Cómodo

How can you not just smile and be pleased at the success of a restaurant like Cómodo?

It grew out weekly dinners that the newlywed owners, Felipe Donnelly and Tamy Rofe, hosted in their TriBeCa apartment, starting in early 2010. Soon it was a full-fledged supper club called Worth Kitchen. By 2011 the health department caught on, and they had to close shop.

But a full-fledged restaurant was always the goal, and with a little help from Kickstarter, they finally have one—and in a lovely location, too, on the edge of Soho in the former Salt space. It’s a typical downtown dining room, with exposed brick walls, a bustling bar, and closely-spaced bare wood tables.

In a well-run restaurant, there are hundreds of things that just happen in the background, and the average diner never notices them until they’re not done right. At Cómodo, you never get the sense that the owners were amateurs a year ago. For a couple that was throwing once-a-week home dinner parties, Donnelly and Rofe have made the transition with remarkable ease.

The cuisine is Latin American, not exactly fancy, but a step up from comfort food. I gather it changes regularly. As of last week, there are seven appetizers ($10–17), six entrées ($17–28) and three desserts ($7–11).

I neglected to photograph the bread service, which came to the table warm, in a little paper bag, with soft butter that contained spackling of toasted almonds and sea salt. The overall effect was like a Ritz cracker.

 

A Brussels Sprout Caesar Salad ($10; above left), shaped like an over-size hockey puck, was the least successful dish we tried, as a garlic parmesan dressing obscured the flavor of the Brussels sprouts, and we didn’t detect much of a Caesar salad flavor either. (It looked better than the over-exposed photo shows.)

Roasted Cauliflower Gratin ($12; above right) was quite a bit more successful, sort of like a macaroni and cheese, with cauliflower replacing the macaroni.

  

Braised Berkshire Pork Shoulder ($24; above left) was excellent, and a much heartier portion than the photo suggests. It came with trumpet mushrooms, greens, and a huge helping of mashed potatoes (above center) with a surprisingly smoky flavor.

Duck Breast ($28; above right) was pretty good, but I hardly touched a wedge-shaped serving of quinoa sprinkled with butternut squash and smoked mozzarella. Next to the regal duck, it felt like a humble afterthought.

 

Flourless Chocolate Cake with passion fruit sauce ($11; above left) brought the meal to a strong conclusion, along with a small plate of petits fours (above right).

Aside from one minor glitch—really, not worth mentioning—service was better than you’d expect at such a casual spot. We didn’t sample the wine list, but they make a terrific Sangria. You won’t go wrong if you stick with that.

The restaurant was practically empty at 7:00 pm on a Wednesday evening, but by 8:00 it was nearly full. Aside from a Hungry City piece in The Times over a month ago, there hasn’t been much press coverage, so they must be getting good word-of-mouth. As of today, you can add me to the fanclub.

Cómodo (58 MacDougal Street between King & Houston Streets, Soho)

Food: Hearty, upscale Latin American cuisine
Service: Surprisingly polished
Ambance: A crowded, but not oppressively loud, downtown dining room

Rating: ★
Why? Food a shade below destination level, but in another year it might get there

Angolo Soho

Note: Angolo Soho closed in November 2013 to make way for a branch of T-Bar Steakhouse.

*

Angolo Soho, yet another new Italian restaurant, feels like the last fifteen of them. Or the last fifteen dozen. You’ll have a pleasant and inoffensive meal there. I’ve no serious complaint about anything we were served. I’ve also no serious reason to go back, nor to recommend it.

Lusso, a similar place, already failed here, back when the address was known as 331 West Broadway. (It’s now 53 Grand Street.) The photo posted in my 2010 review is not far off from what Angolo Soho looks like now. The bones haven’t changed much, except the bar area (not pictured) is a bit brighter. In between, the space was a Southern spot called South Houston, which also quickly failed.

The name is not particularly helpful: Angolo is Italian for corner, though it might be confused with an African nation. Internet searches turn up a far better known restaurant, Piccolo Angolo (“little corner”) in the West Village, not far away. It is amazing how often people name their restaurants without google-testing them first.

Michael Bernardino, the chef, has decent Italian cred., having worked at Villa Pacri (executive chef), ’inoteca, and Dell’ anima (both chef de cuisine), but he didn’t stay long at any of them. His most recent assignments were at Resto and Cannibal (not long there either).

