Holiday Cheer

This is cheating, because…

…these photos are from Thanksgiving. No matter. Here they are. Happy New Year.

A. J. Maxwell's Steakhouse

A. J. Maxwell’s Steakhouse arrived during the steakhouse glut of 2006, when new entries in the genre were opening every other week. Critics ignored the place, as there was no celebrity or concept to distinguish it from all of the others.

The location has a bit of history. In the 1960s and ’70s, it housed Forum of the 12 Caesars, where waiters donned togas, and praetorian helmets served as ice buckets. Elaborate faux Roman mosaics, which more recent restaurants had covered over, were rediscovered during the renovation. At A. J. Maxwell’s, you can see them again, in all their glory.

A few months ago, we dropped in for a pre-theater meal. It’s an attractive, comfortable space, and service is better than in most classic steakhouses. The menu is expensive, even by steakhouse standards, no doubt reflecting midtown rents. There are nearly a dozen seafood and fish entrées, and they don’t seem to be afterthoughts, unlike, say, the salmon at Peter Luger.

Thick-cut Canadian Bacon in the Peter Luger mold ($3.50; above left) was just fine. Dry-aged ribeye wasn’t bad, but at $47 it needed to be terrific. I suspect it was USDA choice (the default assumption when “prime” isn’t stated), as I didn’t feel or taste the marbling a first-class ribeye ought to have.

A. J. Maxwell’s offers a civilized midtown meal, but steak conoisseurs won’t be putting it on their regular rotation.

A. J. Maxwell’s Steakhouse (57 W. 48th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Eleven Madison Park

We had an excellent meal at Eleven Madison Park in early August. I didn’t note every dish, and it’s obviously too late to remember them all, so I’ll keep this brief.

This is a controversial restaurant. In May of this year, Danyelle Freeman gave it five stars in the Daily News (the only restaurant so honored during her brief tenure there). And Frank Bruni said that the new restaurant Corton “joins the constantly improving Eleven Madison Park as a restaurant hovering just below the very summit of fine dining in New York.” If Bruni promotes any restaurant to four stars in 2009, as I believe he is itching to do, I have to think EMP is one of the few real candidates.

But Eleven Madison Park has no Michelin stars, probably the most glaring omission from the French guide’s otherwise very sensible advice. Michelin skeptics cite the snub as evidence that the guide should be disregarded. Still, it’s a fact that this restaurant lacks the near-universal acclaim of, say, Le Bernardin or Jean Georges. Even Bruni, in a year-end blog post, noted that he had an uneven meal there in the fall.

Public adoration seems to be undimmed. Eleven Madison is one of the few restaurants that has continued to raise prices, and get away with it. The prix fixe is now $88 for three courses, and the two tasting menus are now $125 and $175, the latter being one of the most expensive of its kind in the city.

You can count us as fans of Eleven Madison Park. After three visits, we have never yet been disappointed. In August, we had the prix fixe. I was especially eager to try the duck for two. It was wonderful, but I do prefer to have it carved tableside, as they did at Le Périgord. When they whisk it away to the kitchen, the plates that come back never quite seem to add up to a whole bird.

As our meal was five months ago, I’ll let the photos speak for themselves.

Canapés (left); Amuse-bouche (center); Burgundy (right)

Appetizers

The duck as presented (left), and served (center), with leg confit on the side (right)

Cheese course

Palate cleanser and petits-fours

Eleven Madison Park (11 Madison Avenue at 24th Street, Flatiron District)

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

The Year in Bruni

Another year of Frank Bruni’s Times restaurant reviews has come and gone. It could be his last, as he’s rumored to be stepping down next year to write his memoirs. As of June 2009, he’ll reach his 5-year anniversary, a point when a critic might want to move on.

For the second consecutive year, no restaurants earned 4 stars. Corton was the year’s best new restaurant, but I suspect even Drew Nieporent (owner) and Paul Liebrandt (chef) would tell you they were not aiming for 4 stars. Bruni gave it 3 stars, which was the correct rating. Momofuku Ko was the only other conceivable candidate, but Bruni made a compelling argument for awarding three.

In case you’re wondering, it has now been 209 weeks since Bruni elevated a restaurant to 4 stars (Masa on December 29, 2004). That’s by far the longest such gap in New York Times history. There have been a couple of 4-star re-reviews since then, but no new members of the club.

