Prune

Prune has been on my go-to list for a long while, but I was finally prompted to go when I saw Chef Gabrielle Hamilton defeat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America. The fact she was on the show at all was a tribute to what she had achieved in her hole-in-the-wall East Village restaurant, making a destination out of what looks like a casual neighborhood place.

Eric Asimov gave it a rave in $25 & Under (back when that column reviewed real restaurants). Three years ago, Frank Bruni updated that assessment, awarding one star. I often don’t agree with Bruni’s one-star reviews — too often, he uses it as an insult. But with Prune he got it right. One star is supposed to mean “good,” and that’s what Prune is.

Prune is in a tiny slip of a space in the East Village. Into it, Hamilton squeezes more seats than you’ll find in restaurant’s twice the size. Reaching your table may require the agility of an Olympic gymnast. At one table, diners had to climb through the French doors to reach their seats.

The drawbacks, such as they are, aren’t much of a deterrent. Throughout August, we’ve found many popular restaurants with tables to spare. Not at Prune. Every table was taken, and there were always at least a few folks waiting outside. Walk-ins were turned away.

The décor is shabby-chic, with butcher paper standing in for tablecloths. In lieu of bread, you get a small bowl of surprisingly addictive dried chickpeas. With appetizers $8–14, entrées $18–26 and side dishes $7–9, one might expect a bit more comfort. A party entered dressed in dresses and suits, obviously expecting a different type of restaurant. They were visibly distressed to find such a bare-bones place. But most of the clientele were dressed casually, as you’d expect at any of the raft of East Village destinations that have sprouted in the last decade.

There is a separate bar menu with “snacks” ($5–8) that can also be ordered appetizers. I ordered the Lamb Sausages ($8; above left). They tasted great, but would more accurately be called meatballs. Michelle had the fried squash blossoms, an off-menu special ($9; above right), which we were surprised to find still in season. I never really paid much attention to squash blossoms until this year, when they seem to appear everywhere—and Prune’s preparation was as compelling as any.

Suckling pig ($24) was another off-menu special. There was apparently a spice rub, giving the braised pig a fiery kick. There’s not a lot of complexity here, but the dish delivered as comfort food usually does.

Prune is fun. You’ll eat well here without breaking the bank, but I didn’t find the kind of innovative cuisine that Gabrielle Hamilton used to defeat Bobby Flay on Iron Chef America. If I lived or worked nearby, I’d be an enthusiastic regular—if I could get in.

Prune (54 E. 1st Street between First & Second Avenues, East Village)

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

Resto

Note: Bobby Hellen was the acting executive chef at Resto at the time of this visit. The “acting” part of his title was later removed. Since then, he has left the restaurant. The current chef is Preston Clark. Click here for a more recent review.

*

Resto has been on my to-do list for over a year, since Frank Bruni awarded an unlikely two stars in May 2007. Back then, the restaurant didn’t take reservations, and there were reports of waits up to an hour at prime times. Sorry Charlie, but I don’t like to eat that way. Time is too precious to squander an hour of it just waiting to eat. So Resto went on the back burner.

After the hubbub died down, Resto got wise, and put itself on OpenTable, so people can actually plan to eat at a particular time, rather than just hoping. Perhaps the bloom has withered a bit. We found it nearly empty at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday evening, albeit in August. It got busier as the evening went on, but at no point did it appear to be full.

Resto today doesn’t quite seem to merit the laurels Frank Bruni bestowed on it. However, that was when Ryan Skeen was chef; he has since moved onto Irving Mill. Perhaps I visited Resto too late.

The cuisine here is Belgian, a genre not well represented in Manhattan (Markt comes to mind), though it shares much in common with rustic French. The selection of 70 beers is admirable, if not overwhelming. The wine list isn’t long, and neither is the seasonal menu. There are five appetizers ($9–13), five kinds of house-made charcuterie ($9), four seasonal entrées ($16–28), four classic entrées ($15–24), and four side dishes ($6–8).

