Tanuki Tavern

Note: Tanuki Tavern closed in May 2012. It will be replaced by Toy, a new concept and menu from the same owner, Jeffrey Chodorow. The countdown on its eventual closure begins in 5, 4, 3, 2,….

*

When maestro of mediocrity Jeffrey Chodorow replaced his Meatpacking District Japanese restaurant Ono with Tanuki Tavern, I did not rush to dine there. His restaurants are never great, and often suck. Nobody in this town has had so many restaurants spectacularly flame out. How is he still in business?

Coverage on Eater.com made Tanuki Tavern sound more like a gimmick than a serious restaurant. When I learned that the menu would have 70 items, I was not impressed. In the Times, Sam Sifton awarded one star, which is one more than I figured it would get.

The excuse to try Tanuki Tavern came last weekend, when my son was in town and my original dining plans fell through. Much to my surprise, Tanuki Tavern is decent. Actually, it is not bad.

That epic-length menu is mostly Japanese, hedging itself as only Chodorow can, with nine categories, and interlopers like a Pat LaFreida burger and a Creekstone Farms bone-in steak. Many dishes are cross-overs not found on most Japanese menus, like Tuna Sliders and Spicy French Fries.

Aside from the steak ($58), nothing is very expensive. Three appetizers (“snacks” in Chod-speak) and a plate of rolls were $67. It was hard to tell how much food to order, which is surely what the Chod-meister wants, as you are encouraged to spend in excess; fortunately, it was exactly the right amount.

There are no great discoveries here (you knew that, right?), but everything was enjoyable.

Fish & Chips ($9; above left) were exactly what you’d expect. Flecks of yuzu in the tartar sauce were the only connection to the restaurant’s Japanese theme. We loved the Tori Dongo ($7; above right), three chicken meatballs in rice crust with spicy ponzu.

If you grill chicken wings with citrus salt, the result is Tebayaki ($9; above left), and it was very good indeed. The four half-rolls we tried (above right), ranging from $7 to $14 apiece, were on the level of any decent neighborhood sushi place.

Chodorow did a nice job with the rehab, making Tanuki Tavern seem a lot less cavernous and corporate than Ono. Actually, you don’t feel like you’re in the Meatpacking District, which is an accomplishment.

The sushi chefs are Japanese, but none of the servers are. The restaurant is not full, and yet, when you need them they aren’t around. Plates that clearly call for silverware are initially served without any. An empty glass goes unnoticed. When you do get the servers’ attention, they are friendly and efficient. And at least you never want for paper napkins, which are rolled up and kept in a mug by the side of the table.

One wonders how long it will be before Tanuki Tavern joins the Chodorow restaurant cemetery. On a Saturday evening at 7:30 p.m., just a few tables were occupied. It was about half full when we left, and clearly not setting the world afire. There was an unusual abundance of all-girl parties and families with children. This kind of patronage is fleeting. If Chodorow has another restaurant concept up his sleeve, he might as well start getting it ready.

But in the meantime, Tanuki Tavern feels a lot less cynical than many of its Meatpacking District brethren, despite the over-reaching Chod-speak menu. I wouldn’t mind going back.

Tanuki Tavern (18 Ninth Avenue at 13th Street, Meatpacking District)

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

First Look: Terroir Tribeca

Terroir Tribeca opened last night, the west side sibling to the East Village wine bar that was an instant classic two years ago, and remains so today. We’ve visited the original Terroir twice (reviews here & here), and would’ve gone more often if it wasn’t on the opposite side of town. With a Terroir three blocks from work, that problem is now solved.

Terroir Tribeca is twice the size of its older sister, a bit nicer looking, and has about quadruple the kitchen space. The concept, however, is the same. If you’re one of the few people who didn’t like Terroir (ahem, Robert Sietsema), you won’t like Terroir Tribeca either.

Much of the credit goes to Paul Grieco, the mad scientist of sommeliers, whose wine lists are as fun to read as a Joseph Heller novel. The man knows his wine, loves to talk about it, and sells it at prices that make you want to try. There are bottles, of course, and everything on the by-the-glass list is available in either half or full pours.

