Bacchanal

Note: Well, that was fast. Four months in, chef Scott Bryan left the restaurant to take over at Corvo Bianco on the Upper West Side. That’s not exactly a hotspot, so the difference of opinion between Bryan and the owners here must have been substantial. As noted below, it seemed to us that there was a disconnect between Bryan’s inexpensive casual menu here and the deep wine list. Alas, the new chef at Bacchanal, couldn’t rescue the concept either, and the restaurant closed at the end of 2015.

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Years from now, perhaps the early twenty-teens will be called the VeriCru diaspora. Veritas and Cru, perhaps the two best wine restaurants the city has seen, both expired in 2009–10, victims of the Great Recession.

(For the history buffs out there, I do realize that Veritas re-modeled and somehow soldiered on until 2013. I prefer to remember Veritas as it was conceived, not the watered-down replacement that tried and failed to replace it.)

Since then, we’ve seen openings like Pearl & Ash and Charlie Bird, where great (but not “VeriCru” epic) wine lists pair with good (but not great) food in drastically pared-down rooms. To me, it seems odd to pair a $250 Brunello with a $29 roast chicken, in a room where you can barely hear yourself talk. But if you want it, you can have it. Veritas and Cru had it all; these places do not.

Welcome to Bacchanal, the latest entry in the genre. The pedigree is obvious, starting with the chef, Scott Bryan, who opened Veritas (lasted eight years there), consulted a bit, spent five years at the mediocre Apiary, and is now back in his element.

Owner Peter Poulakakos has a stable of Financial District restaurants, anchored by Harry’s at Hanover Square and the more recent Vintry Wine & Whisky, where the reserve list goes as high as a 1945 Château Haut-Brion for $9,975. No doubt Poulakakos borrowed from those superb lists to open Bacchanal, as it’s almost unheard of to build such a cellar from scratch at an untried restaurant.

On a wine and spirits list that runs to 40 pages, you’ve got 1970 Domaine de la Romanée-Conti ($9,125), 1978 Château Pétrus ($2,900), and 1982 Château Mouton Rothschild ($1,950), to name a few. For those who don’t want to spend a mortgage payment on dinner, there are many excellent offerings in the $45–60 range. But how can you not splurge, at least a little bit? A 2001 Château Moulinet, which the sommelier decanted, was well worth the tarrif at $75.

The knock on Scott Bryan at Veritas, was that the food never approached the wine list’s pyrotechnics. It was quietly competent and seldom disappointed, but it never left you with enduring memories, the way the wine did. He has built a similar menu here. It is surprisingly affordable, with no entrée more expensive than a $26 steak.

I am still left with the question that left me perplexed at Charlie Bird and Pearl & Ash: who is ordering three- and four-figure wine bottles, but demands a food menu that is practically budget-priced by today’s standards? Where’s the 28 dry-aged prime ribeye that Harry’s Steak sells for $48.

On paper, the food doesn’t exactly set the pulse racing. Listen to this list of entrées: pasta, ricotta agnolotti, risotto, chicken, codfish, salmon, skirt steak. As he did at Veritas, Bryan executes all of this with cool precision that makes it worthwhile, especially if the prices remain as low as they are now. If the food doesn’t get in the wine list’s way, it has done its job.

 

An Escarole Salad ($10; above left) wasn’t as blurry in real life as my lousy photo, but it was exceedingly pedestrian, with an anchovy vinaigrette that barely registered. Why not charge a couple of bucks more, and give us real anchovies? But Bryan can still cook. A Chilled Corn Velouté ($10; above right) was a soup of astonishing clarity, drizzled with roasted poblanos, sweet tomatoes, and basil.

 

Both entrées were wonderful, bearing in mind the price point: Atlantic Codfish ($26; above left) with white bean purée, manila clams, roasted garlic, and parsley; Roasted Chicken ($22; above right) with polenta, chanterelles, madeira, and tarragon.

Dessert was a delightful Peach Tarte Tatin ($10; left) with créme frâiche ice cream and caramel.