In the context of these modest prices, a six-week-aged prime ribeye for two at $140 seems incongruous. So does an $85 tasting menu. We were curious, but gave both a pass.

 

Lamb Niçoise ($9), a home-made lamb sausage, had a nice spicy kick. My girlfriend loved the Crispy Pig’s Ear Salad ($12). Loaded with greens, beans, chicory and a soft egg on top, it could easily serve as an entrée. And yes, those really are pigs’ ears, fried crisp and scattered about the bowl like croutons.

 

I couldn’t exactly say the entrées misfired, but they were pedestrian. Wild Striped Bass ($28) was chewy and overwhelmed with red peppers. Steak Frites ($24) featured hanger steak, nicely done, but the fries were mushy.

The décor is plain and bare-bones, but service was prompt and friendly. We had many questions about the menu, and the server provided helpful advice with much enthusiasm.

Resto (111 E. 29th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, Gramercy)

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

Le Gavroche

For the second major meal of our London trip, we chose the two-star Le Gavroche. This restaurant opened in 1967 in Sloane Street, moving in 1981 to its current quarters in Upper Brook Street, just steps away from Hyde Park, where it earned its third Michelin star, the first U.K. restaurant to be so honored.

The founding chef, Michel Roux, left to take over The Waterside Inn in Bray, which I reviewed two years ago. His son, Michel Roux Jr., took over as chef de cuisine. Michelin docked a star, leaving Le Gavroche with two. The Waterside Inn is the prettier location, but we found the cuisine here more impressive. This was probably our best meal since the late lamented Alain Ducasse at the Essex House.

The restaurant is on the lower level of an elegant Georgian townhouse, with a hotel occupying the upper levels. The Roux family once owned the hotel too, but it is now independent. The dining room walls are deep green, the banquettes plush. Ducks and roosters dominate the décor, along with orchids.

The restaurant is named for the little urchin in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. That little figure appears everywhere at Le Gavroche, including the handles of all the flatware, many of the serving pieces, the door to the kitchen, and probably other places I failed to notice.

Prices can only be described as staggering. The Menu Exceptionnel (a long tasting menu) was £95 (around $190) per person. I didn’t take note of individual prices, except to note that many entrées were upwards of $70 or $80 apiece (and some more than that), with many appetizers in the $40 to $60 range. As we noted the night before, in relation to what we were already bound to spend anyway, the tasting menu seemed to be a bargain. so we chose that once again.

Once again, we avoided ordering until we had settled on a wine. And once again, the staff acted as if this was an unusual procedure, though we didn’t get the snooty reaction we had at Hibiscus. Here the choice was more difficult, as the wine list is a large volume. I noted that the largest section was the French Bordeaux, so I asked the sommelier for a Bordeaux under £60. You can imagine my surprise when he recommended a 1997 St. Julien at just £48. He decanted it with much ceremony, holding a candle up to the bottle to check for sediment. (In the U.S., Bern’s Steakhouse is the only restaurant where I have observed that procedure.)

I apologize in advance for the poor quality of the photos. The ambient lighting here was low, and we didn’t feel it was appropriate to use the flash. It went off once by accident; it will probably be pretty obvious which photo that was.

 

The canapés (above left) were smoked duck and foie gras. I liked the duck a bit better, but they were both excellent. The bread service offered two contrasting butters (salted, not) and multiple breads, but none of them were memorable. We then moved on to our eight-course menu, a copy of which was on the table, a method I like much better than long explanations delivered at the table.

1) Lobster Salad with Mango, Avocado, Basil and Lime (above right), stuffed in an endive leaf.

 

2) Langoustine and Snails (above left) in a light Hollandaise sauce, flavored with Basque pepper and parsley. As Michelle noted, though the menu did not, there was about half a pound of butter in this dish. It was intensely creamy, but the combination worked beautifully.

3) Seared Sea Bass (above right) on a soft polenta, roast pepper coulis, olive and garlic croutons. Michelle called it “one of the prettiest fish presentations I’ve seen,” and “just amazing.” The intense olive and pepper taste worked well with the perfectly prepared fish.