The menu is straightforward mid-priced Italian, with antipasti $10–17, primi $14–19, secondi $24–32 (not counting an out-of-place aged ribeye for two, $130), contorni $7, desserts $6–9. There’s also a selection of cheese $7 or a house-made stracciatella for $13, or charcuterie $9–18.

I didn’t take a copy of the cocktail list or take notes, but we had two pretty good cocktails at the bar. The mostly Italian wine list is not long, but it’s fairly priced in relation to the restaurant. A 2007 Cannonau di Sardegna Riserva was in the neighborhood of $50.

 

My girlfriend started with a straightforward Arugula Parmigiano Reggiano salad ($10; above left). Trippa alla Napoletana ($15; above right) had a faintly satisfying crunch, but it seemed to me that the chef was trying to conceal slightly rubbery tripe in a sea of tomato sauce.

 

You’d expect the former Cannibal chef to make a satisfying Pork Chop ($32; above left), and this double-cut specimen was beauty, though a hair less tender than I would have liked. Tagliatelle Bolognese ($18; above right) with parmigiano reggiano was competently done.

In only their second week, some of the staff are still feeling their way, but they were friendly and attentive. The bread service (pictured at the top of the page) is perfunctory and ought to be improved. The restaurant was about 2/3rds full on a Thursday evening, which isn’t bad at all for a new establishment. I just wonder whether the place is compelling enough to keep drawing that kind of crowd.

Angolo Soho (53 Grand Street at West Broadway, Soho)

Food: Modern Italian; good enough for what it is, but not distinctive
Ambiance: A bright Soho street corner, wooden tables, brick walls
Service: Friendly and attentive

Rating: ★
Why? Not well differentiated from the city’s many dozens of good Italian restaurants

Back Forty West

Note: Back Forty West closed in July 2016, ending chef Peter Hoffman’s 26-year run in the space (most of it, as Savoy). After more than a quarter-century, Hoffman certainly owes no one an explanation, but as noted below, he cited economic reasons for turning Savoy into Back Forty West. We have seldom seen such transformations work. Savoy was a special place; Back Forty West was just a casual neighborhood spot, and there are plenty of those. Not even Hoffman’s special touch could make it compelling.

*

It was hard not to be a little bit sad when chef Peter Hoffman closed Savoy last year after a 21-year run. The neighborhood, once considered remote, was now overrun with tourists. The restaurant’s farm-to-table cooking, once pathbreaking, was now replicated on almost every block.

Yet, Savoy remained uniquely charming, especially on a winter evening with the upstairs fireplace roaring. Though never really formal, Savoy felt like a special night out. There were always better restaurants than Savoy; none had made it irrelevant. But Hoffman bowed to the inevitable: facing a rent increase, he needed a concept that would turn tables, attract walk-ins, and wouldn’t be dependent on destination diners.

His casual place, Back Forty, in the far East Village (now closed), supplied the template: a more laid-back version of the same cooking style; reservations not taken. It worked on Avenue B, so he kept the name (with “West” attached), which meant he wouldn’t get professionally reviewed. I’m not sure if that was a plan or a miscalculation.

The space doesn’t really look that different from what I remember (and what photos show) Savoy used to be. The website sports all the haute barnyard buzzwords that Hoffman pioneered before the rest of us had heard of them: locavore, farm-to-table, responsibly sourced, greenmarket, in-season.

But the menu is a lot different, with snacks under $10, and only three dishes above $21. Soft-shell crab and ramps appear, so you know it’s seasonal (and you would’ve been shocked if it hadn’t been). A grass-fed burger at $12 looks like a steal, until you realize that’s without cheese or fries (each another $2).

Then you look at the wine list, and your heart sinks. What there is, is not very good, or far too expensive. Among a dozen reds, there was nothing I trusted below a $60 2005 Rioja (not great), served in juice glasses. Are real wine glasses, even the cheap kind, really unaffordable?

The menu invites confusion, with categories labeled “Breads”, “Hands”, “Spoon & Ladle”, “Fork”, “Fork & Knife”, and “Spoon”. Everything in the last category is clearly a dessert (including cookies, which I can’t imagine eating with a spoon). But every other category is a mish-mash, as I was soon to learn.

