The Cleveland

Note: This is a review under chef Kenneth Corrow, who left the restaurant about a month later. He was replaced by Tal Aboav, formerly of Balaboosta. As of January 2014, the executive chef was Max Sussman, formerly of Roberta’s. Sussman was able to breath some life into the place, but it closed in November 2014 due to a dispute with the landlord.

*

The Cleveland is a straightforward seasonal American neighborhood restaurant on the Soho–NoLIta border, where the John Fraser pop-up What Happens When used to be.

It’s redecorated in the over-familiar “rec room chic,” with exposed brick walls, hardwood floors, bare wood tables, mix ’n match chairs, flower arrangements in small mason jars, and napkins that resemble dishrags.

The chef, Ken Corrow, was a sous at Anella and Acme. I gather this is his first solo venture. Like the décor, the cuisine suffers from a lack of purpose. All FloFab could make out from the press release, is that Corrow “takes vegetables a creative distance.”

Pedestrian, rather than creative, is the word I’d use to describe the opening menu of just four small plates ($8–11), five mains ($17–26), and three sides ($6). The mains, for instance: steak, chicken, cod, papardelle, and risotto, none with any unusual take on vegetables that I could make out.

If the aim is to serve the neighborhood with hearty, inexpensive fare, it is undermined by the brief wine list. When three out of five entrées are under $20, the median price of a bottle of red needs to be below $60. I can’t find an Internet price for the 2011 Beaujolais we drank, but it didn’t taste like a fifty dollar wine.

 

Lamb meatballs ($15; above left) were overdone and under-seasoned. Cod ($21; above right) was bland.

 

Barley risotto with shredded duck confit, braised prunes, and caramelized onions ($17; above left) was too oily. A side of sautéed kale, herbs, pears, and pancetta chips ($6; above right) was too dry.

We had no trouble getting a weeknight 7 pm reservation at short notice, though by 8:30 pm the 34-seat dining room was close to full. (A 40-seat garden will open in back, when the weather warms up.) The server was attentive at first, but seemed to forget about us later on.

I’m sure the chef can do better, but we have to call it as we see it: we didn’t much care for any of the dishes we tried, and though they were inexpensive, the over-priced wine list practically doubled the bill.

The Cleveland (25 Cleveland Pl. between Spring & Kenmare Streets, NoLIta)

Food: Unadventurous seasonal New American
Service: Enthusiastic but occasionally inattentive
Ambance: Rec-room chic, right out of the playbook

Rating: Not recommended
Why? The food was not very good; the wine list was over-priced

Jo's

 

Note: Jo’s closed in May 2013.

*

Over three years ago, I wrote a mostly favorable review of Jo’s in NoLIta, which soon became obsolete after the owners fired the chef. The restaurant soldiered on for a couple of years with cooks, but apparently without a named chef, before Andrew Pressler (formerly of the Fatty Crab empire) was appointed executive chef late last year.

The owners recently invited my family and me to pay a return visit. We paid for our drinks, but the food was comped.

The space remains as I described it last time. The bar business is brisk; the cocktails are a strength, and at $11 a bargain by Manhattan standards. The new menu is dotted with Southeast Asian accents, although it’s not as provocative as the “Fatty” menus. But if you like that style, you’ll like this place, and it is less expensive.

On the current online menu, starters (dubbed “small plates”) are $7–16, entrées and house specialties $14–23, side dishes $3.50–6.00, desserts $7.50–11.00.

 

Our first quartet of dishes was:

1) Mussels with spicy garlic and butter ($12; above left)

2) House-made mushroom and cabbage dumplings ($6; above right)

3) Spicy shrimp with curry ($14; below left)

4) Deep-fried ork ribs ($16; below right)

 

The ribs were the highlight of this course, as luscious and plump as I’ve had anywhere.

 

Whole red snapper ($34 for two; above left) with curry and banana was the highlight of the evening, beautifully prepared, and easily separated with no bones to speak of. Shrimp fried rice with chili peppers ($14; above right) had an intense, fiery finish.