Bacchanal occupies the southern frontier on the new Bowery, with its own street entrance in the boutique Sohotel. It is a more polished restaurant than Charlie Bird or Pearl & Ash, but like those establishments, it has a distinctly downtown vibe. Low ceilings and brick walls ensure a punishing sound level. My wife and I had to shout at each other all evening, and we were seated at a two-top in a corner, with no one on either side of us.

The well-executed food and excellent wine list are somewhat undermined by the service, which was a bit slow. The restaurant was close to full on a Wednesday evening.

It will be interesting to see how Bacchanal and other restaurants of the VeriCru diaspora evolve. If you want vast wine lists without paying three-star prices for the food, these restaurants are the places where you find them. But such a large room is hardly the place where I would contemplate a three-figure Brunello. The chef does a thoroughly professional job, especially at the absurdly low price point. You have to wonder how the clash between such luxurious wine and the quotidian surroundings will eventually be settled.

Bacchanal (146 Bowery at Broome Street, Soho)

Food: Casual American, mostly well executed at a surprisingly low price point
Service: At times slow, but otherwise good
Ambiance: A punishingly loud, low-ceilinged room

Rating: ★★

Chicane

Note: Chicane closed for summer renovations in June 2014. Usually, such closures turn out to be permanent. Sure enough, Chicane closed for good in October. As we noted in our review (below), there were “abundant signs that the idea [wasn’t] well thought out.”

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Good casual French cuisine in New York has been on the upswing in recent years, but it’s still nowhere near plentiful enough. Italian restaurants and steakhouses with phoned-in menus open with regularity, but a new French restaurant almost always feels special.

So it’s a pity that Chicane, which opened three months ago in Soho, is such a miserable example of the genre. It is not merely that the food was mediocre on the night we tried it: even good restaurants have off nights. But when fries are thick and mushy, it’s a sign that our visit wasn’t an anomaly: whatever else they do, French restaurants have to ace the frites in moules frites.

There are abundant signs that the idea isn’t well thought out. The South of France is the nominal theme at Chicane (named for a twisting section of track on the Monaco Grand Prix). But just a few dishes on the menu are captioned as specialties of that region. Many of the others, if they are French at all, could be found anywhere.

The chef, Andres Grundy, hails from Queens, not exactly a Monte Carlo suburb. He has worked at some very good restaurants at least briefly: Daniel, Le Cirque, Aquavit, Bouley, Daniel, Montrachet, Raoul’s (all in New York), two-star La Broche in Spain, L’Arpège in Paris. Since 2009 alone, he has been at Clio in Boston, then back in New York at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, Insieme, the Hotel Williamsburg, and now Chicane. By 2015 at the latest, I suspect he’ll be somewhere else.

Both the menu and the wine list are printed on frayed card stock that is already showing signs of ill-use. Sure enough, the first wine I chose was not available: the list had obviously not been re-printed anytime recently.

The menu is in the four-part format that is the current NYC standard, with “sharing plates and specialties” ($6–10; cheese plate $18), appetizers ($9–19), entrées ($19–32), and side dishes ($7). Those aren’t unfair prices, if only the food were better. Our server’s recommendations were generally the most expensive dishes, and after we’d ordered he tried to upsell us into even more.

 

Barbajuans ($8; above left), the national dish of Monaco, are puff pastries filled with Swiss chard and ricotta cheese. But I doubt the originals are as dry and bland as these. The Pissaladière ($10; above right) was made with a crust so thin that it crumbled instantly. Without enough bread to give it structure, the dish tasted like caramelized onion soup with anchovies and sliced olives lazily sprinkled on top.

 

There seemed to be nothing wrong with Mussels Marinières ($21; above left), but the mushy fries were a textural disaster (or nearly as disastrous as fries can be).

 

Lamb Shoulder ($28; above left) is braised overnight, but the goopy fat in this specimen looked as unpleasant as it tasted. For dessert, a Strawberry Vache ($12; above right) was decent enough.