From the “Fork” category, Grilled Kale & Escarole Salad ($14; above left) was straightforward and very good, with creamy parmesan dressing, white anchovies, fried capers, and crispy chickpeas.

Also from the “Fork” category: Smoked Bits Baked Beans ($8; above right). But this turns out to be a side dish, as I suppose I should’ve guessed, when the server asked if I’d prefer to have it with my entrée. Yet, on the bill it’s printed as an appetzier, so apparently the staff is not sure. Anyhow, it was not very satisfying, and I couldn’t really detect much flavor out of the burnt ends that were supposed to be there. The dish was mostly just beans and tomatoes.

There seems to be an on-site smoker, and the kitchen makes good use of it. A sliced pork chop special ($28; above left) shared the plate with polenta, chickpeas, and grilled shrimp. It’s a bit audacious to serve pork so rare, but it was excellent, with a rich, charcoal flavor. Chicken ($20; above right) also came out of the smoker, and was just as skillfully done.

The restaurant was busy but not full on a Saturday evening, which makes me wonder if they ought to start taking reservations. We were willing to give it a shot, and were seated right away, but I wonder how many people aren’t coming, because they don’t want to risk an uncertain wait?

Although Back Forty West no longer has Savoy’s charm, it’s a pretty comfortable place, by today’s standards. The lights upstairs are kept low, the music isn’t loud, and there’s still that fireplace. The service is not very attentive, but if it takes a while to flag someone down, you probably won’t mind lingering here. If only they’d get the wine program into shape.

Back Forty West (70 Prince Street at Crosby Street, Soho)

Food: Casual American locavore
Service: Slightly inattentive, but acceptable
Ambiance: Laid-back, but not loud, and there’s still that fireplace; date spot

Rating: ★
Why? No longer unique, but still worthwhile

Lani Kai

Note: Lani Kai closed in September 2012. It has been replaced by The Dalloway, a Lesbian-themed bar and lounge.

*

When the Hawaiian-themed Lani Kai opened eighteen months ago in the old Tailor space, it got plenty of publicity, but the major critics ignored it. I dropped in for cocktails in late 2010, but never felt like going back for dinner. A favorable Times review last week made me wonder what I had missed.

Julie Reiner, the owner, is known mainly for a couple of excellent cocktail spots, Flatiron Lounge and Clover Club. But she is from Hawaii, so this seemed like the obvious choice for her first restaurant.

I gather it has been a struggle: the restaurant is routinely available on OpenTable, practically any day, any time. It’s on a dull block in Soho’s southwest corner that doesn’t attract a lot of foot traffic. The cocktails, naturally, are first-rate, but that isn’t enough, especially with a rather large bi-level space to fill.

I suspect that, to most people, Hawaiian cuisine doesn’t set the pulse racing. The image that comes to mind is the luau, often an over-priced, mediocre tourist trap.

Ms. Reiner hired a new chef recently, Japanese native Sawako Okochi, who worked previously as a sous-chef at Annisa. Her challenge is to make the food relevant, while staying within a fairly tight price point: appetizers and sharing plates are $7–15, entrées $19–26.

Cocktails are $13, a good $2–3 less than many locations get away with these days. During Happy Hour they’re even less. The Bearded Lady (below left) was just $10, the 808 State (below center) just $6. Both of these seemed like cruise-ship cocktails to me. I liked the Flatiron Martini (no photo) a lot better.

  

The wine list is pretty bare-bones. A Pouilly-Fuissé was $29; it came in a decorative wooden ice bucket (above right).

The Pu-Pu platter plus a side order of pork buns was enough for the three of us to eat. There’s a choice of seven items that can go on the platter, of which you choose four, but they all have a different à la carte price. The crab wantons ($8) were the best of these. Baby back ribs ($13) were thick and meaty. Chicken wings ($10) and Chicken yakitori skewers ($8) were just fine, as were the pork buns ($8 for two). The platter also comes with a mound of chips (which dominate the front of the photo).

But for the most part, this has the distinct feel of beach-resort food, prepared with a bit more care, but ultimately not very memorable. I say this without having sampled the entrées, but The Times thought that those were even less exciting.

We had a quite early reservation on a Tuesday evening and had the place mostly to ourselves, except for a rather loud group taking up most of the communal table. I spotted Ms. Reiner briefly, but she was working mostly out of sight.