 

4) Hot Foie Gras and Crispy Pancake of Duck (above left) flavored with cinnamon. This was perhaps the best foie gras dish ever: amazing. The seared foie reduced to liquid almost instantly, but it seemed neither fatty nor heavy. It was a fairly large serving, too. The duck pancake was the pancake I want for breakfast every day.

5) Roasted Rack of Welsh Lamb (above right), courgette flower fritter and tarragon jus. The rack of lamb was carved and plated tableside. It was soft as butter, and the deep-fried squash blossom also perfect.

  

6) Next came the cheese course. There was a large selection, from which we each chose five, and portions were generous. I didn’t note the individual cheeses, but we wanted sharp, intense-tasting ones, and we got them.

 

7) Ouefs à la Neige, or Soft Caramel-covered Meringue, Vanilla Cream and Poached Strawberries (above left). The flavors were intense and clear.

8) Bitter Chocolate and Coffee-Layered Sponge Cake and Chocolate Sorbet (above right). I’m not a chocolate guy, but Michelle pronounced it a success. I liked the coffee flavor. (Sorry for the awful photo.)

 

One of the petits-fours plates is shown above; there were others, but the photo isn’t presentable.

The restaurant was about 85% full on a Saturday in mid-August, and we were gratified to find that the average age of the clientele seemed to be under 45. The New York media repeatedly inform us that “young people” aren’t interested in composed formal meals of the kind Le Gavroche offers. Whether it’s even true in New York is debatable, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be true in London.

Service was superb; I can’t really find any fault with it. Nor with the food, which was at the highest level we’ve experienced.

Le Gavroche (43 Upper Brook Street, London)

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

Hibiscus

 

On a recent trip to London, my girlfriend and I wanted to try a couple of Michelin-starred restaurants. Full disclosure is due: both of our first choices were fully booked, but we landed on two very good alternatives, starting with Hibiscus. The chef, Claude Bosi, was born in Lyon and trained in France, but his cuisine relies heavily on locally-sourced ingredients. If you’d told me he was English, I would have believed it.

The restaurant opened in Shropshire in 2000, winning a Michelin star in 2001 and a second star in 2004. Eager to play on the big stage, he moved the restaurant to London in 2007, and the Michelin folks knocked him back down to one star. The menu is £60 for a three-course prix-fixe or £75 for the nine-course tasting menu. We thought that £15 was a modest premium to pay for a much broader sample of Chef Bosi’s cuisine, so we went with that.

  

We began with a bowl of warm, slightly salty gougères. The bread didn’t especially impress me, but we loved the soft Welsh cow’s-milk butter. It had an unusually high fat content, which imparted a yellow color, and was also a bit more salty than most butters.

 

1) The amuse-bouche was a Chilled Cucumber & Pineapple Soda (above left) with smoked olive oil and black pepper. This was very clever dish, slightly chunky, but with the consistency of soda.

2) Ravioli of Spring Onion & Cinnamon (above right) with meadowsweet flower, roast onion, and Granny Smith apple. This was a delicate dish, in which the ingredients worked perfectly together. The roasted onions were formed into little pellets that seemed solid, but melted instantly at the touch.

 

3) Tartare of Line-caught Cornish Mackerel (above left) with English strawberries & celery, wasabi & honey dressing. There was a lot on the plate, but this dish was extremely mild, and could almost have used a bit more punch. I couldn’t really detect much of the wasabi.

4) Roast Cornish Lobster cooked in Brown Butter (above right) with green bean and lemongrass purée, Cavaillon melon. This had the “oomph” that the previous dish lacked. Michelle’s comment was, “This was really very nice.”

 

5) Roast Monkfish (above left), Mona Lisa gnocchi, summer truffle, sage & onion purée, mead sauce. This had a nice savory, healthy flavor.

