Ducasse’s Benoit to Open

This has been a busy year for Alain Ducasse, with two new restaurants opening in New York, to say nothing of his ever-growing worldwide empire.

First up was Adour, which we weren’t fond of, but was fêted with three stars by both Adam Platt and Frank Bruni. For the verdict Ducasse really cares about — Michelin — we’ll have to wait till October.

Meanwhile, Benoit opens on April 21 in the former Brasserie LCB space, which before that was La Côte Basque. As usual, Ducasse didn’t stint on the décor. Per the Times:

To furnish Benoit, Mr. Ducasse haunted the Paris flea markets buying stuff, including an 1866 decorative ceiling painted on glass, and fixtures from a former Banque de France. A 19th-century herbal pharmacy from Bordeaux was reassembled on the second floor.

He also kept a few decorative elements from La Côte Basque. “I hoped to transfer the ambience of Benoit, not make an exact reproduction,” Mr. Ducasse said, adding that Benoit in New York cost more to build than his other new Manhattan restaurant, Adour, in the St. Regis a block away.

La Côte Basque’s former chef–owner, Jean-Jacques Rachou, told the Times that he thinks “New York is now regretting the disappearance of the classic food.”

Classics, indeed, are what dominates the menu at Benoit. Ducasse said, “Dishes like these have a history, and I have a list of 100 of them that I hope to put on the menu sooner or later. I call it my mental terroir.” The opening menu, though, runs the risk of putting the audience to sleep, with a $44 chicken for two as the signature item. I’ll be rooting for Ducasse to open up his cookbook sooner, rather than later.

I took an envious look inside last night. The restaurant was clearly open and serving “friends & family.” I am neither, and so I left Benoit for another day.

Brasserie 8½

 

It might seem odd to recomend a restaurant because it is empty. But aside from the very good food, that is one of the principal attractions of Brasserie 8½—at least at dinner.

No one can fault the space, with its grand staircase, drawings by Matisse and Giacometti, and tables that are both comfortable and generously spaced. With the restaurant only 10% full, my friend and I were able to enjoy a quiet conversation, as well as food that deserves a lot more attention than it has been getting.

The name is a cute take-off on the address: it’s at 9 West 57th Street. The restaurant is in the basement, so they call it “Brasserie 8½.” However, the place really isn’t really a “Brasserie” in any normal sense of the word.

When it opened in 1980, critics found the food uneven and occasionally overworked. In The Times, William Grimes awarded one star. Reviews in New York and The New Yorker were similar. But management stood by chef Julian Alonzo is still in place, which in this era is remarkable all by itself. Perhaps with eight years’ experience he has edited out the clunkers, or perhaps we just got lucky with our choices.

 

I loved an asparagus soup ($12) that was as tasty as it was striking to look at, with an oval-shaped glass bowl and concentric circles of green and white foam.

An entrée of Sautéed Diver Sea Scallops “Benedict” ($29) offered three plump scallops, each with a vegetable purée beneath, a fried egg on top, and hunks of crisp braised pork belly in between. This pun on “Eggs Benedict” isn’t unique to this restaurant, but when it’s as well executed as this, who cares if it’s original?

I assume that Brasserie 8½ does a brisker lunch business, which is typical of restaurants in this part of town. I also assume that a self-promotional YouTube video that was posted late last year is part of an attempt to drum up business. If our meal was at all indicative, then management is entitled to crow about it as much as they please.

Brasserie 8½ (9 West 57th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

South Gate

[Krieger via Eater]

Chef Kerry Heffernan first came to prominance as executive chef of Danny Meyer’s Eleven Madison Park. He left in 2005 to helm another Meyer establishment, Hudson Yards Catering, a behind-the-scenes job that didn’t really suit his temperament.

At South Gate, in the Jumeirah Essex House Hotel on Central Park South, Heffernan is back in a restaurant kitchen, where he belongs. I loved Heffernan’s work at Eleven Madison Park the one time I visited, but both New York Times critics that reviewed it awarded only two stars, which for a Danny Meyer restaurant has to be considered disappointing.