The space has been remodeled slightly, but the bones of the old Tailor space are quite apparent. There is now a small bar on the ground floor at the back of the dining room, and as before, a large cocktail lounge downstairs. I assume that this space gets a lot busier later in the evening and on weekends.

I might drop in again one of these days, more for the cocktails than the food, although there is plenty to snack on if you don’t want to drink on an empty stomach.

Lani Kai (525 Broome Street between Sixth Avenue & Thompson Street, SoHo)

Food: Populist Hawaiian cuisine that transports you to a Honululu beach
Cocktails: The real reason for coming here, but I’d avoid the cruise-ship ones
Service: Fine
Ambiance: Upscale Club-Med

Rating: ★
Why? Good for cocktails — but so are a lot of places 

King

Note: Francis Derby left King after just three months on the job, after a clash with the owners about the scope and ambition of the cuisine. As of March 2012, a sous-chef had replaced him. The restaurant closed in June. As of April 2013, the space is Charlie Bird.

*

Francis Derby’s name comes up a lot in NYC culinary circles. In the last eleven years, the chef has worked at Atlas, WD~50, Gilt, Tailor, Solex, Momofuku Ssäm Bar, and Shorty’s.32. I am not sure if that’s a complete list.

None of those were his own place. He has that now at King, which opened last month a converted railroad apartment on a quiet Soho street corner. Let’s hope this gig lasts longer than the others did. King is a restaurant I want to root for.

While I wouldn’t call King elegant, it has many of the amenities lacking in about 95 percent of new restaurants these days: tablecloths, a comfortable bar, reservations accepted, coats checked, a civilized dining room. It’s a superb, quiet date spot. I liked the décor, but to some diners it may seem old-fashioned. Some of it, I think, came from rummage sales, although Ken Friedman built a whole empire that way.

I’m realist enough to know that King is swimming against the tide. There’s a reason not many people are opening that kind of restaurant today. They have trouble finding enough guests like me, who value what King is trying to do.

There are some early fumbles (about a month in), as they try to figure out what works. A tripe gratin or tripe stroganoff, mentioned with derision in some of the early reviews, is no longer on the menu. Likewise a Pigs Head Tortellini and a Salt Crust Chicken for two. As the more intriguing dishes disappear, we’re left with a menu that on its face won’t wow anyone. Once the food arrives, you’ll find that the chef’s technique is top-notch, but first they have to get you in the door.

It is only January, but it’s not too soon to credit King with the dumbest restaurant gimmick of the year:

Push the ‘champagne button’ at your seat, and a server appears with flutes, an ice bucket, and a 375ml bottle of Vueve Clicquot.

There’s nothing at the table to indicate what the button does: we assumed it was just a light switch, until we noticed that every table had one, and then I remembered the stories I’d read. Without an explanation, no one will know what the buttons do. And if they have to explain it, perhaps the old-fashioned way is better: let servers look after their tables. Some problems just don’t need a technology solution.

In the one case I’m aware of where someone actually pushed the button (a Mouthfuls review), they waited 20 minutes, and all that happened was a waiter came over and asked if the party needed anything. But perhaps that’s better than the alternative, an expensive bottle of bubbly that the table probably didn’t want anyway.

Chef Derby has some pretty impressive restaurants on his C.V., but he is certainly not trying to out-do his mentors. He serves a straightforrward seasonal American menu, with no entrée above $29. But I really liked everything I tried over the course of two visits, especially at this price point.

A Chicken & Rabbit Pâté ($14; above left) was excellent. This could go on the menu at Bar Boulud (the city’s best charcuterie place) tomorrow. It seems every new restaurant this year has multiple poached egg dishes. King has a terrific one: Smoked Octopus ($16; above right) with frisée and radish.

Bouchot Mussels ($18; above left) steamed in beer were just fine. Pork Belly ($26; above right) is sometimes too cloying to be an entrée, but it worked here because the skin was nicely crisped, giving it the needed textural contrast.

On my second visit, I tried the Sweetbreads ($16; above left) in an appealing celery root and green olive dip and a great Brussels Sprouts and Lamb Bacon side dish ($8; above right). The plate of pastries at the end (below left) is a nice touch.