 

Fried chicken with butternut squash ($18; above left) was coated in a memorable plum sauce. Vietnamese Lamb Pho ($12; above right) in fish oil received nods of approval at our table, though I found it less compelling than the other entrées.

 

Fried chicken & waffle ice cream with maple syrup ($9; above left) is one of those gimmick desserts you have to order, but it really didn’t need shards of fried chicken skin protruding at odd angles. Peanut butter s’mores ($7.50; above right) is a much raved-about dessert, and deservedly so: a must-order.

 

Lime panna cotta with coconut (above left; not on current published menu) was a bit rubbery, but there were no complaints with a simple bowl of three house-made ice creams ($7.50; above right).

I’ve listed the prices above, where the items correspond to the current on-line menu. At the current rates, and compared to similar places, the food struck us as very good, with perhaps just one or two items slightly disappointing, among the dozen we tried. The chicken, the fish, the fried ribs, the fried rice, and the peanut butter s’mores are all highly recommended.

It’s hard to re-launch a restaurant under the same name: to the critics, it’s not considered a novelty. If you haven’t been to Jo’s lately, you haven’t been to Jo’s. I’m a big fan of the “Fatty Crab” style of cooking; I know it’s not for everyone. If you like the style—you know who you are—Jo’s is worth a try.

Jo’s (264 Elizabeth Street, south of Houston Street, NoLIta)

Ken & Cook

Note: There is a new chef at Ken & Cook as of January 2014: Hido Holli, who returns to New York after 13 years in France.

*

When you hear that Restaurant Such-and-Such is opening in a space that doubles as a nightclub, your immediate reaction is: This cannot end well. The failures are so numerous that it is hardly worth mentioning them.

Usually, I don’t bother visiting such places, but I was intrigued by Ken & Cook, which has been inviting bloggers for partly comped meals: The Pink Pig has already weighed in (favorably), and I saw another blogger there who, I assume, had been lured under similar circumstances. I’m not in the target demographic (and neither is The Pink Pig), so I have to guess that they are trying to make a case for the food as a stand-alone proposition.

You’d expect it to be at least competent, with two guys running it from Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s stable: managing partner Artan Gjoni and chef Richard Diamonte, both formerly of Mercer Kitchen (admittedly, not JGV’s best spot).

Actually, the food is far more than just competent. At times, it’s even impressive. It won’t get a Michelin star, and you won’t be celebrating your anniversary here. But for a place where most of the entrées are sub-$30, it’s enjoyable indeed. Among the five dishes we ordered there wasn’t a dud, and there are a couple I’d be eager to order again.

The menu is vaguely half-American, half-Italian, in sections labeled 1st Course ($13–17), 2nd (pastas, $19–23), 3rd (most $18–28, with steaks and lobster a lot higher), and side dishes ($3–8). There’s also a raw bar and a variety of cheese and charcuterie selections, almost all Italian.

The three-part structure might encourage over-ordering, but the pastas are large enough to be entrées, as the server (to his credit) pointed out.

The cuisine is not challenging. You could write the menu yourself and guess three-quarters of it: beet salad, steak tartare, linguine with clams, pork chop, wagyu burger, chicken, côte de bœuf for two ($95), mac & cheese, and so forth. All that is left to the chef is to prepare it well, and that he does.

 

The mixed cheese and charcuterie platter ($26; above left) and the beef tartare ($16; above right) are excellent ways to start.

 

A tender Wagyu flank steak ($26; above left) was served with pesto, asparagus, and almond.

Linguine with clams ($19; above right) is beyond cliché, but this was one of the better examples of it that I’ve tasted in a long while.

The pairing of salmon ($26; right) with corn and bacon is not one I’ve encountered in the past, but it worked extremely well. It was the best dish of the evening.

