Fiamma Closes: The Bigger Picture

Eater.com reports that Fiamma, Stephen Hanson’s acclaimed SoHo Italian spot, has closed. Two thoughts immediately spring to mind.

Number one, this is the first “recession-related” closure that I’m actually sad about. I never got around to dining at Fiamma, but it was obviously a first-class place. The other closures I’ve seen lately were marginal restaurants that most people won’t miss. They were either not very good, not very important, or both. Bear in mind that the restaurant industry always has a high failure rate. Many of these places would have failed anyway—though perhaps not as soon.

Number two, Fiamma was part of a large empire: Stephen Hanson’s B. R. Guest, with almost twenty restaurants under its wing (before today). In theory, Hanson might have had the resources to subsidize losses at his most acclaimed restaurant with revenues from some of the others. To know whether that made sense, we’d need to know his overall financial picture, but you’ve got to figure it was considered.

The point is that many restaurants at Fiamma’s level aren’t part of a big conglomerate. If revenues are down, the owner has nowhere else to go. If Fiamma couldn’t make it, then what about everyone else?

The Payoff: BarBao and The West Branch

Today, Frank Bruni delivers identical one-star verdicts on BarBao and The West Branch:

Both the West Branch, a mostly Mediterranean brasserie, and BarBao, which interprets Vietnamese cuisine, deserve to make it. While their kitchens aren’t consistent enough or their menus quite original enough to brand them destination restaurants, they have real talent in their DNA and bring serious food to a patch of Manhattan that, for all its recent strides, could still use more of it.

This was one of Bruni’s better reviews. The text was consistent with the rating, and the rating was consistent with the general buzz about these places, and in the case of BarBao, with my own observations. And he resisted the temptation to give two stars to The West Branch merely because it is inexpensive.

Bruni liked BarBao a tad better than The West Branch. Yet, he thinks we may be heading into a burgers-‘n’-fries era, which could work to the latter restaurant’s favor. He found The West Branch consistently full, but BarBao always had empty tables (as it did when we visited). However, it could be less about the recession, and more about the fact that Tom Valenti is already well known in the neighborhood, thanks to Ouest, his other restaurant nearby.

We went home quite unsure about our hypothetical wager with Eater.com, given that either one of these places could have earned two stars. But our sense was that if either place had struck Bruni as a destination restaurant (which is essentially what two stars means), he would have granted it the courtesy of its own review.

As we correctly predicted one star for both restaurants, we win $5 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets. Eater was correct for BarBao (winning $2), but not The West Branch (losing $1), for a net of $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$105.50		$124.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+5.00
Total	$106.50		$129.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	48–23		51–20

Rolling the Dice: Bar Bao and The West Branch

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni has a two-fer, with Michael Bao Huynh’s BarBao and Tom Valenti’s The West Branch going under the microscope. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

BarBao
Zero Stars: 6-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 35-1
Four Stars: 35,000-1

West Branch
Zero Stars: 7-1
One Star: 3-1
Two Stars: 2-1 √√
Three Stars: 5-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: Bruni’s double reviews usually have a theme. Here, it is geography: both places are on Bruni’s beloved Upper West Side, where a deuce is always in play. You wonder, though, why a new two-star restaurant would be relegated to sharing a review, when trivial one-star places have so often been given reviews to themselves.

Frank Bruni has reviewed Michael Bao Huynh twice, awarding one star at Bao 111 and two at Mai House. When we visited, we found BarBao a touch less exciting—less polished—than Mai House.

We haven’t made it to The West Branch yet, but reviews have generally been positive. It’s a less ambitious version of Valenti’s other restaurant, Ouest, but as Eater notes, Bruni could give bonus points for serving pretty good grub at recession-friendly prices.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star apiece to BarBao and The West Branch.

Rouge Tomate

[Horine via Eater]

Note: Rouge Tomate closed in August 2014, due to “economics.” The huge space was never full, but somehow, Rouge Tomate eked out a Michlein star and held onto it for five years. As the review notes below, we weren’t impressed at all, but perhaps the restaurant improved. The owners re-opened in 2016, in a new space dubbed Rouge Tomate Chelsea.

