The Milton

On the official NYC taxi map, the Upper East Side ends at 86th Street, aside from a small sliver near Central Park, which extends up to 110th Street. The rectangle bounded by 86th, Madison, 110th, and the East River, is (supposedly) Spanish Harlem.

Those are the traditional borders, but the streets north of 86th are starting to look more like the old Upper East Side. Indeed, most sources now consider anything up to 96th Street to be part of that neighborhood. Gentrification will only accelerate as the Second Avenue Subway gets closer to completion. (The latest ever-changing due date is the end of 2016, but it is sure to move again.)

The Milton is typical of the dining and drinking establishments taking root in the upper Upper East Side, where rents are low enough to attract a younger crowd. The owner, Tomas Maher of 13th Street Entertainment, talks up the space’s “downtown vibe”. This neighborhood isn’t yet secure in its own skin, so the proprietors have to compare it to someplace else.

The chef, David Diaz, came out of the same ownership group’s Brasserie Beaumarchais in the Meatpacking District, but the two places couldn’t be less alike. The cuisine at The Milton is out of the gastropub playbook: like the owner, a fusion of Irish, English, and American styles. Appetizers and salads are $9–16, side dishes $7, mains $12–28 (but only two of them north of $18).

It’s not a particularly long menu, with just eight mains and no announced specials. It will be interesting to see if it changes seasonally. Otherwise, The Milton isn’t a gastropub. It’s just a pub: a good one.

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The Simone

For at least a decade, the Adult White Tablecloth Restaurant in New York has suffered from media neglect. Open one of these, and the critics are likely to say, “No one eats like that any more.” The exceptions are rare, and usually have big names behind them, like Michael White or Daniel Boulud.

So imagine my surprise when The Simone—an expensive, totally retro, white tablecloth restaurant opened on the Upper East Side—and Pete Wells awarded three stars. Yes, the Upper East Side, where most critics seldom go, and which Wells has repeatedly disparaged, as if it were a foreign nation.

You’ll find more fifty-somethings than thirty-somethings at The Simone, which is just fine by me. I do get tired of being lectured about “the way we eat now,” when I never tired of the the way we ate before. There’s something refreshing about an old-fashioned restaurant. The Simone shows that the format still has plenty of life, when it’s done right.

The chef, Chip Smith, serves straightforward, French-inspired fare. After moving to New York from North Carolina, he cooked briefly at Le Midi near Union Square, a restaurant I found promising, but limited in its ambitions—bearing in mind that no entrée rose above $28. At The Simone, entrées are in the $30s and $40s, and Mr. Smith can do what he wants.

His wife, Tina Vaughn, writes out the frequently-changing menu in a voluptuous, cursive script. There are no tasting menus, snacks, side dishes, seafood towers, sharing plates, or large-format specials; the format is appetizer, entrée, dessert. The End. When was the last time you saw that?

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Rôtisserie Georgette

Who’d have thought that a French restaurant that serves meats on a rôtisserie would be one of the breakout hits of 2014?

Georgette Farkas thought so. After 17 years as Daniel Boulud’s head of in-house PR, she left last year to open Rôtisserie Georgette on the Upper East Side, steps away from Central Park South and the posh Fifth and Madison Avenue shopping districts.

It might strike you as an obvious move, but according to the Post’s Steve Cuozzo (who awarded three stars), there hasn’t been a French rôtisserie restaurant in New York since D’Artagnan in 2001—and that one didn’t last long. But Farkas’ instincts were spot-on: Rôtisserie Georgette is consistently full, and I had a tougher time booking it than almost any restaurant I’ve visited in the last year.

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Ristorante Morini

How much Michael White is too much Michael White? At Ristorante Morini, his seventh New York restaurant in as many years, the chef is betting that we still don’t have enough.

There’ve been some stumbles along the way. Nicoletta, his pizzeria, is limping along after horrible reviews. How do you screw up pizza? Somehow, he did. The Butterfly, his take on a 1950s Wisconsin supper club, quickly fell off the radar after a much publicized opening. A recent re-visit to Costata, his Italian steakhouse in Soho, was disappointing. But at modern haute Italian fine dining, his judgment has never failed him. That’s the genre he tackles once again at Ristorante Morini.

