Tabla Retrenches

Union Square Hospitality Group has announced that Tabla, the Indian restaurant at Madison Park, will eliminate its casual downstairs sibling, Bread Bar at Tabla. From now on, both spaces will serve the identical menu.

When we visited the Bread Bar in June, Tabla was serving a $59 prix fixe. On a Friday evening, the space looked almost empty, while the Bread Bar was bustling. The new menu (PDF here) strongly resembles the Bread Bar menu that we dined from that evening. It has a wide range of à la carte choices from $9–22 (Naan just $4), along with tasting menus at either $54 or $79.

So while USHG says that the Bread Bar has been discontinued, it’s actually the fine-dining option that’s going away. The new combined menu is basically the Bread Bar menu. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as we liked most of the food we had there.

But it does appear to be a retrenchment.

Where David Chang Got The Idea

Here’s William Grimes in Appetite City (p. 40), describing a couple of downtown oyster saloons called Dorlans, circa the 1860s and ’70s:

No uptown rival, though, could cut into the business of the downtown restaurants, whose mystique grew with the years. Ambiance could not explain the attraction: both establishments were spartan, dispensing with such niceties as napkins, tablecloths, and butter knives. This did not deter fashionable New Yorkers. “Fastidious ladies, who at home dwell in splendid boudoirs and sit in perfumed chambers, take Dorlan’s [sic] on their way from the opera, for a stew or saddle-rock roast,” wrote one observer in 1868. “Gentlemen who have rosewood tables on Turkey carpets, eat off porcelain and silver ware, whose dining-rooms are perfumed with the choicest flowers, thankfully accept a stool without a back to it at Dorlan’s, and are jostled by the crowd. The belles and madames of the upper ten often stand in a row awaiting their turn.

Fiamma Closes: The Bigger Picture

Eater.com reports that Fiamma, Stephen Hanson’s acclaimed SoHo Italian spot, has closed. Two thoughts immediately spring to mind.

Number one, this is the first “recession-related” closure that I’m actually sad about. I never got around to dining at Fiamma, but it was obviously a first-class place. The other closures I’ve seen lately were marginal restaurants that most people won’t miss. They were either not very good, not very important, or both. Bear in mind that the restaurant industry always has a high failure rate. Many of these places would have failed anyway—though perhaps not as soon.

Number two, Fiamma was part of a large empire: Stephen Hanson’s B. R. Guest, with almost twenty restaurants under its wing (before today). In theory, Hanson might have had the resources to subsidize losses at his most acclaimed restaurant with revenues from some of the others. To know whether that made sense, we’d need to know his overall financial picture, but you’ve got to figure it was considered.

The point is that many restaurants at Fiamma’s level aren’t part of a big conglomerate. If revenues are down, the owner has nowhere else to go. If Fiamma couldn’t make it, then what about everyone else?

When is the Wine List Fairly Priced?

I’ve developed a theory that helps me decide if a wine list is fairly priced: The bottom of the list should have a good selection at the price of the average meal.

I don’t much care about the top of the list. If a pizzeria wants to serve $1,000 wines, that’s fine with me. The top can go as high as the restaurant thinks it can get away with. But if the average meal is a $15 pizza and a $5 scoop of ice cream, then the cheapest wine shouldn’t be $60.

At Corton in TriBeCa, the cheapest meal is $76 prix fixe, but the wine list has two full pages of bottles under $50, and even quite a few under $40. You can also spend thousands, but the ample selection below $50 makes Corton’s wine list not just fairly priced, but generously priced.

The other night, we had dinner at Belcourt in the East Village. We loved Belcourt overall, but I found the high-priced wine list irritating.

Obviously a casual neighborhood bistro isn’t going to have the same wine list as Corton, but the wines Belcourt did have were nearly all above $50. There might have been a token red or two slightly below that figure; as I recall, they were very young wines that I wouldn’t drink even at retail prices, much less with a restaurant markup. At Belcourt, the average appetizer is around $10, and the average entrée is about $21. It should have a half-dozen to a dozen real choices below $50.

So that’s the rule I use: the heart of the bottom end of the wine list should equal the price of a typical meal for one. That means there should be real choice at that level, not just a token, and not an obscure grape or region that is out of character for the restaurant.

The upshot is that a party of 2 can have a decent meal where the food is 2/3rds of the cost, and the wine is 1/3rd. That seems fair to me.

The State of the Bouley Empire

David Bouley’s growing empire fascinates me. What is it like to build seven restaurants at once? Not seven clones, but seven one-of-a-kind places?

One of the seven, Secession, is an early failure. It got zero stars from Adam Platt this week. If it gets much better than a weak singleton from Frank Bruni, I’ll be surprised.

I walked by the others last night for a brief look-in. Here’s a report:

Bouley Bakery. The bakery has now moved into the old Bouley restaurant. It’s a work in progress, with signs of unfinished construction. David Bouley himself was wandering around inside. They’re selling baked goods and soups, in what appears to be a makeshift space. My understanding is that there will eventually be a wine bar in here, but that part isn’t ready yet.