*

It’s a coincidence that we dined at Rouge Tomate just days after Frank Bruni’s one-star review came out—we made our reservation weeks ago. I went in suspecting that Bruni had been too stingy. I went out convinced he was too generous.

Rouge Tomate is a health lecture disguised as a restaurant. Its “mission” is to provide “a harmonious alignment of balanced cuisine, well-being, and social and environmental consciousness.” It adheres to the principles of Sanitas Per Escam (S.P.E.), a Latin phrase meaning “Health Through Food.”

Perhaps a better principle would be, “Avoid restaurants with mission statements.”

There’s a serious chef: Jeremy Bearman, who has worked for Joël Robuchon and Daniel Boulud. You almost get the sense that if he could toss the S.P.E. rule book, Bearman could rustle up a a memorable meal.

But almost nothing we had at Rouge Tomate tasted very good. With the exception of one dish, it was all very bland and forgettable. And it doesn’t come cheap. Although a $72 prix fixe was wisely jettisoned in the restaurant’s early days, dinner for two still set us back almost $175 (before tip), including cocktails ($12 each) and a $42 bottle of wine.

The bread service (above left) was typical of the many culinary blunders at Rouge Tomate. The bread itself was wonderful, but puréed spinach was a poor stand-in for butter. We love spinach—truly, we do—but in this role it was miscast.

The trio of amuses bouches (above right) were a mixed bag. Puréed beet leaves were awful. A beet gelée tinged with horseradish was arguably too intense, but at least it had flavor. A “beet tartare” had very little flavor at all.

Market Potato and Farm Egg (above left; $15) got a boost from a poached egg, but the potato hash and a streak of “foraged mushrooms” contributed no excitement on their own.

The mushrooms were a more welcome presence in a faux risotto with barley, winter truffles, parmesan, and a Maderia wine reduction (above right; $19). This was the only really enjoyable dish we tasted at Rouge Tomate.

In the Daily News, Restaurant Girl gave Rouge Tomate an improbable four out of five stars. Among her standout dishes was the Rabbit Fleischnacke (above left; $27), a concoction of minced rabbit, chestnut pasta, apple and celery root. But we discerned no flavor at all in the rabbit, while the poor chestnuts proved a poor substitute for flour in pasta.

Duck (above right; $28) was competently prepared, and served in an ample portion. It came on a bed of root vegetables and barley with all the flavor cooked out of them.

The stunning bi-level décor makes an instant impression, but after a while it seemed as soulless and sterile as the food. We were at the far end of the dining room, cut off from whatever warmth the space might have had. Another couple seated near us had to ask twice to be moved. We couldn’t imagine why the staff hesitated, since there were plenty of empty tables to choose from at 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening.

With that curious exception, the service was excellent, to the point of suffocation. We appreciate being asked if we’re enjoying ourselves, but various servers and managers must have asked the question eight or ten times.

Eagerness to please is not the problem at Rouge Tomate. The “mission” is.

Rouge Tomate (10 East 60th Street between Fifth & Madison Avenues, Upper East Side)

Food: Fair
Service: Very Good
Ambiance: Sterile
Overall: Disappointing

Terroir

Note: Terroir in the East Village closed in January 31, as part of the culinary “divorce” between chef Marco Canora and sommelier Paul Grieco. The East Village location is expected to become a new restaurant under Canora’s supervision. Three other Terroirs (in Tribeca, in Murray Hill, and on the Highline) will remain open, under Grieco’s control.

*

I dropped by Terroir the other night to taste the pork blade steak that Frank Bruni has been raving about. He rated it one of the top ten dishes of 2008.

He’s right—up to a point. The steak, just $17, is a pig shoulder, cut thin, broiled on high heat, and lightly seasoned. Unlike Bruni, I saw no need to dump arugula and parmesan on top. The intense porky flavor never wore out on me, even though consuming this beast is a major project.

The server’s suggested wine pairing, a 2005 Merlot from Shinn Estate Vinyards on Long Island ($11.50/gl.), was as provocative as it was successful.

