Dovetail (remodeled)

News that Dovetail had remodeled yet again brought me back last week, where I hadn’t been since a disastrous “Sunday Suppa” in 2008.

I’ve been a fan of chef John Fraser since he was at Compass. His short-lived pop-up, “What Happens When,” served one of the best meals I had in 2011. But neither of my Dovetail visits quite lived up to the three New York Times stars or the Michelin star it currently holds.

The space was remodeled in 2009 (photos here, here), gaining a new 16-seat bar area, twenty new seats in the dining room, and an expanded wine cellar. But it still resembled the original décor (left), with exposed brick and no tablecloths.

Last month, Dovetail closed again for a week. This time, they’ve gone all-in for elegance: there are crisp white tablecloths, and no more brick. It finally looks like a three-star restaurant.

That makes Dovetail more endearing, though it would no doubt have been a demerit when Frank Bruni and Adam Platt reviewed it four years ago. Its reputation assured, Dovetail no longer hedges its bets.

The current menu is in four sections: appetizers ($20–34), vegetables ($17–34), entrées ($37–48), and desserts ($10–16), with about half-a-dozen choices per category. Yes, that’s expensive if ordered à la carte. There’s a four-course $85 prix fixe, but you can order just two courses (as we do in most restaurants, and did here), and contain the damage.

I can certainly do without such pompous moralizing, as: “The chef recommends that you order four courses.” Yeah, duh. Of course he does. If you offer a carte, don’t act disappointed when diners use it.

 

Dovetail has always served a trio of amuses bouches (above), and although I failed to take note of them, they were excellent—as they’ve always been.

 

From the vegetable section came a compelling starter: cured carrots, chicken feed (sic), and a soft-boiled egg ($18; above left). I wouldn’t serve it to a hungry football team, but it is larger than it appears in the photo.

Braised lamb ravioli with saffron, olives, and peppers ($24; above right) were also quite good, if a shade less novel.

 

Swordfish ($37; above left) with clam chowder, chorizo, and thyme, was the evening’s most impressive production, as beautifully cooked as it was to look at. (Fraser does have a high quotient of ingredients to the square inch.)

But it seems there is always one dud at Dovetail, and this time it was Sweetbreads ($46; above right) with heirloom potatoes, bacon, and truffles. It takes chutzpah to charge $46 for sweetbreads. They really have to be good. These were just average, and and the truffles didn’t add much flavor.

The dining room was not very busy, but we dined relatively early on a Saturday evening, and then left for a show. Our upselling server did a fine job, once he was past trying to sell us into four courses. 

The 24-page wine list has magnums of 1959 Château Latour at $11,000; yet, they’ll happily sell you a recent Beaujolais Nouveau at $30. The sommelier showed not a hint of dismay that I ordered it. The server could learn from her. That Beaujolais isn’t an anomaly, either. Whatever your price range, you can do business here.

In 2008, appetizers at Dovetail were $11–18, entrées $24–34. You could order at the bottom or the middle of that range, and walk out with an excellent mid-priced dinner. At its current, much higher prices, Dovetail can no longer claim to be an over-achieving neighborhood place. Fraser wants a second Michelin star.

At its best, Dovetail lives up to its billing. Fraser is a talented chef: the effort and craftsmanship in his best work elevate this restaurant over most of its peers. But at these prices, the duds (even if rare) are harder to excuse.

Dovetail (103 W. 77th Street at Columbus Avenue, Upper West Side)

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

Slightly Oliver

Slightly Oliver is a new “cocktail-themed gastropub” on the Upper West Side. That description is both a selling point and a constraint, the former because there isn’t much like it nearby, the latter because in any other neighborhood it would seem derivative.

The basic idea, we must admit, has been tried before—but not here. If you’re in the area, you ought to be delighted to find Slightly Oliver (Cockney slang for “slightly drunk”), which is unique, as far as I know, on the Upper West Side.