White may be repeating himself, but have you tried to book a table at Marea lately? After five years in business, it is still solidly booked at prime times. Opening Ai Fiori, a second restaurant in the same mold, did nothing to tamp down demand, so why not build a third?

He chose the right location, the Upper East Side, the city’s only remaining residential neighborhood where guests aren’t offended by white tablecloths and don’t require a special occasion for fine dining. The Met is a block away, and if you’d rather avoid museum food, there is now a far better option.

I’m not sure why he chose the name Morini, which this new restaurant shares with Osteria Morini in Soho, where you find haute trattoria fare served on wooden tables with orange paper placemats. This Morini is nothing like that Morini, but I’m sure some tourists will show up at the wrong one.

To run the kitchen, White has installed Gordon Finn, who worked for him at Alto when it had two Michelin stars. Finn executes the White playbook flawlessly. Close your eyes, and you could be at Marea or Ai Fiori.

The prices are punishingly high. You are paying for luxury, or at least the perception of it. Crudi and antipasti are $19–26, pastas $22–29 (not counting gnocchi with black truffles, $42), entrées mostly $36–52 (but Dover Sole will set you back $69).

There is also a four-course option for $84, which allows you to select almost any starter, pasta, entrée and dessert (some items carry supplements). The tariff will probably go up over time, as Ai Fiori’s prix fixe is $94, Marea’s $99, and the restaurants are quite similar. Indeed, when the chef came to our table to say hello, he did not disagree when I described it as “Marea with a meat option.”

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Regency Bar & Grill

When you spend a year and $100 million renovating your Upper East Side Hotel, you’ve got to make it back somehow. What else explains a restaurant that charges so much, and delivers so little in return?

The Regency Bar & Grill opened in January in the 38-year-old Loews Regency Hotel on the Upper East Side. The space where the legendary “power breakfast” originated was gutted and re-built. (The old furniture went to a Coney Island Senior Center.)

At first glance, you’d say they got their money’s worth. It’s a plush white-tablecloth room, with polished aluminum fixtures, cozy banquettes, and walls adorned with historical black-and-white photos of Manhattan habituées. You’d never dream of building such a space downtown, but for the neighborhood it’s in, and the clientele it has to serve, it feels pitch-perfect.

 

The cocktails are $18 apiece, but the bartenders know their craft, once get their attention. A Rob Roy was prepared with Sheep Dip Whisky (they gave a taste of that on the side) and served with a 2-inch-square ice cube, the kind the top-drawer cocktail parlors use. The tab is transferred to the table if you ask.

The Sant Ambroseus team (who run this joint) clearly wanted the Regency to be higher-profile than 540 Park, the last restaurant in this space. They lured Dan Silverman from the Standard Grill downtown, where he got one star from Pete Wells. The guy has been around, including stops at Alison on Dominick, Union Square Cafe, and Lever House. He seems to last about five years, wherever he goes.

The opening was deftly publicized, with multiple blog posts on the likes of Eater, Grub Street, and similar sites, and a photo of Silverman in The Times. I’ll admit I was played. I have nothing against the neighborhood, as regular readers well know, but I wouldn’t ordinarily go running to an Upper East Side hotel restaurant.

The last time I sampled Silverman’s cooking was in 2006, at Lever House, where the prices (adjusted for inflation) were about the same as they are here. I wasn’t wowed and had no desire to go back. I have the same impression today.

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J. G. Melon

I used to have a separate to-do list just for burgers. I gave up on maintaining it, because there were so many burgers, and so little time. It just wasn’t going to happen. Naturally, J. G. Melon was on the list. It regularly appears in compilations of the city’s “best burgers” (here, here, here, here—and many more).

Just a bit of history: the place opened in 1972, but looks a good twenty years older than that. Much like Katz’s Delicatessen, it seems to be frozen in time. It won’t change, because it doesn’t have to. The founders were named “Jack” and “George” (hence J. G.), and the “Melon” is for the watermelon art that passes for décor.

It’s notoriously difficult to get in at sociable dining hours. A few months ago, we walked in at about 6:00pm on a Saturday evening. We were quoted a 20 to 30-minute wait by a host who barely looked us in the eye. It hardly seemed like we could rely on that, and there was nowhere to wait, so we gave it a pass.