My last visit to Terroir was on opening night, in March 2008. Since then, the wine list has expanded, and it’s full of sommelier Paul Grieco’s signature wit. If you’re alone, it can take the place of a dinner companion.

The only trouble with Terroir is getting in. When I arrived at about 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night, I snagged the last stool available at the bar. By the time I left, the server was quoting about 15–20 minute waits for parties of two.

Although the space is perpetually full, the servers provide plenty of attention. Most people seemed to be there to drink. The chef, who occupies a cramped corner in the back of the restaurant, wasn’t working up much of a sweat. But everything she was asked to produce looked wonderful.

There’s a lot of Terroir left to try.

Terroir (413 E. 12th Street east of First Avenue, East Village)

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

The Payoff: Rouge Tomate

Today, Frank Bruni damns Rouge Tomate with faint praise, awarding one-star:

…for all its glimmer and good intentions, Rouge Tomate falters somewhat. While about a quarter of the dishes are knockouts, at least as many are overly calculated and fastidious, suggesting there’s such a thing as too much balance.

The review is fair enough on its own terms, given that Bruni wasn’t going to fall in love with this type of food, no matter how well it was done. However, one comment seemed off-key:

There’s a super-deluxe grandness to its setting that suddenly seems dated in the extreme, a vestige of headier, more hedonistic times. It had a fin de siècle feel…

Of course, Bruni knows that the over-the-top décor was planned in better times. He also knows that most recessions last no more than a year or two, after which Rouge Tomate could be suddenly ahead of its time. Perhaps this recession will be worse—nobody really knows—but it’s no reason to be condemning excellence.

As we noted yesterday, there were ample reasons for believing Frank Bruni would not love this place, along with ample others for believing—as Eater and I both did—that he would grant a second star. The uncertainty was reflected in the odds, wherein any outcome from zero to two stars was reasonably likely. That doesn’t happen very often.

We and Eater both lose $1 on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$106.50		$125.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$105.50		$124.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	47–22		49–20

The Rusty Knot

The Rusty Knot is a bar no one would have noticed, if it didn’t have Ken Friedman (The Spotted Pig, The John Dory) and Taavo Somer (Freemans) as co-owners. It is carefully gussied up to look like a dive bar, which is exactly the point. You would think, “this has been here forever,” unless you knew that it opened last year.

The still-evolving menu isn’t long, but what they serve is cheap, and mostly successful. Restaurant industry types show up here, as they do at the Pig, Momofuku, etc., because pretty damned good comfort food is served without much pretense.

As for critical opinion, Sarah DiGregorio of the Village Voice hated it, but a delighted Frank Bruni in the Times was “too content to care.” Bruni’s view, in this case, is closer to the consensus.

The location isn’t ideal: cold, inhospitable West Street, a very long walk from mass transit. But if you manage to get there early enough, there are priceless views of sunset over the Hudson River, and you avoid the crowds. If you prefer dining late, the kitchen is open till 3:00 a.m.

Oddly enough, there are three Michelin-starred restaurants less than five minutes away: Perry St., Wallsé, and the Spotted Pig. Which just goes to show that West Street is a lot more hospitable than it used to be.

The Pretzel Dog ($4; above left) comes freshly baked. It’s not noticeably better than Auntie Anne’s, except for Gray Poupon on the side and handi-wipes to wash your hands afterwards. Potato Wedges ($8; above right) are dipped in thyme, oregono, rosemary, paprika and chives, with a house made sour cream on the side. For bar food, it’s a pretty memorable dish.

To go with that, I had a couple of beers I’d never heard of: Red Stripe and Abita Light, both in bottles, and both $6.

It’s not your average dive bar.

The Rusty Knot (425 West Street at W. 11th Street, West Village)

Rolling the Dice: Rouge Tomate

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews Rouge Tomate. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 3-1
One Star: 4-1
Two Stars: 3-1 √√
Three Stars: 60-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: This week’s Eater odds reflect real uncertainty about this restaurant. In many ways, it’s not the kind of place you’d expect Bruni to love.