Grieco’s partner, Marco Canora, supervises the food program. The menu is an expanded version of the East Village Terroir. The categories are the same (bar snacks, “fried stuff,” charcuterie, cheese, panini, salads, etc.); there’s just more of everything. I suspect that the larger kitchen will give them the chance to broaden the menu eventually. For the opening, they have hewed to their already proven concept.

My eye drifted first to the “Fried Stuff.” Funky Beef Balls ($7; above left) were heavily seasoned flavor bombs of aged Creekstone Farms beef. Sage Leaves with Lamb Sausage ($7; above right) were even better.

I had brief tastes of a couple other items that I liked a bit less, the “Disc O’ Pig” and the “Bacalla Balls” (there is clearly an obsession with circular and spherical objects here). All are designed for sharing, and that is a wise thing. If there’s any criticism of this food, it’s the lack of variety. After two heavy deep-fried dishes, you might be in danger of falling into a salt coma.

I was ready for a change of pace, which Orangey Beets ($4; above left) supplied. I then went back to the fried stuff, with the Beet Gorgonzola Risotto Balls ($7; above right). They don’t look like much on the outside, but they’re fantastic.

Grieco and Canora have seeded Terroir Tribeca with staff from the East Village, so it’s no surprise that service was much smoother than the typical opening night, even though the bar was packed to the rafters by 7:00 p.m. Actually, I can report only one minor glitch—getting charged for a full glass of wine when I was quite sure I had only half. I ordered about five or six half-glasses, and all the others were billed correctly.

Terroir Tribeca is launched, and I suspect it’ll be one heck of an enjoyable ride.

Terroir Tribeca (24 Harrison Street, east of Greenwich Street, Tribeca)

Review Recap: Nello a Nullity

Alert the media. Today, Sam Sifton files on Nello, finding (shock!) that it’s utterly irrelevant. In case you were wondering:

Nello, which opened in 1992, is an ecosystem that is almost incomprehensible to those not a part of it. The food is not very good. Yet the restaurant’s customer base is built of the richest and most coddled people in the city, who love it for its elegance and, perhaps, simplicity.

It is a private club of sorts, where the dues are paid nightly. The meetings are unadvertised. Nello’s dining room can be crowded at 3 p.m. or midnight. It can also be empty at 1 p.m. or 9 p.m. Regular patrons respond to whistles mere customers cannot hear.

As Ben Leventhal put it on Twitter, “So far the new guy needs work picking his wild cards.”

The slack pace of new openings—the comparative lack of places that require reviews—has given Sifton the chance to write about restaurants that ordinarily wouldn’t get much attention. So far, he is squandering the opportunity.

There’s a place, occasionally, to write about over-priced tourist traps like Nello, if only to call attention to how bad they are. There’s also a place, occasionally, to write about good neighborhood standbys that deserve a shout-out: Strip House and Novitá were examples.

But these are places are static: they execute classics, with varying degrees of competence. They aren’t “part of the conversation.” If the culinary moment is the product of a million little decisions made in restaurants all over town, they aren’t contributing to it. Neither is Sifton.

Frank Bruni has plenty of faults, but you’ve got to give him credit for one thing: he was always trying to find something new. Arguably, he had too little respect for classics done well. His five-year tenure was a mid-life crisis worked out before our eyes.

Sifton just doesn’t seem to care. He reviews the new openings, as he must, then spends the rest of his time at restaurants no one is talking about.

The Mark by Jean Georges

Among four-star chefs, none has syndicated himself more broadly than Jean-Georges Vongerichten. His flagship, the eponymous Jean Georges, remains one of the sublime dining experiences in the city. There are at least fifteen more restaurants (in multiple cities) that he owns directly, and many others—various Vongs and Spice Markets—where he pockets a consulting fee without managing the property.

The rap against these places is that they seldom command his attention after they’ve opened and the (usually) rave reviews have rolled in. This spring brings two new Vongerichten restaurants to New York, raising the city’s total (by my count) to nine. Even for him, it’s an ambitious agenda.

