Brasserie Cognac East

Sometimes, you can just tell that a new restaurant fulfills a neighborhood’s long-felt need. That’s my reaction at Brasserie Cognac East on the Upper East Side French, which was packed to the gills on a random summer Tuesday.

Classic French cuisine has been on the upswing the last few years, as I and many others have noted. Still, the swish of the scythe was so devastating in the 1990s and early aughts that the arrival of another such establishment is welcome.

More, please.

Cognac East is the second of the family. Its older sister opened in West Midtown in 2008, as Brasserie Cognac de Monsieur Ballon. The fictitious M. Ballon, it seems, has been kicked to the curb. The chef, Florian V. Hugo (the Les Misérables author’s descendant), clearly knows his French cuisine. When it’s right, it’s very right.

Both restaurants are built for volume: there are 100 tightly-packed seats at Cognac East, on two levels. The space (formerly the Italian restaurant Lumi) is loud, and not the most charming. Internet reviews suggest the service can be uneven. That was my experience, too, at the original Brasserie Cognac. I had a terrific vol au vent on opening night, but a meal about six months later that I’d rather forget.

This must all, of course, be placed in the context of a mid-priced menu, with most entrées below $30 and most appetizers in the mid-teens — higher than Sel et Poivre, lower than Orsay, both nearby. If I lived in the area, Cognac would be in my regular rotation.

 

We loved the cheese puffs (above left) that started the meal. A tomato-y lobster bisque (above right) was really good.

 

The tuna tarte flambé (above left) is an unusual dish, but it works. The version we were served was spiced with wasabi, which is probably not in Escoffier’s cookbook. There is no mention of wasabi on the Internet menu, so perhaps that has been phased out.

The shoestring fries (above right) were crunchy and salty, exactly as they ought to be.

 

Steak tartare (above left) was disappointing, as an overdose of pepper completely smothered the over-sauced beef. But all was forgiven with a perfect scallop (above right) with mushrooms and a squash purée.

 

The cheese soufflé (above left), made with emmenthal, gruyère and parmesan, was one of the evening’s highlights, a must for soufflé connoisseurs. The side salad it comes with (above right) doesn’t add much to the dish.

  

If the desserts we sampled are any guide, your last memories will be good ones. Our favorite was the coconut shell (above left), with bitter chocolate, coconut sorbet, exotic fruit salad, and passion fruit sauce. Or try the rose macaron (above center) with litchies, fresh raspberries, rose cream and berry sauce. The floating island (above right) with poached meringue with caramel and vanilla crème anglaise was okay, but I have had better versions of this dish.

Full disclosure: we dined at the publicist’s invitation, sat in the corner booth, and got Cognac East’s best. The throngs packing the dining room are evidence enough that the neighborhood wants such a place. I hope the chef and his team can give it to them.

Brasserie Cognac East (963 Lexington Ave. at 70th Street, Upper East Side)

Arlington Club

 

I never realized how desperate the Upper East Side was for a great steakhouse. Laurent Tourondel did. He opened Arlington Club on Lexington Avenue four months ago and scored a bullseye: an instant hit.

You’d figure Tourondel can nail a steakhouse. His BLT Steak (opened nine years ago, and since replicated in a dozen cities) practically defined the modern steakhouse movement: the appetizers and non-steak entrées are terrific, and you swoon over the side dishes as much as the steaks themselves.

Since the failure of Cello, an old-school three-star seafood restaurant, in 2002, Tourondel has been more obsessed with replicable populism than excellence. The man can cook, but who runs the show when he is absent? All of his post-Cello places have been bedeviled with inconsistency.

And none of them have had management that complemented Tourondel’s skill in the kitchen. His BLT partnership with the restaurateur Jimmy Haber ended in an acrimonious divorce in 2010. Now he’s in bed with the Tao Group, the geniuses behind a chain of terrible, but highly profitable, restaurants, such as Tao, Lavo, and Marble Lane. If Tourondel is half the perfectionist he is reputed to be, it’s hard to imagine how he’ll tolerate being beholden to these clowns.

For now, Arlington Club is BLT Lavo, neither as bad as the Tao group’s other outfits, nor as good as it could be if Tourondel ever found the right partner. Tourondel’s DNA is evident in the excellent steaks, the sides, and the heavenly popovers. Tao Group’s DNA is evident in the mediocre service, the clubby crowd, and the spectacular build-out—resembling, and as noisy as, a European train station.

I booked a 5:45 pm table on a Saturday evening. A host called to warn me that my party would not be seated if it were incomplete, and that the table would be forfeited after 15 minutes. That was after they already took a credit card number in advance. Never mind that, according to multiple critics, tables are frequently not available at the promised time. A restaurant that can’t keep to its own schedule has no business lecturing customers about punctuality.