Rouge Tomate is like an upscale health spa. It serves the nutritionally balanced meals your mother always told you to eat. There’s no evidence that Bruni likes this type of food. This is the guy who once ate two porterhouses in one evening. It’s also a Belgian import, and Bruni doesn’t love Northern European food. Lastly, it’s on the expensive side, and Bruni tends to weigh price heavily in his star calculations.

Yet, anything lower than two stars would be an insult for this glitzy place. Bruni doesn’t mind delivering a smackdown, but he doesn’t usually choose targets that most of the other critics ignored. The only MSM review to date is four stars from Restaurant Girl, and while I don’t think RG is a good index to Bruni’s thinking, it shows there’s at least one person who likes the food—even if it’s a bit too preachy for its own good.

In hiis new year’s post, Bruni lamented “how under-served and shortchanged the Upper East Side is.” When he wrote that, he probably knew that Rouge Tomate would be his first review of 2009. Now that Bruni finally has a chance to review a restaurant on the UES—something he has rarely done—it’s hard to imagine that he would say, “Don’t bother.”

The Bet: Will Bruni come to praise Caesar Salad or to bury it? We agree with Eater that Bruni will award two stars to Rouge Tomate.

Fishtail

[Kreiger via Eater]

Note: As I predicted, Fishtail followed the pattern of other David Burke restaurants, and sank gradually into irrelevance. It closed in early 2016, long after Burke himself had moved on to other ventures.

*

We’re in a seafood moment, or maybe it’s just a coincidence. Over the last month, we have compelling new entries at the opposite ends of town, The John Dory in Southwest Chelsea and Fishtail on the Upper East Side. They’re stylistic opposites too: an edgy downtown vibe at one, old-money splendor at the other. Both places work more fish art into their décor than I ever believed possible.

I expect Fishtail to face a lot of skepticism among the Internet chattering class, many of whom believe the civilized world ends at 59th Street. But Fishtail in its early days is a surprisingly good restaurant. Ignore, if you must, the Park Avenue ladies and their face lifts. Focus instead on the bounty of fish, impeccably prepared.

The ringmaster here is David Burke. No mere chef, the owner (says his website) is “blurring the lines between chef, artist, entrepreneur and inventor.” Most conglomerate chefs at least adopt the pretense of dressing the part, even if you know they won’t be there after the review cycle is over. Burke doesn’t even bother. He was there on a Saturday night working the room, dressed in civvies.

I had my doubts about Fishtail. I paid three visits to his other Upper East Side restaurant, David Burke Townhouse (formerly David Burke & Donatella). Each time, I liked it a bit less than before. Many of Burke’s clever ideas looked interesting on paper, but didn’t quite work on the plate. And he’s spread awfully thin, lending his name to dubious enterprises like the laughable Hawaiian Tropic Zone.

At Fishtail, Burke and his culinary wit are on full display, but in the dishes we tried, practically all of it worked. Go ahead and serve a Rice Krispy Crabcake or Lobster Dumplings, but they’d better be good. And they were.

The menu features raw bar standards, small plates ($11–14), soups, salads & appetizers ($11–18), simple and whole fish à la carte ($21 & up, up, up), composed plates ($29–40) and side dishes ($6.50). You can spend a bundle, but with judicious ordering can have an excellent meal for around $50–60 a head (before wine).

Even the more expensive items seem reasonably priced for this kind of restaurant (e.g., Dover Sole, $40). A couple of items on our bill were were a bit lower than the amounts shown online, which suggests the menu is being adjusted to reality. Nevertheless, this is a luxury restaurant, and the service has most of the flourishes you’d expect at such a place.

As mentioned, Rice Krispy Crab Cakes ($15; above left) and Lobster Dumplings ($12; above right) were excellent. Both dishes had examples of Burke’s wit—the clever glass serving plate used for the crab cakes, the little tiny tails poking out of the dumplings. You can’t eat humor, but I’d gladly order these dishes again.

