The Milton

On the official NYC taxi map, the Upper East Side ends at 86th Street, aside from a small sliver near Central Park, which extends up to 110th Street. The rectangle bounded by 86th, Madison, 110th, and the East River, is (supposedly) Spanish Harlem.

Those are the traditional borders, but the streets north of 86th are starting to look more like the old Upper East Side. Indeed, most sources now consider anything up to 96th Street to be part of that neighborhood. Gentrification will only accelerate as the Second Avenue Subway gets closer to completion. (The latest ever-changing due date is the end of 2016, but it is sure to move again.)

The Milton is typical of the dining and drinking establishments taking root in the upper Upper East Side, where rents are low enough to attract a younger crowd. The owner, Tomas Maher of 13th Street Entertainment, talks up the space’s “downtown vibe”. This neighborhood isn’t yet secure in its own skin, so the proprietors have to compare it to someplace else.

The chef, David Diaz, came out of the same ownership group’s Brasserie Beaumarchais in the Meatpacking District, but the two places couldn’t be less alike. The cuisine at The Milton is out of the gastropub playbook: like the owner, a fusion of Irish, English, and American styles. Appetizers and salads are $9–16, side dishes $7, mains $12–28 (but only two of them north of $18).

It’s not a particularly long menu, with just eight mains and no announced specials. It will be interesting to see if it changes seasonally. Otherwise, The Milton isn’t a gastropub. It’s just a pub: a good one.

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Javelina

Tex–Mex cuisine has always had a lowbrow reputation outside of its home territory, much as barbecue did a generation ago. You could visit these places for fun and sustenance, but the cooking was never taken seriously.

Javelina aims to change that. It’s the first local Tex–Mex joint I can remember where you actually knew the name of the chef: Richard Caruso, who’s been at Rosa Mexicano and Hill Country. Pat LaFrieda is on hand to supply the beef for all those tacos and enchiladas; or, if you prefer to have your beef naked, there’s a 28-day dry-aged cowboy steak for $38.

As the modern trend requires, there’s a large-format dish, the Parrilladas Mixtas, essentially the fajita platter of the gods, with six proteins (lobster extra) and abundant side dishes, costing $65 for two or $125 for four. But most of the food clocks in at much lower prices. No other item on the two-page menu is more than $25, and portions are generous.

The restaurant is named for a kind of wild pig that roams the wilds of Texas. A stuffed specimen is on display above the bar, and you can see from its sharp teeth that this isn’t an animal to be toyed with.

They take reservations, and you might need one. On a Wednesday evening, there was no chance of getting seated before our 7:45 booking, and the bar was packed too. We cooled our heels at the quiet Italian trattoria next door: Javelina might be the best thing that’s happened to them in years. On a recent evening, Eater’s Ryan Sutton waited 90 minutes for bar seats, got nothing, and gave up.

Once you get in, the sound level is punishing: those brick walls and hard surfaces turn the dining room into an echo chamber. Is it worth the trouble? Not as far as we could tell. We found the food like most of the city’s Tex–Mex: acceptable for what it is, but not worthy of the destination status that diners are conferring on Javelina in its early days.

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La Gauloise

You know that French cuisine has made a comeback, when classic bistros are opening at a faster rate than I can get around to trying them. I know, I know: it’s a tough job, but someone’s gotta do it.

Welcome to La Gauloise, the latest from Georges Forgeois, whose Gallic mini-chain also includes Cercle Rouge, Jules Bistro, Bar Tabac, Café Noir, and Le Signe Vert.

Forgeois also has The Clarkson, which feels like the answer to the old SAT question: which of these things is unlike the others? It’s a straightforward American bistro, albeit decorated (like all of his other places) with French nick-nacks that Forgeois picked up over 25 years of antique-hunting at flea markets.

Anyhow, The Clarkson had an extra dining room that wasn’t getting enough use, so Forgeois turned it into a separate restaurant. The two establishments are physically connected, sharing both rest room and kitchen space, but this isn’t immediately apparent, until you see staff passing back and forth between them, through a swinging wooden door.

La Gauloise feels like one of those little family bistros that you’d find on hundreds of Parisian side streets, with a small bi-level dining room, yellow pressed tin walls, and what feels like a staff of about three people. Not that it needed more, at least on a Friday evening in early spring, with only about four tables occupied and a couple of more patrons at the bar.

The location isn’t ideal. The West Village loses a lot of its intimate charm as you cross Seventh Avenue, headed West. The nearest streetcorner is dominated by The Clarkson, and the building is draped in scaffolding. You’re not going to notice La Gauloise unless you’re looking for it. (Perhaps it’ll be easier to spot once the weather gets warmer, and the outdoor tables come out.)

The chef is Rebecca Weitzman, formerly of ’inoteca and Cercle Rouge. (She also won an episode of Food Network’s Chopped in 2010.) She does double-duty here, continuing to look after the kitchen at The Clarkson. Her menu breaks no new ground: it’s practically all French classics, with appetizers mostly in the low-teens, mains in the mid-20s. It’s all capably prepared, but nothing we tried was especially memorable.

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Contra

Economists have their own ways of measuring the end of a recession. I have my own: how long does it take to get into a hit restaurant in New York?

Contra opened on the Lower East Side in October 2013, and it took till March 2015 for me to get a reservation. Now, I’ll admit: I didn’t work at it desperately. With dogged persistence, I surely could’ve gone sooner. But at the pace I was willing to work—something less than desperation—it took almost eighteen months for a reservation to appear, at a time I was willing to go.

The concept was daring for late 2013: a $55 five-course set menu from two chefs most people (then) had never heard of. Apparently they never got the memo: that’s not The Way We Eat Now. Diners want sharable small plates, to order either a short snack or a multi-course degustation at their whim. Or, do they? Contra was willing to bet the opposite.

Of course, the fixed-price menu is what every kitchen would love to serve: planning is so much easier when every cover will be the same. But most places don’t open with that format; they adopt it later (if at all), after their reputation is secure. For an unproven restaurant, the fixed cost of entry is supposed to be off-putting—even where, as here, it isn’t really that high.

Contra did it anyway, the rave reviews rolled in, and the rest is history. Last week, the restaurant finally got around to raising its prices. Thursdays through Saturdays, the price will be $67 for 6–8 courses. On Tuesdays and Wednesdays, the original five-course menu will be a hair less expensive than before, at $53. (You can order à la carte at the bar.)

The chefs here are Jeremiah Stone, who worked at Rino in Paris and Isa in Brooklyn; and Fabian von Hauske, whose CV includes the obligatory fifteen-minute stint at Noma, plus Faviken in Sweden and the pastry department at Jean-Georges. Stone looks after the savory courses, von Hauske the bread and desserts.

According to the staff, the menu changes every few days, if not more often, depending on the available ingredients and the chefs’ whims. Theeir style is very loosely “New Nordic,” although the website (not very helpfully) describes it as “Contemporary New York cuisne.”

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