The newly refurbished Essex House is practically synonymous with luxury. Not long ago, it was home to Alain Ducasse, probably the fanciest restaurant New York has seen in recent times. With South Gate, the Essex House has gone down-market. The Tony Chi interior dazzles, with its floor-to-ceiling wine wall, gleaming mirrors, and a working fire place. But bare wood tables and floors, and a large space dominated by a wrap-around bar, send a decidedly casual vibe. So does the booming sound system in the adjoining lounge, which made us decidedly uncomfortable.

If Heffernan has brought along some of his old recipes from Eleven Madison Park, he certainly hasn’t brought along his old service team. It was amateur hour on a Saturday evening, when the amuse-bouche and the appetizers arrived simultaneously, but dessert (cheesecake) took twenty minutes. And good luck flagging down a server when you need one.

Heffernan was in the house and greeted most diners (including us), but he couldn’t have been pleased to see the place half-empty. Judging by the many accents we heard, we guessed that most of those in the dining room were hotel guests. To survive, such a large restaurant will need to attract a broader clientele.

The menu is one of low ambition. There are six appetizers ($14–21), four soups & salads ($12–16), five seafood and vegetable entrées ($26–39) and four meat entrées ($29–38). The obligatory foie gras and lobster make appearances—they’re the most expensive appetizer and entrée respectively—but you don’t find any caviar, black truffles, or Kobe beef. There’s no tasting menu.

The wine list is on the expensive side, but there are some decent options that don’t break the bank. I don’t claim any great expertise, but I thought that the 1998 Chateau Camensac Haut-Médoc ($74) was one of the better wines we’ve had in a while. They don’t decant it, as they do at Eleven Madison Park, and the same glasses are used whether you order red or white.

  
Amuse-bouche (left); Wild Mushroom Martini (center); Hamachi (right)

The bread service was much better than usual for this class of restaurant: warm bread rolls with individual soft butter servings for each of us. But is it possible to have too much bread? The amuse-bouche was foie gras torchon with orange jelly and lemon zest on a cracker, accompanied by warm gougères.

I was sufficiently intrigued to take a chance on the Wild Mushroom Martini ($16). It was basically a hot mushroom soup with spinach fondue, a poached egg, and a slice of crostini. There was allegedly crisp pancetta in there too, but I couldn’t find it. Give Heffernan credit for serving something no other chef in town has thought of, but the dish was a failure. The various ingredients were clumpy and hard to get at, especially when they came in a teeter-tottering martini glass.

The dish was also, quite frankly, extremely unappetizing to look at. Look at the photo, and write your own disgusting caption. At another table, a French woman took one look at it, and sent it back. It didn’t taste bad at all, but I really didn’t see the point.

My girlfriend’s Hamachi ($18) was a good deal more successful. 

 
Gianonne Chicken (left); Short-Cured Salmon Pavé (right)

Chicken ($29) and Salmon ($31) are hotel restaurant clichés, and I’m not sure that Heffernan did much to elevate them beyond their usual fate. The chicken was competent enough, but once again it was not all that appetizing to look at, and it was over-sauced. Did paprika really belong here?

Salmon was alleged to be “short-cured” — that is, cured for exactly one hour, according to the server. Can an hour of curing really make a difference? We certainly didn’t detect any, but the fish was tender enough. 

 
Cheesecake (left); Petits-fours (right)

For dessert, we shared an order of cheescake ($10). With cheesecake, pastry chefs sometimes get too cute for their own good, but this one was the real McCoy, albeit dressed up a bit. We enjoyed it, and also the petits-fours.

With appetizers averaging over $15 and entrées over $30, South Gate needs to do better. The only dish on the menu that seemed to take any real chance—the Wild Mushroom Martini—is surely destined for an early retirement. Is this meant to be a dining destination, or an unadventurous hotel restaurant with a hip bar scene? Whichever is the case, at these prices patrons deserve much better service.

South Gate is barely a month old. Given Kerry Heffernan’s track record, I assume that it will improve.

South Gate (160 Central Park South between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Update: Keens Steakhouse

 

Note: Click here for more visits to Keens Steakhouse.

My girlfriend, son and I had a pre-theater dinner at Keens Steakhouse last week. I ordered the incomparable Mutton Chop ($45.00), which I think is the best item on the menu. My girlfriend had the sirloin (43.50), which wasn’t quite as tender it should be.