The wine list is fairly minimal—around a dozen bottles. I can’t complain about a 2004 Saint-Émilion for $58 (above right), but there aren’t a lot of choices like that. King needs more, and better glassware to serve it in.

There are some pretty good house cocktails, like the His Majesty (Ransom Gin, Purity Vodka, Lillet Blanc, Orange Bitters) or the Rejouissance (Prosecco, St. Germain, Lemon-infused Vodka, Bittered Sugar). Service behind the bar is better and more polished than at the tables, where servers, though friendly and well-meaning, still seem to be feeling their way.

The dining room was not very busy on either of my visits, but both were on weeknights and relatively early. A server said that the weekend business has been brisk. To succeed, King needs to thread a needle. It wasn’t built on a big budget, it’s not expensive, and the cuisine won’t make headlines. It needs to attract people like me, who enjoy such places and wish there were more of them.

King (5 King Street at Sixth Avenue, Soho)

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

The Dutch

Most chefs would be delighted to receive just one tenth of the free publicity that has been accorded The Dutch, chef Andrew Carmellini’s new SoHo restaurant.

By my count, since the first reports that he was considering the former Cub Room space, in September 2009, The Dutch (or unnamed versions of it) has been mentioned in thirty-eight posts on Eater.com, some thirty-three of which came before it had served a single meal. Many of them were titled, simply, the Daily Dutch, both confirming and lampooning the need to provide infinitesimal updates on the protracted build-out, which took almost a year and a half.

Carmellini himself is a master at manipulating the media, beginning with a bizarre opening night, which commenced at 11:00 p.m. on a Monday in April (naturally blogged to death), with normal hours the next day and lunch a couple of weeks later. All blogged and tweeted in copious detail.

None of this is to deny that Carmellini is a pretty good chef, with a long track record of success, and at least somewhat deserving of all that attention. Yet, in an interview with The Times last September, he purposely deflated expectations: “We wanted this to be a neighborhood restaurant,” and “it kind of sounds like a joint, and that’s what we want there.”

When the likes of Martha Stewart,  Mario Batali, Daniel Boulud, and Thomas Keller, dine there on the first couple of nights, this isn’t a neighborhood restaurant, whatever the chef may say. But it’s not fine dining, and the restaurant is designed as much for snacking as a full meal. The late-night hours and casual vibe attract, among others, restaurant industry professionals on days off and at the end of their shifts. That part of the plan seems to be working (Todd English and Wylie Dufresne were among the chefs I spotted).

I’ve been to the Dutch twice, both times fairly late by my standards. Even after 11:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, the room was packed, although I was able to snag a bar stool immediately. It was the same story at 10:00 p.m. on a Monday. I suspect it will be packed for a good long while.

The menu, which Carmellini describes as American food, has Asian, Italian, and Mexican influences too. Prices are in a wide range, with entrées $18–46. You can have oysters from the raw bar at $3 each, or a serving of caviar for $95; smoked ricotta ravioli at $18, or a ribeye for two at $96. Cocktails are the standard NYC upscale price: $14. Other prices have already gone up since the introductory menus were published.

Every meal starts with the warm house-made corn bread (above left), which is a bit too crumbly, but very good nevertheless. Deep-fried little oyster sandwiches ($5 ea., above center) are a delight, but Asian ribs ($7; above right) are somewhat ordinary.

I didn’t much care for under-seasoned Bario Tripe ($14; above left), with beer (untastable), onion, and avocado, covered in dull tortilla chips.

The chicken has undergone perhaps the most significant change since the opening. Photos from early reviewers showed pieces of Southern fried chicken with a biscuit for $19. This has evolved to one piece of smoked chicken (above right) in a sort of foam, topped with stray pieces of popcorn for $22. Carmellini has the knack for poultry, but the version I had at Locanda Verdi a couple of years ago was better, and a larger portion, at a similar price.

The interior, designed by Roman and Williams (same folks as The Breslin and The John Dory) is a rambling space with ample bar seating. It gets awfully loud. Service, although unpretentious, can be slow. I haven’t sampled the wine list, but I’ve had several cocktails, all of which are quite good.

Anyone who knows Andrew Carmellini, knows he will never serve you a bad meal. But it’s hard to avoid the sense that his restaurants are evolving to the lowest common denominator. The Dutch wasn’t as good as Locanda Verde, which wasn’t as good as A Voce, which wasn’t as good as Café Boulud.