 

Desserts were comped, and as they’re not listed online I can’t give prices or precise descriptions. I believe they were a fruit and nut parfait (above left) and warm sugar-coated beignets (above right).

It’s a late-arriving crowd at Ken & Cook. The room was nearly empty at 6:45pm on a Wednesday evening, but practically full at 9:30, when we left. The space is right out of the Keith McNally playbook, with backlit subway tile along the bar. On a nice evening, there are wide French doors that open to the street. Once the weather turns, and those doors are shut, we suspect it will be quite loud in here.

Service was on the slow side, especially the wait for the entrées after the appetizers had been cleared. This is not a good sign, as we were known to the house, the restaurant has been open for four months, and it wasn’t their busiest evening. Perhaps it’s best to order a bottle of wine, and come with companions you don’t mind talking to, because you’ll be talking and drinking for a while.

The half-life of club–restaurants is notoriously unpredictable, but if Richard Diamonte remains chef at Ken & Cook, there’s a good chance the food will remain worthwhile.

Ken & Cook (19 Kenmare Street between Bowery & Broome Streets, NoLIta)

Food: Italian-inflected American cuisine, consistently good
Service: friendly but slow
Ambiance: McNallyesque

Rating: ★
Why? A nightclub cum restaurant, far better than most others in the genre 

Balaboosta

When they write the tale of Sam Sifton’s failed tenure as a restaurant critic, perhaps his enthusiastic one-star review of Balaboosta will be front and center: four of the first six paragrahs were about the guests and his fantasies about them, rather than the restaurant.

After that review, for about a year, Balaboosta was always booked when I wanted to go. It remains popular, but lately crowds have thinned a bit. You no longer have to do cartwheels (or dine at inhospitable hours) to get in.

The chef, Einat Admony, serves up a pleasing mix of Mediterranean and Middle Eastern (non-Kosher) cuisine from her native Tel Aviv. There aren’t many great examples of this cuisine in Manhattan, a fact that elevates Balaboosta above the merely routine.

The restaurant’s name is Yiddish, and like much of that language, not exactly translatable. The rough meaning is, “perfect housewife,” which, if it were written in English, wouldn’t tell you much, except that the chef is a woman. She also has a West Village falafal restaurant called Taïm, though her blog gives the impression that most of her attention is spent here.

The menu is admirably focused, with about half-a-dozen entries each in three categories: small plates ($5–11), appetizers ($9–14), and entrées ($20–29).

The wine list — all sustainable, organic, or biodynamic — is mostly French and Italian. There are plenty of choices in the $30–50 range, so you can get out of here for less than the $100 per person that seems to be the mid-priced standard nowadays.

While you wait for the food, you can snack on fried Yuca chips (above left), which have the alarming tendency to spoil one’s appetite.

From the “small plates” part of the menu, we shared the Crispy Cauliflower ($10; below left) with currants and pine nuts, an outstanding dish.

A very good whole Branzino ($29; above right) came with grilled asparagus, a beet-citrus salad, and a lemon-dill sauce.

Sifton’s favorite dish was the boneless half chicken cooked “under a brick,” Israeli couscous with dried apricots and green leeks, and gremolata sauce. It wasn’t bad for a $22 entrée, but the chef didn’t coax as much flavor or tenderness out of the bird as the best I have had lately, the chicken at Tiny’s in Tribeca.

We had a fairly early reservation and found the home-spun space delightful before it filled up. But like so many modern downtown restaurants, the exposed brick meme is played out to the hilt. When full, later in the evening, we were shouting to hear each other, and that was with a corner table. In the middle of the room, I suspect it would have been worse.

Balaboosta is a pleasant enough place, though I would probably choose to come back for lunch or at off-peak dinner hours.

Balaboosta (214 Mulberry Street at Spring Street, NoLIta)

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

ellabess

Note: It turns out I overrated Ellabess. Reviews were lukewarm, and the place never caught on. It closed in February 2012 after seven months in business.