The 75-seat dining room is decorated in a sunny Monaco motif (plenty of Grace Kelly photos). But the excessive din from the noisy bar, packed two deep, would have marred this potentially romantic spot, even if the food had been better. The bar, indeed, seems to be the scene here, as most of the tables were unoccupied at 8:00pm on a Wednesday evening. There is supposedly a subterranean cocktail lounge in the basement (mentioned in an UrbanDaddy piece), but with no reviews that I can find.

The owners clearly made an investment in this space, but if if they want to serve southern French cuisine, there is an additional investment they ought to consider: a chef from the South of France.

Chicane (430 Broome Street between Lafayette & Crosby Streets, Soho)

Food: Southern French cuisine…sort of
Service: Upsellingly obnoxious
Ambiance: A noisy beach in Nice, waiting for the chef to arrive

Rating: Not Recommended (no stars)

Ariana Soho

A restaurant run by a pop singer is usually not destined for great success. Ariana Grinblat, known in Russia as just “Ariana,” hopes to change that.

The self-described “foodie at heart” says that “Russian food in the U.S. has remained stagnant for the last 100 years while cuisine in Russia continues to evolve and transform.” At Ariana Soho, her aim is to “shock your senses, and redefine what you thought you knew about Russian food.”

Born in Houston to Russian parents, Ms. Grinblat divided her childhood between the U.S. and Russia (she speaks English without an accent). I know nothing about Russian R&B, but Ms. Grinblat is obviously successful, winning “6 Russian Grammys” (the first of them while she was still in high school), “3 Song of the Year Awards, an MTV Europe Music Award Nomination for Best Russian Act, and a platinum debut album selling over 500,000 units.”

This is not one of those celebrity restaurants where the nominal owner appears for a photo-op, and is never seen again. Nearly three months after opening, on a rainy weeknight in late April, with no more than 10 customers present, Ms. Grinblatt was there all evening, dressed rather more chastely than in the photo.

She and her husband/co-owner, Lev Schnur, have their work cut out for them. The 2,000-square-foot space is divided into four rooms, three of which were totally empty when we visited, and even in the fourth there was not much energy. No professional critic has reviewed it. Where are the throngs of Russian ex-pats that have filled Mari Vanna since it opened?

There clearly is potential here. The serene back dining room with a spectacular skylight, contemporary art work, and generously-spaced seating with white tablecloths, lacks only for customers. A curtained grotto at the back of the restaurant, with a gas fireplace, could be one of the city’s most romantic tables, if only people knew about it.

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The Art of the Cassoulet at Back Forty

Every winter, chef Peter Hoffman hosts a Cassoulet tasting at his Soho restaurant Back Forty, a worthy tradition carried over from dearly departed Savoy, which occupied the same location from 1990–2011.

The only constants in cassoulet are an earthenware pot and white beans. Almost any meats can be included, but duck leg and pork sausage are the most common. Savoy itself used to serve a terrific cassoulet, which it prepared in the upstairs fireplace. We had it in 2009.

There’s a cult of cassoulet, and even a Universal Cassoulet Academy devoted to the dish. Philippe Bertineau, the Academy’s only member based in America, serves an acclaimed cassoulet at Alain Ducasse’s Benoit. I suppose it would be too much to expect him to serve it at Back Forty.

Nevertheless, Hoffman assembled a worthy sextet of chefs (click on the menu for a larger image), including two from his pair of Back Forty restaurants.

The format isn’t ideal. You grab a napkin and fork, walk to serving stations (two downstairs, four upstairs), and take appetizer-sized portions of cassoulet, one at a time. Most of the tables have been removed, so you sit on benches along the outer edge of the dining room, balancing plates and bowls in your lap. It inevitably feels and tastes more like catering than dining.

There were staggered reservations between 6:30 and 7:30, and it was an advantage to arrive early. By the time we left, the later crowd was arriving and, for the most part, eating their cassoulet without a place to sit.

Within these constraints, the staff are efficient: checking coats, clearing plates promptly (you’re expected to re-use your fork), and patrolling the room with wine refills. You can’t beat the price: $65 including wines, before tax and tip, and the proceeds benefit the New Amsterdam Market.

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Charlie Bird

Once burned, twice careful? How else do you explain the very good, and yet timid, restaurant that is Charlie Bird?