Keens is one of the few NYC steakhouses that offers prime rib. The only option shown on the dinner menu is a so-called King’s Cut ($49.50). The perceptive server guessed that a twelve-year-old probably wasn’t going to finish such a massive portion, so he offered us the English Cut ($28.00), normally served only in the downstairs “pub”.

Fries ($8.00) could easily become addictive. We didn’t order a bottle of wine, but a glass of the respectable house cabernet was a remarkably cheap $8.50.

While the time-warp ambiance at Keens is matchless, its steaks are a notch below other places in town while being several dollars more expensive. The huge two-story space is built for volume, and servers aren’t as attentive as they should be. But for the mutton chop or the prime rib, Keens is always worth the occasional visit.

Keens Steakhouse (72 W. 36th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Update: Staghorn Steakhouse

Kalina via Eater

I returned to Staghorn Steakhouse recently for a pre-theater dinner. From a previous visit, I recalled the relatively quiet atmosphere with widely spaced tables, which I thought would be conducive to a family conversation. I didn’t expect it to be quite this quiet: on a Saturday evening, it was practically dead when we arrived shortly before 6:00. It livened up a bit—but only a bit—by the time we left.

At $37.95, the steaks here are priced slightly below the NYC average. We found two hefty fillet mignons, a Kansas City strip, and a humongous rib steak, all top-notch, along with asparagus ($10.50) and mashed potatoes ($8.95). Two especially thick strips of Canadian bacon ($5) were wonderful. I was also pleased to find a good Côtes du Rhône for $45, which by steakhouse standards is not bad at all.

In short, everything at Staghorn Steakhouse was more impressive than last time. I am not sure which visit was more typical. 

Staghorn Steakhouse (315 W. 36th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Update: BLT Market

Kalina

Note: Click here for a more recent visit to BLT Market.

We last visited BLT Market on opening week, finding it promising but not yet polished. Since then, the reviews are in, most of them favorable (Platt, Cuozzo, Lane, Tables for Two).

Frank Bruni issued a peculiar dissent, relegating the restaurant to Dining Briefs (i.e., not a full review). He found much of the food very good, but called chef Laurent Tourondel “a slacker” for opening “assiduously promoted, trend-conscious restaurants” instead of making the “real impact on the city’s dining scene” that he’s capable of.

I agree with Bruni to an extent. My meals at the BLT restaurant brood have generally been very good (with a few odd lapses), but you always feel you’re getting something less than Tourondel’s best effort. With his large restaurant family now numbering fifteen, he cannot be spending much time at any one of them.

Nevertheless, you’ll pass a happy time at Tourondel’s latest New York restaurant, BLT Market, though you won’t get out cheaply. On a recent visit, Amish Chicken ($30) was among the less expensive entrées. Rock shrimp risotto ($36) and a pork chop ($38) were both wonderful, but no one would call them bargains at a restaurant this informal. Cocktails at the bar (technically part of the hotel, not the restaurant) were staggering: $16 for a Whisky Sour, $17 for a Negroni.

The menu has been expanded to include separately-orderable side dishes that it lacked before—always a sure way to plump up the bill (though we didn’t bite). At all the BLT restaurants, the menus are printed on thin, cheap paper with a half-life that couldn’t be more than a day or so. So why are the specials printed on a separate sheet of paper, of which we were given only one copy? Surely a restaurant so expensive could get this right.

We were on our way to a show, so I was pleased to find that they got us out in an hour without rushing. The amuse-bouche was the same pigs-in-a-blanket as before, but more enjoyable this time. The garlic bread is still superb.

BLT Market  (1430 Sixth Avenue at Central Park South, in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, West Midtown)

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

The Master Class at Gordon Ramsay

Note: The master class was offered under chef Josh Emett, who has since left the restaurant. Ramsay sold his interest, and is now affiliated in only a consulting role. The current chef is Markus Glocker.

*

A year ago, Gordon Ramsay at the London opened to outsized expectations. The city’s major critics quickly pronounced it a dud, with both Adam Platt and Frank Bruni awarding just two stars to a restaurant that was vying for four. I was more impressed than they were, awarding three stars, though I agreed with Platt and Bruni that the restaurant didn’t quite live up to the hype.