*

If you want to know if a new restaurant will be good, look at the company it keeps. Danny Meyer, for instance, couldn’t open a bad restaurant if he tried.

The same, I think, is true of the less well known Epicurean Management, which runs a duo of wonderful, casual Italian restaurants in the West Village (dell’anima and L’Artusi) and a nearby wine bar (Anfora).

With three hit restaurants to their name, they could have upped their game or stuck with what works. They’ve done the latter: the proffer at ellabess falls squarely within the dell’anima/L’Artusi idiom, except that it is not Italian. The owners are apparently happy to grow within a successful model, rather than to challenge it.

The restaurant is located in the boutique Nolitan Hotel, one of many largely interchangeable places dotting the East Village, the Lower East Side, and adjacent neighborhoods. The designer has thoughtfully given the dining room floor-to-ceiling glass picture windows, perhaps hoping that a view worth looking at will come later. At least it admits plenty of natural light.

Gabe Thompson and Joe Campanale, chef and sommelier respectively of the group’s West Village establishments, aren’t involved here. Troy Unruh, a former dell’anima chef de cuisine, runs the kitchen. He serves a mid-priced “seasonal American” (aren’t they all?) downtown menu, with appetizers $8–18, mains $22–32, sides $7. The list of selections at the three-week-old restaurant is brief—just nine appetizers and five entrées—but presumably will rotate frequently, as its seasonal emphasis is fairly apparent.

We shared an octopus salad ($16; above left), an excellent savory–sweet–tart justaposition with melon, cucumber, and mint. The same good judgment was evident in a comped fluke ceviche (above right) with watermelon, chili, radish, and mint.

The chef is fond of melon in savory dishes, but handles it well, as seen in a delightful striped bass ($27; above left) with melon consommé and heirloom cherry tomatoes. A gorgeous, lightly-poached king salmon ($32; above right) lay in a bed of porcini mushrooms, blueberries, and juniper lamb jus.

The wine list is not the conversation piece it is at the group’s West Village places, though it may blossom into one. A Domaine Ostertag Riesling ($40) paired well with our food choices.

The dining room was busy, but not full, on a Wednesday evening. Service was attentive, and the host seated me before my girlfriend arrived. There are no tablecloths, but with plenty of open space the room is not an echo chamber, as it is at so many other new places we’ve visited lately.

If not yet rising to destination status, ellabess has made a promising start.

ellabess (153 Elizabeth Street at Kenmare Street, NoLIta)

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

Double Crown

Note: Double Crown closed in August 2011. It was replaced by Saxon & Parole with the same chef (Brad Farmerie), focusing on game and domestic meats.

*

This has happened to all of us: you get to the restaurant, and the host asks you to wait at the bar until your party is complete.

What happened last night at Double Crown took arrogance and audacity to new heights. When I arrived, the host said:

Your guest is here. She went to the ladies’ room. When she gets back, I’ll take you to your table. Feel free to wait at the bar.

This was in a practically empty dining room.

In a busy, casual restaurant, I respect the policy of not seating incomplete parties. Why should the host keep someone else waiting, while I sit at a half-empty table, waiting for guests who may never show up, or who could be considerably delayed?

But Double Crown wasn’t busy, and my date had arrived. Asking me to wait at the bar in that situation is beyond absurd.

Beyond that was a loud sound track that made pleasant conversation difficult; a hackneyed faux Asian décor phoned in by the folks of AvroKO, who’ve done better work elsewhere; and a Vongerichten lite fusion menu that seems to have lost its focus since Frank Bruni awarded two grade-inflated stars in 2008.

The website claims that, “Double Crown explores the aesthetic and culinary dualities arising from the British Empire’s forays into Southeast Asia.” The British influences have disappeared, assuming they existed in the first place. What we have now is pan-Asian miscellany, filtered through an East Village twenty-something comfort food lens.

