Sofia Wine Bar

Nearly six years ago, I had dinner at DeGrezia, which just might be the city’s best Italian restaurant that no one writes about. This week, I had dinner at Sofia, which just might be the city’s best Italian wine bar that no one writes about.

The two spots share the same block and the same founder, Tommaso DeGrezia. Tommaso sold his share in the restaurant in 2001. With his wife, Toni, he opened Sofia in 2009.

If you were led into Sofia blindfolded, and asked to guess the location, you’d probably think downtown—perhaps the East Village. It has that familiar, rustic Italian bric-à-brac look without being derivative. And with just 38 seats in two rooms, it feels like it belongs in a residential neighborhood, not a townhouse a block away from midtown.

Toni DeGrezia designed the space herself (it was formerly an art gallery, which she owned). The larger front room (above) sports an L-shaped bar, a few tables, and broad French windows facing the street. The windowless back room, where we were, seats just 12. It gets loud when full, as the sound bounces off the exposed brick walls and has nowhere to go.

Espcially striking is a hand-sculpted limestone replica of the Bocca della Verità (“mouth of truth”), a Roman relic from the 1st century AD. Legend has it that if you put your hand in its mouth and told a lie, it would be bitten off. Do that here, and you might get burned by the votive candles inside.

These days, there’s no rhyme or reason to the amount of food a wine bar may offer: it can range from a handful of snacks to practically a full menu of appetizers and entrées. Sofia is smack in the middle, with pizza as the only real main course, aside from a lasagne that’s served on Sundays.

A daily housemade pasta will be offered starting in the fall. In the meantime, you can certainly put together a meal several times over from the raw bar, and various meat and cheese platters, hot and cold starters, and panini.

Wine’s the point, and it’s a strength here, with an international list of 200 bottles, many of them from boutique producers. The printed list shows about 70 wines by the glass (most $12–15), though with daily specials that number can rise to 100, and I am told the list changes monthly. There are also around 25 exotic beers, none of which we sampled.

I visited at the publicist’s invitation and didn’t pay for my meal. We asked the server to pair wines with the food, which he did extremely well. I won’t try to describe the wines or to reproduce his explanations of them, but the labels are shown below.

Most items on the menu are in the $12–20 range (some a bit more), desserts $6–12. The cuisine is home-style Neapolitan and Sicilian classics, nothing revelatory but most of them well made, and all from organic ingredients. Shared appetizers and a pizza would run about $60 for two people, which is a fair price for the neighborhood. Food is served on charming distressed pottery china with a fleur-de-lis pattern on the edge.

 

We started with the vegetarian lasagne (above left), in what was described as a Neapolitan style, not as thick or as heavy as that dish typically is. Tomatoes and house-made mozzarella ($12; above right) were excellent.

 

Stuffed mushrooms ($14; above left) with prosciutto, Pecorino Romano, and sour cream, were the best dish of the evening. But meatballs in tomato sauce ($12; above right) seemed too routine.

 

I skipped the Eggplant Crostini ($12; above left), as I don’t like eggplant, but two of my tablemates found it under-seasoned and over-cooked. The Pizza Margherita (above right) was wonderful. It sported a thin crust, just slightly floppy at the center, with a rich, smoky flavor. It’s offered plain, as here, for $14, or with a variety of toppings, most of them either $3 or $5 each.

 

Spinach and artichoke dip ($14; above left) was terrific; Cannoli ($5 for two; above right) were just fine.

If Sofia Wine Bar wants to raise its profile, it ought to begin with the antiquated website, which has a food menu without prices and no wine list. For an establishment where wine is the point, this is a sad state of affairs. In the meantime, you’ll just have to take my word for it that a visit here will amply reward the investment of your time.

Sofia Wine Bar (242 E. 50th Street, slightly west of Second Avenue, Turtle Bay)

Prandial

 

Note: Prandial closed in August 2013, after a year in business. My doubts about its viability, expressed in the review below, turned out to be well-founded.

*

Prandial, which opened about a month ago in the Flatiron District, is my kind of restaurant. It has a serious chef in the kitchen, a legit. wine list, tables a generous distance apart, white tablecloths, and solicitous service.

