Trattoria Cinque

Note: Trattoria Cinque closed in March 2013. A Marc Forgione steakhouse is expected to replace it.

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Trattoria Cinque has arrived on Greenwich Street’s restaurant row, taking over the former Devin Tavern space.

The cinque in the name, meaning “five,” is the central conceit. On the menu, you’ll find five appetizers, five pastas, five entrées, five red wines, five whites, five cocktails, five desserts, and so forth. They’ll change it five times a year.

The 250-seat space could easily house two restaurants with room to spare. That was Devin Tavern’s downfall. Cinque could have the same problem, especially with Andrew Carmellini serving two-star food at Locanda Verde down the street.

The owners of the Alfredo of Rome chain have done a nice job with the rehab, installing a handsome, long marble bar and comfortable faux-rustic seating (photos here). The restaurant was about 80% full by 8:00 p.m. on a Friday. Keeping it that way may be a challenge.

At least the menu is priced to encourage repeat visits. There are just two dishes over $20, and just two wines over $40. I sampled two of those wines at the bar, where quartinos (equivalent to two glasses) range from $9–16. A bowl of olives with parmesan on the side was free. A respectable serving of Italian cheeses, grapes, and figs with raisin bread was just $10.

At the table, rustic bread was nothing to write home about, but I loved the ricotta spread flecked with olive oil. In lieu of bottled water, there is house-filtered water, still or sparkling, offered at no charge. We couldn’t decide, so they served both.

We ordered far too much food, receiving no guidance from our young waiter. He then compounded the mistake by telling the kitchen to send out the pasta and both entrées simultaneously. A manager came over to apologize and then comped the entire meal. We aren’t sure if it was due to these mistakes alone, or because he was aware of our camera.

We loved the Pizza with Gorgonzola and Pears ($12), with a crisp crust no thicker than matzo. But at eighteen inches across, this was no appetizer. Even if it had been our only item, we might have struggled to finish. It’s arguably too rich for two people; we took more than half of it home in a doggie bag.

There were two recited specials, but though they sounded intriguing, they were the weakest things we tried. Penne with Italian Sausage (above right) was of the “I-could-make-this-at-home” variety, except that most home cooks would probably do it better. Veal (below left) had been pounded so thin that there was barely any flavor, and it was cold by the time we tasted it.

An aged ribeye steak was wonderful, especially as it was just $25. It isn’t the best ribeye in the city, but it was one of the better ones outside of a steakhouse. I doubt you’ll find many this good within ten dollars of the price.

Trattoria Cinque is certainly generous with portion sizes, and all of the items we had off of the printed menu were good. If the restaurant can stick to what it does well, perhaps it will be able to fill those 250 seats.

Trattoria Cinque (363 Greenwich Street near Franklin Street, TriBeCa)

How Dumb Can Ozersky Get?

Josh Ozersky, editor of The Feedbag, is often called on as expert du jour when the press need a quote and don’t know whom else to ask. But unless the topic is burgers, barbecue or steaks, he doesn’t really speak expertly.

The latest example comes in today’s New York Daily News article, “Recession forces ritzy restaurants such as Café des Artistes to close doors.” The reporters, Leah Chernikoff and Edgar Sandoval, don’t exactly cover themselves in glory. The story purports to be about “ritzy” restaurants killed by the recession, but several of those listed don’t fit that description. Elettaria wasn’t ritzy at all. LCB Brasserie closed before the economic downturn, and the restaurant that replaced it (Benoit) was practically the same genre. La Goulue closed due to a lease issue; its owner insists it will re-open nearby.

The reporters say that “512 [NYC] resetaurants have closed this past year.” But the vast majority, as in about 95%, aren’t “ritzy.” As far as I can tell, “ritzy” restaurants (however one defines that term) are closing in roughly the same percentage as the fraction of the market they occupy. No more, no less. Take a tour through Eater.com’s posts tagged “The Shutter,” and tell me how many of them are “ritzy” in the same sense as Café des Artistes. It’s a tiny number.

Café des Artistes closed, as far as I could tell, because the owner was 85, and as he was going to have to retire eventually, now was as good a time as any. [ETA: Oh, that and a greedy union.]

One doesn’t expect much nuance from Daily News staff writers, but from Ozersky one expects better:

The great fine-dining fuddy-duddy restaurants were already on the wane before the recession hit… Overwrought and overstaffed, they were lingering in their own twilight. Now the meteor has hit, and these places have all gone under… The old white tablecloth dinosaurs have been supplanted by friskier mammals.”

It’s usually a safe bet that when people use words like “fuddy-duddy” and “dinosaur,” it’s shorthand for “restaurants I don’t understand.” Now, I am not suggesting that the loss of Café des Artistes is any great culinary loss: my last meal there was a disaster. But it filled a legitimate niche, and some of the remaining examples of the genre are still very good, for what they are (Le Périgord, for instance).