At least it is not terribly expensive. Most appetizers are $13 or less, most entrées $27 or less. Cocktails were $12, including a great chipotle sour made with three kinds of whisky. That passes for a bargain in Manhattan these days. Bread service (below left) was pretty good too, with two kinds of rolls and soft butter.

A whole braised short rib for two, served on the bone ($44; above right), and coated with an unspecified spice mix, was tender and flavorful, but short rib is hard to mess up if you braise it long enough. I realize that braised meats are prepared long in advance, but this came out literally five minutes after we ordered it—before the wine was poured, in fact. It came with a decent Asian mushroom salad.

The wine list, printed on the back of the menu, is a grab bag with no particular focus. There’s an ample selection of inexpensive bottles, or you can go into the triple digits for bottles that I couldn’t imagine drinking with this food. A 2007 Weninger Zweigelt at $36 was one of the more enjoyable inexpensive bottles I’ve seen in quite some time.

The server kept the wine on a counter away from the table, and I wondered if she’d be attentive enough to keep our glasses charged. Surprisingly, she was. But after the wine was finished, and we wanted our bill, she was nowhere to be seen.

When Double Crown opened, the Bowery was just beginning to sow its oats as a dining destination. Nowadays, if you’re in the area, Pulino’s, DBGB, or Peels are all better bets. And if you have a hankering for Chef Brad Farmerie’s best work, Michelin-starred Public and The Monday Room aren’t far away.

Those are all better options than Double Crown.

Double Crown (316 Bowery at Bleecker Street, NoLIta/East VIllage)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Loud and Hackneyed
Overall: No Stars

Pulino's

Note: Pulino’s never really caught on, and closed at the end of December 2013. It was the first McNally restaurant ever to close. A French restaurant Cherche Midi, is expected to replace it.

*

My son and I had an early dinner at Pulino’s last week. Since we last visited, owner Keith McNally fired the opening chef, Nate Appleman, and replaced him with one of his corporate chefs, Tony Liu. Typical of McNally, he blasted the critics for under-appreciating the place, but by replacing the chef so soon, apparently acquiesced in their judgment.

Appleman was at least trying to serve interesting food, and for the most part he succeeded. In replacing Appleman, McNally has regressed to the mean. Pulino’s will always be dependable, if you don’t mind throngs of tourists and the crowded, generic, punishingly loud room. But it will never be destination cuisine—just a useful option if you happen to be in the neighborhood.

Ricotta Bruschetta ($12; above left) was curiously bland and didn’t come with enough bruschette. An off-menu special of Softshell Crab ($24; above right), lightly breaded and deep fried, was quite good. We didn’t try pizza, but those we saw at other tables were thicker than those Appleman served, rectifying a nearly universal complaint under the prior regime.

Add a beer ($7), two lemonades ($8), and a shared dessert (3 smallish scoops of gelati, $8), and you’re up to $59 before tax and tip, for not very much food. Pulino’s is not bad, by any means, but it no longer aspires to be great.

Pulino’s (282 Bowery at Houston Street, NoLIta)

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

Torrisi Italian Specialties

Note: Torrisi Italian Specialties closed at the end of 2014. It is expected to be re-vamped as a fine dining restaurant, and to re-open with a new name in 2015.

The review below was written when Torrisi was still serving a downscale Italian comfort-food menu that many people loved, but I found overrated. It was later remodeled and upgraded, and also started taking reservations. By the time it closed, the restaurant was probably better than the one star I gave it, but I never made it back for another look.

*

At 7:25 p.m. the other night, a man walked into Torrisi Italian Specialties, and asked, “How long for a table?”

“Ten fifteen,” replied the hostess.

“Ten or fifteen minutes! That’s great!!” the man exclaimed.

“That’s 10:15 at night,” the hostess corrected him.

The crestfallen man departed without leaving his name. He was unwilling to make the hours-long commitment required for the privilege of a prime-time table at this twenty-seat restaurant, which does not accept reservations.