Recently, we dropped by slightly earlier, in the middle of a blizzard, and it was still pretty crowded, but we were seated immediately at the bar. It didn’t take long before the place was packed once again. The bartender was more attentive than the host; she made a pretty good martini.

J. G. Melon serves a typical pub menu, but I’ve never heard of anyone ordering anything but the burger. If you peer into the half-open kitchen, burgers seem to be the only thing they make: possibly hundreds per hour at busy times, as it appears they have at least a few dozen on the grill at any given time.

 

I was surprised by how small it was. A super-model on a diet could make peace with it. Mind you, in this era of $20 burgers, they do not overcharge: it’s $10.25. Still, in a city where great burgers are so plentiful, I was surprised it has made so many top-10 lists. By all means, if you’re in the neighborhood and it’s not prime time, stop in and have one. But it’s not the burger of your dreams; it’s just solid and reliable.

Mediocre cottage fries (easily sharable) will set you back another $4.95, and credit cards aren’t accepted.

J. G. Melon (1291 Third Avenue at 74th Street, Upper East Side)

Food: Burgers and not much else
Service: Hurried
Ambiance: A 40-year-old pub that looks 60

Rating: ★

The Writing Room

It takes chutzpah to open a restaurant in an iconic space. That’s what the owners of The Writing Room have done, taking over two buildings on upper Second Avenue that, for almost fifty years, were known as Elaine’s.

They’ve invested two and a half years and $4 million, and gotten their money’s worth, a lovely modern-casual restaurant that feels immediately comfortable. It reminds me of The Smith. The decibel level is higher than I’d like, but that’s probably deliberate.

The new owners aren’t shy about reminding you what used to be here. The main dining room is festooned with photos of Elaine’s celebrity patrons, of which there were many. A back room, called the Study, is decorated with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, populated with the literary works of Elaine’s regulars. The re-building job occasioned a lengthy Glenn Collins article, “Reviving Elaine’s Without Elaine.” The place was long past its prime when Elaine Kaufman died in 2010, but no one is going to forget her anytime soon.

The Times’ online archives are full of stories about Elaine’s, but the paper never reviewed it as an actual restaurant. By most accounts, the critics weren’t missing much: the food was generally described as mediocre, at best.

That is one thing the new owners have fixed. It’s not destination cuisine, but for what it is, it’s very good. The concise, upscale pub menu (curiously lacking a burger) is inexpensive for the neighborhood, with starters $11–15, entrees mostly $19–28 (a lobster is $32, a dry-aged strip steak $52), and side dishes $5–6.

The wine list runs to 16 widely-spaced pages, organized by grape, with a short paragraph on the history of each varietal. Just like the food, it’s not a destination list, but much better than you’d expect.

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Spigolo

When Frank Bruni was the New York Times restaurant critic, he dropped two stars on an earnest neighborhood Italian spot every other week.

Actually, that is a very unfair exaggeration. Sometimes he went a whole month without reviewing an Italian restaurant, and he didn’t love them all. But he loved a lot of them.

Spigolo was one of these, a pretty good restaurant that no one talks about any more. Frank Bruni gave it two stars in 2005. The review reached its 13th paragraph before Bruni mentioned a dish he liked: admittedly, there were many of these, once he finally got around to it, but they almost seemed beside the point.

Scott and Heather Fratangelo, the critical darlings who opened the restaurant, left in September 2012, with no explanation that I can find. But the restaurant is still popular, judging by the crowds on a recent Wednesday evening. And Spigolo moving to a larger space early next year.

The new chef, Joseph D’Angelo, cooks in the same rustic Italian idiom that Bruni described. The online menu and wine list lack prices (irritating!), but we ordered three entrées: all were in the high $20s, and as I recall those prices were typical. It’s a fair tariff for food of this caliber. A pretty good chianti was $48.

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Cucina Ciano

Note: Cuciana Ciano closed in August 2014 due to a dispute with the landlord. The space is expected to become a French restaurant called Monte Carlo.

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Remember Pan Am, the airline? After it folded in 1991, it was resuscitated six times, in each instance having nothing whatsoever to do with the original, aside from the name.

This is the comparison that comes to mind when you visit Cucina Ciano on the Upper East Side, which shares ownership and a name—but little else—in common with Ciano, which failed nobly after a three-year run in the Flatiron District.