Of course, it’s nice to have a “drop in” place, which The Dutch is, but Café Boulud and A Voce were not. Yet, it’s hard to escape the sense that Carmellini could do better.

The Dutch (131 Sullivan Street at Prince Street, SoHo)

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

Rouge et Blanc

Last year’s fall previews mentioned a French–Vietnamese restaurant called Cinq à Sept. Shortly after opening, it was renamed Rouge et Blanc, without any intervening event (like a chef shuffle or a revamp) that would have prompted it.

Despite being launched twice, the restaurant has not attracted much critical notice, a Gael Greene rave being the only professional review I can find. It deserves a much closer look.

The folks behind it are Thomas Cregan, a former sommelier at Chanterelle and Beacon; and chef Matt Rojas, who has worked at Eleven Madison Park, Degustation, and Shang. No source I can find says how long he worked at those places, or what he did there; it’s not a bad resume, nevertheless.

The Vietnamese theme is interpreted awfully loosely, with Asian spices clearly evident in some dishes, and only barely there in others. But everything we tried was executed impeccably, albeit on a scale of modest ambition. It’s always a good sign when the menu is reprinted daily, and doesn’t overdo the number of choices: here, just eight appetizers ($10–18) and seven entrées ($19–34; all but one $27 or less).

Bone Marrow ($13; above left) is a wonderful start, roasted with grilled baby octopus, pickled plum sauce, and fennel, and served with a soft, warm roll. (There is otherwise no bread service.) Green Papaya ($12; above right) is a bright spring dish, with whole fried prawns and a curry vinaigrette.

The Vietnamese influence was less apparent in the entrées, but both were beautifully prepared. Quail ($26; above left) had the musky aroma of a charcoal grill, served with blue foot mushrooms and two quail eggs. Duck Confit ($26; above right) lay atop a sweetbread cassoulet.

The all-French wine list isn’t long, but markups aren’t ridiculous. A bottle of Château Moulin de Clotte was $48. You’d expect an ex-Chanterelle sommelier to know the correct temperature to serve a French red (61 degrees), and this one did, but casual restaurants seldom get it right. The owner overheard me comment on it, and came over to chat with us.

The décor is not easily categorized, but it’s charming. The Vietnamese accents are mostly in the background. French chansons waft over the speakers. A wide, glass window faces a cute, lightly-traveled block of MacDougal Street.

The attentive server provided reliable ordering guidance, but hadn’t yet learned to pour a full bottle of wine. That, and the lack of a proper bread service, were the only flaws at this otherwise adorable little restaurant.

Rouge et Blanc (48 MacDougal Street, south of Houston Street, SoHo)

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

David Burke Kitchen

David Burke, the playful chef who serves cheesecake lollipops and lobster “steaks,” has taken his act to the James Hotel in Soho. His new restaurant, David Burke Kitchen, occupies a charmless basement that could double as a fallout shelter.

“It’s a challenge to make a basement attractive,” he told the Times. I’ll say.

They’ve done their best to gussy it up. There’s a long, handsome bar, widely-spaced bare wood tables, and a fully exposed kitchen. If you’re sufficiently distracted, you might not notice that the space has only tiny slivers for windows, at ceiling level.

Burke has done business with this hotel chain before: their Chicago branch hosts his steak place, David Burke Primehouse. So why did they offer him, and why did he accept, the hotel’s worst space?

The reasons could be related to Burke’s apparent willingness to franchise himself all over the place, whether it’s David Burke at Bloomingdales, the now-closed Hawaiian Tropic Zone (practically a strip club without the lapdances), or a bowling alley. If you pay enough for his celebrity, then you can put the restaurant into whatever godawful space you choose.

Or maybe David Burke Kitchen is meant to be a more serious effort, like David Burke Townhouse (the former David Burke & Donatella) and Fishtail on the Upper East Side. Despite their unevenness, those places are real David Burke restaurants, not just consulting engagements. On the right day, they can be very good.

The menu is full of Burke’s trademark whimsy: Ants on a Log; a pretzle crab cake; prawn sauce made in a duck press. Most of these dishes may even be good, but can it last after he moves onto the next project? He was ever-present in the dining room last Friday night—at least looking the part of a working chef, though I had no illusions that he was actually doing anything but schmooze.