At check-out, I was compelled to sign the bill twice, both before and after I presented my credit card. “It’s our policy,” said the server, who didn’t even try to explain it.

According to Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton, bar tabs are not transferrable to the table—an inexcusable lapse at a restaurant where even modest eaters will struggle to keep the bill under $125 per person. The wine list offers a wide selection, from the low $50s up to four figures; but then, they’ll serve your super-Tuscan in the same glass as they’d serve a Pinot Grigio.

This is what you get when a respected chef goes into partnership with the Tao group: a restaurant practically designed to suck. But with Arlington Club perpetually packed these days, the money-vacuum at Corporate has no reason to change: they just keep hoovering up the dough.

Having said that, the service staff themselves were extremely good. The server gave excellent ordering advice; plates were cleared promptly, and the staff must have circled back half-a-dozen times to wipe crumbs off the table.

The food was fine, but not good enough to justify the Tourondel premium. The price of the menu’s centerpiece, the côte de boeuf, has been on a rocket’s trajectory: $110 in early January (when The Post’s Steve Cuozzo awarded three stars), $115 in mid-January (when The Times’s Pete Wells awarded two), $125 by the end of January (when Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton awarded half-a-star), and $130 today. Most of the menu has seen a similar, if not quite as spectacular, an increase over the past few months.

At today’s prices, the menu offers a selection of sushi rolls ($12–21), raw fish and seafood ($14–28), appetizers ($14–26), steaks ($36–65 per person), composed mains, referred to as “specialties” ($26–59) and a wide assortment of sides ($11–15). The sushi, by the way, has been panned by all three of the pro critics that have reviewed it. We were not about to touch it with a barge pole.

The meal begins with the legendary popovers (above left), a feature wisely retained from the BLT franchies, served here (inexplicably) with pickles. The recipe has changed since we last visited BLT Prime, and I like these a bit less—they taste a bit too eggy—but they remain a highlight of dinner at any Tourondel restaurant.

 

Calamari Salad ($17; above left) and Fluke crudo ($14; above right) were competent but unremarkable.

 

That côte de boeuf (above; $130 for two), served with a trench of bone marrow, is very good and perfectly cooked to the medium rare we requested (not a guarantee here, given the comments of multiple pro reviewers). There’s an appealing crunchy char on the outside, although the meat doesn’t quite have as much dry-aged flavor as I’d like.

 

The steak comes with the French Fries (normally $10 if ordered separately). Full credit to the server for letting us know (the menu made no mention of them), and urging us to cancel a separate order of “Potatoes Arlington,” which would have been wasted on us. The fries are doused with an excess of cheddar powder and what the menu calls “spices,” which tasted to us like truffle oil. They were merely okay.

The Truffled Gnocchi ($15; above right) are superb, an expensive side dish well worth it.

 

There are about a dozen wonderful gelati and ice creams, all made in house. The server rattled them off from memory, all of them funky combinations like chocolate popcorn, of which we chose three ($8; above left). A couple of small pastries resembling beignets (above right) stood in for petits fours.

There’s much to like at Arlington Club. We weren’t served a bad dish, and several were very good. If I lived nearby, I’d go back. But the “steakhouse-plus” genre that Tourondel pioneered is no longer a novelty. For the same money, you can visit Porter House or Minetta Tavern, where the food is more consistent and the service is better.

Arlington Club (1034 Lexington Ave. between 73rd–74th Streets, Upper East Side)

Food: Steakhouse plus, BLT style
Service: Very good at the table with a terrible corporate owner
Ambiance: A gorgeous, stylized European train station (and as noisy)

Rating: ★
Why? The genre is no longer novel, and Tourondel fails to improve on it

Sirio Ristorante

Note: Sirio closed in February 2015. A French–American restaurant called Perrine replaced it.

*

Sirio Ristorante is the latest offering from the Maccioni family, the clan behind Le Cirque and Circo in New York, and half-a-dozen similar places in Las Vegas, India, and the Dominican Republic.

The patriarch, Sirio Maccioni, was once the top maitre d’ in the city. He still holds court at the mother ship, but day-to-day management of the company is now in the hands of his three sons.

There is some evidence that the empire is not what it used to be: last year, Pete Wells knocked Le Cirque all the way down from three stars to one, whereupon they fired the chef. He has not yet been replaced, to my knowledge; his name still appears on the website.

Still, in multiple visits to Le Cirque and Circo, particularly the former, I’ve found that they can certainly dazzle you on occasion. (This would be the case, even if you discount a comped visit to Le Cirque last year at the restaurant’s invitation.) We were dazzled again at Sirio last week. As far as I can tell, we weren’t recognized. None of Sirio’s sons, nor the maitre d’, visited our table; nothing was comped. The food was simply superb.

Our experience does not square with either Adam Platt of New York, nor Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post, both who gave it just one star. Even Gael Greene, who is recognized everywhere she goes, filed a negative review.