Upstairs. With the bakery gone, Upstairs has the whole building to itself. I saw four lovely tables on the ground floor with — gasp! — white tablecloths and formal glassware. It actually looks like a pleasant place to dine, certainly not the case when I visited three years ago, and promptly crossed it off my list. There is no longer a menu posted outside, but a sign on the door announces various prix fixe sushi specials, presumably still available on the second floor.

Bouley Restaurant. This is now open in the old Mohawk Atelier building, on a scale of unprecedented luxury. There’s a private dining room on the lower level with a separate entrance. The kitchen features panoramic windows facing the street. If you can’t afford to eat at Bouley, you can press your nose to the glass and watch him (or more likely, his minions) cook for those who can. It’s a gutsy move—a new take on the idea of an “open kitchen.” There’s no menu posted, at the restaurant or online. I’m in no rush to visit until I read a few more reports, but I may stop in for a drink sometime soon.

At Matsugen, even Vongerichten is a food blogger

Most chefs and old-line journalists look down on food bloggers with disdain. So what’s it like when a four-star chef turns into a food blogger himself? Here’s Jean-Georges Vongerichten on the opening of his latest restaurant, Matsugen:

My newest New York City restaurant, Matsugen, is open. I am thrilled to bring truly authentic, refined Japanese dishes to this great city in a warm, chic setting.

We have some of the best sushi and sashimi in the city, but Matsugen is ultimately a soba house. And what soba. These fresh noodles are the best I’ve ever had. Starting with whole buckwheat grains, we slowly grind them into fine, medium, and coarse flours each morning. Throughout the day, we prepare the doughs and cook the just-cut noodles to order. Here’s Marja, my wife, enjoying a bowl of hot soba.

Of course, I love our other Japanese specialties too, like homemade tofu and shabu shabu. Here I am enjoying some tempura at the end of a long night.

The Rhythm of a Restaurant Meal

During the first ten or fifteen minutes after you sit down at a restaurant, several things happen in quick succession that will determine the rhythm of the rest of the meal:

• You’ll be given menus
• You’ll be told about specials—if there are any
• You might or might not receive a separate wine list
• You might or might not receive a separate cocktail menu
• You’ll be asked if you’d like to order cocktails
• The cocktails, if you ordered them, will arrive
• You might or might not receive a visit from the sommelier
• You’ll be asked if you’d like to order wine
• You’ll be asked for your food order

It’s remarkable how the order and timing of these events will vary from one restaurant to another. And how often they get it wrong.

Even at three-star restaurants, I’m amazed at how often servers ask for your food and wine order when you’ve just begun to sip your cocktails. This often sets up a situation where your half-consumed cocktails, your just-opened wine, and your first savory course are all on the table at once. If you finish your cocktail, then the wine isn’t serving its intended purpose—to accompany the food. If you leave your cocktail behind, then you’ve just wasted $5–7 (assuming the cocktail costs $10–14, which is typical).

This, of course, is merely one way that these events can be mistimed. There are many other permutations, such as the sommelier asking for your wine order before you’ve seen a menu. He surely knows—or should know—that wine is normally chosen to go with the food.

If there are specials, I prefer to have them in writing. But if they’re going to be recited, this should be done at the same time the menus are presented. The time to tell me about other options is before I start studying the menu, not after. It’s annoying when the server circles by later on with new information, potentially upsetting the ordering strategy I had already tentatively decided on.

But it’s the timing of the cocktail order that restaurants most often get wrong. If a party orders cocktails, it often means they want to relax a while before launching into the food and wine. The server ought to at least ask. Even high-end restaurants—places where diners are paying to enjoy a leisurely meal over at least a couple of hours—fail to get this right. This struck me last weekend at Café Boulud, a top-tier restaurant in most every respect, but where they were ready to take our wine and food order before the previously ordered cocktails had even arrived.

The other alternative is that a party is drinking only cocktails and wines by the glass. Here, servers make a different error: once your glass is empty, they they circle back and ask if you’d like a refill. But what if you ordered by the glass because you want to sample more than one item? Isn’t that one of the main benefits of ordering by the glass? Yet, I invariably have to ask them to bring back the beverage menu. That can take a few minutes, and then it’s a few minutes after that to prepare another cocktail or fetch another glass of wine. In the meantime, I’m sitting there with an empty glass.

Not all restaurants make these mistakes, but they happen well over half the time.

Am I being unreasonable?

An OpenTable Milestone

Within the last week, the number of restaurants listed on OpenTable for Metro New York rose above 1,000.

I’ve been on OpenTable for a little over four years. When I joined, the number of restaurants available was something well under 500. (In October 2005, the earliest date captured on the wayback machine, the total was 474.) 

I use OpenTable for almost all of my restaurant reservations. In the old days, you had to look up telephone numbers, make multiple calls, and wait on hold. Occasionally, either you or the restaurant screwed up, and the time they recorded (if they did at all) was different from what you asked for.

With OpenTable, a list of available tables is available instantly. Even at tough-to-book times, there are usually dozens, if not hundreds of choices. Because it’s all done electronically, with the restaurant seeing the same thing you have on your screen, errors are rare.