Prices are lower than at his Upper East Side places, but not cheap, with appetizers $12–17, entrées $22–45, and side dishes $7. There was no amuse bouche, but bread service was impressive for a downtown restaurant, with three kinds of bread (I had the cranberry walnut), and what appeared to be house-made butter.

Bison Tartare ($14; below left) was wonderful, topped with egg salad and smoked tomatoes, with fingerling potato crisps on the side.

There is a rabbit in the restaurant’s logo, and an ever-changing rabbit dish has been on every menu I’ve seen. The version I had ($28; above right) crossed the line from inventive to bizarre. Rabbit medallions were stuffed with chorizo sausage, with two King Crab claws on top, a soupy risotto on the bottom, and at least two sauces. The individual components weren’t bad, but it looked and tasted like an entrée designed by committee.

I dined at the bar, where the server was knowledgeable and attentive. The two cocktails I had were well made, if on the expensive side: the Rabbit Hunter ($14) with bourbon, ginger beer, fresh mint, and lime; and The Border ($15), with tequila, mezcal blanco, ginger, agave, and a slice of beef jerky on a spear.

As I’ve noted before, hotel restaurants are lower-risk projects than stand-alone ones, as the hotel subsidizes the space, and its guests provide a captive audience. It’s an open question whether David Burke Kitchen has staying power with fickle downtown diners, especially if Burke himself doesn’t stick around to keep his whimsical menu from running off the rails.

David Burke Kitchen (27 Grand Street at Sixth Avenue, in the James Hotel, Soho)

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

What Happens When

Note: What Happens When closed in June 2011, after five months. It had intended to remain open for nine months, but could no longer continue after it lost its liquor license. With sufficient effort it probably could have been reinstated, but for a restaurant that had planned to close anyway in October it wasn’t worth the expense.

*

Just one word . . . pop-up. It seems to be the latest restaurant trendlet. Exactly where the term originated is beyond google’s capacity to answer, but you don’t find many references before 2010.

The notion of a “pop-up restaurant” is somewhat elastic. It can take many different forms. The one clear requirement is planned extinction: these places aren’t meant to last. Some exist for just a night or two.

Then, there’s John Fraser’s new pop-up, What Happens When — though he prefers the term “temporary restaurant installation” — which he insists will die after nine months, if not sooner.

Fraser is best known as chef of the Michelin-starred Dovetail on the Upper West Side, which is still doing fine. My two meals there (here, here) were slightly meh, although I liked his work at Compass.

So what is Fraser doing in a restaurant that he’ll kill after nine months? As he told Frank Bruni:

He was wondering what it might be like to have a restaurant he could fool around with and walk away from when, less than three months ago, he happened upon the SoHo space, on Cleveland Place, where Le Jardin Bistro had just closed. The landlord was willing to write an eight-month lease, beginning in December, with a likelihood of several month-by-month renewals until the building, mostly vacant, can be redeveloped.

What Happens When is not so much a pop-up, as a string of them. Once a month, the menu, the décor, and the soundtrack will be tossed out and re-done. The current version looks just as temporary as it was meant to be, but it’s nicer and more polished than many restaurants I could name that don’t have sell-by dates.

Part of the funding is coming from Kickstarter, a creative arts seed money site. This is an unusual approach, as restaurants, pop-up or otherwise, are practically always treated as profit-seeking ventures. It makes you wonder what would be possible, if the culinary arts were more often funded like the rest of the arts, with donated money?

Mind you, he’s not giving the food away. The menu is $58 prix fixe. After three cocktails ($13 each) and coffee ($5), the bill came to $102 before tax and tip. That’s a fair price for food that would have a good shot at three New York Times stars if the restaurant were permanent. Of course, if the restaurant survives for the full nine months, he’ll need to come up with eight more menus as good as this one.

Fraser has a graphic artist, an interior designer, and a composer on his team, for what he calls “an ever-changing culinary, visual, and sound experience.”

Your eyes may glaze over when you see all of the hand-doodled drawings explaining the “inspiration” for what’s called “Menu No. 1”: blue cold conflict expectation ice intensity reflection tension Winter.

There’s a faintly wintry feel to the current menu, but if there is any reflection or tension in the offerings, the connection entirely eluded me.