The formula is tweaked for uptown sensibilities. The “commonwealth-inspired” menu (mostly comfort-food standards) breaks no new ground, but it is extremely well made. We tried eight dishes, and I’d be happy to have them all again. Prices are low: most entrées are $20 or less. Cocktails are in three categories: punches ($7); house recipes (described somewhat annoyingly as “tasty” cocktails) ($9), and prohibition-era classics ($12) — a good deal less than you’d pay downtown.

The owner is Stanton DuToit, who also runs Tolani Wine Restaurant a few blocks away, and formerly Sojourn on the Upper East Side. I didn’t much care for Tolani, though I haven’t been back in a while. The idea here seems more carefully edited and focused. DuToit is a trained winemaker, and the wine lists are a strength at both restaurants. As at Tolani, there’s a glass-enclosed wine room visible from the dining room; here, it shares space with a mad-scientist chemistry set that’s used to make home-brew infusions.

There are three connected spaces: a bar in front, a narrow corridor with several comfortable booths separated by gauze curtains, and a dining room in back. It feels more spacious and comfortable than most downtown restaurants with a similar proffer. We visited on New Year’s Day, when neither of the two back rooms were very crowded. There are plenty of exposed hard surfaces (brick, wooden tables) that could reflect sound, if the space were full.

Dislosure: My visit wasn’t pre-arranged with the management, but Mr. DuToit recognized me. He sent out eleven(!) different cocktails, all at no charge, and four comped dishes, in addition to the four we ordered and paid for.

We sampled a wide swath of the cocktail menu. There is a tendency to sweetness; I best liked the ones with offsetting bitter or spicy flavors. Among the punches, try the Last Night in Paris (Claro rum, spiced rum, absinthe, fresh mint reduction, pink grapefruit juice, house blended spices, whisky bitters).

Among the house cocktails (left), I preferred Oliver’s Cilantro (infused gin, Lillet Blanc, house made sour, and cucumber) and the Slightly Green Martini (vodka, green pepper reduction, dill elixir, house made sour mix). I did wince at the idea of calling something a martini that isn’t.

I especially liked the old standards, even if by then I was too, er, Oliver to finish them. The Negroni and the Manhattan, while both recognizable as the classics they are, both had an extra tang of spice that I don’t recall in other versions of them.

Over now to the food, the Chicken Liver & Foie Gras Pâté ($8; above left) was luscious and creamy, though there is not enough toast for it. The staff offered to send more, but I declined, knowing how much was coming.

There are several pizza-like dishes, which they call “flats.” The Spaniard ($12; above right) with chorizo, manchego, and piquillo peppers, was especially good.

There’s a section of the menu called “Stacks” (all $16) and though I’ve no complaints with these items, perhaps they’re comparatively skippable. Duck Spring Rolls (above left) made for a tasty snack food. Kobe Beef Sliders and Bittermilk Chicken Sliders (below left) were just fine, although you’ve had others just as good elsewhere.

Swiss Chard and Ricotta Ravioli ($14; above right) probably violated the legal limit on the amount of butter and cream allowed in one dish, but, oh my! They were absolutely fantastic.

There’s also an excellent rendition of braised short ribs ($18; above right), served here with celery root purée, braised leeks, and apple gastrique.

I would describe the Sticky Toffee Pudding ($8; right) as my dessert of the year, but it was New Year’s Day, so that isn’t saying much. I don’t remember a more enjoyable dessert last year either. Other desserts shown on the menu (a pecan bourbon pie, an apple–huckleberry crisp) sound equally appealing.

If I have a concern about Slightly Oliver, it’s the over-reliance on consultants. Jason Hicks of Jones Wood Foundry helps out in the kitchen (Mr. DuToit says he is there twice a week). Pre-opening publicity also included cocktail whiz Albert Trummer. You’d prefer to see a restaurant grow organically, rather than leaning on people whose main focus is elsewhere.

But in these early days the cocktails are mostly quite good, and if the menu is somewhat predictable by downtown standards, at least the kitchen is acing it. The location at Amsterdam & 85th doesn’t attract a destination crowd, so if Slightly Oliver is going to work, neighborhood folk will have to embrace it, which they should.

