Review Recap: Madangsui

Can I just admit that I was bored by today’s one-star review of Madangsui? Will you still respect me in the morning?

Commenters on the New York Times website were perplexed that “Manhattan’s best Korean barbecue restaurant” merits only a star, but it seemed rather clear to us:

Madangsui is not much to look at, really, just a long fluorescent-illuminated room with chocolate accents, almost barnlike, with exhaust hoods over the tables and a carpet down the center, leading to the tea station, the bathrooms and the kitchen. The clientele runs to groups of celebratory young Koreans texting as they eat, office parties and passers-by from local hotels; it is hardly a clear picture of fine dining in New York. But jiminy crickets, is the dining fine.

But first, a warning: responsibility for the pace of a meal at Madangsui belongs to the diner alone. Service at the restaurant is brisk, almost brutally efficient… .

But make sure not to ask for your barbecue, not yet. Diners who order soups and appetizers at the same time as main dishes at Madangsui will receive, far more often than not, the main dishes in advance of the appetizers. This throws a wrench into the works. Be firm on this point and be happy.

In a system that awards one conflated rating for food, service, and décor, these things have to take their toll. Besides that, it is no insult to get one star, which means “good”. True, it was so debased during the Bruni era that readers have been conditioned to expect that one star is an insult. Sam Sifton is re-training them.

We and Eater both predicted the one-star outcome. We both win $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets:

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$4.00		$6.00
Gain/Loss	+$2.00		+$2.00
Total	$6.00		$8.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	4–2 (66.7%)		4–2 (66.7%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 74–29 (72%).

Tipsy Parson

 

Tipsy Parson is the encore restaurant from the same team that scored such a big hit at Little Giant on the Lower East Side. It hews to the earlier restaurant’s comfort-food roots, but a bigger kitchen allows a more substantial menu. Where the Little Giant is limited to just half-a-dozen apps and just as many entrées, the menu here offers a wider variety of starters, salads, oysters, charcuterie, entrées, side dishes, and bar snacks.

The space is nearly double the size of the Little Giant, which made me worry whether the owners would be able to scale up to the challenge. Those worries are borne out by the inconsistency of the food, but if they can clear that up, this is a cuisine we would happily eat any day of the week.

I arrived early and ordered a snack—figs stuffed with chestnuts and topped with bacon (left). This is perfect bar food, but for some reason the chef served three of them, an odd choice for a dish that will be frequently shared. In all fairness, many chefs have made that error, as if there is a mystical perfection in the number three, no matter what the customer may require.

Cocktails were not such a happy experiment: both of those that I tried were too sweet, including a champagne sidecar that seemed to be nearly all champagne.

The industry has changed since Little Giant opened in 2004. Back then, places were showing how cool they were by not taking reservations. Some restauranteurs would even have the chutzpah to claim this was what the customer wanted: it meant one could always drop in and be sure of getting a table, provided one was willing to wait long enough. In reality, this was pure selfishness on the owners’ part: it meant they didn’t have to bother keeping track of who was coming, and they didn’t have to deal with no-shows.

A few hugely successful places have clung to this model (Boqueria, Momofuku, Spotted Pig), mainly because they could, but many of these no-resy places wound up taking them later on, including Little Giant. Tipsy Parson was on OpenTable from Day One. They could no doubt survived a while on walk-in business alone, given the inevitable curiosity that attends any new restaurant. Instead, they sensibly decided to court reliable repeat business instead, and recognized that many diners want the assurance that they can eat at a time certain.

I know we wouldn’t have been there without a reservation. The restaurant kindly accommodated us, even though my friend was a half-hour late.

 

We suspected that the entrées would be large, so we shared a salad of warm spinach, which was wonderful, as were the house-made Parker House rolls.

 

Both entrées suffered from execution failures. A pork shank was enormous, but over-cooked. Duck was perfectly cooked, but the portion was (by comparison) on the small side, and the vegetables accompanying it were too bitter.

 

A side of Brussels sprouts was terrific. Macaroni & cheese was just fine, but didn’t erase the memory of the even better version of it served at Little Giant.

Early on, the service seemed just a bit anxious, as if they were eager to get our table back. Later on, the server disappeared for long intervals. Just about all of the restaurant’s 75 seats were full when we left, and it appeared there weren’t quite enough staff to handle the rush.

The décor tries to capture the homespun rustic chic that so many restaurants aim for these days, but at least they got it right. The noise level wasn’t bad, but as we were seated at a corner table with no one nearby, that might have been atypical.

Tipsy Parson doesn’t quite have its act together yet, but the menu is extremely appealing, and when the kinks are ironed out this should be a fun place to visit.

Tipsy Parson (156 Ninth Avenue between 19th & 20th Streets, Chelsea)

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

Review Preview: Madangsui

Sam Sifton’s last four reviews have been big-budget productions: Aureole, Oceana, A Voce Columbus, and SD26. All were, in a sense, mandatory—the Times couldn’t be the paper of record without reviewing such highly-publicized openings.