Daniel is the only remaining 4-star restaurant that Bruni has not reviewed, and it’s fairly apparent he does not love the place. I suspect he is itching to find another 4-star restaurant, after which Daniel will be promptly demoted. I don’t know of any new restaurants coming along that are 4-star candidates, so Bruni will need to promote somebody.

At the 3-star level, there were happy pills in the water at Times HQ. Bruni doled out eleven 3-star reviews in 2008. He has given just 33 of them in 4½ years, so it is remarkable that a third of them came in 2009. Bruni’s smackdowns are the stuff of legend, but he did not demote any 3-star places this year, and there was not a single new restaurant that was clearly aiming for a 3-star review that failed to get it.

To some extent, we are seeing the effects of Bruni’s grade inflation. At least three of Bruni’s 3-star awards seemed awfully dubious to me (Dovetail, Matsugen, and Momofuku Ssäm Bar), and I have my doubts about one other (Scarpetta). But even if you subtract a star from those reviews, it was still a very good year for new restaurants.

Bruni continued his pattern of awarding two stars to very marginal candidates, such as Double Crown, Bar Q, Bar Blanc, Bar Milano, Mia Dona, Market Table, Perbacco and Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill. This, in turn, put pressure on him to elevate borderline places to 3 stars. It should be obvious that if Momofuku Ko is a 3-star restaurant, the less ambitious Ssäm Bar is no better than two. Yet, when he awards 2 stars to Double Crown the preceding week, all Ssäm Bar’s 3-star review means is “better than Double Crown.” That is not a tough bar to clear.

Bruni’s obvious bias in favor of Italian restaurants continued. About 20% of his reviews were Italian (broadly construed), and he gave those restaurants 2 or 3 stars 60 percent of the time. Even his 1-star Italian reviews were generally enthusiastic, which is not always the case with Bruni.

In other genres, there were missed opportunities. Allegretti and Eighty One, to which he gave 2 stars each, were better than several of his 3-star places. Eighty One was probably the most unjustly treated, given the 3-stars awarded to the inferior Dovetail nearby. Persimmon and Elettaria deserved better than the 1 star Bruni gave them.

For the first time that I can recall, Bruni visited a French restaurant by choice. He awarded 1 star to La Sirène, which was a perfectly reasonable rating. Had it been Italian, it would have received two.

Every year, Bruni picks a couple of places no one writes about any more, just to point out that they’re not as good as they were. This year’s victims were Mesa Grill (1 star) and Michael’s (no stars). Among new restaurants, Ago and Secession received his most entertaining and richly deserved takedowns, both receiving no stars.

A number of Frank’s reviews were about a ‘scene’, conveying practically no important culinary content. Among these were Kurve, Delicatessen, Chop Suey, Elizabeth, and Second Avenue Deli. It seems almost a travesty when Elizabeth is allotted the same number of column-inches as Corton. If it was worth writing about at all, couldn’t it have shared the review with some other place?

Bruni doled out several well deserved promotions, including WD~50 (2 to 3), Le Cirque (2 to 3) and Mas (1 to 2). But the largest errors of his tenure—The Modern, Gilt, and Gordon Ramsay—remain uncorrected, with all three restaurants still undeservedly mired in Bruni’s two-star scrum.

Despite some mistakes, Bruni did not commit as many howlers in 2008 as he did in past years. For the most part, where there was excellence he found it. Where restaurants let us down, he called them on it.

As Bruni notes in his year-end retrospective, most of the important restaurants that opened in 2008 were planned in much happier times. That means that we won’t be seeing anywhere near as many ambitious restaurants in 2009. Bruni will be spending his time in more casual places, which is probably the way he likes it.

BarBao

[Savory Cities]

Note: BarBao closed in March 2010, the latest restaurant the love-’em-and leave-’em chef has abandoned. It will become a second branch of Marc Murphy’s Ditch Plains.

*

BarBao is the latest production of Vietnamese chef Michael Bao Huynh. He has made the rounds, to put it charitably, but he is a partner here, so perhaps he’ll finally stay put. I loved his cooking at Mai House, and there is certainly no doubt about his talent.

The space that was formerly Rain has been gutted and beautifully renovated. There’s a large bar, a spacious dining room, yet another bar, and a quiet space in the back with seating so comfortable that you’ll want to take it home with you.

The major critics haven’t made it here yet, but Cuozzo in the Post, DiGregorio in the Village Voice, and Gael Greene at Insatiable all liked it. Andrea Strong had a muted reaction by her standards, though she found the décor—get this!—sexy. I’ll alert the media.

