonderful, while the other had a tuna appetizer that he described as “okay.” He didn’t finish it, so I would guess his response fell well short of rapture.

None of the entrees really caught our fancy, so all three of us wimped out, and ordered the NY Strip (around $33). It came with chimichurri sauce, potato confit, watercress and blue cheese salad—or so the menu said; I couldn’t really detect any blue cheese. The online menu shows a “Grass-Fed Ribeye,” and I don’t know why it’s been replaced. It’s hard to go seriously wrong with a steak, but at such a restaurant the strip is predictably going to fall short of what the better steakhouses have to offer.

The restaurant was nowhere near full. I suspect they are hanging on for dear life. There have been no professional reviews yet, aside from Frank Bruni’s Diner’s Journal preview right after the place opened. I suspect the critics are giving Colors a bit more time to get its act together—a kindness extended to a restaurant one desperately wants to succeed. Rather than deliver a potential death blow with lukewarm reviews, it seems the critics have steered clear, a courtesy they wouldn’t extend to most other restaurants.

Colors offers a pleasant experience in comfortable surroundings, but I won’t rush back.

Colors (417 Lafayette St. between Astor Place & E. 4th St., NoHo)

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

Bond Street

A few years ago, Bond Street was the Japanese restaurant of the rich and famous. Every review mentioned the celebrities and fashion models one encountered there. It is still doing a healthy business, but you can land a reservation easily on OpenTable, and you score a 1,000-point bonus for requesting an off-peak time, which we did.

BondSt has a suave décor of cool earthtones. My brother said it’s the kind of restaurant that the chicks on Sex and the City frequent, but which he always assumed didn’t really exist. From the unassuming frontage of a townhouse on the eponymous street in NoHo, you don’t imagine that such an oasis lies waiting for you inside. An elevator took us to our table on the second floor, emphasizing the feeling of being transported to another world.

I ordered the $60 tasting menu for me and my two guests. (Tasting menus are also available at $40, $80, and $100.) We were served eight courses, as follows:

1. Steamed, salted edamame.

2. Vegetable tower in a preparation so fancy it seemed a crime to bite into it.

3. Small squares of tuna tartare, with a respberry sauce and szechuan peppercorns.

4. BBQ quail wings with a beehive of fried soba noodles. The crispy quail wings were a highlight, although gone all too quickly, but the soba noodles were ruined by an overly salty soy sauce.

5. Scallop and shrimp over a sweet potato puree. This was the hit of the evening.

6. A sushi plate, six or seven pieces, with a mixture of salmon, whitefish, yellowtail, tuna roll, and others.

7. Noodle soup with seafood tempura.

8. Dessert – each of us received something different, which we shared, and all of which were wonderful. One was a bento box of mixed sorbets and ices; another was a heavenly preparation resembling strawberry shortcake with heavy cream, served in a sundae bowl; and third, a vanilla custard.

We ordered from the lower end of the sake menu, a $45 bottle that was smooth and fruity to the taste – one of the best sakes I’ve experienced, which may just tell you that I am not a true connoisseur. Service was friendly, attentive, and unpretentious. I can’t say that Bond Street equaled the amazing lunch I had at Nobu a few weeks ago, but it was a great meal nevertheless, which I’d be happy to recommend to anybody.

Bond Street (6 Bond Street between Broadway and Lafayette Street, NoHo)

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