I suspect that Torrisi Italian Specialties has raised the fortunes of every bar in the neighborhood, where diners cool their heels waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the hostess to call when their table is ready. This has been the story for the last few months, ever since Robin Raisfeld and Rob Patronite awarded the improbable restaurant five underground stars in New York, and Sam Sifton awarded two stars in the Times.

Torrisi Italian Specialities occupies an old-school Little Italy storefront. (The neighborhood is called NoLIta today, but it was squarely in Little Italy a century ago.) By day it’s a sandwich shop; by night, a prix fixe restaurant—fifty bucks for eight courses, which change daily. Your only choice is meat or fish for the entrée.

The restaurant plays from a script we’ve seen before: chefs who cut their teeth at three-star restaurants (Del Posto and Café Boulud), now working in the humblest of surroundings, where all the trappings of fine dining are stripped away. They’ve got a smash hit—the equivalent of a Broadway show sold out months in advance.

If you want to dine here, your best option is to show up at around 5:30 p.m. Your margin for error is slim. On a Friday evening, there were already about a dozen people in line at that hour. A few minutes more, and I would have been too late for the first seating.

The hostess, whose watch is synchronized to an atomic clock, emerges at exactly 5:45 to take names. At 6:00 on the dot, she starts escorting diners, one party at a time, into the tiny sandwich shop. They keep the lights low, perhaps to confer a bit of romanticism in such humble surroundings. (The ploy works!)

*

The hardest review to write is of a restaurant that is good—yet, not as good as it’s cracked up to be. I don’t want to give the impression I’m panning the place, because I’m not. Dinner at Torrisi Italian Specialties is enjoyable—once you get in—and you won’t go home hungry. Nobody in town is serving an eight-course Italian feast, especially this good, for just $50.

But objectively speaking, the kitchen is not as accomplished as at nearby Peasant or Locanda Verde, both of which have nailed the rustic Italian genre into which Torrisi fits. And both offer much broader menus, without locking you into an eight-course format. You’ll pay a bit more, but the food will be better, and you can eat at reasonable times without waiting for hours.

And let’s be honest: the chefs, Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone, drastically limit their degree of difficulty, by limiting your options to a choice between two entrées. To make up for that, they really need to ace every dish, and they don’t.

Every meal has the same format: five antipasti, a pasta, an entrée, and a plate of dessert pastries. Among the antipasti, I counted two winners, two that were merely average, and one dud.

The first antipasto is the only that does not change every day (above left): garlic bread with tomato powder, and warm mozzarella with DaVero olive oil, milk thistle cream, and I believe a dash of sea salt. If you’re accustomed to mozzarella served cold, this is a revelation.

The second was the only dud: calamari marinara (above right). Served cold, it was goopy and bland.

The next two were of no particular distinction; you could probably make them at home: a Broccoli Rabe alla Panama (above left) and a Pickle Salad New Yorkese (above right). The suffixes “alla Panama” and “New Yorkese” weren’t explained.

The antipasti finished with another winner: Fresh Ham drizzled with melted Cheddar (above left).

The pasta course was Sheep’s Milk Ricotta Gnocchi (above right). My reaction was that if you add enough garlic and butter, you can’t go too far wrong. Once again, a good Italian cook could make this at home.

Barbecue Lamb Shoulder (above left) with corona beans and collards had such a haunting smoky flavor that I wondered if the chefs had an unlicensed smoker in the back yard. The server said that it was just a dry rub, left to marinate overnight. (The fish entrée, for the record, was a black bass in Fulton chowder.)

There was a tiny scoop of homemade ice, served in a paper cup, followed by a generous selection of Italian pastries (above right).

The wine list fits on the back of a laminated card, and if you order by the glass—as I did—there is just one each of bubbly, white, rosé, or red, served in a water glass. Service is friendly and efficient, but silverware is not replaced until after the pasta course. By that time, there’s a coating of ooze on the table, where your knife and fork have repeatedly been put down after each plate was cleared.