Slightly Oliver (511 Amsterdam Ave. between 84th/85th Streets, Upper West Side)

Loi

Note: Loi closed in July 2014, supposedly because the restaurant’s owners could not reach a lease agreement with the landlord. I found the very large space nearly empty on both of my visits, and most of the city’s main critics never reviewed it. A meatery called Lincoln Square Steak replaced it.

*

Compass was the restaurant with more lives than a cat. Between 2002 and 2011, it chewed up and spitted out at least six executive chefs. Most of them were pretty good, but the place never developed a following.

Finally, the owners gave up on the name, and brought in Maria Loi as a partner to run the place. Known as the “Greek Martha Stewart,” she has written several cookbooks and, until recently, hosted a cooking show in Greece. She also owns a restaurant on one of the islands, produces a weekly magazine and a series of DVDs, designs a line of appliances and dinnerware, partners in a clothing business, and has also lobbied on behalf of firms like Texaco and Nokia.

I’ve no doubt that Ms. Loi has a talent for breaking down Greek cooking to a series of easy steps comprehensible to the amateur—like a Rachael Ray, Giada DeLaurentiis, or yes, Martha Stewart. None of this implies a talent for running a restaurant.

Hardly anyone believes that chefs like Daniel Boulud or Jean-Georges Vongerichten actually cook the food at the restaurants named for them. But they are, at least, full-time professional chefs, and have been for their entire adult lives. Ms. Loi isn’t even that. She’s the front for an operation that will be run (mostly) by others.

The restaurant—called Loi, naturally—re-opened in late October after a two-month renovation. The floor layout is pretty much the same as it was at Compass, but it’s clad in a handsome Aegean skin, with comfortable seats, crisp white tablecloths, and a regimented, well-dressed staff.

Five weeks in, Ms. Loi is an active presence in the restaurant, highly visible on both of my visits. (She told The Times she intends to be here “24/7.”) She spends most of her time making rounds in the dining room, saying hello at least briefly to all her guests, and chatting at some length with those she recognizes.

Not that the rounds are at all demanding. This restaurant may have the same problem Compass did: staying full. The space is huge. The main dining room seats 125. There is also a spacious bar and lounge, and three private dining rooms seat up to 300.

On two weeknights, a week apart, Loi was about 10 or 20 percent full at 6:45 p.m., before I headed over to Lincoln Center. If it does not attract a significant pre-theater following, which it hasn’t so far, I cannot imagine how it will fill up, especially with the more modestly-priced and far better-known Kefi nearby.

Not that Loi is terribly expensive, especially for such an attractive space. Appetizers, soups, and salads are mostly in the mid-teens, entrées mostly in the mid-to-high $20s. Still, diners won’t forgive sloppy execution, and there is some of that.

I’ve no complaint with the ample bread service (above left), but Loi’s version of a Greek Salad, the Horiatiki Loi ($14; above right) was marred by a chalky brick of feta that tasted like it has been cut hours earlier, and left to sit in the fridge. I had hardly blinked before it came out, which makes me suspect they have a bunch of these pre-made.

On my second visit, the kitchen sent out a quartet of stuffed grape leaves (above left) as an amuse-bouche. My girlfriend and I shared the Tirokeftedes ($15; above right), cheese croquettes with baked goat and manouri cheese, with a fig and apricot compote. This was a decent enough appetizer, but like the salad on my prior visit, came out within moments and didn’t seem quite as fresh as it should be.

I wasn’t at all fond of Loi’s Moussaka ($19; above left). The traditional minced mean filling had been ground to where you could almost have sipped it through a straw, and the Bechamel sauce tasted a bit sour.

On my second visit, the entrées were more successful. An ample hunk of salmon ($26; above right) had a rich, smokey flavor. I also liked the Seared Diver Scallops ($28; below left), served in a bright dill sauce with asparagus.