Instead of appetizers and entrées, the menu offers “Small Plates” ($8–14) and “Big Plates” ($16–27), all served family style. The plates of whatever size are designed for sharing, which is the way to go. The cuisine, though nominally Vietnamese, is very liberally interpreted.

Most reviewers have mentioned the Daikon Duck Hash ($14; above left). The concept is beguiling: what’s not to love about duck fat and a fried egg? But we found the duck fat cloying, and the few slices of real duck meat seemed too skimpy.

An Octopus special ($14; above right) was the star of the evening.

Mashima Sirloin ($24; above left) got a mixed reaction. I considered it a success, but my girlfriend found the meat a bit too tough. The accompanying salad, to our surprise, was served cold (by design).

Lemongrass Guinea Hen ($17; above right), another special, was terrific. It had enough red pepper for a three-alarm fire, but we were also impressed by the tenderness of the meat.

Had the server told us that the Guinea Hen came with rice, we probably wouldn’t have ordered a side of Duck Fried Rice ($9; below left). Still, it was very good fried rice, and had more duck in it than the Daikon Duck Hash we had earlier.

The wine list isn’t lengthy, but we were pleased with a 2000 Valdrinal Tempranillo, which at $44 was one of the better wine deals we’ve seen this year.

Like most restaurants these days, BarBao needs to work hard for its customers’ affections. It was about half full on a Friday night, which probably covered the rent, but isn’t good enough to stay in business. Service was attentive, if perhaps a bit ingratiating, and there must have been three or four manager types who kept dropping by, along with the chef himself, to make sure we were enjoying ourselves—which we were.

The two best items we had were specials, which tells me that chef Huynh is still experimenting, and that return visits will be rewarded with new things to try. The food wasn’t perfect, but much of it was very good, and the bill for two was a very reasonable $120 before tax and tip.

Bar Bao (100 W. 82nd Street at Columbus Avenue, Upper West Side)

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

When is the Wine List Fairly Priced?

I’ve developed a theory that helps me decide if a wine list is fairly priced: The bottom of the list should have a good selection at the price of the average meal.

I don’t much care about the top of the list. If a pizzeria wants to serve $1,000 wines, that’s fine with me. The top can go as high as the restaurant thinks it can get away with. But if the average meal is a $15 pizza and a $5 scoop of ice cream, then the cheapest wine shouldn’t be $60.

At Corton in TriBeCa, the cheapest meal is $76 prix fixe, but the wine list has two full pages of bottles under $50, and even quite a few under $40. You can also spend thousands, but the ample selection below $50 makes Corton’s wine list not just fairly priced, but generously priced.

The other night, we had dinner at Belcourt in the East Village. We loved Belcourt overall, but I found the high-priced wine list irritating.

Obviously a casual neighborhood bistro isn’t going to have the same wine list as Corton, but the wines Belcourt did have were nearly all above $50. There might have been a token red or two slightly below that figure; as I recall, they were very young wines that I wouldn’t drink even at retail prices, much less with a restaurant markup. At Belcourt, the average appetizer is around $10, and the average entrée is about $21. It should have a half-dozen to a dozen real choices below $50.

So that’s the rule I use: the heart of the bottom end of the wine list should equal the price of a typical meal for one. That means there should be real choice at that level, not just a token, and not an obscure grape or region that is out of character for the restaurant.

The upshot is that a party of 2 can have a decent meal where the food is 2/3rds of the cost, and the wine is 1/3rd. That seems fair to me.

Keens Steakhouse

I had an errand to run near Herald Square yesterday. Keens Steakhouse is the only decent restaurant nearby, so I dropped in for a light supper. A bit before 6:00 p.m., they were already nearly full, which is remarkable for a restaurant this enormous that is not in the theater district. Had I arrived just a few minutes later, I would have had to wait for a table.

There’s a casual “pub” at Keens that doesn’t take reservations. You can order from the over-priced dining room menu, but the pub also has its own menu that, if not cheap, is at least reasonable. I’ve written about Keens a number of times, so I’ll get right to the beef.

Prime Rib Hash ($16.50; left) caught my eye. It’s basically a play on corned beef hash, with diced prime rib as the main ingredient, and a fried egg replacing the usual gravy. In the interest of science, I had to try it.

The verdict? It’s pretty good, though surely not meant to be dinner on its own. Four people could share it as an appetizer. It’s that big. So naturally, I ate the whole thing myself (and nothing else).