Let’s rewind a bit. Robert Bohr was a partner and sommelier at Cru, one of the city’s best restaurants of the mid-2000s. Frank Bruni awarded three stars right off the bat. Rumor had it Bruni was considering a fourth. I gave it three and a half stars.

In an era when most restaurants were becoming more casual, Cru actually got fancier in its first four years, 2004–08. By the peak, it had a 150,000-bottle wine cellar, with a list so hefty they presented it in two volumes, each the size of a phone directory.

Then the The Great Recession hit. Hedge fund moguls were no longer dropping in and buying the three- and four-figure trophy wines that the business model depended on. The chef left; his replacement was told to dumb down the menu.

I predicted that plan would fail, and it did. As I asked at the time, when the core of your wine list is bottles in the hundreds and thousands, what does it matter if entrée prices are slashed $5 or $10 apiece? Cru closed in 2010.

Bohr moved onto other ventures for a while before opening Charlie Bird in June. The restaurant is, of course, wine-centric: how could it not be? But neither the food nor the wine attempts anything like the ambition of Cru at any point in its six-year run.

I can understand not trying to reproduce Cru, but with the economy now on an upswing, and restaurants like Costata and Carbone pulling in the high rollers again, I think Bohr could have aimed higher than he did.

Mind you, Charlie Bird is very good for what it is, but the food itself is not destination material. It’s good “neighborhood-plus” Italianesque food, which you can get all over town. The wine list, which The Times’s Eric Asimov recently named one of the city’s twelve best, is what makes Charlie Bird a destination.

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Costata

In his heyday, the tenor Luciano Pavarotti could probably have recited the telephone directory in a monotone, and people would have paid to hear it. The chef Michael White is in a similar enviable position: anything he opens is instantly popular, for no other reason than his association with it.

White’s New York career began at Fiamma, where over a decade ago he earned three stars, working for Stephen Hanson of all people. His career really took off when he left in 2007, taking over two upscale Italian places (both now closed) in partnership with Chris Cannon. After an intervening soap opera, he finally wound up with an empire called Altamarea Group, which includes ten restaurants in two U.S. states and on three continents, including five in New York City alone.

That track record guarantees attention, but not acclaim. His pizza place, Nicoletta, got terrible reviews; it’s still open, but gets almost no press. There are no such worries at Costata, his Italian steakhouse in the former Fiamma space. Most of the pro critics haven’t filed yet, but I believe they’ll agree: it’s a hit.

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Cocotte

What a wonderful time it is to be a Francophile in New York, with little French bistros and cafés opening all over town. I thought Frank Bruni told us that France was dead?

Welcome to Cocotte (“little casserole”), a delightful little Soho spot that opened last October. It’s a little slip of a space—”the size of a studio apartment“—seating just 35.

The dining room is a few steps down from sidewalk level, decorated in dark gray, with the menu written in chalk on the blackboard-colored walls. There’s a tiny bar and an even tinier counter in the kitchen that accommodates all of two guests at a time.

The chef, Sébastien Pourrat, serves tapas-style cuisine from the Southwest of France, near Basque country. It feels like half-French, half-Spanish.

There are about 25 items on the menu, priced $7–16, in eight categories (including desserts). Most are suitable for sharing (maybe not the soups). A terrific-looking bacon & Basque cheeseburger ($12), which we didn’t try, seems to be the only bail-out dish.

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Jezebel

Note: After I wrote this post, the restaurant’s owner wrote a couple of nasty tweets about my reviewing qualifications. Turns out, I wasn’t so far off. About a month after our visit, the restaurant hired a new chef, Chris Mitchell, and changed its kosher supervision to the Orthodox Union, in order to broaden its appeal among kosher diners. The OU insisted that the restaurant change its name to “The J Soho,” since Jezebel (as noted below) is “a clearly wicked person” in the Bible. That strategy didn’t work. The J Soho closed in late 2013.

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Do you remember the TV series Chicken Soup, a 1989 sitcom that starred Jackie Mason in an improbable interfaith relationship with Lynne Redgrave? It was canceled after eight episodes.