Ramsay fired chef de cuisine Neil Ferguson, replacing him with Josh Emett, who had cooked for Ramsay at the Savoy Grill. Neither Platt nor Bruni has been back since the change, which is understandable, given their hostility to upscale European (non-Italian) cuisines, even when it is executed well. But Ramsay was redeemed when the restaurant earned two stars in the 2008 Michelin Guide, making Gordon Ramsay at the London one of the top ten restaurants in town, in at least one informed opinion. It also earned the top rating of four stars in the annual Forbes survey.

I received an e-mail promotion for a Master Class at Gordon Ramsay, offered weekdays for parties of four to eight guests. Chef Emett demonstrates the day’s menu, and then you have a multi-course lunch at the Chef’s Table. My girlfriend and I thought it would make a great Christmas present for our parents. We made it a surprise, so they knew only that we were going to the London Hotel, with no idea what was to come.

The day went far beyond our expectations. We arrived at 10:30 a.m. After coffee and continental breakfast, Chef Emett spent ninety minutes demonstrating three complex recipes and explaining how the kitchen worked. We then sat down to a luxurious six-course lunch with wine pairings, finishing at around 2:30 p.m. All of that was only $195 per person for our party of five. This is a bargain when you bear in mind that it included what amounted to a private cooking lesson with a Michelin-starred chef and four bottles of wine.

The Master Class photos are in the previous post.

After the master class, we sat down to lunch at the Chef’s Table, which is in a nook facing the kitchen. We began with a bottle of champagne.

 

 

First we were served two canapés: a crispy cod fish with salmon roe, and a fried mushroom (above left). Then came the amuse-bouche, a light butternut squash soup (above right).

Another bottle of wine came out, as we watched the ravioli plated at the pass: 

 

 

Above: Ravioli of Tiger Prawn with Fennel Cream,
Shellfish Vinaigrette and Chervil Velouté

It’s hard to tell from the photo, but the ravioli were plump and generously filled; two of them would have been excessive, especially given how rich they were. This was a four-star dish, easily the best ravioli I’ve had in a long time. It’s a popular dish, too: we saw many plates of it leaving the kitchen.

Another bottle of wine arrived. We watched the complex operation of plating of the Beef Wellington, and Chef Emett came by to check on us:

And the pièce de resistance:

Above: Short Rib of Kobe Beef; Fillet of Beef Wellington with Madeira Jus

The Beef Wellington entrée was outstanding, and puts to shame every other preparation of this dish that I’ve ever had. There were something like a dozen separate ingredients on the plate. The Kobe beef short rib practically melted at the touch. The beef was beautiful,  perfectly aged and tender, the crisp puff pastry shell offering a gorgeous contrast.

By the way, the Beef Wellington is not currently on the regular menu, although Emett told us it has been offered in the past.

It was time for dessert:

The palate cleanser was a passion fruit crème with coconut foam and mint granata (above left). I must admit that I had doubts about whther the rice pudding (above right) could live up to the culinary fireworks of the rest of the meal, but there was far more to it than I expected, with a raspberry jam, mascarpone ice cream and pecans. It came with a dessert wine, followed by petits-fours that we could barely touch.

This was among the best meals we have had in New York. It is difficult to rate a meal like this, bearing in mind that most guests won’t experience the restaurant under these conditions. But recent reviews seem to confirm our impression that Gordon Ramsay is now one of the top handful of restaurants in the city.

Gordon Ramsay at the London (151 W. 54th Street between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, West Midtown)

The Master Class at Gordon Ramsay (Photos)

Note: The background of our visit and the meal itself are in the next post.

We all donned aprons and joined chef de cuisine Josh Emett in the kitchen, where he demonstrated the Ravioli of Tiger Prawn, Beef Wellington, and Rice Pudding. Besides being a master chef, he was a patient teacher and a true gentleman, spending close to ninety minutes with us.

I was encouraged to take photos liberally, which I did: He said, “We’re very laid back about that, contrary to popular belief.” He also said that he speaks to Ramsay almost every day, but that he has complete freedom to design the menu.