6) Lightly Oak-smoked Lamb Sweetbreads (above right) with fresh goat cheese, tamarillow powder, and lettuce veloute. The sweetbreads had a terrific smokey flavor, and everything on the plate worked well together. To me, this was the most remarkable dish of the evening.

 

7) Roast Goosnargh Duck (above left), cherries scented with lapsang Souchong, barbecued almond butter, and cauliflower four ways (purple cauliflower couscous, white cauliflower purée, and roasted cauliflower × 2). The duck was flavorful but a little too tough.

8) SweetTomato Skin (above right) with vanilla & frozen raspberries, held together with gelatin. Michelle said, “It’s so light, it’s like eating a cloud.” The tomato taste was in the background, while the raspberries were wonderful. 

 

9 ) English Pea & American Mint Tart (above left), sheep’s milk whey & coconut sorbet. Michelle called this “the oddest thing I’ve ever tasted,” and “very strange.” I found it bizarre. That didn’t stop us from finishing the whole thing, but we felt that a tart made of peas misfired. At the end of a long meal, one wants a real dessert, not an appetizer masquerading as dessert.

The petits-fours (above right) were just fine.

Service was generally good, with many sauces applied at table-side, but some dishes weren’t cleared quite as promptly as they should be, and the staff were occasionally frazzled. We had trouble understanding the explanations of quite a few of the dishes. We got a printed menu at the end, but it would have been a lot easier had this been left on the table.

The server seemed offended when I said I wanted to make a wine selection before we ordered. I don’t know if our habits are unusual, but I’ve found that if you don’t choose the wine before placing the food order, you’re liable to be eating the first couple of courses with only water to drink. I haven’t noted the bottle we chose, except that we paid £43 for it (a reasonable price by London standards). The list was not an especially long one. After I narrowed down the choice to two bottles, the sommelier made a very good recommendation and decanted the wine without being asked to do so.

We were gratified to note that the restaurant was full in mid-August, with a mixed demographic of young people and jeans, old folks in suits, and everything in between. The clientele did not seem to be tourists. The tables are not overly cramped, but the noise level was on the loud side after the space filled up. The décor is a mediation on taupe and pine, but bright orange charger plates (pictured at the top of this post) give the room a dash of color.

Chef Bosi dares to challenge his audience on occasion. There were a couple of misfires, but on the whole this was a happy experience.

Hibiscus (29 Maddox Street, London)

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

The Payoff: Scarpetta

This week, Frank Bruni reviews Scott Conant’s greatest hits, finding their current home at Scarpetta worth a three very generous stars:

“Spaghetti, tomato and basil.” That’s all it says. That’s pretty much what it is. But however Mr. Conant is choosing and cooking the Roma tomatoes with which he sauces his house-made spaghetti, he’s getting a roundness of flavor and nuance of sweetness that amount to pure Mediterranean bliss…

More than that, it underscored the wisdom of his work at Scarpetta: he’s getting back to the tomato. I mean that not literally but figuratively, in the sense that Mr. Conant, whose cooking took a precious turn when he opened the restaurant Alto in 2005, is mining a more straightforward, soulful vein.

Here’s a reminder: The Bruni didn’t like Alto, finding it “haute and cold.” He awarded just two stars, which was an insult to a restaurant clearly designed for three. After Conant left, Bruni re-reviewed Alto and gave it the three stars it had deserved in the first place. Critics love to be vindicated. At Scarpetta, Conant has abandoned his excellent work at Alto, so Bruni says, “I told you so.”

Ironically, I am fairly certain that the owners of Scarpetta weren’t gunning for three stars. They’ll happily take them, but I’m sure a two-star verdict wouldn’t have carried anything like the disappointment it did at Alto. Scarpetta is a decent enough place, but it is well below any of the other Italian places that have won three stars from Bruni.

Give full credit to Eater, who correctly forecasted that Bruni’s Italian grading curve would be on full display this week. Eater wins $4 on a hypothetical one-dollar bet, while we lose $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$97.50		$121.67
Gain/Loss	+4.00		–1.00
Total	$101.50		$120.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	46–21		48–19