If you apply the same idea to restaurants, you wind up with Jezebel, an expensive Glatt Kosher restaurant in Soho that looks like it was helicoptered in from the Meatpacking District.

In the Book of Kings, Jezebel is a Phoenician princess who was murdered by being thown out a window. She is also sometimes associated with false prophets and prostitution. Why they chose this name for the restaurant is beyond me. Perhaps there is a Talmudic connection I have missed.

Jezebel has a very clubby look. If I learned that the folks behind Lavo and Tao consulted on the design—to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t—I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. It occupies a bi-level century-old townhouse, with a plush lounge on the ground floor and a beautifully-appointed 100-seat dining room upstairs. It’s provocatively decorated with a Last Supper parody painting, with Woody Allen in the center chair. A loud Latin sound track seems out of place.

The host, hostess, and cocktail waitresses are all quite attractive. Cocktails are $16 apiece, and many entrées soar above the $40 mark, but they won’t transfer your tab. The staff hurry you to leave the bar and head for your table, even though neither space is full.

Jezebel was packed and exclusive for about three months, but it’s now on OpenTable and bookable most evenings, any time you want. (They’re closed Fridays, of course.) I can’t compare Jezebel to other kosher restaurants, but as a glam restaurant that just happens to keep kosher, Jezebel has very little appeal.

The website credits Bradford Thompson, the former Lever House chef, though the extent of his day-to-day involvement is unclear. The website also claims “extraordinary” and “innovative” cuisine. It is neither. Most of the dishes, in fact, are snoozers. Almost all are very expensive. A $110 steak for two headlined the menu, with no mention of quality or aging, whcih probably means it was unaged choice. (Do the laws of Kashrut even allow aging?)

I didn’t photograph the bread course, but there was hardly any need: unimpressive onion rolls. The Daily News review mentioned a carrot-and-chickpea spread that’s supposed to come with it, but our server seems to have forgotten it, and we didn’t know to ask.

An order of veal meatballs (above right) was priced in the high teens. You’ll eat them and quickly forget them. Another restaurant would put cream in the sauce, but Jezebel can’t.

 

Much the same is true of Salmon (above left) and Braised Short Ribs (above right): just fine, but you’ve had better, for less money. The short ribs, I believe, were $46.

In a new restaurant, I usually ask a server what he recommends. This one went straight to the most expensive item, that $110 steak, strictly an amateur-hour move. He also pushed the side dishes, which we skipped, as they would have been entirely unnecessary. All the other staff were friendly and helpful.

The wine list is better than the restaurant deserves. Some of the prices are just crazy, but there are good bottles under $60, like the 2007 Rioja we had. The rebbe who poured it was a real mensch, one of the highlights of the evening. There’s a cohort of Israeli wines, as you’d expect, but at the prices they’re asking I wasn’t about to risk trying one.

If your beliefs do not require you to eat this way, you’ll find this food very boring. There was, to be fair, nothing specifically wrong with it, except that, for what it is, it ought to cost a lot less.

Food: Boring and very expensive kosher steak and fish
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Reminds you of a restaurant connected to a nightclub

Rating: Not recommended, except for affluent machers.

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select

There’s a mini-boomlet in ski-themed bars and restaurants, including the Haven Rooftop in the Sanctuary Hotel, and the Hudson Lodge at the Hudson Hotel, both in midtown. The Minus 5 Ice Bar is scheduled to open in the Hilton in March 2013—odd timing, to say the least.

The Après-ski Chalet at Café Select has less glitzy ambitions. It occupies a charmless back room behind the kitchen, gussied up rather sloppily with outdated ski equipment and old posters. The staff said it’s used as an oyster bar in the summertime, though it’s about the last place I’d go to eat oysters.

 

 

Three of us paid $22 per person, or a total of $66, for a fondue crock with melted cheese, a bowl of bread cubes for dipping, and some crudités.  In contrast, three of you could share the Grande Fondue at Artisanal, which I’m pretty sure is no smaller than Café Select’s version, and is almost certainly better, at $42.