There are still some limitations. Some restaurants do not make all of their tables available to the system. When OpenTable says there are no tables, that might not be true. Some restaurants are nominally on OpenTable, but seldom have actual tables available at reasonable times. The perennially-booked Gramercy Tavern is an example. If you want a table there, you’d better be prepared to get on the phone at 10:00 a.m. exactly four weeks in advance.

A few well known restaurants aren’t yet on the system at all, such as Babbo and Jean Georges. These restaurants have no trouble filling their tables the old-fashioned way, and have probably decided it isn’t worth paying the bounty OpenTable charges for every reservation. I suspect they will join eventually. These days, pretty much every significant new restaurant is on the system immediately.

For every reservation you make (and keep!) through the OpenTable system, you earn at least 100 “dining points.” Every 1,000 points is worth a $10 certificate, good at any OpenTable restaurant. My current total is 33,800 points, which would cover one blow-out meal or a few inexpensive ones.

Some restaurants make 1,000-point reservations available; these are at times they have trouble filling. You’ll never see it at Gramercy Tavern, but they aren’t necessarily bad places, just unpopular times. If I’d made  a point of nabbing 1,000-point reservations over the years, I could have had a lot more points accumulated by now.

If you haven’t made the switch to online reservations, it’s way overdue. Whether you dine out occasionally or several nights a week, it is far more convenient than using the phone.

Your Seder Could Be Here

With Passover starting tomorrow, I doubt that anyone who cares about celebrating a Seder is still looking for restaurant suggestions. Still, I thought I’d share my research.

I was surprised how many serious restaurants are offering Seders or Passover-themed meals this weekend:

• At Savoy, chef–owner Peter Hoffman cooks the Sephardic-accented meal and leads the Seder himself. Price: $110.
• At Tabla, Floyd Cardoz celebrates Passover Indian-style. Price: $95.
• At Compass, Neil Annis mixes a modern American and traditional Jewish menu. Price: $110.
• At Capsouto Frères, which has offered its Seder for 20 years, the menu is Sephardic-themed, and the proceeds are donated to charity. Price: $150.

These are all wonderful restaurants—places I’d be pleased to recommend any day of the week. On paper, Tabla appears to have the best deal, not merely because it has the lowest price, but because it’s the best restaurant of the bunch.

But the pièce de resistance is Passover at Sammy’s Roumanian, where the watered-down Seder (just 20-minutes long) costs $190. Just three years ago, they were charging only $90 for it. We were actually considering Sammy’s—the 20-minute service is right up our street—but at the inflated price we’ll take a pass.

So where are we going instead? L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. Same price as Sammy’s; food from another universe.

State of the Bouley Union

 
Restaurant Bouley (left); In case you were wondering… (right)

David Bouley, chef/owner of three successful TriBeCa restaurants, is throwing his whole restaurant empire into a state of turmoil.

The flagship, Bouley, will be moving into new quarters in the old Mohawk building, a block away. His bakery, now located across the street, will move into the old restaurant space. That will create room for the restaurant Upstairs to expand into all three floors of that building. (I wonder if they’ll still call it “Upstairs”?)

Bouley’s Austrian-themed restaurant, Danube, will close, to be replaced by Secession, a French brasserie. Lastly, he’ll be creating a three-story Japanese restaurant, Brushstroke, in the space formerly occupied by Delphi, which had been the oldest restaurant in TriBeCa. The place closed last year after it couldn’t agree to a new lease with its landlord.

These changes are supposed to happen in the course of this year. Mind you, all of these restaurants, existing and to be, are literally within one block of the current Bouley space. If David Bouley is a control freak, he won’t have to go far to check up on any of his projects.

So how is the state of the Bouley union? Let’s begin with the flagship, Bouley. I was able to get a nice wide-angle shot (above), because there are no cars outside. This is one of the Community Board’s major complaints about the place. Notice the sign outside, “No Double Parking.” At the moment, there’s no single parking there either.

 
Restaurant Upstairs (left); At Danube, “Do you think someone’s going to blog about us?” (right)

Business is brisk at Upstairs (above left). This was the first night of the year that the outdoor tables were in use. Over at Danube (above right), a gaggle of employees loitered outside.

  
The old Delphi space will house the new restaurant Brushstroke, and apparently, Luxury Lofts up above

The space that will be Brushstrokes still looks like the vacant hulk that was Delphi. It isn’t a very appealing sight. Note the sign for “Luxury Lofts” next door. Doesn’t look very luxurious, does it?

This restaurant has not had an easy gestation. In February, a committee of Community Board 1 twice voted to deny Brushstroke a liquor license, based on years of complaints about the way Bouley runs his restaurants. Bouley put on a charm offensive with the full Community Board, and miraculously, they voted in favor of recommending a liquor license. (They almost never override the committee vote.)

Here it gets creepy. The very next day, the Buildings Department issued a Stop Work Order at the Delphi site “after finding that a floor joist had been removed without providing shoring.” That seems almost too coincidental. Could it be that someone in the area who had opposed the liquor license filed an anonymous tip?

 
There’s no work being done here, after the Dept. of Buildings found unsafe conditions

It looks like this restaurant still has a long way to go. I don’t think we’ll see Brushstroke before 2009.