A whole Branzino ($27; above left) and a whole Red Snapper ($33; above right) were both prepared perfectly. In each case, the whole fish was presented in a skillet and then filleted at a serving station. Both were listed as portions for one, but the Snapper could easily have been for two.

There are sauces and garnishes for the whole fish, in a menu category called “Top Hats”—complement to Tails, get it? These are $7.50 apiece and ample enough to share, but I wouldn’t bother. A Gnocchi & Wild Mushroom sauce added nothing to these already excellent fish, and it was served slightly lukewarm.

Several of the whole fish are priced “by the pound,” a practice that can only lead to confusion. That Snapper, for instance, was $22/lb., but the menu stipulated it was 1½ pounds. So why not be done with it, and just put $33 on the menu? The Branzino, on the other hand, was listed at its correct price of $27.

 

French fries ($6.50; above left) were served in a miniature frying basket with homemade mayo. The first batch was cold and soggy. After we complained, they brought up another batch moments later, which was perfect. Cauliflower Brûlée ($6.50; above center) didn’t need a do-over: it came in a sizzling hot cast-iron dish, and was terrific.

The wine service, already very good, still needs some tweaks. A server offered to send over a sommelier before we’d even seen menus. The wine list, printed in 8-point type, is practically unreadable. What could they have been thinking? After I’d squinted my way through it, I found a great Crozes Hermitage ($50; above right). It would have been harder to find a bargain among the reds. There are some compelling verticals with real age on them, but at prices well above our budget.

The “petits-fours” (right) were little daubs of sorbet inside a candy wrapper, served on ice. It was the only time in the meal when the “chef–inventor” got too cute for his own good.

Aside from that, service was impressive, with plenty of staff in ties and vests scurrying efficiently. There were warm baguettes at the beginning of the meal, though two people shouldn’t be asked to share one butter knife.

The restaurant is set up on two floors of a townhouse, with the bar and the kitchen downstairs, and two dining rooms up above. Food runners will get plenty of exercise shuttling food upstairs, and as noted, a couple of items came out not quite warm enough.

The space is lovely, if you don’t mind bright red. It is not quite as cramped as David Burke Townhouse, but you still get a sense that there isn’t an inch to spare. Our two-top was just six inches away from the next one.

David Burke seems to have a built-in Upper East Side fan club. His earlier restaurant is perpetually packed, and his clientele seems to have followed him over to Fishtail. If I have a concern, it’s whether Burke and executive chef Eric Hara can keep up the quality after Burke moves onto other projects.

But for a one-month-old restaurant, Fishtail is impressive. I hope it will stay that way.

Fishtail (135 E. 62nd Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, Upper East Side)

Food: ★★½
Service: ★★½
Ambiance: ★★
Overall: ★★½

Shang

Note: Shang closed in October 2011. As of April 2012, the space is Blue Ribbon Sushi Izakaya.

*

New York is often unkind to imported chefs. New York’s Adam Platt, the city’s most clueless critic, once declared, “If I were them, and I had a successful restaurant elsewhere, I would not come.”

True enough, there have been some well publicized flops, especially where the itinerant chef is not in permanent residence: Lonesome Dove, anyone? Alain Ducasse has failed twice here, and at two current restaurants (Adour and Benoit) he has brought in new chefs after less than a year in business. Yet, had Thomas Keller and Joël Robuchon followed Platt’s advice, we would not have the exquisite Per Se or the sublime L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon.

Still, these are tough waters to navigate. So it took a dash of audacity for Susur Lee to close his internationally acclaimed Toronto restaurant, Susur, and open Shang on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Like those other chefs, Lee won’t be here full time (he still has another restaurant in Toronto), though he is a partner at Shang and presumably has a lot riding on its success.

In Toronto, Lee was best known for his “reverse degustation” tasting menu, which “began with robust, heavier dishes and grew progressively lighter as the evening went on.” At Shang, he wisely chooses not to demand that kind of commitment. He offers instead an à la carte menu of tasting plates, most of them (except the soups) suitable for sharing.

The menu has 35 items in various categories, priced $3–29, but most are from $13–20. The “small plates” format is notoriously prone to upselling and over-ordering, but the server’s recommendation of four to six dishes for two people was exactly right—we settled on five, plus a half-order of bread, for a total of $88.50, which is remarkable for food this good.