We had a feeling he was overdue for another review plucked out of nowhere—the kind of review filed because he wants to, not because he has to. Sure enough, tomorrow Sifton visits Koreatown stalwart Madangsui.

The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Zero Stars: 100 - 1; One star: 2-1; Sift Happens: 5 - 1; Three Stars: 1,500 - 1.

Sifton so far hasn’t been throwing out two-star ratings like candy, the way a certain well known predecessor did. The precedent, as Eater notes, is Imperial Palace, which received a glowing onespot. We agree with Eater that one star is by far the most likely rating.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

Randolph, New Jersey
December 5, 2009

The Café at Le Cirque

Like most luxury restaurants these days, Le Cirque has a formal dining room and a dressed-down café, where reservations aren’t taken and the menu is a bit more approachable.

Since our meal in the main dining room almost two years ago, Le Cirque has acquired a new chef: Craig Hopson, formerly of Picholine and One if By Land, Two if By Sea. None of the city’s major critics has reviewed Le Cirque since Hopson took over. It holds three Times stars, courtesy of a Bruni re-review in February 2008. It almost pained him to dine there:

At Le Cirque you will indeed eat too much food, of a kind that neither your physician nor your local Greenpeace representative would endorse, in a setting of deliberate pompousness, at a sometimes ludicrous expense.The ravioli, all three of them, are $35.

But that has long been the way of certain restaurants, which exist to be absurd, to speak not to our better angels but to our inner Trumps, making us feel pampered and reckless and even a little omnipotent, if only for two hours and three courses with a coda of petits fours.

And while I’m not calling for the spread of these establishments (or the massacre of Chilean sea bass), I’m charged with noting when one of them fulfills its chosen mission with classic panache. Le Cirque now does.

Has ever a critic awarded three stars to a restaurant, while saying that he would prefer to see no more like it?

I had an evening commitment on the Upper East Side during Restaurant Week, and as Le Cirque would be on the way, I decided to drop in. The Dining Room was fully committed, even at 5:45 p.m., but the adjoining café was empty (it would begin to fill up later on). The website advises: “Jackets are required for gentlemen in the dining room and suggested in the café.” I was wearing one, but it did not seem to matter.

The café is a comfortable space, dominated by a huge cylindrical wine tower. In the oddly-shaped room, two of the walls have ceiling-height windows that face on Third Avenue and 58th Street, admitting plenty of natural light.

Lately, the owners have been struggling to fill the café. Evidently, the idea of dropping into Le Cirque for an order of sliders hasn’t caught on. Offers to drop in for free fried chicken to watch major sporting events (sixth game of the World Series; Thursday night Jets–Bills game) have dropped in my mailbox with regularity.

There is a dizzying array of options at Le Cirque. The main carte offers a pre-theatre prix fixe at $48, a tasting menu at $120, and a regular prix fixe at $95. You can also order à la carte, which I don’t recall before, with some of the highest prices in town: appetizers $25–30 (most in the high 20s), pastas $28–38, mains $42–70.

The café menu, also called the wine bar menu, has tasting plates from $14–35, along with a three-course “restaurant week” prix fixe for $35, which was available all summer long. Apparently you can order from any of these menus in the café, but the server gave me only the restaurant week menu, as they said it’s what most of the café visitors want.

No one should be under the illusion that they’re getting a $98 value for $35. When the price for three courses is less than the cheapest dining room entrée, you’re obviously not going to get the restaurant’s best stuff. None of the three dishes I had is shown on the main dining room carte. But I did have a modestly satisfying meal at a respectable price, with two forgettable dishes and one I would happily order again.

Gnocchi with tripe ragu (above left) was pedestrian, but I loved (at the price) the pavé of veal with zucchini, tomato, and pecorino romano (above right). The veal was nicely crisped, but tender on the inside. I was afraid of another humdrum tomato broth, but both the tomato and the zucchini were vibrantly flavored. The cheese didn’t add much, though.

Dessert, a lemon merengue pie, was competently executed but rather ordinary, and the accompanying sorbet paired with it poorly.

Café diners get the same bread service as the main dining room—not that it is anything to write home about. Coffee ($4) came in its own silver pot. Service overall was attentive and pleasant. The café has its own pared-down wine list (though I’m sure you can get the bigger one), and prices by the glass are reasonable. A 2003 Haut Médoc was $15.

It may not offer the main dining room’s culinary fireworks, but the Café is a fine way to enjoy an inexpensive dinner if you happen to be in the area.

The Café at Le Cirque (151 E. 58th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Review Recap: SD26

Today, Sam Sifton drops the expected one-spot on San Domenico:

They really are trying down there at SD26, the old lion Tony May and his indefatigable daughter Marisa, the two of them working the dining room of their fancy new restaurant as if all that happened to their old one, San Domenico, was a face-lift. . . .