Most of the critics—Platt in particular—are predictably hostile to restaurants that cater to the affluent, as an Upper East Side restaurant in The Pierre hotel, facing Central Park, is inevitably expected to do. To criticize the mission is absurd. Review it on its own terms, or don’t go. Nevertheless, the conclusion on reading those reviews is that you can have a bad meal here. We had an excellent one.

The city would be a poorer place without restaurants like Sirio. How nice is it to walk into a beautiful dining room, be served by a professional staff, sit in comfortable chairs, order from a wine list with real depth, and carry on a conversation in a normal speaking voice? Even if they served nothing but twinkies, there’d be value in that. Yes, it’s expensive—unavoidable in this location. You don’t have to go every day.

This is the space formerly occupied by Le Caprice, which flopped a year ago after a short stint. It too was panned by nearly everyone. The guts of the long, narrow space have the same layout as before. The Maccionis’ favorite designer, Adam Tihany, has given the dining room a colorful upgrade. There are no tablecloths, the restaurant’s lone concession to fashion.

The menu, I understand, has scaled back some of the opening prices. Still, you can spend a lot here. Antipasti are $14–36 (average about $20), primi $24–33, secondi $28–59 (most in the $30s), contorni $9.

 

Bread service (above left) was the lone disappointment: by the time we arrived for our late meal, most of the bread was stale.

Carpaccio di Manzo ($21; above right) was a wonderful starter: thinly sliced beef, quail eggs, baby bok choy, lemongrass, and shaved truffles. I wondered if the truffles could possibly be real at this price, but they certainly seemed to be.

 

Sea bass ($36; above left) came with delicious potato and artichoke chips, with a luscious caper cream sauce (above right).

 

Salmon ($34; above left) belied the myth that restaurant salmon has to be boring. Roasted with Brussels sprouts and served with a caviar sauce, it was rich and deeply satisfying.

The wine list went on for many pages and had the usual trophy wines you’d expect at such an establishment, but a 2003 Loire valley white at the back of the volume (photo of the label at the top of this post), at just $55, was magical, with a deep, musky, mature flavor that wowed us immediately.

Service was polished and correct. I would not call it elegant: by the standards of the neighborhood, it’s upscale but not luxuriious. Downtown, it would be impossible. Our reservation was at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. It was not full at that hour, but there were a couple of parties that arrived after us.

My isolated voice probably won’t persuade very many people that Sirio is wonderful. Platt, Cuozzo, et al, have much larger megaphones than we. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Sirio Ristorante (795 Fifth Avenue at 61st Street, Pierre Hotel, Upper East Side)

Food: Modern Italian with French technique
Service: Upscale but not luxurious
Ambiance: A comfortable dining room in a five-star hotel

Rating: ★★
Why? Sirio won’t be for everyone, but it fulfills its mission almost perfectly 

83½

Note: The Skeen curse continues. 83½ closed (briefly) after just 4½ months in business. As noted in the comments (below), it has re-opened with a different chef, Will Foden, who is serving an Italian menu.

*

I’m gonna try to write this post without making a bunch of Ryan Skeen jokes. It’s not easy. The chef has been linked to ten projects since 2008, many of which failed quickly (either the restaurant or Skeen’s involvement). In early 2012, he sat for an interview with Grub Street, clearly aware of his reputation for job-hopping. Taken individually, each failure has a logical explanation. Taken together, there is a shitload of them.

Welcome to Skeen Project #11, 83½, named for the restaurant’s location, halfway along 83rd Street between First and Second Avenues. The place has been open less than a month. Skeen hasn’t quit yet.

No one who knows Skeen’s history would predict a long life for this place. But at least it’s a lot different than most of his recent projects: a brand new, small dining room with 42 seats, where he’s the executive chef, and no one else’s culinary ego is competing with his.

Of course, there is still an owner to contend with, Vincenzo Mangiafridda Jr., who owns Gino’s Pizzeria next door. We weren’t sure if it was Vincenzo or his son who was perched at the bar on a recent Saturday evening, chatting with Ryan in the open kitchen and surveying the scene.

The one-page, focused menu is in four sections: Starting Course ($16), Sea Course ($17), Pasta Course ($18), and Large Courses ($27). But for one dish with a $5 supplement (the rack of lamb), every dish in a category costs the same.

This layout might prompt over-ordering. The server didn’t push that at all, though he did point out that some tables order a pastas—of which there are only two—as a mid-course to share. There are just five entrées, and the kitchen was no longer offering two of them when we arrived a shade early for our 10:30pm reservation.

Given Skeen’s reputation as a meat-hawking chef at Resto and Irving Mill, it may be a bit surprising that about half the menu is seafood, and most of the meat offerings are timid. Is Skeen channeling the Upper East Side, trying to prove he’s settled down, or something else?