Shang avoids other pitfalls often encountered at this type of restaurant. Sometimes, plates advertised for sharing are actually difficult to share—e.g., three sliders for two people. Here, every dish was evenly divisible by two. (One eGullet poster, though, was annoyed when Shang served six lamb chops for a party of seven. A server ought to have noticed that.)

The other pitfall is timing. At some restaurants, the plates come out in crashing waves, drowning you in food you’re not yet ready to eat. You often wonder if the kitchen’s convenience has trumped the diner’s. Here too, the staff got it just right. We started with a salad—the immense Singapore Slaw ($16; right)—then two appetizers, and finally two main courses, all paced appropriately.

The service impressed us in other ways. Our first half-bottle of wine was slow to arrive. That shouldn’t happen, but the server handled it the right way: by telling the kitchen to slow down, so that we wouldn’t be drinking water with our appetizers.

We asked for an order of the Whole Wheat Manto Bread ($3; left). Without prompting, the server offered to cut it down to a half-order, as a full portion is more than two people would normally eat. We certainly had no way of knowing this, and many servers wouldn’t be alert enough (or honest enough) to point it out.

That Singapore Slaw comes in a volcano shape (there’s a photo on Gael Greene’s blog) before a server tosses its 19 ingredients tableside. I won’t try to describe the blizzard of flavors; you have to try it. The menu describes it as a portion for two, though four could easily share it.

The Mantou Bread is roasted to order, and the server warned it wouldn’t come out for about 20 minutes. It’s absolutely wonderful, but given that it’s only 37½ cents a slice, I wonder why the restaurant doesn’t just send out an order at the front end of every meal?

Chef Lee’s cuisine has been described as Chinese fusion. Everything we tasted was ablaze in flavor and impeccably prepared. Most of it you would find in no other restaurant.

Vegetable Potato Dumplings ($13; above left) wore a crusty cloak—yes, there are four individual dumplings on that plate. Lobster and Shrimp Croquettes ($18; above right) were in a delicate puffy jacket, each resting on a slow-cooked wedge of daikon.

Mongolian Lamb Chops ($20; above left) were as tender and flavorful as I’ve experienced in any restaurant lately, along with glazed bananas and a chili mint sauce. A cold carrot cardamom chutney would have been better omitted. A Young Garlic Chicken ($20; above right) yielded six pieces of plump meat, cooked perfectly.

I was pleased to see an ample selection of half-bottles of wine, an option far more restaurants should offer. It gave us the chance to sample two halves for a total of $41, less than we normally pay for a full bottle. (Now that I look back on it, I think they charged us less for the wine than the prices listed.)

Though Shang is a casual restaurant, the service team would be at home in a more formal setting. Fresh plates and silverware, and extra serving utensils, are provided for each course. Chopsticks are enamel, rather than the disposable wood most places use. Even the starched white napkins are delivered with a flourish.

Some glitches still need to be worked out. The large bar area was practically deserted. Yet, when I asked for a cocktail list, the inattentive and seemingly bored bartender gave me the bottle service list instead, which listed only two cocktails. Only when we got to the table did we realize the restaurant offers a dozen others. Our bar tab was not transferrable to the dining room.

The dining room itself was about 25 percent full when we arrived at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening, and about 75 percent full when we left. That’s probably not as good as they’d like, though not bad in a neighborhood that doesn’t come alive till late.

Shang is located in a luxury boutique hotel, the Thompson LES. The space is as gorgeous as it is comfortable. If you’ve been around a while, you have to pinch yourself before you believe you’re at the formerly desolate corner of Houston and Allen Streets. The restaurant’s advertised address—a separate entrance on Orchard Street—is not yet open. You get there via the hotel entrance on Allen Street.

No restaurant opening today can be assured of success, but if Chef Lee keeps his eye on the kitchen, Shang should do very well indeed.

Shang (187 Orchard Street between Houston & Stanton Streets, Lower East Side)

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