The chef at Ciano was Shea Gallante, who came thisclose to earning four stars at Cru, and was very close to three at Ciano. The food and the setting were refined, in a way few new restaurants are any more: the perfect second- or third-date restaurant.

The impressive wine program, with former Cru sommelier John Slover in charge, offered most of the list by the half-bottle for 50 percent of the full bottle price. Even if the food had been merely average (and it wasn’t), Ciano was worth repeated visits for the wine alone.

Ciano closed abruptly in April 2013 for unspecified reasons, although I had long suspected that the upscale Italian restaurant market segment was over-saturated, which turned out to be the case.

Owner Stratis Morfogen transported the name and one of Shea Gallante’s sous chefs, Tim Huynh, way uptown. But he brought little else that had made Ciano the charming place it was. A loud, hectic scrum greets you at the door. Tables are crushed close together. The space is not at all pleasant.

The mostly-Italian, two-page wine list has very few of the unusual selections that would bring you back, and they’re no longer available by the half-bottle.

We ordered two of the house cocktails. and in both cases the bar was out of a main ingredient. They’re served in mugs the size of water goblets, and with so much ice that they quickly become diluted. 

The food isn’t memorable. If I lived in the neighborhood, I’d wait a few months until the crowds die down, and give it another try to see if the chef has his act together. Right now, it is uneven. Prices are lower than at the original Ciano, with primi $10–19, pastas $14–18 for half portions, $24–25 for entrée portions, secondi $24–42, and side dishes $8. That’s the going rate in this part of town.

The bread service (above right) looks impressive, but bread sticks and focaccia were both stale; the warm garlic bread was pretty good, though.

 

A mediocre Caesar Salad ($12; above left) was under-dressed and featured but one measly anchovy. The bartender recommended the Veal Meatballs ($16; above right), a wise choice. They’re a bit expensive for what you get, but at least the dish is well made.

 

Wendy gave her endorsement to the Garganelli with Duck Bolognese (above left). She ordered the half-portion ($15), and it was ample. The Pork Chop with a honey glaze ($29; above right) was a hair over-done, but I finished it nonetheless.

It’s understandable that Cucina Ciano is less ambitious than Ciano. When an upscale place fails, its replacement is usually more casual. But no one who admired the original Ciano should be misled. Very little of what made it special has survived the trip uptown. It’s still a decent neighborhood spot, and right now the local crowd is keeping it full. If I lived in the neighborhood, I’d give it three months and then go back, hoping to find it less hectic.

Cucina Ciano (181 E. 78th St. btwn Third & Lexington Avenues, Upper East Side)

Food: At its best, slightly better than neighborhood Italian
Service: Fine, considering the crowds
Ambiance: A loud, bustling room 

Rating: ★

The East Pole

When’s the last time a cloned restaurant was actually better the second time? Usually, the clone is a poor shadow of the original. Occasionally they’re equal, if the management is really good.

The East Pole breaks the rules. Billed as an uptown version of The Fat Radish, it’s a significant improvement on its predecessor. Not that the Fat Radish was that bad, but when we visited, the food wasn’t impressive enough to overcome poor service and a room so loud it was headache-inducing. Perhaps it has improved; I wasn’t inclined to go back.

The concept is cleverly re-imagined for the Upper East Side ecosystem. The room has a bright sheen, casual but refined, with edison bulbs, blonde wood tables, plush black leather banquettes, and soft music in the background. You can be comfortable here, and don’t have to shout to be heard.

Like the Fat Radish, the restaurant wears its farm-to-table ethos on its sleeve, with a list of purveyors on the back of the menu, and servers in brown aprons as if they’d just walked in from the barn. Our server delivered a sermon on pickling, which he does in his spare time at home. After a while, it felt like too much information. The menu is vaguely British (Scotch Egg, Fish Pie), to an extent you’d barely notice. Although reprinted daily, there’s a sizable list of recited specials with quite intricate descriptions: why?

Prices at the East Pole are a bit higher than at the Fat Radish. A Piedmontese Flank Steak at the Radish ($28) becomes a Piedmontese New York Strip uptown ($42). What seems (from the description) to be the same Heritage pork chop is $28 downtown, $32 uptown. But the bacon cheeseburger is $19 in both places. The room is so much nicer that I’d gladly pay a few bucks more.

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