The wine list isn’t long, but it’s fairly priced in relation to the food, and it featured a number of producers unfamiliar to me, many of them labeled as organic or biodynamic. At $50 (about 2½ times retail), the Torbreck 2009 Cuvée Juveniles (above right) had a rich, full-bodied flavor.

 

A Tea Beet & Goat Cheese Salad ($16; above left) was…well, a beet salad. A Liege Salad ($16; above right) was as close to the old Skeen as the menu got, a delightful soupy mix of escarole, arugula, chopped pig’s ears, and a poached egg.

 

If you’re going to offer just two pastas, there’s full credit for making one of them such a dandy as the Sepia Bucatini ($18; above left) with chili, sea urchin, lemon and basil.

But I was quite disappointed in the Rack of Lamb ($32; above right), the only dish on the menu that carries a supplement. Served off the bone, the lamb didn’t have much flavor, and it was swimming in a watery swamp of bitter greens.

The space doesn’t appear to be perversely designed to amplify the ambient noise, but noisy it was, until the crowd thinned out later in our meal. The dining room is modern, stylish, and attractive, although the tables are close together. The servers are smartly dressed and knowledgeable, a cut above what one often finds at new restaurants these days. This isn’t their first rodeo.

I’m sure 83½ will attract some of the Skeen curiosity seekers, the way it attracted us. The introductory menu doesn’t qualify as destination cuisine, but as Skeen finds his equilibrium perhaps it will become more adventurous. The advantage of a small space is that the menu doesn’t have to be full of crowd-pleasers, as long as he can keep 40-odd seats full.

Less than a month in, 83½ is promising, but perhaps not yet at its full potential. It will bear watching, along with the chef’s mercurial temper.

83½ (345 E. 83rd Street between First & Second Avenues, Upper East Side)

Food: Upscale American cuisine
Wine: A short but worthwhile list of wines, many organic or biodynamic
Service: A strong point, especially for a restaurant this new
Ambaince: A small, stylish dining room with an open kitchen; a bit too loud

Rating: ★
Why? A promising menu with some soft spots, but well worth watching

The Pitch & Fork

Note: Pitch & Fork closed. The space is now a Mexican restaurant called Epazote.

*

On the Upper East Side, where the restaurant scene has been quietly improving, welcome to The Pitch & Fork. It’s not destination dining, but another solid option in a neighborhood that the media always considered dining-deficient.

In truth, the media perception of Upper East Side dining was always more myth than fact. East of Third Avenue, the residents are younger, edgier, and far more likely to be single. They’ve all gotta eat. Restaurants up here still struggle to pull crowds from outside the neighborhood, but many of them do solid local business.

That appeared to be the case on a recent Saturday evening at The Pitch & Fork, which opened in late June. There’s a small outdoor café, a dark tavern-like dining room, and a quiet outdoor garden (where we ate), which supposedly will be open year-round.

The man in charge is Jacques Ouari, whose clutch of restaurants includes Jacques Brasserie at 85th & Third and Jacques 1534 in NoLIta. The menu here offers French-accented pub fare, where burgers, hot dogs and ribs could share the table with moules frites and steak au poivre.

Soups, salads and appetizers run $7–16, main courses $15–26, side dishes $6–7. The wine list is not much of a draw, but you’ll find something acceptable. The bottle of red Zinfandel pictured above was $53.

Not many restaurants serve a platter of Schaller & Weber choucroute these days, so we ordered that. It comes in two sizes ($16/$22), and the larger of these was more than we could finish, a bounty of bockwurst, weisswurst, frankfurt, pork belly, sauerkraut, and potatoes.

 

A very good poached Brook Trout ($22; above left) was stuffed with spinach, shallots, and wild mushrooms. But under-seasoned Roast Chicken ($21; above right) had a flat, mushy taste.

Some of the servers here are a bit shaky on the finer points (where to put silverware, how to pour wine), but they were attentive enough, and the outdoor garden is lovely. I’d like to hope that chicken was an anomaly, as otherwise the Pitch & Fork is a pleasant spot.

The Pitch & Fork (1606 First Avenue between 83rd & 84th Streets, Upper East Side)

Food: French-accented American pub fare
Service: Informal but sufficiently attentive
Ambiance: A bustling tavern with a quiet outdoor garden

Rating: ★
Why? Another solid option for the area, but not noteworthy enough to travel for

Móle

The successful Móle Mexican restaurant family now has its fourth and most ambitious sibling, with a lavish new space on the Upper East Side.

The chef (Guadalupe Elizalde) and her husband (Nick Cervera) have built this little empire over a period of twenty years, starting with the humble Taco Taco, which opened in 1992. The first Móle (in the West Village) came in 2007, followed by branches on the Lower East Side, in Williamsburg, and now the new Móle across the street from the place that started it all, Taco Taco, which has since closed.