We began with…

Ravioli of Tiger Prawn with Fennel Cream, Shellfish Vinaigrette and Chervil Velouté

First, Emett makes the pasta by hand:

There’s enough leftover for a heavenly linguini, which was not actually part of the planned menu. We ate right out of the skillet it was prepared in:

The ravioli are filled with a shrimp and tiger prawn mousse, then assembled and trimmed into a circle. They are extremely delicate and prone to puncture, in which case the whole operation must be repeated:

Now it was onto… 

Fillet of Beef Wellington with Madeira Jus

The beef had been seasoned and pre-seared in a hot pan. A chicken, mushroom and shallot mousse was spread onto a light crêpe:

Then the fillet was wrapped inside, and the edges sealed:

Then, a flat puff pastry was brushed with an egg wash, and the crêpe containing the fillet rolled inside:

Lastly…

Rice Pudding with Raspberry Jam & Mascarpone Pecan Ice Cream

I’ve not much to say about the rice pudding, which was the most straightforward part of the demonstration, so I just offer the photos:

And some scenes from the kitchen:

Left: A line cook prepares venison loin for the dinner service; Center: There are two massive French stoves, which cost $750,000 apiece; Right: Emett is proud of an Apple Tarte Tatin, which is offered as a dessert for two.

It was time to sit down to lunch…

Koi

In a city flooded with big-box Asian-themed restaurants, Koi arrived relatively late. As Frank Bruni put it in his zero-star review 2½ years ago:

Koi recreates a popular, buzz-bedecked establishment with the same name and same principal owner in Los Angeles, and it belongs to a well-worn Japanese genre that includes, in Manhattan, Megu, Geisha, Ono, Matsuri and En Japanese Brasserie. These restaurants invest in flashy design, mix colorful cocktails and construct menus that hedge any daring bets with the safety of sushi rolls and versions of dishes popularized by Nobu, the less flamboyant, more dependable sire of this expanding brood.

I didn’t bother with Koi back then, but when I was looking for something new to try in Madison Square Garden’s general vicinity, suddenly its moment had come.

Our visit to Koi almost didn’t happen. I booked on OpenTable for 5:30 p.m., but the restaurant was closed when we arrived: the Bryant Park Hotel staff told us that Koi wouldn’t open until 6:00. We took a twenty-minute walk, and when we returned they were open. The snafu was never explained, but we headed off to our table and were out in plenty of time for a 7:30 show.

Early critics complained about a “you need us more than we need you” attitude and music so loud you could barely think straight. Thankfully, none of that was on display last Friday evening, either because management actually learned something from the reviews, or because Koi’s fifteen minutes of hotness are up. I suspect it’s the latter. We saw families with small children, and our server asked, “Where y’all from?” I suspect that most of the patrons now are tourists.

As at Nobu and other restaurants of its ilk, the menu at Koi is mostly “small plates,” which you’re encouraged to share, along with standard offerings of sushi, sashimi, and rolls. Our server was well informed about the menu and provided patient guidance.

We started with a trio of appetizers. Tuna Tartare ($15; above left) with avocado and crispy wontons was as good a preparation of that dish as any in town. Our server steered us to Crispy Rice topped with spicy tuna ($16; above center), but we weren’t as wowed by it as he was. I believe the third appetizer was the Creamy Rock Shrimp Tempura ($17; above right),  which had a nice cruncy–spicy texture.

 

The so-called “signature rolls” at Koi avoid some of the usual clichés. My son was pleased with a shrimp roll ($16; above left), which had the shrimp outside the rice, instead of the opposite. A Baked Crab hand roll ($9; above right) had a doughy wrapping, rather than the usual rice paper, but it was a bit bland.

The better items on the menu are good enough to make Koi a solid standout in the neighborhood, but it’s not really distinct enough to be a destination.

Koi (40 W. 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

San Domenico

Note: San Domenico closed. Click here for a review of SD26, its downtown replacement.

I’ve always been a little hesitant about visiting San Domenico. It advertises more than most restaurants. You can hardly see anything at Lincoln Center without running across the distinctive San Domenico logo in your program. Now, I’ve nothing against advertising, but I figured a place that needs to sell itself so aggressively must not have enough adoring regulars. And that’s a bad sign.

On OpenTable, you can book San Domenico any day of the week, at almost any time you want—especially after 8:00 p.m., when the pre-theater crowd has departed. Another bad sign.

But San Domenico gets respect in the local press (New York rates it a critic’s pick), and many a fine Italian chef has passed through its kitchen. So I figured it was finally time to give it a try.