If Ozersky’s point is that the narrow genre that Café des Artiste occupied (Classic Old French) is shrinking, that has been true for decades—not so much due to the recession, but because their clientele is aging and is not being replaced. But to Daily News readers, when “white tablecloth” and “dinosaur” are put in the same sentence, there is no distinction between Café des Artistes (which Ozersky hated) and Marea (which he loves). Both have white tablecloths and elegant service. And I’ll betcha Marea has far more staff than CdA did.

What, exactly, makes Café des Artistes “overwrought,” and not Le Bernardin? Obviously the latter restaurant is far better (and still thriving), but its style of service is much farther over the top than CdA ever was. If the word “overwrought” applies to the service at any restaurant, on what principled distinction could Ozersky apply it to CdA and not Le Bernardin? Or is it really just a lazy term used to disparage a genre he never appreciated?

Veritas

Note: This is a review under chef Gregory Pugin, who was fired in August 2010. After remodeling, the former Tao chef Sam Hazen replaced him.

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We’ve been eager to return to Veritas ever since Gregory Pugin took over as executive chef in the middle of last year. Pugin had been executive sous-chef at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, and given our high opinion of that restaurant we figured that Veritas could only get better.

Mind you, we thought that Veritas was already a very good restaurant under the previous chef, Ed Cotton. Perhaps the food alone wasn’t quite worth three stars, but it was certainly good enough when the incomparable wine list was taken into account.

We heard even better reports of Chef Pugin’s cuisine, which unlike that of his predecessors just might be worthy of a visit on its own account. The Times completely ignored the transition. We do not recall a single mention of it, even in passing, by Frank Bruni—a sad but not altogether surprising omission, given his lack of enthusiasm for this style of dining.

For a couple of weeks in August 2009—traditionally a slow month for this kind of restaurant—Veritas was offering 25% off all wines, and this was the excuse for six members of the Mouthfuls food board to pay a visit.

Pugin, unlike his predecessors (Scott Bryan and Ed Cotton), brings a classic French sensibility to the menu. It’s still prix fixe ($85, as opposed to $82 when I last visited), but the dishes seem more formal and elegant than before.

I didn’t make a mental note of the amuse-bouche, but I’ve included a photo (above left). There were something like five or six choices of house-made breads, and I enjoyed both of those that I sampled.

I loved the rich flavor of the Lobster Nage (above left). Two of my companions had the Peekytoe Crab Mille-Feuille (above right), which one of them described as “a very nice presentation of two ‘slices’ with jicama forming the bottom layer and avocado the top.”

A Degustation of Lamb (above left) might well be called a Symphony of lamb, including the loin, the chop, and sweetbread, all perfectly prepared. Another of our party had the Skate Wing (above right), which he described as “superb.”

I was mightily pleased with the Grand Marnier Soufflé with crème anglaise (above left). Two others at the table had the Sparkling Grape Consommé (above right), of which one said, “I didn’t detect much sparkle, but it was as grapy as all getout.”

The petits-fours (right) weren’t as impressive as in some three-star restaurants, but they got the job done.

Obviously wines were to be a focal point of our evening, and with six in our party it was possible to try five of them. I won’t even attempt to describe them all, but fortunately another of our party has done so.

Service was mostly attentive, but the staff seemed slow to take our initial wine order, a curious omission at a restaurant focused on wine. The dining room was no more than half full, and our six-top was the largest party.

Veritas already had one of the city’s best wine lists. With the arrival of Gregory Pugin, it now serves the kind of food that such great wines deserve.

Veritas (43 E. 20th St. between Broadway & Park Avenue South, Flatiron District)

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

The Worst of Bruni

Frank Bruni’s tenure as a restaurant critic has come to an end. On Monday, we posted the Best of Bruni. Now, we turn to his failures.

My opinion of Bruni isn’t any great secret. He’s an entertaining writer and a top-notch journalist, but he had no background in food, and it showed. The Times would never put a novice in its music department or its science department. Why, then, did they put a novice in the restaurant department?

Despite his inexperience, Bruni eventually got the hang of it. Any intelligent person with a six-figure dining budget would make at least some of the right calls, and would improve with time. But his aversion to fine dining and his narrow preference for a few limited cuisines severely hampered his effectiveness.

As I did with the Best of Bruni, I’ve made a list of 10 items, but with so much to choose from, a few of the items are thematic rather than individual reviews. Here, then, is the worst of Bruni:

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Review Recap: The Redhead

With today’s one-star review of The Redhead, Frank Bruni’s tenure as restaurant critic is finally over. Why did he end with a one-star place, when he could have reviewed anything? I can only guess that this is the kind of restaurant where Bruni will be eating for fun, once he’s no longer paid to do it. Reviewing the three- and four-star places always seemed like a duty to him, not a joy.

