Valentine's Day at Corton

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Corton.

The restaurant industry calls major holidays “amateur night.” Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day and New Year’s Eve are the biggest culprits. Restaurants are overrun with customers who don’t eat out a lot. Many places charge outsized prices for less-interesting versions of their normal menus—because they can get away with it, because it’s easier, or because they figure that customers want “safe” food.

If you dine out all year long, choosing a restaurant on “amateur night” is a challenge. I’ve had some good luck, but I’ve also been burned. I’ll accept a price premium, but I don’t want to pay twice as much for food half as good as usual.

We guessed that Paul Liebrandt, the chef at Corton, wouldn’t be capable of serving boring Valentine’s Day food. The tasting menu price was jacked up to $205 (it’s $120 normally), but at least Liebrandt didn’t compromise. If anything, the food seems to have improved since our last visit. With three stars from Frank Bruni in the bag, maybe he feels like he can let his creative side roam free again.

I didn’t want to disrupt a relaxing evening with photos. You can see the menu on the right (click for a larger image). The Sweetbread and White Chocolate Palette were spectacular, the Turbot and Pheasant very good. An amuse that I can only call “foie gras soup” was outstanding. For the rest, I’ll let the printed menu speak for itself. Liebrandt’s platings occasionally get too cute, with daubs of sauce no larger than a nickel that you can barely taste, but that’s more an observation than a drawback.

My eyes landed on a $60 Ladoix burgundy, and sommelier Elizabeth Harcourt’s eyes lit up—one of her favorites, she said. After we ordered it, we understood why.

My only complaints are picky, but given Corton’s aspirations I’ll state them anyway. The timing of the courses was a bit lumpy, with the first few coming out too quickly, and then some awfully long pauses later on. We didn’t mind the pauses, but the earlier courses needed better spacing. And some of the runners need a brush-up on their mechanics: plates should be served and cleared from the side, not across the table. One server refilled my wine glass before my girlfriend’s.

For the record, Drew Nieporent was in the house, seating customers and busing tables. I had wondered if he would still be working the floor after the review cycle was over, but for now, he is. He told us that he turned away 300 covers, which I could well believe. Corton is one of the few high-end places that does not seem to have seriously suffered in the recession. Getting three stars from every critic in town will do that.

Based on this meal, I would say Corton is still getting better. Given how good it was already, that is a high compliment indeed.

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

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

Halfsteak

Note: Halfsteak, along with is parent restaurant Craftsteak, closed in late 2009. A new restaurant from the same team, Colicchio & Sons, replaced it in early 2010.

*

Not a week goes by without further retrenchment in the restaurant industry. Even Tom Colicchio’s sainted Craft empire is hunkering down for a long recession. This week, the front room at Craftsteak rebranded itself “Halfsteak,” where every dish is under $15.

I’ve visited Craftsteak three times (1, 2, 3), but I’ve been wholly satisfied only once. To be fair, the first two visits were early on, before Colicchio fired the executive chef and bought new broiling equipment. But I continue to read mixed reports, suggesting a visit to Craftsteak is very much a crapshoot. It’s a tough value proposition for a place where almost all steaks are above $50.

I’m not visiting many steakhouses these days. Even if I was, I’d have to think twice before returning to Crafsteak. But the sub-$15 menu at Halfsteak has my attention. This is a place where one doesn’t mind just “dropping in.”

Halfsteak occupies the casual front dining room at Craftsteak. Everything is priced at odd multiples of a half-dollar. Snacks are $6½, salads $7½, small plates $9½, sandwiches $11½, “one-pots” $13½, desserts $4½, and the namesake halfsteak with fries is $14½. [Click on the menu for a larger image.]

The concept extends to cocktails ($7½), half pints of beer ($3½) and wines by the glass ($10½). Even the notoriously exorbitant wine list has been dialed down. There are twenty bottles on offer, all $55 or less (most under $50). The beers are thoughtful choices from small, artisanal producers; not Budweiser and Schlitz.