The Mark by Jean Georges is a fancy place in an even fancier Upper East Side hotel, but the menu is surprisingly low-brow, with its $22 hamburgers and pizzas in the teens. There’s the obligatory $89 ribeye for two, but most of the entrées are below $30, and very few of them set the pulse racing. The servers marching through the dining room with their silver platters are incongruous with the lack of ambition on the plate.

The fit-out is gorgeous. On a recent Saturday evening, the Mark was a mixture of the old-school Upper East Side crowd, European and Russian accents, and fashion-plate trophy dates in party dresses. Many of the women could be illustrations in a costmetic surgery textbook, illustrating both the right and the wrong way of doing it.

The restaurant, at least early on, is not lacking for business. We couldn’t do any better than 9:30 p.m., even a month in advance. We arrived early for drinks, only to find a cocktail menu as uninspired as the food. However, it was worthwhile for the people-watching alone.

I’ve never seen so many rent-a-dates. One seated near us had been promoted to concubine. “Can I rent an apartment under $10,000?” Her apparently stoned companion, who was at least twice her age, didn’t have an intelligible answer. Later on, she pouted, “I’ve been waiting patiently for a week!”

What about the food? Oh yes, they do serve food here. Some of it is good. A small black truffle fritter was served as an amuse-bouche.

A black truffle pizza with fontina cheese ($16; right) continued the theme. We shared it, and that’s the way to go. Although it is excellent, even truffles can be cloying if you eat too much of them. But I can’t complain about the price. At $16, this wouldn’t have been a bad deal even without truffles.

The entrées were standard-issue hotel fare: a pedestrian linguine with clams ($30; left); an overly salty parmesan crusted chicken ($23; right).

The wine list has decent selections that don’t break the bank. I chose a $43 Syrah. Rather oddly, the sommelier brought a $65 bottle, which he opened before showing it to us. As it was quite clearly not what I had ordered—not even close, actually—the restaurant had to eat it, which was done without complaint.

There is, of course, much more to the menu than what we tried, but 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.

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

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

The Harrison

Note: This is a review of The Harrison under chef Amanda Freitag, who left the restaurant in September 2010. The restaurant closed in late 2014, due to a rent increase.

*

Since the Harrison opened in 2001, just after 9/11, several big names have run the kitchen, most recently Amanda Freitag, who joined in 2007. She put a more Italian, less French-ified twist on the menu, a ploy clearly designed to pull in Frank Bruni for a re-review. It worked: the man awarded two stars.

Not that the Harrison needed a lot of help. It was a hit practically from the beginning, and it’s a hit still. It seems to be consistently full. Both Freitag and partner Jimmy Bradley keep themselves in the public eye, and no doubt this is good for business.

We’ve dined at the Harrison twice before (reviews here & here), but both pre-dated Freitag’s tenure. We were overdue for a re-visit. We won’t be rushing back. Our meal was a bust, with both appetizers and entrées disappointing.

Prices are lower than I remembered them, but perhaps the Harrison, like many places, has dialed them down. The current top entrée is $34, the current top appetizer $14—both a couple of dollars less than they were in the Bruni review. Most entrées are $25 or less.

An octopus appetizer ($14; above right) came with a sweet tomato and cucumber salad, but it was overwhelmed with celery. Lamb Cripinettes ($12; above right) were over-cooked, and dry.

Calf’s Liver ($22; above left) was too slimey, and the log-shaped pieces into which it was sliced resembled an unappetizing scatological object. Potatoes puréed to the consistency of baby food and dull mustard greens were not much better.

Fluke ($27; above right) was torpedoed by a butter-lemon sauce that was too watery, leaving the fish a soggy mess.

To the restaurant’s credit, the server noticed that I had barely touched the liver. It did not appear on the bill, and the kitchen sent out an eclair (right) as partial recompense.

The room, always crowded, is fine for what it is, but it was never especially inviting. The service remains top-notch for a “casual-plus” kind of place.

For those who care about such things: we cannot assign a rating to the Harrison. We gave it two stars after our last visit (under another chef), but this visit would get zero. We suspect the Harrison is not quite this bad. Rather than assuming that, we will leave it with no rating at all.