Now more than ever, diners find principled, distinctive cooking in places where they wouldn’t have expected it before: dessert trucks, baseball stadiums, postage-stamp storefronts, wine bars, taverns and cocktail lounges. In fact the Redhead was mostly a tavern and cocktail lounge during that span of Thursday-only dinners, which exemplified the possibility of terrific eating with untraditional trappings and captured the sense of gastronomic serendipity that defines this culinary moment.

With its first-come-first-served seating policy and its televisions showing sporting events behind the bar, the Redhead speaks to the moment’s casual ethos. And it underscores the extent to which the East Village has become a center of gravity for young chefs intent on bold flavors. They clearly feed off of one another, a loose network of validation and motivation.

This was one of the most positive one-star reviews that Bruni has ever filed, but it does underscore one of the worst failures of his tenure. Most of his one-star reviews were insults. His last three one-star reviews — Spice Market, Bar Artisanal, and Monkey Bar — were negative. Those reviews create the perception that one-star restaurants are bad. I’ll bet the owners of The Redhead are getting condolence calls today, which is clearly not what Bruni intended.

Review Preview: The Redhead

Record to date: 9–3.

Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews The Redhead in the East Village, bringing his five-year tenure to a close.

The Skinny: First, we have a little catching up to do. Before we went on vacation, we took a guess at Bruni’s last three reviews. We were right about just one of them: four stars for Eleven Madison Park. We missed the chance to issue our prediction on Union Square Cafe—a pity, as we knew it had to be two stars the instant we heard about it.

He didn’t review DBGB, and it turns out he’s skipping Marea, as well. That last one’s strange: Bruni taking a pass on an upscale Italian place? Is there a story waiting to be told?

So we come to The Redhead, a fine neighborhood place, but hardly an impressive choice for the final review. The one time we visited, it struck us as the quinessential one-star place—in a good way. When Frank Bruni takes pen in hand, two stars can never be ruled out, but we have trouble imagining how he would make the case for it.

The Prediction: We predict that lame-duck Frank will award one star to The Redhead.

The Best of Bruni

As we count down the days to Frank Bruni’s exit, it’s time to look back on the best and worst of his tenure. This post will focus on his greatest hits. Another, dedicated to his failures, is available here.

Bruni’s best reviews were his smackdowns. It’s easy to write an entertaining bad review, but describing excellence requires a depth of knowledge that Bruni didn’t have. He couldn’t really explain persuasively why things were great; he came alive when they were awful. His other successes came when he broke the mold of the conventional review format, and I’ve selected a few of those examples, too.

Here, then, are Bruni’s 10 greatest hits:

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Review Previews: DBGB, Marea, Eleven Madison Park

Record to date: 8–3

We’ll be away for the next two weeks, and most likely will not be able to post our Review Previews in real time, so we’re posting them now.

Bruni has three reviews remaining. What will they be?

1. Marea is a definite: there’s no way Bruni would pass up an upscale Italian place that opened on his watch.
2. Eater.com reported that Bruni has been spoted three times recently at Eleven Madison Park. He wouldn’t be there so often in the twilight of his tenure unless he’s working up a re-review.
3. The last one’s something of a wild card, but among places that must be reviewed (and a Boulud restaurant clearly fits this description), we are fairly certain that DBGB is the oldest outstanding.

Bruni has already reviewed Eleven Madison Park twice (two stars; 2/23/2005 and three stars; 1/10/2007). A promotion to four is the only conceivable reason to review it again. He has not named a new four-star restaurant since Masa in December 2004. The 4½-year gap is the longest in Times history, a record he set in the middle of last year. We and others believe that he’s itching to crown one more.

Unfortunately, that will leave poor Marea with three stars, as Bruni isn’t going to canonize two restaurants in under a month, when in almost five years he found none at all. We don’t think Marea is a four-star restaurant in any event, but given Bruni’s love-affair with Italian cuisine we thought he just might pull the trigger until we heard he was taking another hard look at Eleven Madison. (If the 11MP review doesn’t come through, then Mike White and Chris Cannon could still have a chance.)

Finally, DBGB: Most reviews we’ve seen (including our own) have been slightly less enthusiastic about this place than Bar Boulud at Lincoln Center, where Bruni awarded two stars. We therefore believe that DBGB will be rated a notch lower, at one star.

In summary, our predictions are: one star for DBGB, three stars for Marea, and four stars for Eleven Madison Park. Obviously, it’s possible that Bruni’s final reviews will include one or two other places, but we’re positive that Marea will be among the three.

Corton

Note: Corton closed in July 2013, after the chef, Paul Liebrandt, opened a competing (and less expensive) restaurant, The Elm, in Williamsburg. Liebrandt’s partner, Drew Nieportent, said that Corton could not survive while the chef was selling the same food at half the price across the river.