Desserts (above right) were comped, as it appears they are at every table. (We were not given a dessert menu to inspect; they just appeared.) The explanation was a bit difficult to follow. One was a traditional baklava, and I am not sure about the other. Anyhow, they were both very good—perhaps the best part of the meal.

The service was attentive and solicitous, especially in the dining room; less so at the bar. They are a shade over-eager to take your order and get you out the door to a show.

Any neighborhood can use an authentic Greek restaurant that is not as mass-produced as Kefi, but not as outrageously priced as midtown’s Estiatoria Milos. The menu at Koi is a work in progress (there are various recited specials), and so is its execution. Here’s hoping it becomes dependable.

My girlfriend, who did not suffer through my less impressive first visit, enjoyed Loi and would happily go back, and so we will.

Loi (208 W. 70th Street, west of Amsterdam Avenue, Upper West Side)

Food: ★
Service: ★½
Ambiance: ★★½
Overall: ★

Lincoln Ristorante

I’ve dined at Lincoln Ristorante several times since it opened a year ago. It is not my favorite Lincoln Center restaurant, but it is certainly the most convenient, and it is very good.

I just wish I liked it better. I want to like it better. People I respect like it better. But it usually leaves me wanting more.

Lincoln opened with the proverbial thud, getting lukewarm reviews from most of the city’s critics. I had a long list of complaints in my original review, and I stand by most of them. Lincoln is too corporate: it screams of design by committee. The room and the building are unattractive. These things are unfixable.

What Chef Jonathan Benno and Restaurant Director Paolo Novello have done, is to fix what they can. Lincoln is not bargain dining, but prices now are a shade lower. An expensive tasting menu and an absurd $130 ribeye are no longer offered. Portion sizes, which for some dishes were insultingly small, have been increased.

Benno has found his inside voice. Though I am not fond of the open kitchen, at least you no longer hear a drill sergeant commanding the Normandy invasion. We sat right next to the glass partition at dinner a couple of weeks ago, and I don’t think we heard him once. What a relief!

Service, which was already excellent, has continued to improve. The staff know they need to get you to your show on time—all of my visits have been pre-concert or pre-opera—and they do it well, without ever seeming to be in a rush. Ask about any item, and a clear, patient, encyclopedic explanation will follow.

On the current menu, antipasti are $17–25, pastas $20–28, entrées $30–45, side dishes $10–15, and desserts $10–12. A traditional four-course Italian meal will thus set you back around $90 to $100 a head before wine, but I seldom eat that much before a show, and I am probably not alone. Indeed, the staff actively suggest that pasta dishes be ordered as mains or in half-portions.

We shared the Reginette Verdi al Ragú Bolognese ($24; above left), which the kitchen divided and served in separate bowls. This was one of the more enjoyable pastas I’ve had in quite a while. The reginette is a fascinating noodle, shaped like a long, thin, green zipper. The ragú was a rich mix of veal, pork, and beef, topped with just the right kick from parmigiano-reggiano.

But Halibut ($36; above right) was on the dry side. It was served over excessively salty lentils baked in chicken stock and pig trotters, but I couldn’t taste those ingredients. This seems to be my fate at Lincoln, where the wonderful dishes are offset by the less successful ones.

With the petits fours (right) there’s no argument. They may not be the fanciest, but they are more than sufficient.

So that’s the status of Lincoln circa late 2011. The professional reviews have started to improve. Esquire’s John Marianai called it one of the best new restaurants of the year. Gael Greene in Crain’s recently gave it “three hats” out of four, noting, “It is thrilling to watch a shy, insecure adolescent grow into a magnetic, irresistible beauty.”

But even allowing a year for Lincoln to improve, the Post’s Steve Cuozzo could only give it two stars recently, just slightly better than his 1½ stars a year ago.

I’m with Cuozzo. I very much want to like it better, but still cannot.

Lincoln (142 West 65th Street at Lincoln Center)

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

Gastroarte

Note: Gastroarte “closed for renovations” in September 2012. The chef, Jesús Núñez, had already left the restaurant to open a similar place in the West Village called Barraca. The space, still under the same owners, and still Spanish, is now called Andanada 141.