For its steaks, Keens charges premium prices for a second-tier product. The décor is one-of-a-kind, but you always have the feeling that the staff is thinking about the next thousand customers.

They do have a few dishes no one else is serving, especially the incomparable mutton chop, to which I can now add the Prime Rib Hash.

Keens Steakhouse (72 W. 36th Street, east of Sixth Avenue, West Midtown)

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

Belcourt

[Metromix]

Note: Matthew Hamilton left Belcourt in December 2011, and the restaurant closed in 2012. It was replaced by Calliope, by Waverly Inn chef Eric Korsh and his wife, Ginevra Iverson.

*

Matthew Hamilton is a chef you want to root for. His two previous gigs fell apart for reasons not his fault. At Uovo, he couldn’t get a liquor license. At Pair of 8’s, he arrived too late to save a restaurant already on life support.

Things are going better at Belcourt, where he’s into his second year and appears to have a solid East Village neighborhood following, supplemented by a few folks like me who are curious enough to make the trek.

He’s got a lovely space, with spectacular picture windows looking out on East 4th Street and Second Avenue. A striking old-fashioned bar, distressed mirrors, a pressed tin ceiling and an antique tile floor suggest the kind of unfancy bistro you dream about but seldom find any more.

Belcourt stayed off most of the critics’ radar. In the Times, Frank Bruni gave it the Dining Briefs treatment, noting that “this charming, happy restaurant…wants to hit your comfort-food sensors.” That’s accurate.

The menu notes with laconic modesty, “Everything that can be made in house, is.” That includes a variety of sausages, cured meats and pâtés. There’s also the usual comment about local organic farmers and organically-raised meats, which is a fixture on menus all over town.

We assume bread (served in a bucket) is home-made, along with the butter, which was soft the way we like it. A selection of the house charcuterie ($16; above right) was more than ample for two to share as an appetizer.

Prices are gentle on the pocketbook, with soups and salads at $7–9, starters $8–15, mains $12–24, and sides $5–6.

The pork chop ($24; above left) was as large as a truncheon and very good too, but the vegetables underneath it seemed dull and over-salted. My girlfriend thought the burger (above right) was one of the best she’s had in a long time. The bun, naturally, is house-made. It’s a bargain at $12 (cheese and onions $2 extra apiece), and the fries that come along with it are perfect.

The wine list is too expensive, with no reds I could trust below $50. I don’t care how high the list goes, but a restaurant at Belcourt’s overall price level needs to go a lot lower.

The food at Belcourt is very well made, service in hearty portions and at low prices. I can’t quite call it destination cuisine, but it’s a place I’m glad to have around. Our dinner here was one of the more enjoyable inexpensive meals we’ve had in a while.

“This,” my girlfriend said, “is what Secession should have been.”

*

Update: Belcourt has brought its wine list in line with the humble atmosphere. On a recent visit, a respectable Corbières was available at $31. That is much more like it. Bone marrow tacos ($10) are one of the strangest dishes I’ve had, but they were excellent. The pork chop (now $21) remains excellent.

Belcourt (84 E. 4th Street at Second Avenue, East Village)

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

Casa Mono

Owning the city’s most popular Italian restaurants wasn’t good enough for Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. So five years ago, they branched out into Spanish cuisine. Sure enough, they mastered that too.

Pig’s Feet Croquetas with Cranberries ($15)Casa Mono was an instant hit, winning two stars from Marian Burros in the Times and a 25 food rating on Zagat, the highest of any Spanish restaurant in the city. It has taken me a while to get here because the place is always packed at the times I want to eat. Finally, I landed a Friday night 7:00 p.m. reservation.

Our dinner was almost scuppered when my girlfriend got stuck on a train. The hostess wouldn’t seat an incomplete party, and there is no waiting space inside this cramped restaurant: nada. She not-so-gently suggested that I mosey over to Bar Jamón, the wine bar next door, “and we’ll call when your party arrives.” But I’d already spent an hour at Bar Jamón and knew there was no space there either. So I shuffled my feet at the doorway, checking my watch.

Sepia a la Plancha with Salsa Verde ($15)My girlfriend arrived at 7:19 p.m., four minutes too late, according to the hostess. “I can offer you a table until 8:30 or seats at the bar without a time limit.” We took the bar seats, which may be the best way to experience Casa Mono. Watching the open kitchen just a few feet away is a pleasure in itself: it runs like clockwork in an insanely small space. You get to see a much wider variety of the gorgeous plates coming out, and the craftsmanship that goes into them.