The menu is brief (just four appetizers and five entrées), and so are the wine and cocktail lists, also suffixed with “No. 1.” The current cocktail list offers three creations, all named for characters in Hamlet: Polonius (gin, mandarin orange juice, sweet & dry vermouth), Ophelia (photo below; vodka, dry vermouth, pickling liquid), and Laertes (rum, allspice, lime, honey). Again, how these related to the “inspiration” wasn’t quite clear, but they did pair well with the food.

The meal began with a trio of amuses bouches (above right): from right to left, a bracing pea soup, an onion dip with croutons and pickled ramps, and “ants on a log,” served with a champagne cocktail.

The bread service (above left) is wonderful here, as it always is at Fraser’s restaurants: a warm garlic–olive oil roll with a hint of cheese and black pepper.

The appetizer (above right), referred to as “potato skins” on the menu, is much more elaborate than that. Hollowed-out fingerling potato skins join forces with pickled sausage, sorrel, and a wheat beer fondue.

I was comped an excellent spiced foie gras and rabbit terrine (above left). (It’s not listed on the menu, and I didn’t see it at any other tables.)

The guinea hen entrée (above right) had many supporting players, and I can’t do justice to all of them. I especially liked the buckwheat crèpe (left side of the plate). The breast of guinea hen itself was just a shade less tender than it should have been, but the conception of the dish was first-rate.

Desserts came around on a cart, a startlingly old-school idea at an anything-but-old restaurant. The menu doesn’t credit a separate pastry chef, and the desserts (three of them, I think) didn’t quite have as much inspiration as the savory courses. I had the rice pudding, which was just fine, but you could have it anywhere.

There are some obvious compromises at What Happens When. Fraser told Frank Bruni that it cost about $100,000 to build, as opposed to over $2 million at Dovetail. The chairs supposedly came from eBay, though I’d take them any day over the backless bar stools that you have to endure at the Momofuku restaurants.

He certainly hasn’t skimped on service. I saw a small platoon of chefs behind the half-open kitchen window, and there are certainly enough servers for the 65-seat room. The tables have small silverware drawers, and you’re encouraged to lay the table yourself, but after the first course the staff replaced the silverware, as they would at any other restaurant.

Reservations are accepted through the nascent Urbanspoon online site, instead of the more established (but far more expensive) OpenTable. Availability most days is typical of a hit restaurant in New York City: 5:30 or after 10:00. If What Happens When wasn’t temporary, you’d have to ask if that could last? At a restaurant that is expected to be gone in nine months, the question doesn’t matter.

Why nine months? Fraser told Bruni that even if the building remained available, What Happens Next wouldn’t continue: beyond that, it would become another permanent restaurant, negating the whole point of a venture that you can play with, and then dispose of. But if it works, it’s hard to believe that someone else, if not Fraser himself, will try the same thing again.

The current menu will be in place until February 25.

What Happens Next (25 Cleveland Place between Kenmare & Spring Streets, Soho)

The White Truffle Burger at Burger & Barrel

Go ahead, call me a sucker. When I heard that Burger & Barrel was serving a white truffle burger, I had to have one.

It’s a gimmick dish, but B&B is not a gimmick restaurant. The chef, Josh Capon, knows his burgers. (We tried his burger at Lure Fishbar last year, and thought he nailed it.)

The truffle burger will be on the menu only for a few months, while the fungi are in season. The rest of the menu is classic bistro comfort food, ranging from an old-fashioned cheeseburger for $13, up to a grilled ribeye for $38.

On a cold, rainy Thursday evening at 7:30, the place was packed. The wait for a table would have been over an hour. Even at the bar, I waited about fifteen minutes for a stool to free up.

At $48, Capon isn’t exactly giving these burgers away, but he gives you plenty of truffles for your money. Actually, I tasted them more than I tasted the beef. He uses a Pat LaFreida blend (doesn’t everybody?) that was a shade over-cooked: the specimen he served to A Hamburger Today looked distinctly rarer. The fries were spot-on, and so were the two onion rings, which seem to come with every burger he serves, truffled or not.

It’s not a dish that any sane person will order twice, but I was happy to try it this once. I look forward to sampling more of the menu—perhaps when the place settles down.

Burger & Barrel (25 W. Houston Street between Mercer & Greene Streets, SoHo)