*

I wrote last week about the Spanish moment we’re in: Gastroarte, Salinas, Tertulia, and the extravagant Romera, all open within the last year, and all with ambitious—or in Romera’s case, stratospheric—intentions.

They probably won’t all succeed, but it’s progress in a town that has too many Italian and New Brooklyn restaurants, and not enough of practically everything else.

Gastroarte opened in January 2011 as Graffit, named for the graffiti-clad walls and the chef Jesús Núñez’s artful platings. But a google search on Graffit most often returned another Manhattan restaurant, chef Jehangir Mehta’s Graffiti.

Mehta sued for copyright infringement and Núñez relented, renaming his restaurant Gastroarte. Good move. Even if the suit was baseless (as it almost certainly was), it was dumb to have two such similar names in one city, and Mehta got there first.

It took some chutzpah to put such a restaurant on the Upper West Side, near Lincoln Center, a neighborhood not known for rewarding culinary risk-takers. Of course, the city’s restaurant critics aren’t known for that either. Sam Sifton, Adam Platt, and Steve Cuozzo all gave it just one star apiece.

Those ratings aren’t irksome in themselves: I gave it 1½ stars early on, and frankly, I am not sure if I would have rounded up or down, had I been using a system without half-stars. What is irksome is the lack of respect for the chef’s art and the recognition of its potential, even if its execution, at first, was not consistently enjoyable.

Menu prices have risen: appetizers are now $14–21 (vs. $10–18 in January), entrées $29–32 (vs. $23–27). That’s a fairly substantial increase of around $8–10 per person (before dessert), in under a year. As before, a tapas menu is served only at the bar and at the front walk-in tables—an inexplicable blunder.

I assume Gastroarte is getting the customers to justify those higher prices. Fortunately, it deserves them. Nine months later, Gastroarte is a much more polished restaurant. The service is more reliable, plates arrive at the right temperature, and the balance of flavors seems more sure-handed.

The vegetable stew under “Not-your-average egg” ($17; above left) changes with the season (compare it to the photo last time I had it). This version is less colorful than before, but it remains a triumph. As it was before, the centerpiece is an egg yolk enclosed somehow, miraculously, inside of a cauliflower sphere. It rests on turnip prepared two ways, and underneath that, yogurt and Serrano ham.

Lamb cheeks ($30; above left) were in a stew of lentils, spiced cheese, and asparagus, with a slice of brioche. A cuboid of black rice ($29; above right) was topped with calamari, sobrasada, and snow peas, with a streaks of Idiazábal cheese and red tobiko as garnishes.

Núñez doesn’t splurge on ingredients, but the assembly of these dishes is impressive, and so are the flavors, which blend beautifully. Both of the central proteins, the lamb cheeks and the calamari, were just right.

The difference from January is that the plates are no longer just entrants in an art exhibit: they’re a pleasure to eat, as well. That’s based on a small sample of the menu (plus amuses bouches and petits fours), but Gastroarte today seems far more promising than Graffit did at the beginning of the year.

Early on a Friday evening, before the opera, the dining room was not quite full. I have no idea if the traffic dies, or picks up, after curtain time; however, the restaurant has managed to impose a rather substantial price increase, without any of the usual signs of desperation, so I assume it is not doing badly.

In the competitive Lincoln Center dining market, it’s difficult to remain relevant (just ask Picholine, now an OpenTable 1,000-point fixture), but perhaps Graffit is on its way to becoming essential.

Gastroarte (141 W. 69th St. between Broadway & Columbus Ave., Upper West Side)

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

Gazala's

Gazala Place in Hell’s Kitchen and Gazala’s on the Upper West Side claim to be the only outposts of Israeli Druze cuisine in New York, or indeed in the country. I’ve no reason to doubt it, given that the entire population of the little-known sect is just 120,00 in Israel.