The Harrison (355 Greenwich Street at Harrison Street, TriBeCa)

Review Recap: Faustina

This week, Sam Sifton awarded one star to Faustina, even though he liked the food very much:

The restaurant offers what may be the city’s best pork chop, a shoebox-size Berkshire behemoth currently recommended for two or more diners; it might serve four, and happily. You can find a wealth of interesting raw-bar small bites and bread-dippers, delicate salads and ridiculously hearty, delicious pastas.

On hand is a wine list that affords a chance to drink well at reasonable prices, up and down Italy. This being a hotel restaurant, you can have lunch, even breakfast — some oatmeal, perhaps, or a protein shake.

But no matter the meal, you will eat it uncomfortably, in a tough concrete dining room that juts off a large bar crowded with tall tables, in what is unmistakably an institutional setting, down to the space on the check where you can sign the bill to your room.

Sifton also dings the place for a “small plates” format that is being phased out, although Recette, which has that format, received two stars.

We subscribe to the view, best articulated by our friend Sneakeater, that the Times doesn’t review food, it reviews restaurants. Service and ambiance count. The whole package counts. But this is perhaps the severest “ambiance penalty” we can recall—in terms of stars—for a restaurant whose food he clearly liked.

We also, quite frankly, see very little difference between the “institutional setting” at Faustina and that at Colicchio & Sons, where Sifton inexplicably awarded three stars.

Eater had predicted one star, and wins $2, while we lose $1, on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$7.00		$19.00
Gain/Loss	+2.00		–1.00
Total	$9.00		$18.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	9–10 (47.4%)		10–9 (52.6%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 80–36 (69.0%).

Socarrat Paella Bar

We’ve had our eye on Socarrat Paella Bar ever since Frank Bruni awarded an enthusiastic star in October 2008. A pesky no-reservations policy gave us pause. When we plan an evening out, we generally want to count on a table at a time-certain. Many a restaurant that we’d love to patronize is buried well down the list for that reason, and that alone.

Socarrat Paella Bar closed the sale when it added a wine bar this spring in the adjacent storefront. We’d still have to wait for a seat, but at least we’d wait in comparative comfort, well fed and well lubricated. But be forewarned: even after effectively doubling their space, the wine bar, empty at 6:00 p.m., was standing-room-only by 8:00 on a Friday evening.

The wine bar serves mainly tapas, though you can order paella for parties of five or more. While we waited for two of the prized stools next door, we had the cheese plate ($15; above left) and the empanadas gallega ($8; above right), both very good.

Where most Spanish restaurants might have two or three versions of paella, Socarrat has eight, ranging from $22–24 per person (minimum of two people). The one shown above, Paella de Carne, was first-rate, with chunks of pork, chicken, duck, chorizo, and mushroom soffrito.

Socarrat, by the way, is the word for the burnt, sticky, but irresistible clumps of right that cling to the bottom of the pan. Near the end of your meal, a server comes along and helps you scoop it up (it takes some elbow grease, but is well worth it).

As the name implies, Socarrat Paella Bar is a bar, and a narrow one at that. You won’t have much room, and this isn’t the place for an intimate conversation. But sometimes it pays to be great at just one thing.

Socarrat Paella Bar (259 W. 19th Street between Sixth & Seventh Avenues, Chelsea)

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

Review Preview: Faustina

“This guy is hard to nail down.” Thus sayeth Eater.com in today’s edition of Sift Happens. Six months into Sam Sifton’s tenure as New York Times restaurant critic, nobody can figure the guy out.

Tomorrow, Sifton reviews Scott Conant’s Faustina, which was built on the husks of the failed Table 8. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 15–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 3–1; Three Stars: 15–1; Four Stars: 500–1.

We liked Faustina, giving it two stars, but that means nothing to Sifty, whose ratings have been all over the map. Early critics have been down on Faustina, but with Conant fine-tuning the menu, those earlier reviews might not be relevant.

A one-star review won’t surprise us, but with Conant giving Sifton the white-glove treatment, we’ll lay our bets on two stars.