So it’s a pity to report that the food was not very good on a recent Saturday evening. Here’s hoping the kitchen’s performance was atypical, perhaps a late-summer swoon, with the chef out of town and farmhands in the kitchen.

The chef, Pierre Rougey, was an instructor at the French Culinary Institute and earned a Michelin star in France, so presumably he knows what he is doing. I don’t know to what extent he is present here, or merely writing a menu for others to execute.

The owner, Mark Stern (formerly of the now-defunct “Village”) is presumably motivated to get it right, because he actually owns the space (previously the soul-food restaurant Justin’s, which closed in 2007). He spent a pretty penny on the renovation, a striking post-industrial dining room with an antique bar and back-lit subway tile.

So far, diners aren’t flocking here. On a Saturday evening, albeit in late August, it was at best one-third full.

“Prandial” may not have been the best name, as the word is unfamiliar to many. (“What’s ‘pran-dye-uhl’?” was overheard at the bar.) And the restaurant’s slogan, printed beneath the logo — “relate to your meal” — is rather silly.

The proffer is American cuisine, purportedly with French technique. It’s inexpensive for the neighborhood, with a focused menu of ten appetizers ($9–15) and the same number of entrées (most in the $20s).

The wine list, dominated by the U.S., France, and Italy, runs to about half-a-dozen pages, with plenty of options below $50 and even a list of half-bottles. It’s a remarkable selection for a casual restaurant, especially a brand new one.

 

I might have liked the Pan Crisped Smoked Skate ($12; above left) with arugula and a fried quail egg. But the egg was slightly overdone, and not runny enough; and the whole contraption sat on a bizarre, chalky-green pancake.

An Artichoke Salad ($12; above right) was too cold, giving the impression of having been prepared earlier and allowed to sit in the fridge.

 

A hunky double-cut Pork Chop ($24; above left) was tough and dry. I ate less than half of it. If they’d only not overcook it, the pairing with spaetzle and Brussels sprouts would be promising. This left the Duck 2 Ways ($24; above right), with confit leg and pan-seared breast, as the evening’s only successful dish.

If the kitchen could catch up to the wine list, Prandial could be a worthwhile spot. But in the life of a new restaurant, there isn’t much time to fix such things before the crowd moves on. They’d better hurry.

Prandial (31 W. 21st Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: American cuisine with (supposedly) French technique and uneven execution
Wine: An impressive list for such a new, inexpensive spot
Service: Friendly, solicitous, and efficient
Ambiance: A smartly-renovated, spacious, post-industrial dining room

Rating: ★
Why? For the wine list; benefit of the doubt to the food, which needs to improve

Mint

 

I was invited recently to a press dinner at Mint, an under-the-radar Indian restaurant in East Midtown. I dined there once, years ago, but have very little recollection of the meal, except that I liked the space and didn’t mind the food.

Whether you’d like the space now is a matter of taste. It’s far more comfortable and pleasant than the average neighborhood Indian spot, but the backlit minty-green interior is very much a product of its age. It may also reflect the sensibilities of its chef and owner, Gary Sikka: a new branch in Garden City is quite similar, except that the dominant color is lavender.

As a civilized place to enjoy classic Indian cuisine, free of the usual decorative clichés, I still like it here.

The menu offers most of the usual Indian specialties: your kebabs, paneers, naans, samosas, tikka masalas, and vindaloos. It also veers off the beaten path occasionally, and is more worthwhile for doing so.

Prices are modest by midtown standards, with soups and salads $6–10, appetizers $7–14, breads and rice $4–8. Entrées are in a wide range, with most in the low $20s, but vegetarian dishes are as low as $12, fish and tandoori dishes mostly in the high $20s, and one lobster dish is $36.

Everything we tried was done well, bearing in mind the context of an arranged visit. The fish and vegetarian dishes, it seemed to me, are the ones where the chef rises above the merely routine. (Prices below are from the menu; we didn’t pay for the meal.)

 

There’s the usual assortment of bread, but for this meal the kitchen sent out the simplest of them, the Roti ($4).

 

We all liked the Vegetable Samosas ($7; above left). I believe the chicken appetizer (above right) was the Malai Kebab ($12), marinated in herbs and spices, more tender and flavorful than that dish usually is.