San Domenico has been offering luxe Italian cuisine on Central Park South for almost twenty years. It earned an adoring three stars from Bryan Miller just six weeks after it opened in 1988, with a celebrity chef that had earned two Michelin stars in Italy. Two years later, that chef was gone, and Miller demoted it to two stars in 1991. Ruth Reichl, always generous with her ratings, bumped it back up to three stars in 1993.

Owner Tony May (center), daughter Marisa May (left),
and Chef Odette Fada (right)

Since 1996, Odette Fada has been in the kitchen. William Grimes demoted San Domenico back down to two stars in 2003, finding that Fada “continues to perform marvels,” but that “the dining room is working from a different script,” noting a tourist atmosphere, “aggressive salesmanship,” and servers who “begin calculating their tip almost as soon as they approach the table.”

Grimes also noted that sometimes “the B team was at work” in the kitchen, and we seem to have chosen such an evening to dine at San Domenico. But maybe something more fundamental is wrong here, because no restaurant charging as much as San Domenico should be as clueless as we found it.

We began with drinks at the bar, served up by an old-school Italian bartender who took a while to notice we were there. When our table was ready, the service team insisted that my girlfriend’s unfinished drink would follow, but it took more than five minutes to arrive.

On the way to our table, the host was suddenly stopped by a more senior colleague, who berated him in Italian—for what sin I couldn’t perceive. We were offered fresh cut vegetables and olive oil immediately, but the bread it was meant to go with (excellent, I should note) didn’t arrive till quite a while later.

The waiters who served us were Indian, and they had a huckstering quality about them that belonged on Restaurant Row in the theater district. Our main server kept bumping into things. Others would come along and ask the same question (more bread? tap or bottled water?) we’d already answered. Did we want wine by the bottle or by the glass? It’s a crucial question, as there are separate menus for each option. I asked for wine by the bottle, and they brought both menus anyway. Bargains on the massive wine list are few, but I did find a great nebbiolo for $75, though with no help offered from the staff.

The dinner menu comes, and it’s a confusing jumble, with a lot of dishes to consider, and two loose inserts with additional choices, some of which are duplicated. One of those inserts is a white truffle menu. The server brings two truffles by our table, so we can see what they look like. If you go that route, you choose your food at the usual (very high) prices, and truffles are “$9 per gram” on top of that, with five grams recommended.

Who among us knows what a gram of truffles looks like? In 1993, when truffles were only $5/gram, Florence Fabricant reported that they actually bring the scale to your table and weigh the truffle before and after. It sounds like a procedure more appropriate at a gas station.

The pasta menu warns that dishes may be split, at an extra charge of $2.50. It seems almost churlish, when most of the pastas are around $25.

 
Candlestick pasta in spicy sausage sauce (left); Suckling pig (right)

To start, I had the nightly pasta special, described as “artisanal candlestick shaped pasta with a reduced spicy sausage sauce and green peppers” ($23.50). I was struck by the laziness of the plating, which would be unappetizing even at a diner. The pasta was undercooked and tough. The spicy sausage sauce packed some nice heat, but I didn’t see any green peppers. And for the life of me, I couldn’t perceive a “candlestick” shape; it just looked like large penne.

My girlfriend was even more disgusted with a similar-looking pasta, likewise undercooked, that was supposed to include lobster, at a price of almost $30. There were just two dinky pieces of lobster in there, which hadn’t been detached from their shells.

We both ordered the suckling pig, an entrée that’s tough to screw up, but was somewhat dull in light of a price point north of $35, and again unimaginatively plated. (To be fair, I had already eaten a bit of it before I remembered to snap the photo above.)

After all that, we weren’t going to take any chances on desserts, which at around $14 apiece struck us as exorbitant, even by this restaurant’s standards. After our meal, the server dropped off a plate of petits-fours, which were probably the best thing we had.

The room seems a bit dated, but I suppose it could be charming if only the food and the service lived up to it. San Domenico is surely capable of doing better than this. Then again, maybe not. We certainly don’t plan on trying it again anytime soon. At $300 (including tax and tip), we have better ways of spending our money.

San Domenico (240 Central Park South between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

Food: unsatisfactory
Service: classless
Ambiance: the perfect setting for a good meal that never arrives
Overall: disappointing