Skirt Steak with Onion Mermelada ($16)There are some cuisines that, inexplicably, seem to be found only in casual settings (at least in New York), and Spanish is one of them. Alex Ureña tried to serve three-star food at Ureña, but it never caught on, and he had to dial it down a notch, renaming the place Pamplona. Batali and Bastianich, blessed with a keener sense of the culinary moment, made Casa Mono casual from the beginning, and never looked back.

Fried Cauliflower ($9)The wine list, though, is a serious document. If there were a four-star Spanish restaurant, it could have the same list without changing a thing. You’ll find large-format bottles with four-digit prices, but also real value below $50. There was a slight hiccup when I ordered a 2004 at $45, and the server returned with an ’05, apparently not realizing the difference. Fear not, said the hastily summoned sommelier: the 2005’s are just as good, and according to some connoisseurs, maybe better.

Confit Goat with Saffron Honey ($19)On the all-tapas menu, you’ll pay anywhere from $5–25 a plate, with most in the teens. A selection of six plates plus a shared dessert brought our food tab to $102. You could probably get by with a little less than that, but not by much.

Batali has never worried about challenging the diner. You’ll find pig’s feet, lamb’s tongue, rabbit loin, cock’s combs, bone marrow, sweetbreads, duck hearts, and tripe. But you’ll also find safe choices like mussels, skirt steak, and lamb. Pork Belly Fabada with Horseradish ($19)We saw a lot of skirt steak going onto the griddle, but not one order of tripe. Even Marian Burros declined to try it. A fried cheese made of calves head and feet has been dropped since Burros visited, showing that even offal has its limits.

I’m not going to comment on most of the dishes individually, but they were all terrific, except for over-cooked pork belly. The photos don’t do the food justice, but they were the best I could manage in a low-light setting where flash wasn’t appropriate.

Mono Sundae ($9)

Desserts are sometimes a throwaway at this kind of restaurant, but we adored the Mono Sundae, a plum brandy ice cream with arrope and almonds. We observed other diners in phases of rapture over their desserts, so this is apparently not the only great one.

The food at Casa Mono arguably deserves a better setting. It is cramped and rushed. Although we sat at the bar, even the tables seemed small and tightly packed.

I’m not the type to spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle of wine, but even if I were, this isn’t the place where I’d choose to do it. But for five years diners have either forgiven the setting or perhaps even embraced it. Food this good can make up for many an inconvenience.

Casa Mono (52 Irving Place at E. 17th Street, Union Square/Gramercy)

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

Bar Jamón

Bar Jamón — literally “Ham Bar” — is the front end of the Batali–Bastianich Spanish double-header, the other being the restaurant next door, Casa Mono. The two share a wine list and prep space, and some guides describe them as one restaurant. Even the owners have trouble deciding: some of their literature lists the two places separately, but they share a common website.

Anyhow, it’s a tiny space that holds about 25 people, including those standing at the bar, where there are no stools. There are light tapas, generally in the $7–11 range, along with the crazily expensive Spanish hams that give the place its name. These set you back $15 or $30 a portion.

The star is the 24-page all-Spanish wine list, probably the best of its kind in New York. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone would plunk down $1,950 for a magnum of 1989 Vega Sicilia and then drink it on bar stools. But if you want it, Bar Jamón has got it. Even for more modest budgets, Bar Jamón has plenty to choose from, with bottles as low as $30.

Like all of the Mario Batali–Joe Bastianich restaurants, wine by the glass is served in a quartino or, in Spanish, a cuarto, which is good for about a glass and a half. In that context, the $12–25 price range is fair, and I was happy with both that I tried — the 2005 Mustiguillo ($15) and the 2006 Jiménez-Landi ($17).

As we had reservations at Casa Mono afterwards, I didn’t order any food, and the staff didn’t try to sell me any. The munchies here aren’t expensive, but unless you order some, you aren’t going to get anything extra—not even so much as a bowl of nuts. It appeared that about half the patrons ordered food, and half didn’t.

Bar Jamón serves as Casa Mono’s “waiting room,” though it’s too successful for its own good. By 6:00 p.m. on a snowy Friday evening, Bar Jamón was nearly full. I didn’t mind standing at the bar and admiring the bottles perched there. If you want a seat, expect to wait.

Bar Jamón (125 E. 17th Street east of Irving Place, Union Square/Gramercy)

Wine: ★★★
Service: ★
Ambiance: ★
Overall: ★★