I visited with my family on my own dime a couple of months ago (although the owner knew who I was, and gave us the best table in the house), and again later on, at a dinner hosted by the publicist. This review is based on a composite of the two visits. Prices shown are from the regular menu.

There’s a broad selection of Mexican classics: nachos, guacamole, enchiladas, tostadas, tacos, burritos, chimichangas, quesadillas, and so forth. You can eat heartily and inexpensively, as almost every entrée is $22 or less.

The two owners now have four kitchens and four dining rooms to look after, and quality sometimes suffers. Two dishes were common to both visits. One was better the first time; the other was better the second. Appetizers generally fared better than entrées.

The food menu runs to five pages, which is probably too long. It’s hard to make so many things consistently well, especially when the chef can’t be in four kitchens at once.

None of the four Móles has had a professional review that I can find, but on various websites there are multiple reports of poor service, which I clearly cannot judge, as I was known to the house both times I visited. (Móle’s Zagat service rating is just 18, which is not a great score.)

 

Fresh Guacamole ($10 small; $15 large) is made tableside, although we saw this bit of theater only on our first visit. You’ll be asked if you want mild, medium, or spicy. We asked for medium both times, but on the second visit it didn’t have much “pop” at all.

  

Sopa de Tortilla ($8; above left) was one of the best dishes on either visit. It’s an intensely spicy tomato soup with strips of crisp blue corn tortilla, cheese, sour cream and onions.

Huitlacoche is a black fungus that grows on corn: the word is derived from cuitla, which means “excrement” or “rear end.” Anyhow, it features prominently in Mexican cuisine, though most American restaurants don’t serve it, as it looks gross. At Móle, they serve it wrapped in crepes ($12; above center) slathered in a creamy poblano sauce, so that the diner doesn’t actually see that the corn is black. (See Wikipedia for examples of other preparations, the likes of which I haven’t seen outside of Mexico.)

Tostada de Tinga ($10; above right) is a flat tortilla with bean spread, spicy shredded pork and onions, topped with lettuce, sour cream, and cheese.

 

Neither of two entrées impressed us. Perhaps the chef erred by sending out two items that were so similar. Pescado a la Veracruzana ($22; above left) is flounder with tomato, onion, olives, capers and shrimp; Bisteck a la Mexicana ($21; above right) is skirt steak with tomato, onion, jalapeño and cilantro. In both, the saucing and accoutrements were too heavy-handed, and we got very little flavor from the flounder or the steak.

 

Móle poblano is a complex sauce with about 20 ingredients, including chili peppers and chocolate. The restaurant serves it on two dishes, the Enchiladas de Mole Poblano ($22; above) and the Chicken en Mole Poblano ($22), which we didn’t have the chance to try.

The owner says that the sauce, which isn’t easy to make well, comes from the chef’s mother, who ships it to New York from Mexico. The first time we had it, the taste of chocolate was overwhelming. The second time, the flavors were in better balance. (The right-hand photo is a good illustration of typical portion sizes, as opposed to the tasting portions in most of the photos.)

  

It’s truly a family affair at Móle, as the chef’s sister is responsible for desserts. We loved the Pastel Tres Leches (above middle), a white cake drenched in three kinds of cream. The Belgian chocolate cake (above right) was also quite good. A crème caramel flan (above left) was fine, but you’ll find better examples elsewhere in town.

At the bar, there are around 100 tequilas and mezcales. Most are $14 or less and suitable for pairing with dinner. There’s also a pretty good cocktail list, including the ridiculous “Sex in a Mexican Prison” (tequila, cranberry juice, lime). What the ingredients have to do with the name is beyond me, but I ordered and enjoyed it, which I suppose is the point.

I haven’t been to the other Móles, but I believe this is the largest and most lavish of the quartet, although no one would call it fancy. The dining room seats 75, with an additional 20 outdoors in good weather. It was doing brisk business both times I visited—once on a weekday, the other on a Saturday.

The kitchen swings and misses at times, but you can put together a solid, inexpensive, and enjoyable meal here.

Móle (1735 Second Avenue between 89th & 90th Streets, Upper East Side)

Uva Restaurant and Wine Bar

I am leery of accepting dinner invitations from publicists, as it’s sometimes a signal that the restaurant is desperate.

At Uva Restaurant and Wine Bar, it is entirely the opposite. On a Wednesday evening, the charming, rustic space was bustling, full of the young, energetic, value-conscious diners that most people think the Upper East Side doesn’t have.

After it opened in 2005, Uva received just one professional review that I can find, a mostly favorable write-up from The Times in $25 & Under. It has received little media attention since then. Our visit was at the publicist’s invitation, and all of the usual caveats apply. However, between the four of us we were able to sample a good deal of the menu, and my friends didn’t hesitate to share their critical reactions, both positive and negative.