 

The Aloo Methi Tikka ($9; above left), a spicy potato cake with chickpeas, tamarind and mint chutney, did not make any particular impression on me. But the “Chilly” [sic] Fish ($14; above right) was the hit of the evening, a spicy preparation of black sea bass.

 

The Bombay Masala Pao ($7; above left), a blend of tomato, herbs and spices on bread, could pass for Indian pizza. Fish Tikka Masala ($26; above right), marinated overnight in yogurt and garlic, was another of the evening’s highlights.

 

I’d also heartily recommend the Saag Paneer ($16; above left), a spinach base sautéed with Indian cheese, or the Yellow Tadka Dal ($12; above right), a preparation of yellow lentils with herbs and spices.

 

But Chicken Tikka Masala ($19; above left) was somewhat bland and forgettable, as was a Lamb Shahi Pasanda ($22; no photo).

The lone dessert was a Paneer cheese pastry puff with honey and rose water syrup (above right). I practically never order desserts at Indian restaurants, but my dining companions said that this was a very good exemplar of this well known dish.

If the chef is eager to to raise the restaurant’s profile, he might want to start with the beverage program. The cocktails are mostly sweet, vodka-based “–tini” drinks. The publicist recommended the wine program, but none of the wines on the by-the-glass list included the vintage, which I do not consider a good sign.

Mint is located in the San Carlos Hotel, although it is independently owned. Like any hotel restaurant, it has to offer safe and familiar dishes that can appeal to a wide variety of weary travelers. My sense of the place, on this limited sample, is that the farther the chef gets from the routine dishes that 1,000 other Indian restaurants serve, the better he does. You won’t go wrong here, but the fish and vegetarian dishes are especially worthwhile.

Mint (150 E. 50th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

SriPraPhai

I hesitate to admit that I had never been to SriPraPhai, the acclaimed Thai restaurant in Woodside, Queens, until about a month ago. To those who swear by the joint, this gap in my dining resume might be practically disqualifying. Frank Bruni of The Times gave it two stars nearly eight years ago, and chowhounds were raving about it long before that. Let’s just say I have a long to-do list.

The experts have fallen out of love with SriPraPhai. Not long after the Bruni review, the owners took over the adjacent storefront, doubled in size, and surrendered some of the intimacy that made them so successful. Many of the chowhounders transferred their affection to Ayada in Elmhurst, which remains on my to-do list. Perhaps I’ll get to it before 2020.

We walked into SriPraPhai without a reservation at about 5pm on a Saturday evening, after a Met game. It was not terribly busy, but that would soon change.

The dining room had the cloying scent of leftover soy and garlic. It was a warm evening, and we happily took seats in the outdoor garden.

There are 144 items on the menu, and I’ve a sinking feeling that there’s a wide variation between the best items and the merely routine on any given evening. I did a bit of research before our visit, but the food boards are not in agreement about what to order these days.

 

I had to try the Roasted Duck Salad ($10.50; above left), a dish Bruni loved so much that he ordered it twice. Its charms were lost on us: the duck was cold and soggy. I rather liked the crisp tang of Salted Beef Fried Rice ($8.50; above right), but my son wasn’t fond of it.

 

Drunken Noodles ($10.50; above left) are offered with beef, duck, chicken, or shrimp (our choice), laced with hot chili and basil leaves.. The noodles themselves are a shade on the tough side, but still worthwhile. Sautéed Crispy Pork Belly ($10.00; above right) won’t be to all tastes, as the pork is so dry as to be nearly dessicated, but it was our favorite dish of the evening.

No one would come here for the wine, but to wash down dinner, $9 for a half-liter of the house red is not a bad deal. We weren’t wowed by the food, but at these prices you can over-order and it’ll still feel like a bargain. Dinner for two was $70, including tax and tip. Credit cards aren’t accepted.

SriPraPhai (64–13 39th Aveue between 64th & 65th Streets, Woodside, Queens)

Food: Good, but uneven, authentic Thai food
Service: So-so; not quite able to keep up with such a large space
Ambiance: Not the reason you dine here

Rating: ★
Why? The chowhound crowd has moved on, and I can see why