You can add to the basic fondue package, and you should, with plates of meats and sausages, which are more sensibly priced. Still, it’s a lot of money for what felt like about eight dollars worth of food, in a room that doesn’t feel like any kind of Chalet.

The fondue at Café Select won’t change your life. There’s nothing wrong with it either. But there’s a sense of romance implied in the name “Après-ski Chalet” that this spot doesn’t live up to. If you’re suddenly in that fondue mood, go uptown to Artisanal and grab a seat at the bar.

Après-ski Chalet at Café Select (212 Lafayette St & Kenmare St, Soho)

Food: Unmemorable but acceptable fondue and accouterments
Service: Fine, but cash-only
Ambiance: A storage room hurriedly re-decorated as a 1970s chalet

Rating: Not recommended
Why? If you want fondue, there are better and cheaper options

Pera Soho

 

When Pera, the midtown Mediterranean restaurant, opened a Soho branch last year, it didn’t get a lot of critical attention. (A Dining Brief from Julia Moskin of The Times was about it.) Most people probably assumed: same menu, 50 blocks south.

It turns out they’re not quite the same, and I like the Pera Soho menu better. The uptown menu is longer (always a minus in my book), more monotonous, and skewed more expensive. Pera Soho doesn’t have as many redundant meat dishes, and there are ample options for vegetarians.

I liked Pera midtown when we visited in 2009, but I felt that some of the dishes were phoned in. The food at Pera Soho struck me as more varied and better prepared. My endorsement comes with one huge caveat: we dined at the publicist’s invitation and did not pay for our meal. The dishes we tried were the chef’s selection.

Pera styles itself a “Mediterranean Brasserie,” and I had remembered it as mostly Greek. That was a mistake, but one I suspect the owners want people to make. The cuisine is actually Turkish, a genre that doesn’t have much traction in Manhattan. By labeling it generically “Mediterranean,” the restaurant attracts diners who might not want to commit to the unfamiliar cuisine of one nation.

The menu is divided into several categories: small plates and mezes ($6–15), appetizers and salads ($9–16), main courses ($18–30), and side dishes ($7–8). There’s a separate menu category called “Signature ‘Shashlik’ Steaks” ($25–33), comprising meat on skewers with vegetables and rice pilaf. The heading is a stretch, as one of the so-called “steaks” is chicken.

A tasting menu is $48, and this may be the best way to experience Pera Soho. There’s also a $29 prix fixe (with wines half-price) on Sundays, although it doesn’t showcase the best dishes. On Wednesdays, there’s an extra menu with seafood specials (we had several of these), which can be ordered à la carte or as a $39 prix fixe.

 

After warm bread (above left), we started with rich lobster relish crostini (above right).

A dull ceviche was the centerpiece of a seafood platter (above), but we enjoyed dipping lobster and shrimp in a horseradish and aioli sauce.

 

Phyllo rolls (above left) were excellent, as was a simple house-made pasta with mushrooms (above right).

 

Simplicity ruled too in a wonderful poached sea bass (above left) with root vegetables, carrot, and olive oil. On this showing the Wednesday seafood menu ought to be extended to the other six days of the week.

Lamb Shashlik (above right) is one of those “steaks”. The lamb is marinated for two days, then cooked on a skewer and served on a bed of bulgur rice. “I love this dish” was my girlfriend’s summary, and I can’t add more.

 

Both desserts blew the doors off: Panna Cotta with kiwi and pineapple (above left), and a Turkish classic, the Kunefe (above right), a pastry of phyllo, butter and honey, topped with a clump of kajmak cheese. The Times’ Moskin called it the best rendition of the dish she’d had in New York. It was new to me, but I’d certainly have it again.

The interior is smartly decorated, though perhaps over-done in this casual era. A partially-enclosed outdoor garden seems to be popular: even on a chilly evening, it was decked out in soft lighting, and tables were set, though we saw no one take advantage of them. At 7pm on a Wednesday, the bar was busier than the dining room.

As always, caveats apply when one dines as a guest of the house, but we found quite a bit more to Pera Soho than we expected.

Pera Soho (54 Thompson Street at Broome Street, Soho)