Uva is owned by the Lusardi family, whose sister restaurant down the block, Lusardi’s, serves a very similar Northern Italian menu in considerably more upscale surroundings. To the younger crowd that favors Uva, Lusardi’s is the old-fashioned white-tablecloth place where they’d take the grandparents. My age is about midway between most of Uva’s patrons and grandpa, and perhaps I’d probably enjoy the higher-priced (but much quieter) Lusardi’s a bit more. Uva is more cozy: with low ceilings and exposed brick right out of the downtown playbook, it does get loud in there.

But Uva has its charms, with 40 wines by the glass, most of them $12.50 or less; and 250 wines by the bottle in a wide range from $28 to a few reserve selections in three and four figures. (I assume Uva shares stock with Lusardi’s, which has a 500-bottle list.)

Although Uva is marketed as a wine bar, it has a full menu of antipasti, cheeses, pastas, and entrées. Portions are ample, and nothing costs more than $22. There is also a late-night menu from 11:00 p.m. to 2:00 a.m., a rarity in this neighborhood.

Chisolino ($9.50; above left) is a dish I’ve not had before, an Emilian-style focaccia with Robiola cheese and preserved black truffles. This was one of the more satisfying and memorable dishes of the evening.

Of the two bruschette we tried (both $6.50), our table voted a slight preference for the Sundried Tomato Puree, Pesto & Pine Nuts (above left) over the Wild Mushrooms, Arugula & Parmigiano Cheese (above right).

The appetizer course was the evening’s best, with a quartet of excellent dishes:

1. Insalata di Barbabietole ($9; above left), a salad of red beets, goat cheese and fava bean salad. Some version of this dish seems to appear in every restaurant, but this was a fine rendition of it.

2. Involtini de Melanzane ($10; above right), eggplant stuffed with ricotta and spinach, baked in a pink sauce with mozzarela. This is a dish I’ve not seen before, and frankly one of the few eggplant dishes I have ever liked.

3. Polenta Tartufata ($9; above left), fresh polenta filled with robiola cheese in a black truffle sauce. This was probably my favorite dish of the evening, and like the stuffed eggplant, I haven’t seen anything quite resembling it before.

4. Burrata Barese ($13; above right), creamy mozzarella with yellow beef tomatoes, fava beans, and a balsamic glaze.

The pasta course (right) was competently executed, but less distinctive:

1. Gnocchi di Ricotta ($18), home made ricotta gnocchi in a creamy black truffle and chive sauce. (Truffles seem to figure in a lot of the dishes here.)

2. Pappardelle al Ragu di Vitelo ($17), house-made pasta ribbons sautéed with ragout of veal and montasio cheese.

3. Cavatelli al Pesto ($18), house-made pasta shells in a creamy pesto sauce with shaved ricotta.

All three were acceptable, but the sense of the table was that we’d had better versions of them elsewhere.

The entrées were all quite heavy, plated and sauced in a style that isn’t fashionable these days. Three of the four seemed to be swimming in the identical dark brown sauce, which was too much of a good thing.

Anello de Capesante e Speck ($22; above left), was the most striking of these dishes, with five scallops arranged in a pentagon held together with a string of smoked prosciutto, resting in sautéed spinach and a white wine sauce. The whole production had a rich, dusky flavor.

Polpaccio d’Agnello ($21; above right), a braised lamb shank, seemed (like most of the entrées) over-sauced.

Vitello Gratinato con Melanzane ($22; above left), veal topped with eggplant and soft pecorino cheese in a rosemary sauce, was a higher quality and more tender veal than the pounded-into-dust versions served at lesser restaurants.

Petto d’Anatra ($22; above right), a pan-seared duck breast in a thyme sauce, was served with sautéed oyster mushrooms, spinach, and fingerling potatoes. Here, the suace was so overwhelming that it was hard to taste much of the duck at all.

All four desserts we tried were excellent:

1. Torta di Mandate ($8; above left), an almond tart served warm with vanilla ice cream and chocolate sauce.

2. Baci Perugina Mousse ($8.50; above right), a chocolate and hazelnut mousse topped with chocolate sauce and toasted hazelnuts.

3. Salame del Papa ($6.50; below left), a chocolate “salame” Venetian style.

4. Fragole con crema al mascarpone ($7.50; below right), fresh strawberries topped with mascarpone cream.

There wasn’t a dud among these, but if I must choose, the first two were more memorable.

To summarize, the starter and dessert courses were clear winners. The pastas were about typical of a good Italian restaurant in New York, while the entrées struck us as a tad old-fashioned and somewhat heavier than many diners are looking for these days. Having said that, they are certainly good for the neighborhood, especially at just $22, a good $4–5 less than many places would charge.

The service was excellent, as you’d expect at a pre-arranged meal, but if Uva is packed on a Wednesday in January after seven years in business, they are probably doing something right.