Gazala Place, named for the chef Gazala Halabi, opened in Hell’s Kitchen in 2008. It seats just 18, and the kitchen is so small that the chef supposedly does some of the cooking at home. It won favorable reviews from Peter Meehan in The Times and Robert Sietsema in the Village Voice.

I won’t try to explain the technicalities of Druze cuisine: Meehan and Sietsema did it far more knowledgeably than I could ever hope to. You’ll find many ingredients familiar from other Middle Eastern cuisines, like goat cheese, grape leaves, bulgur wheat, eggplant, chickpeas, and lamb kebabs. Prices are very modest, with cold appetizers as low as $5 and most entrées below $20.

Gazala’s, the chef’s new place across from the Museum of Natural History, is a bit larger than the original. It takes reservations, but I gather it gets a significant walk-in crowd. Although OpenTable offered any time I wanted on a Thursday evening, the restaurant was just about full for the entire two hours we were there.

Promising food was marred by well-meaning but atrocious service. There seemed to be just one server for the whole dining room, and he couldn’t keep up with the demand. He was also very difficult to hear, in a room with the acoustics of a train station.

We ordered a mixed appetizer platter to start, followed by a whole deep-fried red snapper. A while later, the server returned to ask if we’d mind if both were served together. Yes, we minded. After another wait, the fish arrived, and seconds later, the appetizers. Both wouldn’t have physically fit on the table, even if we’d wanted them.

As we’d already started to dissect the fish, we sent back the appetizers. They returned after we’d finished the red snapper—obviously the same platter they’d brought out before, as items that should be warm were now cold.

Anyhow, I really liked the snapper ($28; above), but the cold appetizer platter ($33; below) had all the appeal of a stale buffet. It is probably better when it is served first, straight out of the kitchen, as was intended to be.

The wine list is mostly inexpensive, but the only Israeli wine on the list was something like $80. I wasn’t about to spend that for an appellation I didn’t recognize, so I ordered an unobjectionable $35 merlot.

If the service improves, Gazala’s could be a decent and inexpensive option on the Upper West Side, well positioned to take walk-ins from museum and park traffic. The space is pretty, but bare-bones, and as noted, punishingly loud when full. I doubt I’ll go again.

Gazala’s (380 Columbus Avenue at 78th Street, Upper West Side)

Columbus Tavern

Note: Columbus Tavern has closed. A. G. Kitchen, from Calle Oche chef Alex Garcia, replaces it.

*

Columbus Tavern is a cute and mildly diverting Upper West Side neighborhood restaurant. It has gastropub ambitions that it doesn’t quite deliver on.

The cringe-worthy proffer is written in the worst publicistspeak, and printed in large type on the world’s ugliest ca. 1980s website:

Columbus Tavern cunningly straddles the line between a destination and neighborhood restaurant by offering the beloved comfort food that diners secretly crave with a contemporary spin.

The 120-seat restaurant has great legs with its art deco tile floor, burgundy banquettes and gorgeous 100 year old mahogany bar which seats 20.

After posting that nauseating prose, they deserve to have no customers at all.

The folks in charge have the most clever name for their clutch of mediocre restaurants: The Restaurant Group. It’s the same team that failed a short distance away, at Bloomingdale Road (now closed). Their chef, Phil Conlon, brings a resume of no particular distinction, including Broadway East (now closed) and Cafe Cluny, though he turns out to be pretty good.

They aren’t off to a great start here. Although open since February, their web page still says, “Full Site Coming Soon.” The menu posted there is not current: both of our entrées were less expensive than the website shows. The menu is presented in a cheesy laminated sleeve; it obviously doesn’t change daily, so how hard would it be to post a current one online?

The restaurant is obviously cutting prices to attract patronage, but the wine list is barely accessible, with the average bottle of red wine priced at $70 and a number of them in three figures. The Federalist 2008 Zinfandel ($48) was quite enjoyable, but this type of restaurant needs more wines at that price and below.

The food is enjoyable and fairly priced: a rich ricotta ravioli with chestnuts ($18; above left), a supple roast chicken with fingerling potatoes, carrots and escarole ($19; above right). At another table, we saw a half-inch-thick burger that looked terrific.