I can understand the critics’ rapture for a restaurant serving such an enormous amount of food, most of it pretty good, at such a low price. (The prix fixe was just $45 when New York reviewed it.) But Torrisi Italian Specialties is not a two-star restaurant, and the Times does the real two-star restaurants a disservice by saying so. Quite apart from the many amenities it lacks, far too much of the food is rather simplistic.

The menu changes daily and is posted every morning on the restaurant’s website, the cheekily named piginahat.com, so you can decide if it’s worth standing in line for. I’d love to try a few more of the entrées, but to do so, I’d need to sign up for the whole $50 production all over again. I’m not sure if I’m up for that.

Torrisi Italian Specialties (250 Mulberry Street at Prince Street, NoLIta)

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

Pulino's Bar & Pizzeria

 

Note: This is a review under Chef Nate Appleman, who left the restaurant in November 2010.

*

Few New York restauranteurs—okay, none—have managed to attract as much giddy anticipation as when Keith McNally opens a new place. He’s on—what is it?—his tenth or fifteenth brasserie, each duly stamped out of a pre-fab mold, and each hailed instantly as if he were doing something new.

The critics have often liked but have seldom adored his restaurants. Frank Bruni wrote a three-star love letter to Minetta Tavern (the only rating above two stars McNally has ever received), but panned Morandi, curiously the McNally restaurant that is least like the others. Those were the only ones that opened during Bruni’s tenure. On this point McNally deserves much credit: he doesn’t shove restaurants hastily out the workroom door. He bides his time, and when he sees gold, he pounces.

I’m less in McNally’s thrall than most people. I wouldn’t have given Minetta Tavern three stars, but I’ve been twice and love it, for what it is. I found Pastis entirely unimpressive, Odeon and Schiller’s both forgettable, though it should be noted I visited them long past their prime. Nevertheless, Schiller’s and Pastis remain packed (I have not checked Odeon lately). I have never been to Balthazar: it’s too difficult to get in, at the hours I would want to go.

Now comes Pulino’s Bar & Pizzeria, which is right out of McNally’s playbook—but then again, no. It looks and feels like a McNally place, but he lured James Beard honoree Nate Appleman away from San Francisco, to sling pizza on the Bowery.

(All of McNally’s past chef hires were from New York, and if we can put it so delicately, he seldom chose anyone who presented any threat of running the show. Quick: do the names of any McNally chefs trip off the tongue? That’s right: they don’t.)

The pro reviewers have hammered Pulino’s pizzas, which are made with a thin crust resembling matzo. Of the six pro reviews I checked, not one liked it. For a restaurant that has “pizzeria” in its name, that’s a drawback.

I visited Pulino’s by myself. Given the reviews, I wasn’t going to take a chance on pizza. (The server advised that a hungry solo diner can finish one, but not if you want to try anything else.)

Fortunately, there are many non-pizza items, and you know what? I loved everything I tried. All the food is cooked in two huge wood-burning ovens, which impart a rustic, smoky flavor.

None of the food at Pulino’s will break the bank. Appetizers (various salads, antipasti, proschutti, bruschette) are $8–15, pizzas $9–18 and easily shareable, mains $18–29.

 

I started with the Fazzoletti (above left), crèpes topped with ricotta, lamb ragu and peccorino: a hearty dish, full of flavor. Tender polpettine (above right), or braised goat meatballs, came in a luscious sauce of honey, black pepper, green garlic, white wine, polenta verde, and almonds.

I can’t find an online dessert menu, but I think I had the budino di faro pudding topped with dates and goat’s-milk yogurt (left).

What I loved about this food, besides that it was very good and impeccably prepared, is that I haven’t seen these exact dishes at a hundred other places. Now, a pizzeria that can’t make pizza has a real problem, but there’s excellence and even a bit of inventiveness on the rest of the menu.

The cookie-cutter décor, cribbed from other McNally joints, doesn’t deserve any awards. And at a brand new restaurant, I shouldn’t have to contend with a table that wobbles on an uneven surface.