Uva (1486 Second Avenue between 77th & 78th Streets, Upper East Side)

Jones Wood Foundry

Could the Upper East Side be the next bastion of hip restaurants? I admit it’s far-fetched, and we’re a long way from that happening, but the essential requirements are there. East of Third Avenue, real estate is inexpensive by Manhattan standards, making it attractive both for restaurants and the young, single, urban professionals they hope to attract.

Jones Wood Foundry, a gastropub that opened in February, has the same rough-and-tumble vibe as many an East Village or Williamsburg restaurant. Whether it’ll succeed is not for me to say, but a young crowd had packed the place by 8:00 p.m. on a Monday evening, and the pro reviews have been favorable (Cuozzo for the Post, Moskin for The Times, Sietsema for the Voice).

I’m assuming the customers are mainly locals, as most Manhattanites can’t escape the impression—although it is decidedly false—that the Upper East Side is the bastion of trust fund babies and and ladies who lunch. That may be true on Fifth and Park Avenues. Take the Lexington Avenue Subway uptown, and turn right as you leave the station, and you find a much more diverse community.

This section of the Upper East Side was once called Jones Wood: it was even a candidate location for what became Central Park. The building itself, dating from the late nineteenth century, was once a foundry that manufactured manhole covers, among other things. Descendants of the original occupants, the Eberhart Brothers, still own the building.

The chef, Jason Hicks, worked in New York at Aureole, La Goulue, and Orsay, but he’s a native of the Cotswolds region of England. He’s partnered here with Yves Jadot, who also runs the Petite Abeille chain and the excellent cocktail lounge, Raines Law Room.

The menu here may remind you of April Bloomfield’s places (Spotted Pig, Breslin), but it’s more of a full-on English pub, with heavy doses of Bangers & Mash ($17), Steak & Kidney Pie ($18), Mushy Peas ($7), Haddock & Chips ($22), and so on. There are also fall-back dishes for the less adventurous, like a DeBragga dry-aged burger for $18 (which I didn’t order, but looked wonderful), roast chicken ($22), or a Niman Ranch pork chop ($28).

Most appetizers are below $15, most entrées below $25, so you can get out of here easily for $50 a head before drinks. There’s an ample list of beers on tap or by the bottle and a pretty good wine list too, though no hard liquor is served. The wine-based cocktail list is by Meghan Dorman of Raines Law Room and the Lantern’s Keep.

Celery root and blue cheese soup ($7; above left) with croutons and crispy bacon was a perfect starter for autumn. But my friend Kelly thought that Sweet pea soup ($7; above right) was overpowered by olive oil. She also found jumbo lump citrus crab salad ($14; no photo), with avocado, roasted tomato, and frisée, just average.

There were four announced specials — why should this be necessary on a menu reprinted daily? — including Partridge ($42), “just shot this weekend in Scotland.” It was served deboned, on a rich root vegetable stew. The server warned us to be on the lookout for birdshot, but all I encountered was a stray bone the butcher’s knife had missed.

Kelly has a hypothesis that food with a narrative (i.e., “just shot in Scotland”) is never worth the tariff, and this dish bore that out. I haven’t ordered partridge before, so I have no idea how it is supposed to be. It tasted slightly gamey, as you’d expect, but it was also a bit tough. A domestic, farm-raised bird on the same bed of vegetables would have been twice as good, and would have cost half as much.

We concluded with an excellent milk chocolate and sea salt pie ($7; left) with Chantilly cream.

The three-room space is smartly decorated in distressed pub chic. There is a long bar in the front room, a banquet-length communal table in the middle, and a dining room in the back. It was not terribly loud, although the crowds did not arrive until the end of our meal. Service was fine for a restaurant on this level: an incorrect order was dropped off, but promptly replaced after we pointed it out.

We didn’t really love anything, and a couple of dishes seemed off-kilter. But I adore the menu, and given the reviews it has received, I suspect we ordered wrong, or caught the place on chef’s night off. Despite the tone of the review, I’d happily rush back, next time I am in the area.

Jones Wood Foundry (401 E. 76th St. between First & York Avenues, Upper East Side)

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

The Mark by Jean-Georges

The current crop of new restaurants is dismal these days, so I have been re-visiting places that I thought deserved a second look. The Mark by Jean-Georges is packed every time I drop in, and reservations at prime times need to be booked several weeks in advance. So, I wondered: has it improved?

When we last visited The Mark, I wrote:

. . . we were left with the impression of decent hotel food served in a gorgeous room where the people-watching trumps the cuisine. Perhaps Vongerichten is skipping the inevitable decline, and launching with mediocrity in mind from the beginning.

I was referring, of course, to the “inevitable decline” that afflicts most Vongerichten restaurants after the first few months in business. Unlike other successful chef–restaurateurs, like Daniel Boulud or Tom Colicchio, he never seems to find the talent that can run a restaurant in his absence.