Craftsteak’s chef de cuisine is Shane McBride. As he did at his short-lived midtown chophouse 7Square, he isn’t afraid to challenge his audience. I am quite sure that fried tripe is not on this menu because there was overwhelming demand for it. Likewise brisket with sauerkraut or a duck confit omelet.

I wasn’t too hungry, so I ordered just two snacks ($6.50 ea.), the Smoked Chicken Wings with White BBQ Sauce (above left) and the Lamb Spare Ribs with Cucumber Raita (above right). The wings were wonderful, perfectly seasoned and slightly spicy. Where on earth did that white barbecue sauce come from? The lamb ribs were slightly dry and not quite warm enough. Total bill with two half-pints of beer: $20.

The restaurant’s two-star service model hasn’t changed. I almost laughed when I asked for a wet-nap to wash my hands after all that finger food, and they brought out a hot towel. Both the main dining room and the front room were doing a respectable business, but neither was full between 7 and 8pm on a Thursday evening.

The current recession has taken its sad toll on many restaurants, but among those that remain open there are many good deals to be had. Halfsteak is one of the best around.

“Halfsteak” (85 Tenth Avenue at 15th Street, Far West Chelsea)

Beacon

Note: Click here for a more recent visit to Beacon.

Beacon, a midtown steakhouse, was completely off my radar until eGullet’s “Fat Guy” raved about the tasting menu served on Thursday nights. It’s currently $98 for 12 courses, including winees. That would be a remarkable value even if a few of the courses were duds—not that they are. Subsequent reports bore out Fat Guy’s recommendation (Frank Bruni reviewed it late last year), but it was impossible to get in (only 6 seats, only on Thursdays), and I don’t usually fancy such a heavy meal on a weeknight.

From the beginning, Beacon was more than just an average steakhouse. In the Times, William Grimes awarded two stars in 1999: “Organized around an open kitchen and a huge wood-burning oven, it delivers uncomplicated, big-flavored food, emphasizing fresh, seasonal ingredients. That’s all, and that’s enough.”

Like many restaurants, Beacon has felt the bite of the recession. The $35 “Restaurant Week” menu has been extended at least until the end of February, and perhaps indefinitely. Deals abound, such as a $44 pp. family style meal on Sunday evenings, with bottles of wine under $35, and no corkage if you bring your own.

The normal menu features dry-aged Niman Ranch steaks, but there’s a wide variety of other choices, most of them revolving around the wood-burning oven.

The chef/owner, Waldy Malouf, has a lot of seats to fill. On a recent Tuesday evening, the vast tri-level space was perhaps 60% occupied, which is better than many restaurants, but probably not good enough, given midtown rents. I also suspect that many patrons are doing as we did, and ordering at the bottom end of the menu.

A mixed green salad with herb vinaigrette and goat cheese (below left) was all you could ask of a $13 salad. The burger and fries ($21; below right) were terrific. It’s Niman Ranch beef and tastes dry-aged. I couldn’t help but compare it to the over-hyped LaFreida Black Label blend served at City Burger.

The Beacon burger is $5 more than the City Burger product. But City Burger is a fast-food joint with styrofoam containers, plastic trays, and minimal counter seating. Beacon is a full-service restaurant, with waiters, white tablecloths, cloth napkins, silverware, three kinds of homemade bread, etc. On top of that, their burger was better (thicker, juicier, tastier) than the one Mr. Cutlets has been shilling at City Burger, and their fries were better too.

It was about as impressive as a salad, burger, and fries can be.

Beacon (25 W. 56th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

The Payoff: The John Dory

Today, Frank Bruni awarded two stars to the John Dory, in a surprisingly muted review:

[Ken] Friedman is credited as the decorator, and it’s as if he went on eBay, typed in “fish décor” and bought and made use of everything that popped up. It’s all very “Finding Nemo,” or maybe losing Nemo, because the impact of this visual chaos — ratcheted up by an open kitchen that is a distraction too many — can be to give you a maritime migraine and tug your focus from the edible fish that are the purpose and point of the project.

Nemo gets lost in another sense as well. In Ms. Bloomfield’s laudable determination not to treat seafood as lean and pristine cuisine, she sometimes goes too far, for example dousing the restaurant’s namesake dish, a whole roasted John Dory for two, with not just a salty salsa verde but also an audaciously generous measure of butter and other pan juices. Although gorgeously cooked, the fish becomes almost incidental. Dungeness crab, meanwhile, is bombarded by a black pepper sauce.

There were more complaints than he usually incorporates in a two-star review, unless it’s a three-star aspirant gone bad. I suppose it means that Bruni seriously considered awarding three stars, and felt obligated to give the reasons why not. We thought the John Dory was very obviously a two-star place from the get-go, but we hear Chef April Bloomfield was disappointed.

The trouble is that when Bruni gives three stars to marginal places, every chef thinks it can happen to them, even though their restaurant lacks most of the amenities a three-star place should have. The John Dory is a two-star restaurant—in the good sense—and has nothing to be ashamed of:

Ms. Bloomfield’s revel in richness and big flavors pays off. Two in particular stand out: this restaurant’s answers to the gnudi that Ms. Bloomfield made famous at the Spotted Pig. Only they’re more adventurous, and possibly even more enjoyable.

One of them, an appetizer labeled an oyster pan roast, is essentially a thick, garlicky, intense bisque in which several of the plumpest, most tender oysters imaginable loll. But even that’s not the whole of it. With the bisque comes crostini covered in overlapping petals of a pale orange purée of uni, butter and salt. If Poseidon had a preferred canapé, this would be it.

The other marquee dish, an entree, involves several large, seared bulbs of squid that are stuffed, as the menu promises, with chorizo. But once again the menu is indulging in understatement. The chorizo is joined by Bomba rice, saffron and more: a veritable paella’s worth of ingredients, and a very fine paella at that.

We are back on the winning track this week, winning $3 on our hypothetical one-dollar bet. Eater loses a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$109.50		$126.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+3.00
Total	$108.50		$129.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	50–25		52–23

Rolling the Dice: The John Dory

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni goes swimming at the John Dory, the new Ken Friedman/April Bloomfield seafood place. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 25-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 250-1

The Skinny: A bad review (zero or one) would be a big surprise here. Ken Friedman knows how to run a restaurant, April Bloomfield can most assurely cook, and reports have been fairly positive—including ours.

But three stars? Hoo boy, that’s stretching it, even by Bruni’s loose standards. Bruni has given the trifecta to some dubious restaurants, but we don’t see here the level of execution we observed at Dovetail, Matsugen, or BLT Fish in its early days—all three-star laureates that should have received two.

Our bets lately have not been very reliable, but we’re going with the safer choice.

The Bet: We predict that Frank Bruni will award an enthuisastic two stars to the John Dory.

Centro Vinoteca

[Kalina via Eater]

Note: Centro Vinoteca closed in March 2013. The following review was written under chef Leah Cohen, who left the restaurant in September 2009.

*

Centro Vinoteca is one of those restaurants that raises immediate suspicion, with its achingly long 18-month gestation and a game of musical chefs before it served its first meal in the summer of 2007. Frank Bruni’s middling one-star review did nothing to pique my curiosity.

Last fall, founding chef Anne Burrell—she of the blonde spikey hair, perhaps best known as Mario Batali’s sidekick on Iron Chef—left the restaurant. Apparently all of her TV gigs were interfering with more important matters—like, you know, cooking. No successor was announced, but the owners quietly passed the baton to sous chef Leah Cohen (left), whom they knew — although we did not — was about to appear as a “cheftestant” on Season 5 of Bravo’s Top Chef.

Cohen has had an eventful season on the show. As of this writing, she has made it to the final five, out of an original cast of seventeen. She is not a bad chef, but she will probably be remembered for getting caught on camera playing tonsil hockey with a fellow cheftestant. Most observers expect her to be sent home well before the finale, as she has barely scraped by in the last several challenges.

Of course, the episodes we watch now were taped months ago. As of today, Cohen is chef de cuisine at Centro Vinoteca, and the restaurant’s website doesn’t fail to remind you. I don’t know how many people visit the restaurant to see her—as if you could actually “see” anything—but they are milking it for all it’s worth.

We paid a visit on Saturday evening. Okay, I’ll admit it: I wanted to see what Cohen’s food was like, apart from the contrived and time constrained challenges imposed on TV. Whether due to Cohen’s minor celebrity turn or other reasons, the restaurant was as crowded as any we have been in lately. It is a noisy, cramped space, and not especially pleasant. (An upstairs dining room appears to be a bit more civilized.)

For a casual Italian joint, prices here are a tad on the high side, with antipasti $10–16, primi $14–18, and secondi $22–36. The menu appears to be changing regularly. Many of the items mentioned in the Bruni review have been replaced.

 

Both pastas were very strong: a kabocha squash ravioli with walnuts ($14; above left) and a squid ink tagliatelle with baby squid, shrimp and cockles ($18; above right). But both pastas got cold too quickly, as the plates had not been pre-warmed.

 

Sausage-Stuffed Baby Chicken ($22; above left) suffered from a lack of balance between its two main ingredients. There was about a millimeter of chicken wrapped around far too much of the sausage. It was tender and nicely complemented by a bed of creamy polenta and mushrooms, but the sausage was too powerful a presence.

Ribeye Steak ($36; above right) is a bail-out dish in many restaurants. It was beautifully done here, but my girlfriend said that the potato prosciutto fontina cake underneath it was inedible.

If Centro Vinoteca offered a more quieter atmosphere, I might consider returning to try more of the pastas. They weren’t good enough to compensate for the loud, cramped atmosphere and the uneven entrées.

Centro Vinoteca (74 Seventh Avenue S. at Bleecker/Barrow Streets, West Village)

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

Perle

Note: Perle closed in January 2009. The space became “1834 Bar & Burger.”

*

What is it with classic French brasseries these days? In the last year, they’ve been sprouting up all over town, admittedly with mixed success. Just when Adam Platt was ready to dance on the grave of French cuisine, it has returned with a vengeance.

So now comes Perle, deep in the Financial District, on the same row of Colonial-era townhouses as Fraunces Tavern. It sports one of the glitziest websites we’ve seen in a while and a bi-level renovation that cannot have come cheap. The upstairs looks like a Paris transplant, while the bustling wine bar and “boudoir” (a private party room) downstairs have a more “clubby” vibe.

  

There’s nothing original on the menu, but everything we tasted was executed flawlessly, from Poulpes [octopus] Provençale ($11; above left) to a Terrine de Canard ($11; above center and right).

 

Likewise a humble but thoroughly addictive Bœef Bourguignon ($19; above left) and a tender Magret de Canard ($23; above right).

Service was just fine for this type of restaurant. Butter was too cold, but everything else was as it should be. A vegetable side dish went forgotten. We were not charged, but given the large portion sizes it was just as well. An after-dinner drink was comped.

At first, I feared the downstairs wine bar was doing better business than the dining room, but our reservation was early. By the time we left (around 8:20 p.m.) the dining room was about 2/3rds full. A place like this will need word-of-mouth, because it isn’t quite important enough to be a dining destination, and most of the critics are likely to ignore it—not that they should, but it’s the cold reality.

If you like French classics, you’ll probably love Perle.

Perle (62 Pearl Street near Broad Street, Financial District)

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

The Payoff: Oak Room at the Plaza

Today, Frank Bruni gives the Oak Room a one-star spanking from which it may not recover, finding that “there were letdowns, huge and many”:

I had meals stippled with disappointment. More than a few dishes were clumsily executed or vacuously luxurious. Seldom have I had so many black truffle shavings thrown at me to so little effect.

The prices aren’t crazy in the context of such truffling and trappings; in fact, they’re reportedly 25 percent lower than they were slated to be back in the early fall, before the economy deteriorated further.

But they remain steep enough — $34 for cod, $44 for a double-cut pork chop — to build expectations for meals more seamless than the ones I had… .

[F]or anyone seeking relatively firm assurance that a serious tab will mean serious pleasure, the Oak Room won’t do. It’s more looker than performer.

Make no mistake: the Oak Room was designed for three stars; to receive only one is a serious setback. Among new restaurants reviewed during Frank Bruni’s tenure, only V Steakhouse and the Russian Tea Room stand out as comparable smackdowns. The former is now closed; the latter fired its chef not long after the review.

I haven’t dined at the Oak Room, so I can only say that if Bruni had the meals he described, a one-star rating may be too generous—an insult to the many restaurants where one star actually means what it is supposed to mean: “good”.

In the wagering department, we have not been doing well since our BruniBetting feature resumed. We’ve been losing lately far more often than we’ve been winning. But this week, Eater was wrong too, so we both lose a dollar on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$110.50		$127.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$109.50		$126.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	50–24		51–23

The La Frieda Black Label Burger

Note: City Burger closed in July 2009.

Mister Cutlets, among others, have been giving lots of love to the LaFrieda Black Label Burger. Cutlets calls it the “Bentley of Beef.” According to A Hamburger Today:

The Black Label blend is aimed at high-end restaurants and features an intoxicating mix of skirt, brisket, short rib, and a secret cut that is actually dry aged! It has an extremely generous 70/30 meat-to-fat ratio, making for an ethereally succulent burger.

It is most curious that a secret blend allegedly aimed at high-end restaurants is available only at the lowest-end restaurant, City Burger in midtown. It’s a slip of a space with less ambiance (though better service) than the average McDonald’s. The only seating is at either of two narrow counters, one of which is along the glass wall. I kept on my winter coat, and I was still freezing.

This Bentley of Burgers comes in a styrofoam box. I’ve nothing against styrofoam at fast food restaurants, but I struggle to comprehend why this ultra-secret, heavily hyped blend is served nowhere else. Anyhow, it is a very good burger, a bit on the small side, with a hint of dry-aged flavor and a foie gras-like richness. The bun that City Burger uses doesn’t quite stand up to such a juicy piece of meat (more photos here and here).

The Black Label Burger sells for $12.99, twice the cost of the regular burger. With french fries ($2.75) and a diet soda ($1.95), the bill came to $19.17. And just one word of caution: City Burger is closed on weekends—as I found out to my dismay when I stopped by on a Saturday evening.

City Burger (1410 Broadway near 39th Street, West Midtown)

Rolling the Dice: Oak Room at the Plaza

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews the legendary Oak Room at The Plaza, recently under new management with a Michelin-lauded chef, Joel Antunes. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 20-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 4-1
Four Stars: 25-1

The Skinny: The poor Oak Room had the misfortune to open right into the headwind of the worst recession in a generation. The price of dinner here is more than a car payment. The cuisine is luxe Continental—always a tough sell in New York, even in the best of times.

Pro reviewers to date all give Chef Antunes his due, but none of them are shouting from the rooftops, “You must eat here!” — the way they did at Corton, for example. This isn’t a style of dining that has ever floated Frank Bruni’s boat, and we suspect he’ll find the high price point off-putting, unless everything served was absolutely perfect.

We agree with Eater that the odds between two and three stars are nearly in equipoise, and any other outcome would be surprising. Given Bruni’s track record, we agree that two stars is the slightly more probable outcome.

The Bet: We agree with Eater that Frank Bruni will most likely award two stars to the Oak Room.