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We’ve been big fans of Corton since the day it opened, but our enthusiasm was tinged with regret that Chef Paul Liebrandt wasn’t turning out the same eye-popping cuisine that wowed us at Gilt. But given the reviews at Gilt (not favorable), Liebrandt and owner Drew Nieporent clearly had to do something different here.

Now that Frank Bruni is out of the way, and three stars secured, the real Paul Liebrandt is coming into full bloom. Corton was a great restaurant when we visited last November, an even better one in February, and it is better still today. On Saturday night, we saw dishes that started to remind us of the best at Gilt, though the cooking here is more disciplined, the judgments more refined than they were at the earlier restaurant.

On a Saturday evening in mid-summer, Nieporent wasn’t in the house (not that he should be), and our favorite sommelier seemed to have departed, but we recognized most of the service staff, and Liebrandt was of course in the kitchen. We ordered the three-course prix fixe, which has edged up to $85 from $77 last year, but with amuse courses included it felt like a tasting menu.

Time is short today (I am getting ready to go away for two weeks), so I’ll present the photos with minimal descriptions.

Canapés included quail eggs with caviar (above left) and variations on the usual duo that we’ve seen in the past (above right). The technical precision of the quail eggs especially impressed us.

We had a quartet of amuse-bouches, all astonishing, with the highlight a foie gras mousse (bottom right in the above photos).

“From the Garden” (above left) has been a menu fixture from the beginning, a salad that could double as a still life. The foie gras with beets (above right) has become a sphere, rather than the sliced terrine it was before.

Cod was a beautifully-conceived dish, with three separate sides, but it had rested in the kitchen too long and had cooled by the time it reached us. We sent back a risotto (ice cold) for reheating, but accepted the fish as-is (it would have had to be re-made).

I also felt that Madai (below), a Japanese Sea Bream, was not quite warm enough, though it certainly wasn’t cold, as the cod had been. The plating was a work of art, and I almost wonder if the fish was left sitting while the artists in Liebrandt’s kitchen painted this masterpiece.

The Madai came with two sides, a preparation of the tail (above left) that I cannot begin to surprise, and gnocchi (above right), both excellent.

After a pre-dessert (above left), we shared the cheese course (above right), a terrific brioche (below left), and the usual blizzard of petits-fours (below right).

The wine list remains recession-priced, with plenty of good options in the 40s and 50s, though you can spend a lot more, if you choose. Service was wonderful, and meal was served at a steady pace from beginning to end—an improvement over our past visits.

It’s a pity the main course wasn’t served warm enough, but as Corton continues to improve we have no doubt that this, too, will be solved. We went home deeply satisfied.

Corton (239 West Broadway between Walker & White Streets, TriBeCa)

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

Gordon Ramsay's Maze at the London

Soothsayers have been predicting the demise of Gordon Ramsay at the London, but for now it is alive and well. We visited Maze, the casual front room, on Friday night, and it was reasonably close to full. The main dining room appeared to be better than half full—not bad for a summer weekend.

None of this changes the fact that Gordon Ramsay is completely off the radar in New York. The restaurant took a critical drubbing when it opened 2½ years ago, and I suspect it is surviving on visitor traffic alone. I cannot remember the last local review, blog entry or message board post. It probably wasn’t within the last year.

We’ve visited the main dining room twice (here, here), finding it on both occasions better than the critics did. The Michelin inspectors agreed too, awarding two stars. Like many upscale restaurants, Gordon Ramsay has an informal front room, here dubbed “Maze,” which is meant to offer slightly less formal cuisine a more accessible à la carte price point.

Maze is a somewhat ill-defined concept. There are about a dozen small plates priced from $13–20, plus four “market specials” (essentially entrées) $20–38. The server advised that three of the small plates would make a suitable meal, but they come in widely varying sizes, and it’s tough to tell what you’re getting. We decided to share two of those and two entrées.

The atmosphere is tough to decipher. There are no tablecloths, tables are close together, and the restaurant shares space with the bar, where cocktails are $17. Yet, service is rather formal, with a flotilla of sauces and broths applied tableside, and a wine list where you’ll struggle to find much below $60. At least the wine comes properly chilled.

If dinner had ended with the appetizers, I might have been tempted to award three stars. A terrine of tête de veau (above left) with caramelized sweetbreads and green bean salad was superb. So was a silken filet of fluke (above right), in a portion that could very well have been an entrée.

But duck breast (above left) was rubbery and a pork chop (above right) was over-cooked. Both dishes were fine in their conception, but the same heavy hand at the meat station had ruined them.

We got plenty of attention when we sat down, and the food came out reasonably promptly, but after the restaurant filled up we felt a bit neglected. The space is pleasant, and if the rest of the food were as good as our appetizers we would feel more confident about returning.

Maze at the London Hotel (151 W. 54th St. between Sixth & Seventh Avenues)

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