I’ve been back to The Mark many times, perhaps a dozen or more, but always at the bar. It attracts a lively crowd of affluent, educated, attractive Upper East Side-types, along with assorted mafiosi and working girls. It’s not a bad place to have a drink, if you’re in the area.

But when my friend arrived first, the vibe looked so unsavory to her that she chose to wait in the hotel lobby, rather than go in alone. That sense of discomfort did not abate when we went into the dining room, where the staff seated us at a smallish round table in the corner, right next to the patio door.

Sam Sifton awarded two New York Times stars in April of last year, while finding the cuisine “so unambitious that it is difficult to fumble.” We had a similar reaction, but the crowds have not dissipated, so Mr. Vongerichten’s money men decided they could hike prices. A lot. Whereas most of the entrées were below $30 when The Mark opened, now almost none of them are. A burger, formerly $22, is now $26. The black truffle pizza with fontina cheese, $16 when I had it last year, is now $26. Linguine with clams has risen from $30 to $32, parmesan crusted chicken from $23 to $30.

But I liked the food better this time, and that counts for something.

The amuse bouche was a honeydew gazpacho (above left). We shared the Watermelon and Goat Cheese Salad ($14; above right), which the kitchen plated as two half portions. It’s served with cracked white pepper and a dash of olive oil, a perfectly balanced summer dish.

Both entrées were faultless. Scottish Salmon ($29; above left) is lightly poached, served with sprink leeks, roasted peppers, and artichokes. Casco Bay Cod ($32; above right) rested on a bed of spinach, with sweet garlic lemon broth and a coating of crunchy lemon crumbs.

All of these plates shared that wonderful combination of sweet and sour that Vongerichten is known for, so satisfying when it works, but so difficult to duplicate. There is much more to the menu, but in these selection his vision is evident, and the deputies he left behind seem to know how to execute it.

I still like The Mark, but it isn’t for everyone. Some will find the “scene” there a distinct turn-off. If you can tune it out, or don’t mind it in the first place, the food is actually very good.

The Mark by Jean-Georges (25 E. 77th St. near Madison Ave., Upper East Side)

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

East End Kitchen

You’ve heard of a time-warp, right? East End Kitchen is in a space-warp, a Yorkville restaurant that “feels like” it belongs in the Hamptons or the Flatiron District. Bemused residents walk by all evening long, peering through the windows, wondering how such a place wound up in their neighborhood.

The owners, Allan and Diane Carlin, told Grub Street they wanted “to fill a void of ‘casual’ ‘thoughtful’ restaurants in the area. As such, their ‘American bistro’ uses organic produce, sustainably sourced seafood, and grass-fed meats in its menu.”

But how “thoughtful” is it, when you trot out the same bistro tropes that have been used at six dozen other places? Of course, there is nothing wrong with replicating a widely successful model, if you can do it well, but don’t claim you’re something you’re not.

Unfortunately, the performance here is somewhat uneven, with hits and duds in just about equal measure. The menu is inexpensive by downtown standards, with entrées mostly $18–24 (the steak is $35). But there is nothing distinctive enough to lure destination diners to this remote location, and the neighborhood may find it too expensive for a regular hang-out.

Crab Cakes ($18; above right) were pretty good, but Grassfed Meat Balls ($14; above left) were bland and under-seasoned. If I’d made them at home, I wouldn’t have had grassfed beef, but I would have done something more interesting with them.

Snapper in a Bag ($20; above left) is one of the more notable entrées. It’s surprising you don’t see this more often: the bag really does hold in the moisture, as advertised, and there was a nice stew of mushrooms and crushed tomatoes inside.

There’s nothing wrong with Pork ‘n’ Peaches ($23; above right) as a concept, but pork off the bone tends to be underwhelming. The corn was excellent and the peaches were fine, but you could have made ’em at home.

A frozen blueberry soufflé ($8; left) was a textural disaster: a brick of frozen, cakey blueberry substance in a ramekin. My friend called it astronaut food. The server told us it was a real soufflé, but any resemblance to that familiar dessert was strictly incidental.

The wine list is slightly over-priced for the neighborhood, as were the cocktails ($14 each), although we enjoyed our Muga Rosé ($33).

The old Boeuf à la Mode space has been re-done in bright, distressed blond wood. There is a spacious bar, and the dining room is deep, with space to seat at least 60, and maybe 75. There was a decent crowd by the time we left, so the locals are at least amenable to giving the new place a try.

The staff does try hard, and undoubtedly they have a genuine desire to embrace (and be embraced by) the neighborhood. If I lived nearby, I would give it another shot, but the food will need to be more dependable, and they may need to shave a couple of dollars off the appetizers, if they want to attract a real following.

East End Kitchen (539 E. 81st St. btwn York & East End Aves., Upper East Side)

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