I was curious to know what the chef would do with duck, but after ordering it the server returned moments later to say they were “out of that.” As it was early in the evening, and the restaurant was not close to full, a more accurate statement might be that they never actually had it. After a while, that server disappeared, and it was difficult to flag down anyone who could bring us a check.

The restaurant occupies one of those ubiquitous Upper West Side avenue storefronts with a covered outdoor patio that can be opened on nice days, but is usable in winter. It is a pleasant place to dine on a summer evening.

I don’t have much confidence that the management can fix what’s wrong and publicize what’s right. The chef knows what he is doing, and at these prices the restaurant is a worthwhile neighborhood place. I hope it’s still around next year.

Columbus Tavern (269 Columbus Ave between 72nd/73rd Streets, Upper West Side)

Food: *
Service: Satisfactory
Ambaince: *
Overall: *

Telepan

Note: Telepan closed in May 2016, leaving the chef, Bill Telepan, without a restuarant. (Telepan Local, his Tribeca restaurant that was supposed to be a casual version of Telepan, failed miserably in 2014.)

Telepan had a respectable ten-year run, but as we noted in the review below, he had to scale back the original concept to stay aligned with what the neighborhood would pay, and even so, the restaurant wasn’t consistently full. He told The Times that, eventually, he reached the point where he couldn’t raise prices enough to keep pace with escalating costs.

In a sense, Telepan fell between two genres. Its Michelin star signaled a level of quality that the chef clearly wanted to maintain, but that doesn’t come cheap. It was too expensive to be an every-day restaurant, but didn’t attract enough guests to be a special-occasion place either.

*

I hated my first visit to Telepan, more than five years ago. For some odd reason, I nevertheless gave it 1½ stars. As I now see them, a star (even just one) is supposed to be a compliment, and there was very little about the meal that I liked.

Nevertheless, other reviews were generally good, and friends continued to recommend it, so Telepan was on my list of restaurants deserving a second chance, which it finally got last week.

The four-course prix fixe, which was $55 in 2006, has risen by just four dollars, to $59. If you order à la carte, the prices seem not to have changed at all: an over-priced restaurant has become a fairly-priced one.

The menu is still divided into three parts—starters ($10.50–15), mid-courses ($21–26), and entrées ($29–35—a format I dislike, but that has become more common, though still by no means prevalent. The use of fifty-cent price increments on some items feels a bit cheesy.

Of course, when prices are basically unchanged after five years, something is usually lost. What was once a flight of three amuses bouches is now one (above left), a plate of pickled radishes in a dipping sauce. But the bread service (three kinds) is excellent.

We weren’t that hungry, so we ordered entrées only. Wild Striped Bass ($33; above left) and Roasted Trout ($29.50; above right) were both presented simply, and very good for what they were.

Perhaps because of the overwhelming trend in favor of more casual dining over the last five years, Telepan’s décor, which once seemed dull, now seems upscale, bordering on elegant (though not quite there). The service is more polished than it was, then. The twenty-five page wine list offers a wide selection and price range, but the lower end (in the mid-$50s) is reasonable for this type of restaurant. If you want to spend three thousand bucks on a 1999 Screaming Eagle, you can.

The restaurant was not crowded on a Wednesday evening, but we dined early—6:00 p.m. for a 7:30 Lincoln Center curtain. When prices are virtually unchanged five years later, one can safely conclude that Telepan isn’t a runaway hit. However, it has hung on and improved, and we are better off for that.

Telepan (72 W. 69th St. btwn Central Park West & Columbus Ave., Upper West Side)

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

The Leopard at des Artistes

Twenty years ago, when I was looking for a restaurant that could play host to a romantic meal, a friend recommended Café des Artistes. I knew nothing about the place, but was instantly transported by the voluptuous décor. Alas, a practically dessicated Duck à l’Orange ruined the meal, and I vowed never to return.