But what’s happened here is much more than simply a face-lift. The sedate and elegant San Domenico, which opened in 1988, has been kicked to the curb. SD26 is the restaurant equivalent of a second wife: younger, considerably more nervous, dressed in a way that might raise eyebrows in the social circles the original restaurant was opened to serve. . . .

Then there’s the long walk back through the bar to the street, past slightly stunned old regulars from San Domenico and gastro-tourists wondering what all the fuss was about. Emerging onto 26th Street, the overwhelming feeling a diner is left with is one of exhaustion, the sense that at SD26 we are a long, long way from the kind of restaurant Mr. May has stood for in New York City. It’s a restaurant to make anyone feel old.

You have to feel bad for Tony and Marisa May. They invested $7 million in this place—reportedly their own money—in the sincere view that this was what today’s diners wanted. But in chasing the latest fashions, they weren’t true to themselves. This isn’t the restaurant that the old San Domenico regulars wanted. And it isn’t the restaurants that the younger, edgier clientele wanted.

As Steve Cuozzo points out in today’s Post, recent upscale hits like Corton and Marea, and the dressing up of Eleven Madison Park, have proven that sophisticated diners will flock to places that present serious food in an adult setting. That’s not the only path to success, but it’s the only path that Tony May had ever known.

There are ways of subtly updating the original concept without entirely abandoning it. “Renovation of the original mission may have been a smarter course,” says Sifton.

Eater predicted two stars, and loses a dollar on our hypothetical bets. We win $4 at 4–1 odds.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$5.00		$2.00
Gain/Loss	–$1.00		+$4.00
Total	$4.00		$6.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	3–2 (60.0%)		3–2 (60.0%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 73–29 (72%).

The Burger at Gansevoort 69

Note: Gansevoort 69 closed in August 2010. (As often happens, a “temporary closure” for renovations turned out to be permanent.) The owners told the Times that “the diner thing has to go,” apparently oblivious to the fact that the previous restaurant in the space, Florent, had a long and successful run as a diner and would still be in business, but for an economically unsustainable rent hike.

*

Gansevoort 69 would be utterly unremarkable, if not for the reputation of the establishment it replaced, the sainted Florent, which closed last year.

The new place seeks to fill the gap left by Florent’s demise—essentially, a cafeteria to sop up the alcohol after a long night of boozing. It’s open to 6:00 a.m. Thursdays to Saturdays, midnight the rest of the week.

I never dined at Florent, which perhaps says more about my drinking habits than anything else. From all I can tell, Florent was basically a diner serving French and American bistro standards, but it had a cult following. The cult was none too please when the chef, Florent Morellet, was forced out by a rent hike.

The décor has been smartly updated, while retaining the feel of a diner. The old “R & L” signage remains outside—a reminder of what the place was four tenants ago. Reservations are taken on OpenTable, but I’d be surprised if they get much traffic that way. The whole point of Florent was that you could just drop in if you happened to be nearby.

The menu, described as American comfort food, has appetizers and soups ($6–10), salads ($7–16), sandwiches ($12–15), entrées ($8–26), and side dishes ($3–5). In the true diner spirit, breakfast is served anytime. So are cocktails.

There’s an amuse-bouche of tater tots (above right), served with three dipping sauces, to munch on while you wait for your food.

My son and I both had the burger ($12 plus $2 for cheese). I liked the thickness and juiciness, medium rare as we had requested. The beef had a slightly metallic tang, which will keep it out of the pantheon. The fries were just fine.

Gansevoort 69 (69 Gansevoort Street btwn. Greenwich & Washington Streets, Meatpacking District)

Scenes from Thanksgiving 2009

I know it’s terribly un-Web 2.0 to post my Thanksgiving photos five days late. Sorry, but New York Journal took some time off. Here, at last, they are. Appetizers first; then the carved bird.

Review Preview: SD26

Tomorrow, Sift Happens at SD26, the relocated re-do of the former San Domenico. The Eater Oddsmakers have set the action as follows: One Star: 4-1; Two Stars: 3-1; Sift Happens: 20-1.

As Eater notes, this is Sifton’s fourth review of a re-located or cloned restaurant. Aureole, Oceana, and A Voce Columbus were all rated one star lower than they had been before. That bodes ill for SD26, which had two stars in its old location. In general, Sifton has been a tough grader, except for the odd deuce given to DBGB in his inaugural review.

This is Sifton’s third Italian restaurant, after Marea (three stars) and A Voce Columbus. All three have been on the rounds of the city’s major critics, and a hierarchy is clear, with SD26 conspicuously at the bottom of it. A weak deuce is probably the best it can hope for.

Given Sifton’s biases thus far, we think the safe bet is one star.