Restrooms with a shared washroom are another design feature out of McNally’s playbook. In the photo (right), you’ll notice separate doors labeled “women” and “men.” In fact, they lead to the same room, with a sink for washing up, and with toilets behind another set of doors.

I had read about this, but I presume many guests have not. While I was at the sink, a woman poked her head inside the door, gasped, and quickly backed out. Is this McNally trademark is past its sell-by date?

Pulino’s serves the identical menu for lunch and dinner. I took advantage of a slow work day to visit Pulino’s for a very late lunch, at 1:45 p.m., when it was less than half full. At prime times, I hear it is mobbed and oppressively loud.

If there’s anyone who can survive a slew of terrible reviews, it’s Keith McNally. Really, aside from the wobbly table, I had no complaints about the meal or the service at all. I suspect Pulino’s will remain popular for a long time to come.

Pulino’s Bar & Pizzeria (282 Bowery at Houston Street, NoLIta)

Food: **
Service: *
Ambiance: Not the reason to dine here
Overall: *½

Kenmare

Note: Consulting chef Joey Campanaro left the restaurant in February 2011. As of April 2011, his replacement was Gilbert Delgado, a Del Posto/Breslin/Spotted Pig alum. Kenmare closed in October. As of 2013, the space is a Japanese small-plates restaurant called MaisonO.

*

The aughts have been awfully kind to Joey Campanaro, with big hits first at The Harrison (two stars from William Grimes), then at The Little Owl and Market Table (two stars each from Frank Bruni), with a failure at the short-lived Pace as the only blemish on his resume.

Much as we liked Little Owl and Market Table, we thought that Bruni overrated them. The Little Owl owed its reputation to just a few basic dishes (the sliders, the pork chop, the burger). Everything there was nicely done, but it wasn’t destination dining and shouldn’t have been portrayed as such. Our opinion of Market Table was much the same.

With Kenmare, which opened recently in the failed Civetta space, there are signs that Campanaro’s imagination is finally running close to exhaustion. The restaurant is larger than the Little Owl and Market Table combined, and lacks both the intimacy and polish of its predecessors. The menu is dreary, the kitchen’s work slapdash.

A Risotto du Jour ($14; above left) was a sign of sad things to come: it was served in an unwarmed bowl and was already slightly cool when it reached us. We liked the gooey egg yolk on top, but there was no sign of the promised black truffles, except for some itsy bitsy black specks that made no flavor impression.

The Chicken ($19; above right) is clearly supposed to remind you of the Little Owl’s signature dish, The Pork Chop, though it is a poor substitute. The chicken itself is beautifully prepared, but it wasn’t helped by dull and lazily-plated escarole and butter beans.

Veal Cutlet ($25; above left) was a disaster. A diner would be embarrassed to serve it. The runny salsa verde tasted like barbecue sauce out of a bottle, and the veal was tough. We gave up after a few bites.

Cauliflower and broccoli with toasted breadcrumbs ($6; above right) was a fine, if uninspired, side dish.

Rhubarb Crisp is in season. Kenmare’s version ($9; right) is very good, although we haven’t found a bad one. If you visit Kenmare, perhaps you should skip the savory courses and go straight to dessert. 

Aside from that, nothing at Kenmare impressed us. The décor is lively and bright, but you’ve seen it a hundred times before. Tables are tightly spaced. The serving plates look like they were bought second-hand. The place has been open for only a month, and already some of them are chipped.

The rather abbreviated wine list is fairly priced, but uninteresting.

Kenmare has been packed in the early days, thanks in large part to the reputations of Little Owl and Market Table. If those places were slightly overrated, at least they were charming, and fulfilled their modest ambitions admirably. Kenmare can’t even do that. It’s just a big box, and not a very good one.

Kenmare (98 Kenmare Street between Mulberry Street & Cleveland Place, NoLIta)

Food: Fair
Service: Decent
Ambiance: Fair
Overall: Fair