The restaurant had been there, attached to the Hotel des Artistes, since 1917. More than its old-school French cuisine—which had its ups and downs, to put it charitably—the space was known for the nine murals of Rubensesque nudes, “Fantasy Scenes with Naked Beauties,” painted by one of the building’s residents, Howard Chandler Christy, from the late 1920s to 1935.

Jennifer and George Lang took over the restaurant in 1975. Despite the mediocre food, it was a popular haunt for musicians, celebrities, and journalists. (We saw soprano Beverly Sills there on our last visit.) In 2009, the restaurant closed for its usual August vacation and never re-opened. Business was down, as it was for many restaurants then, and as Mr. Lang was 85, the owners felt it was time to let go.

Later on, it came out that the union was partly to blame. Café des Artistes was one of the few non-hotel restaurants in the city with union labor. In a bitter post-mortem, Jennifer Lang noted that the place was hobbled with uncompetitive labor expenses that no other comparable restaurant would have. Several prominent restaurateurs passed on the space, because of its union affiliation.

Finally, about a year later, Gianfranco Sorrentino, owner of the Italian restaurant Il Gattopardo in midtown, inked a 15-year deal to re-open the space without union labor, vowing to invest $1.5 million to refurbish the dining room, including “expert restoration” of the Christy murals.

The restaurant re-opened last month as The Leopard at des Artistes (Gattopardo means “Leopard” in Italian). The cuisine and service style are old-school southern Italian. The renovation is gorgeous, but when you see the menu prices, you won’t forget what you’re paying for, as entrées (other than a $24 meatloaf) are $30–46.

As is often the case at such restaurants, there is a lengthy list of recited specials, from which both of us ordered. Whole Turbot ($46; above left) was expertly filleted tableside, served with braised escarole. House-made Fettucine ($24; above right) was served with a pork ragú.

One may blanche at the prices and quibble that the chef isn’t serving unmentionable pig parts or market vegetables grown on a rooftop in Brooklyn, but both dishes were impeccable. It is hard to imagine anything much better of their kind—especially the wonderful turbot, which I’d order again in a heartbeat.

As we were going to a concert at nearby Lincoln Center, we drank only one glass of wine apiece; but I noted that the medium-length wine list had plenty of options below $50 a bottle, a much lower entry price than one is entitled to expect at a restaurant this expensive.

The restaurant was about half full at 6:45 p.m. on a Wednesday evening, too early (in the evening, and in the week) to draw any conclusions about its prognosis. It is too expensive to justify being a regular here, but for food this good I’ll certainly be back occasionally.

The Leopard at des Artistes (1 W. 67th St. near Central Park West, Upper West Side)

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

Landmarc at the Time-Warner Center

On a recent Sunday evening, a friend and I dropped in on Landmarc at the Time-Warner Center.

In a neighborhood where most of the food is extremely expensive, Landmarc remains one of the few places where two people can dine under three figures. Not that it’s easy, even here: most of the entrées, other than salads, are north of $25. Steaks can take you close to $40. Appetizers hover around $15. Still, if there’s such a thing as inexpensive dining at Columbus Circle, this is it.

Now in middle age, by restaurant standards, Landmarc has grown lazy. Chef/owner Marc Murphy, once a pioneer of casual upscale dining, is content to trot out an unchallenging and unchanging menu. You find it (the menu) when you sit down, folded neatly on top of your napkin. But unlike years past, they can’t even be bothered to print fresh ones. Those at our table were dog-eared and torn.

The food was routine and forgettable: a Mediterranean Salad (above left); frisée aux lardons (above right), both $19 in entree-size portions. Competent, nothing more.

If anything saves Landmarc from a demotion to no stars, it’s the wine list, with seven pages of half-bottles, an amenity very few restaurants offer. We took advantage of it to share one half-bottle (we were going to the movies, and wanted to remain alert). It works equally well for solo diners or those who want to sample more of the list.

Now if only Marc Murphy were serving food as interesting.

Landmarc at the Time-Warner Center (10 Columbus Circle, 3rd floor)

Food (and especially Wine): *
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *