Aldea

 

Note: Just a month after switching to a prix fixe-only format, chef George Mendes flip-flopped after regulars told him they preferred the à la carte menu. So Aldea now has the same menu every day (though there is still a $95 tasting menu). Ironically, the switch to prix fixe is what drew me back to Aldea, but obviously with the customers who mattered, it wasn’t popular.

*

Last week, Ryan Sutton, Bloomberg’s restaurant critic, reported that Aldea has switched to a prix fixe-only format on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. The chef, George Mendes, told Sutton that the new format would “mak[e] Aldea better” and although it’s a price hike, it’s “more about the ingredients and what I’m offering.” The chef also said that he’d eventually like Aldea to be a prix fixe restaurant every night.

I hadn’t written about Aldea since shortly after it opened, in mid-2009. I gave it 2½ stars at the time. Every pro critic in town gave it two or three. It also won a Michlen star in 2011, which it has maintained. The Sutton piece made me curious to see what has changed.

The space remains, as I described it four years ago, “flat-out gorgeous.” It’s on the casual side of formal, but comparatively serene by today’s standards. The sound track is quiet enough not to interfere, and consists mostly of items a guy my age would recognize.

The à la carte menu remains relatively brief, with six Petiscos, or snacks ($8–16), five selections of hams and terrines ($9–18), eight starters ($11–21), and eight entrées ($27–38). By way of comparison, four years ago $27 was the most expensive main course, rather than the least expensive. That was, of course, right in the teeth of the financial crisis, and Aldea was an unproven restaurant then.

On weekends, your choices are a $75 three-course prix fixe (probably with an amuse or two, though the menu doesn’t say that) or a tasting menu at $95. Given such a small difference, the tasting menu was the obvious choice. (Click on the image, left, for a larger copy of the menu.) We also ordered the wine pairings, which add another $50 per person, bringing the total for two to $376 including tax and tip.

The wine list remains a weakness. As it was from the beginning, it’s just one sheet of paper, printed on both sides. It’s a decent selection, and fairly priced, given that limitation. But you’d think, after four years, critical acclaim, a Michelin star, the economy in better shape, and the restaurant well past its probation, that they’d have upgraded it.

The printed tasting menu listed nine courses. Fifteen items were sent out, although many (especially early in the meal) were rather small—essentially just bites.

 

The amuse bouche was described as a “mojito meringue” (above left). This was followed by a number of small courses, several of which appear on the regular menu as “Petiscos.” First up was a trio of items (above right): an Island Creek oyster with Steelhead trout caviar; a terrific mussel soup with fennel and chorizo; and a Bacalhau Croqueta with roasted garlic aioli.

 

Then a beet floret with goat cheese sitting in moss (above left) and a dellicate poached quail egg (above right).

 

Finally, a remarkable warm stew of roasted bacalhau (codfish), scrambled egg, crispy potato, and black olives, served warm inside a hollowed-out egg (above left); and a dish that I believe has been on the menu from the beginning, the sea urchin toast (above right).

 

There was a rich Foie Gras Terrine (above left) with cranberry jam and an apple poached in vanilla. The toasted brioche (not pictured) was a considerable improvement over the untoasted country bread that the chef sent out four years ago, but he sent out only two slices of it, when four were needed.

A Diver Scallop (above right) was the evening’s one blunder. The delicate flavor of the poor scallop was overwhelmed by a bitter black radish sitting on top of it, and not redeemed by glazed turnips and hen-of-the-woods mushrooms.

 

A crisped brick of suckling pig (above left) suffered no harm from accompaniments of little neck clams, pickled cauliflower, carrots, and savoy cabbage; but I didn’t feel like those extra items enhanced the pig, either.

The cheese course (above right) was a Kinderhook sheep’s milk cheese from the Hudson Valley, with a wheat cracker and spice fig marmelade. (Sorry about the awful photo.)

 

The pre-dessert (above right) was exactly what such an intermezzo should be, a vanilla custard with mango sorbet and mint granita.

The dessert (above left) was a lemongrass and coconut-milk panna cotta with a blizzard of other ingredients: poached kumquat, coconut-Thai basil granita, and coriander-fennel crisp. This struck me as a bit too citrus-y. Your mileage may vary. There was a plate of petits fours (right) that we were far too full to fully appreciate.

The service was excellent. The meal took about 2½ hours to complete, which is a reasonable pace for this amount of food. The wine pairings were well chosen, given the constraints of the list, but I am not going to itemize them. There were seven generous pours, which was more than enough alcohol for one evening. I can’t evaluate the economics of the chef’s prix fixe experiment, but I had no trouble getting a prime-time Friday evening reservation the same day. The dining room was doing a good business, but was not full.

As is so often the case, the smaller courses at the beginning of the meal (the petiscos and appetizers) pleased us more than the main courses, although the scallop was the only dish that failed outright. No chef is going to send out fifteen courses that please everyone. Among tasting menus available in New York, this is surely one of the better ones below $100.

Aldea (31 W. 17th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: Modern Portuguese cuisine, liberally interpreted
Service: Upscale but not formal
Ambiance: A beautiful, fairly quiet, modern room.

Rating: ★★★

The Four Seasons on Valentine's Day

In the restaurant industry, they call Valentine’s Day “amateur night.” I call it a challenge. Any restaurant worth visiting is going to charge more money than usual—perhaps a lot more. The game is to find one that’s still worth it, despite the premium. Yes, they do exist.

Strictly as an economic proposition, you could dine another evening, and pay a lot less. But Valentine’s Day isn’t strictly about economics, is it? Sometimes, a romantic occasion is what’s wanted. Not just any old day, but a specific day.

If cost were all that mattered, you could skip flying home for Christmas, and visit Mom instead on a random Tuesday in January, when airfares are a lot lower. You’re not going to do that, are you? How about skipping Thanksgiving dinner, and waiting till they run a supermarket sale on turkeys? Obviously not. Some occasions only make sense on a particular day.

It’s anyone’s prerogative to declare that dining out on Valentine’s Day just isn’t worth it, and I’m not going to tell you they’re wrong. But they’ve got no business telling me that I’m wrong for wanting a romantic occasion on a romantic day, and being willing to pay for it.

For this Valentine’s Day, I chose the Four Seasons. No one with an ounce of common sense would deny the romantic elegance of the iconic, landmarked space. Every day is a romantic occasion here. I figured that the food might not be any better than their usual performance, but it was unlikely to be much worse.

It has been three and a half years since the Four Seasons’ executive chef, Christian Albin, passed away suddenly. The owners, hoping to bring back culinary relevance after The Times’ Frank Bruni took away the restaurant’s third star, hired the Italian chef Fabio Trabocchi, who’d earned three stars at Fiamma.

I was skeptical of the Trabocchi experiment: there’s something about star chefs in pretty spaces that just doesn’t add up. He lasted just three months before getting the boot. He and the owners cited “philosophical differences.” Simply put, Trabocchi wanted to install his own menu, but its well heeled regulars didn’t want it to change.

After Trabocchi’s left, the owners promoted Pecko Zantilaveevan and Larry Finn, two of Albin’s former deputees, and the Four Seasons just kept doing what it has always done. No one in recent memory has accused the Four Seasons of setting any culinary trends. It does what it does, either well or badly. My last visit, in 2007, was a mixed bag.

The Valentine’s Day menu, undeniably expensive at $150 per person, was surprisingly clever for a place not known for innovation. There was a choice of about twenty appetizers, fifteen entrées and a dozen desserts, all with double-ententre names, such as: Peek-a-Bouillabaisse, Not that Kind of a Dungeoness Crab Salad, and Fluttering Heart Beet Salad. Sure, they were groaners, but just try to come up with better ones on a nearly fifty-item menu.

We sampled only a fraction of it, but the food was uniformly good. For a restaurant bent on preserving its traditions, all you can ask is that they deliver on their proffer—and they did.

(On the normal à la carte dinner menu, the appetizers average about $30 and the entrées about $50, and I am not sure what they charge for desserts. In round numbers, the Valentine’s Day premium was at least $50 per person or more, depending on which dishes you ordered.)

The bread, served cold, was the evening’s lone disappointment. The amuse bouche (above left) was a bracing potato leek soup with baked potato and salmon roe, served on a plate decorated with little hearts.

 

The appetizers were both first-rate. The first, to give its full description, was Dreamy Hamachi Sashimi (above left) with va-va-voom vegetables and i love you-zu remoulade. A lobe of seared foie gras (above right), or should I say, Frisky Foie Gras, was perched atop proposal pear and let’s take a napa cabbage. There might not be a lot of skill in searing foie gras, but it was one of the better specimens I’ve had in a while.

Truffle-Roasted Orgasmic chicken for two (above) was an absurdly luxurious dish, with truffles, vegetables, and more foie gras. Of course you can pay less for chicken, but that is hardly the point.

 

The desserts, also excellent, were the Poached Perfect Pear (above left) and the Elderflower Girl Cheescake (above right), followed by petits fours (below right).

The fifteen-page wine list has not many bottles that could be called bargains, but in the context of a restaurant this expensive, it is fairly priced, with an adequate number of bottles in the $80–100 range, along with many that cost a lot more. The 1999 “Le Roi” Burgundy at $95 stood out as an unusually good deal.

Pool Room has always been the more romantic of the Four Seasons’ two contrasting spaces, but the Grill Room, where we were seated, looked lovely, with its shimmering gold curtains. The service was a bit slow, perhaps because they had to roast the chicken from scratch, but you don’t visit the Four Seasons on Valentine’s Day because you’re in a rush. The table was ours for the evening.

I won’t deny that you can have bad meal here, given that my own previous experience here was less than stellar, especially at the price. But when they pull it together, as they did on this occasion, the Four Seasons is extraordinary.

The Four Seasons (99 E. 52nd St. between Park & Lexington Ave., East Midtown)

Food: New American, dating from the era when it actually was new
Service: Elegant but not opulent; occasionally careless
Ambiance: A landmark, and deservedly so

Rating: ★★★

Table Verte

Table Verte is the latest offering from chef Didier Pawlicki of La Sirène and Taureau. It opened under the radar, with about the worst timing possible, last October, just before Hurricane Sandy devastated the far East Village.

Pawlicki’s three restaurants couldn’t be more different: a traditional bistro (La Sirène), a fondue place (Taureau), and now a vegetarian spot (Table Verte, or “green table”). The cuisine of Pawlicki’s native France is the only tie that binds them together.

Table Verte occupies the former Taureau space, which became vacant when Pawlicki was able to move Taureau to a storefront next to La Sirène. Unlike the first two restaurants, his role here is as an owner–patron, with chef Ken Larsen running the kitchen full-time.

I’ve enjoyed both of Pawlicki’s places, but I probably wouldn’t have visited Table Verte on my own dime, as I’m not a vegetarian. I was there at the publicist’s invitation, and although I enjoyed the meal, I’m not the one to say how it ranks with the city’s other vegetarian restaurants.

The goal, as the chef explained it, was to serve enjoyable French-inspired food that “just happens” to be meatless. A mixed party of vegetarians, vegans, gluten-frees, and carnivores could dine here, without major sacrifices by anyone. There aren’t any gimmicks, or dishes tricked up to look like one thing, while actually being another. The food is straightforward, and mostly very good.

Though Pawlicki doesn’t cook here, his fingerprints are all over the place, from the spare décor, the odd menu prices (ending in .25, .50, .75), and the Franglais menu, occasionally with grammatical and spelling errors.

Nothing is expensive. Soups and appetizers are $3.75–9.50, larger plates $14.50–19.75, side dishes $2.00–6.00. Every dish is labeled vegan, gluten free, or in some cases neither. (Some dishes are made with butter and/or cheese.) The menu changes weekly.

A warm Rosemary Onion Focaccia (above left), baked in house, is so soft and flavorful that it doesn’t need butter (and none is supplied).

 

There are several “Plats Froids” (cold plates) on the menu, or you can have a selection of three for $7.00. For this arranged tasting, the chef sent out a quartet of them (above right): 1) Celery root marinated with lemon juice and dressed with house-made mayonaise; 2) Lentils vinaigrette with brunoise of carrots, celery and leeks with Dijon vinaigrette; 3) Beets with horseradish, seasoned with shallots, tarragon and herbs; 4) Assortment of carrots, with chickpease, leeks, and raisins in a lemon spiced vinaigrette.

The lengthy descriptions give an idea of the kind of effort that goes into these salads. They are all worthwhile. I also enjoyed the Yam Cake ($3.75; nine o’clock position in the photo, above right), made with layers of sweet potatoes, seasoned with nutmeg and cinnamon.

 

I disliked the Vegan Cassoulet ($14.75; above left), as I couldn’t put out of my mind what it lacked: the combination of duck confit and pork sausages, or the like, that a cassoulet traditionally requires. If you love real cassoulet, you’ll feel that something crucial is missing.

Gnocchi Parisian au Gratin ($19.75; above right) is the chef’s marvellous interpretation of mac and cheese, made with 180-day-old swiss cheese, shallots, and black truffle. This is a much better bet for carnivores, as you won’t wish the dish contained anything else. (We were served tasting-sized portions; the full entrée sized portion is enormous and should probably be shared—it is that rich.)

 

Dessert was “my grandmother’s semolina wheat cake” with crème anglaise, rum and raisins ($5.50; above far left), gluten-free chocolate ganache with rice, almond and raisin crust ($8.75; above middle), and a Banana Brûlée ($6.50; above right). Once again, the gluten-free chocolate was the least successful (for this carnivore), because I was reminded of what it lacked. The other two were excellent.

The intimate space seats just 38. The chef works with just one assistant and serves many of the dishes himself. As far as I could judge, other tables got the same good service that we did; the space wasn’t full on the weeknight we visited, but this being the East Village, it operates on very different hours than I do. The restaurant is currently BYOB; a wine license is expected in the spring.

Table Verte isn’t a fancy spot, but it’s rustic, hearty, and enjoyable. I probably won’t be back on my own, but if I were entertaining a vegetarian friend, it would have my business. As far as I can tell, it’s a success for what it’s trying to be, and should build a strong East Village following.

Table Verte (127 E. 7th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A, East Village)

Bistro Le Midi

 

Note: At the time of this review, Chip Smith was the chef. He has since moved onto The Simone. We’ve not been back to Le Midi since he left.

*

French cuisine is making a small comeback. It never really went away, but for a long time in the mid-aughts, new French restaurants were more dreamt of than seen.

I’ll believe France is really back when a French restaurant like Ai Fiori or The NoMad opens, and gets three stars. Otherwise, chefs are just doodling around the margins of excellence, fearful of critic backlash.

But there is plenty to enjoy in the meantime. Enter Le Midi, a new casual bistro near Union Square. It offers the sort of hearty, rustic French menu that I love. The space is modern-looking, and a bit austere, despite the white tablecloths. Old movies play silently on a screen above the bar.

The menu offers bistro standards, with a few announced specials. Soups and starters are $8–14, mains $18–28, sides $5–6, plus the obligatory burger at $14. Fries didn’t come with any of the dishes we had, but should you order them, the portion size is ample, and they looked irresistible.

The wine list is better than it has to be. We were surprised to find a 2005 Médoc for $48 (above left). New places in this restaurant’s price range tend to have very little older than 2009, or so. We ordered that, and were quite pleased with it.

The bread service (above right) was humble, but at least served warm.

 

My fiancée nominated a warm Frisée aux Lardons ($12; above right) as an early candidate for Salad of the Year, with a luscious poached egg and a musky bacon flavor. A duck terrine ($12; above right) was fine, but not as memorable.

 

Duck Leg Confit ($21; above left) and Coq au Vin ($21; above right) were good renditions of classic dishes—not the best you’ve had, but at this price well worth your trouble.

We ordered dessert (a rarity for us), a perfectly respectable Strawberry Shortcake ($9; left).

I didn’t make note of the cocktails we ordered at the bar before our meal, and there isn’t an online list, but my recollection is they were a good deal better than you’d expect at such a place. They wouldn’t transfer the tab, a lapse I’ll forgive at Le Midi’s price range. Once at the table, the server was attentive, his ordering advice dependable.

The restaurant, doing comfortable business but not full on a Wednesday evening, attracts what appears to be a neighborhood crowd. So far, Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice is the only professional critic to have noticed it. He departed a happy man. So did we.

Le Midi (11 E. 13th Street between University Place & Fifth Avenue, Union Square)

Food: French bistro standards
Service: Casual, but just fine at the price range
Ambiance: An austere, modern space, where tablecloths don’t feel old-school

Rating: ★

Jo's

 

Note: Jo’s closed in May 2013.

*

Over three years ago, I wrote a mostly favorable review of Jo’s in NoLIta, which soon became obsolete after the owners fired the chef. The restaurant soldiered on for a couple of years with cooks, but apparently without a named chef, before Andrew Pressler (formerly of the Fatty Crab empire) was appointed executive chef late last year.

The owners recently invited my family and me to pay a return visit. We paid for our drinks, but the food was comped.

The space remains as I described it last time. The bar business is brisk; the cocktails are a strength, and at $11 a bargain by Manhattan standards. The new menu is dotted with Southeast Asian accents, although it’s not as provocative as the “Fatty” menus. But if you like that style, you’ll like this place, and it is less expensive.

On the current online menu, starters (dubbed “small plates”) are $7–16, entrées and house specialties $14–23, side dishes $3.50–6.00, desserts $7.50–11.00.

 

Our first quartet of dishes was:

1) Mussels with spicy garlic and butter ($12; above left)

2) House-made mushroom and cabbage dumplings ($6; above right)

3) Spicy shrimp with curry ($14; below left)

4) Deep-fried ork ribs ($16; below right)

 

The ribs were the highlight of this course, as luscious and plump as I’ve had anywhere.

 

Whole red snapper ($34 for two; above left) with curry and banana was the highlight of the evening, beautifully prepared, and easily separated with no bones to speak of. Shrimp fried rice with chili peppers ($14; above right) had an intense, fiery finish.

 

Fried chicken with butternut squash ($18; above left) was coated in a memorable plum sauce. Vietnamese Lamb Pho ($12; above right) in fish oil received nods of approval at our table, though I found it less compelling than the other entrées.

 

Fried chicken & waffle ice cream with maple syrup ($9; above left) is one of those gimmick desserts you have to order, but it really didn’t need shards of fried chicken skin protruding at odd angles. Peanut butter s’mores ($7.50; above right) is a much raved-about dessert, and deservedly so: a must-order.

 

Lime panna cotta with coconut (above left; not on current published menu) was a bit rubbery, but there were no complaints with a simple bowl of three house-made ice creams ($7.50; above right).

I’ve listed the prices above, where the items correspond to the current on-line menu. At the current rates, and compared to similar places, the food struck us as very good, with perhaps just one or two items slightly disappointing, among the dozen we tried. The chicken, the fish, the fried ribs, the fried rice, and the peanut butter s’mores are all highly recommended.

It’s hard to re-launch a restaurant under the same name: to the critics, it’s not considered a novelty. If you haven’t been to Jo’s lately, you haven’t been to Jo’s. I’m a big fan of the “Fatty Crab” style of cooking; I know it’s not for everyone. If you like the style—you know who you are—Jo’s is worth a try.

Jo’s (264 Elizabeth Street, south of Houston Street, NoLIta)

Sirio Ristorante

Note: Sirio closed in February 2015. A French–American restaurant called Perrine replaced it.

*

Sirio Ristorante is the latest offering from the Maccioni family, the clan behind Le Cirque and Circo in New York, and half-a-dozen similar places in Las Vegas, India, and the Dominican Republic.

The patriarch, Sirio Maccioni, was once the top maitre d’ in the city. He still holds court at the mother ship, but day-to-day management of the company is now in the hands of his three sons.

There is some evidence that the empire is not what it used to be: last year, Pete Wells knocked Le Cirque all the way down from three stars to one, whereupon they fired the chef. He has not yet been replaced, to my knowledge; his name still appears on the website.

Still, in multiple visits to Le Cirque and Circo, particularly the former, I’ve found that they can certainly dazzle you on occasion. (This would be the case, even if you discount a comped visit to Le Cirque last year at the restaurant’s invitation.) We were dazzled again at Sirio last week. As far as I can tell, we weren’t recognized. None of Sirio’s sons, nor the maitre d’, visited our table; nothing was comped. The food was simply superb.

Our experience does not square with either Adam Platt of New York, nor Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post, both who gave it just one star. Even Gael Greene, who is recognized everywhere she goes, filed a negative review.

Most of the critics—Platt in particular—are predictably hostile to restaurants that cater to the affluent, as an Upper East Side restaurant in The Pierre hotel, facing Central Park, is inevitably expected to do. To criticize the mission is absurd. Review it on its own terms, or don’t go. Nevertheless, the conclusion on reading those reviews is that you can have a bad meal here. We had an excellent one.

The city would be a poorer place without restaurants like Sirio. How nice is it to walk into a beautiful dining room, be served by a professional staff, sit in comfortable chairs, order from a wine list with real depth, and carry on a conversation in a normal speaking voice? Even if they served nothing but twinkies, there’d be value in that. Yes, it’s expensive—unavoidable in this location. You don’t have to go every day.

This is the space formerly occupied by Le Caprice, which flopped a year ago after a short stint. It too was panned by nearly everyone. The guts of the long, narrow space have the same layout as before. The Maccionis’ favorite designer, Adam Tihany, has given the dining room a colorful upgrade. There are no tablecloths, the restaurant’s lone concession to fashion.

The menu, I understand, has scaled back some of the opening prices. Still, you can spend a lot here. Antipasti are $14–36 (average about $20), primi $24–33, secondi $28–59 (most in the $30s), contorni $9.

 

Bread service (above left) was the lone disappointment: by the time we arrived for our late meal, most of the bread was stale.

Carpaccio di Manzo ($21; above right) was a wonderful starter: thinly sliced beef, quail eggs, baby bok choy, lemongrass, and shaved truffles. I wondered if the truffles could possibly be real at this price, but they certainly seemed to be.

 

Sea bass ($36; above left) came with delicious potato and artichoke chips, with a luscious caper cream sauce (above right).

 

Salmon ($34; above left) belied the myth that restaurant salmon has to be boring. Roasted with Brussels sprouts and served with a caviar sauce, it was rich and deeply satisfying.

The wine list went on for many pages and had the usual trophy wines you’d expect at such an establishment, but a 2003 Loire valley white at the back of the volume (photo of the label at the top of this post), at just $55, was magical, with a deep, musky, mature flavor that wowed us immediately.

Service was polished and correct. I would not call it elegant: by the standards of the neighborhood, it’s upscale but not luxuriious. Downtown, it would be impossible. Our reservation was at 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening. It was not full at that hour, but there were a couple of parties that arrived after us.

My isolated voice probably won’t persuade very many people that Sirio is wonderful. Platt, Cuozzo, et al, have much larger megaphones than we. But that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Sirio Ristorante (795 Fifth Avenue at 61st Street, Pierre Hotel, Upper East Side)

Food: Modern Italian with French technique
Service: Upscale but not luxurious
Ambiance: A comfortable dining room in a five-star hotel

Rating: ★★
Why? Sirio won’t be for everyone, but it fulfills its mission almost perfectly 

Jezebel

Note: After I wrote this post, the restaurant’s owner wrote a couple of nasty tweets about my reviewing qualifications. Turns out, I wasn’t so far off. About a month after our visit, the restaurant hired a new chef, Chris Mitchell, and changed its kosher supervision to the Orthodox Union, in order to broaden its appeal among kosher diners. The OU insisted that the restaurant change its name to “The J Soho,” since Jezebel (as noted below) is “a clearly wicked person” in the Bible. That strategy didn’t work. The J Soho closed in late 2013.

*

Do you remember the TV series Chicken Soup, a 1989 sitcom that starred Jackie Mason in an improbable interfaith relationship with Lynne Redgrave? It was canceled after eight episodes.

If you apply the same idea to restaurants, you wind up with Jezebel, an expensive Glatt Kosher restaurant in Soho that looks like it was helicoptered in from the Meatpacking District.

In the Book of Kings, Jezebel is a Phoenician princess who was murdered by being thown out a window. She is also sometimes associated with false prophets and prostitution. Why they chose this name for the restaurant is beyond me. Perhaps there is a Talmudic connection I have missed.

Jezebel has a very clubby look. If I learned that the folks behind Lavo and Tao consulted on the design—to the best of my knowledge, they didn’t—I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. It occupies a bi-level century-old townhouse, with a plush lounge on the ground floor and a beautifully-appointed 100-seat dining room upstairs. It’s provocatively decorated with a Last Supper parody painting, with Woody Allen in the center chair. A loud Latin sound track seems out of place.

The host, hostess, and cocktail waitresses are all quite attractive. Cocktails are $16 apiece, and many entrées soar above the $40 mark, but they won’t transfer your tab. The staff hurry you to leave the bar and head for your table, even though neither space is full.

Jezebel was packed and exclusive for about three months, but it’s now on OpenTable and bookable most evenings, any time you want. (They’re closed Fridays, of course.) I can’t compare Jezebel to other kosher restaurants, but as a glam restaurant that just happens to keep kosher, Jezebel has very little appeal.

The website credits Bradford Thompson, the former Lever House chef, though the extent of his day-to-day involvement is unclear. The website also claims “extraordinary” and “innovative” cuisine. It is neither. Most of the dishes, in fact, are snoozers. Almost all are very expensive. A $110 steak for two headlined the menu, with no mention of quality or aging, whcih probably means it was unaged choice. (Do the laws of Kashrut even allow aging?)

I didn’t photograph the bread course, but there was hardly any need: unimpressive onion rolls. The Daily News review mentioned a carrot-and-chickpea spread that’s supposed to come with it, but our server seems to have forgotten it, and we didn’t know to ask.

An order of veal meatballs (above right) was priced in the high teens. You’ll eat them and quickly forget them. Another restaurant would put cream in the sauce, but Jezebel can’t.

 

Much the same is true of Salmon (above left) and Braised Short Ribs (above right): just fine, but you’ve had better, for less money. The short ribs, I believe, were $46.

In a new restaurant, I usually ask a server what he recommends. This one went straight to the most expensive item, that $110 steak, strictly an amateur-hour move. He also pushed the side dishes, which we skipped, as they would have been entirely unnecessary. All the other staff were friendly and helpful.

The wine list is better than the restaurant deserves. Some of the prices are just crazy, but there are good bottles under $60, like the 2007 Rioja we had. The rebbe who poured it was a real mensch, one of the highlights of the evening. There’s a cohort of Israeli wines, as you’d expect, but at the prices they’re asking I wasn’t about to risk trying one.

If your beliefs do not require you to eat this way, you’ll find this food very boring. There was, to be fair, nothing specifically wrong with it, except that, for what it is, it ought to cost a lot less.

Food: Boring and very expensive kosher steak and fish
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Reminds you of a restaurant connected to a nightclub

Rating: Not recommended, except for affluent machers.