Review Recap: Table 8

I haven’t been Frank Bruni’s biggest fan, but I have to give credit where it’s due: the man knows how to deliver a smackdown!

Today, Frank uncorked the final zero-star review of his tenure, giving the bagel to Govind Armstrong’s Table 8 in the Cooper Square Hotel. (Frank has only three reviews left, and as goose eggs are a rarity, it’s safe to assume there won’t be any more of them.)

For Frank, as always, restrooms are the index to a restaurant’s success:

In its opening weeks, [Table 8] rewarded anyone who went to the bathroom with a glass of sparkling wine.

At least that’s what happened the first time I dined there, when my companions and I noticed bubbly for the taking in a chamber beside the sinks.

What to make of this? Freud surely would have had one answer. We had another: diners were being congratulated for actually managing to reach this remote, ill-marked destination, a Herculean feat involving an instinctive left here, a speculative right there, a hunch, a leap of faith, a descent into the underworld and a fearless crossing of the river Styx.

That tortuous journey — only the final phrase amounts to exaggeration — isn’t just a mood killer; it’s a metaphor, too. The people behind Table 8 have given too little thought to logistics and comfort. They were inattentive when they put the place together, and they’re inattentive still. The acoustics are insane, the absurdly narrow lanes of foot traffic clog, the bread isn’t reliably fresh and the filet mignon on a recent night had the stringy texture and stew-y taste of something that would only barely pass muster on a tray table in coach.

A hard-to-find bathroom might be forgiven if the food were better, but alas it’s not:

I was struck by how overworked and overdressed many dishes were. A deep puddle of excess liquid was left behind once the grilled octopus with celery heart salad, tomato and Moroccan olives was gone, and a similar puddle outlasted duck sausage with grilled radicchio, pine nuts, grilled peaches and a watercress salad. I would have traded all those accessories for more sausage with more of a crisp-soft contrast than this one had.

On a subsequent night, the torn pasta that served as a bed for pan-fried sweetbreads was mushy. Another pasta was even worse: a gluey clump of linguine with a combination of ricotta and lemon that might as well have been Elmer’s and Pledge.

With such condemnations as those, why does the review end with “SATISFACTORY”? Did Frank seem satisfied?

*

We’ll be traveling the next two weeks, and most likely won’t have the opportunity to post our usual “Review Preview.” I know, I know, don’t all cry at once.

We’ll be out with speculative predictions early next week.

Review Preview: Table 8

Record to date: 7–3

Just four reviews to go! Tomorrow, Frank Fantastic reviews Table 8 in the Cooper Square Hotel. We do not expect this one to be pretty. No critic yet has been smitten with this place, so the only question is: one or zero? Does Bruni have one more delicious smackdown left in him? The hour is late, so we’ll once again spare you the analysis, and take the bet on zero stars.

Southern Spice

Today’s review comes with a huge caveat: I couldn’t tell Southern and Northern Indian cuisines apart if my life depended on it. I’ve eaten plenty of Indian food, but to tell different regions apart requires a palate more discerning than mine.

If that doesn’t disqualify me, the next disclosure surely will: before last Saturday, I had never been to Flushing, unless you count the airport or a Mets game. The city’s widely-acknowledged center of ethnic food was completely unknown to me.

Two Flushing neophytes were drawn there by a rave review of Southern Spice’s biriyani in the Times $25 & Under column. In the Village Voice, Robert Sietsema (review, photos) was smitten:

Sometimes a restaurant makes such an impression that it changes your way of thinking about an entire cuisine. Southern Spice is just such a place. While we’ve been conditioned to think of South Indian cooking as one giant collection of dosas, iddlies, and utthampams, Southern Spice flings open the doors on a half-dozen regional micro-cuisines.

That’s high praise indeed from Sietsema. Serious Eats loved it too.

We were less enthralled. We enjoyed the sights and sounds of Flushing, and we also enjoyed our food, especially as a full meal was just $35 before tip. But it wasn’t markedly better than our neighborhood Indian restaurant, which is ten minutes’ walk from our apartment.

We liked our first dish best: Chicken 65 ($6; above left), a house specialty. The chicken was tender, but with plenty of fire.

The Hyderbadi-style Dhum Biriyani comes in four varieties: chicken, mutton, shrimp, and vegetable. We had the Mutton Biriyani ($11; above right). We loved the rice, which had none of the clumpyness that often mars this dish, but we didn’t like having to pick inedible lamb bones out of the mix.

In Chicken Vindaloo ($9; above left), the seasoning seemed to be off. It was so mild that I wondered if Southern India had a different vidaloo recipe than I’m used to, but the menu describes it as “extremely hot.” It was less spicy than even the secondary curry dish served at most Indian restaurants (i.e. the level below vindaloo, often called “Madras”).

A comped dessert, sweet carrots with almonds (above right) was a nice treat. It would have set us back all of $3.

The restaurant has been open since last November, but as yet it has no liquor license. The décor is spare, but service was surprisingly good. I figured that a place with $6 appetizers and $11 entrées would leave us with one set of silverware for the whole meal, but they delivered a fresh place setting for every course.

We had a decent enough meal and would love to sample more. We’re just not prepared to travel two hours to get there.

*

This isn’t related to the restaurant, but I have to share the experience of walking into a Chinese market near the Flushing–Main Street LIRR station. The place was filthy, with rotting clams sitting around in unrefrigerated crates, and fish packed so tightly into their tanks that they couldn’t move. All kinds of unmentionables were for sale: pig snouts, feet and intestines, chicken feet, duck hearts, and black chickens, to name a few. Probably the nastiest offering was “miscellaneous meat,” sold for about $1 a pound and wrapped in large frozen bags.

I know there are some terrific restaurants in Flushing, but it’s one neighborhood where I wouldn’t just wander in without a prior recommendation.

Southern Spice (143–06 45th Avenue nr. Bowne Street, Flushing, Queens)

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

Perbacco

Perbacco was a routine East Village trattoria until last year, when Simone Bonelli took over as chef, and immediately started turning out creative riffs on Italian specialties. Frank Bruni awarded two stars, as he so often does. We wound up there on Friday evening after another reservation fell through. Business was brisk, but you no longer need to book a week in advance. Our 7:15 p.m. table was available on OpenTable the same afternoon.

I was seated promptly before my girlfriend arrived, but couldn’t flag down a server to order a cocktail. I couldn’t figure out why they assigned us to a tall bar table with backless stools, when many seats in the more comfortable dining room were still empty. I didn’t say anything, but after we’d ordered, they decided it was a mistake and moved us to a better table.

The menu goes on for several pages and is heavy on the antipasti and salads ($9–15). There are about half-a-dozen pastas ($13–18) and an equal number of secondi ($21–25). These prices are reasonable for the quality of the food.

After pondering our choices for a while, we decided to start with the deep-fried olives stuffed with minced meats ($9). Oops! The menu is in transition, and a couple of dishes, including that one, aren’t available yet. In lieu of that, we had the mixed antipasti ($15; below left), all excellent, of which the best was a quartet of onion gelatin ravioli served in a jar of balsamic vinegar. These delicate, quivering globules are swallowed whole, exploding in the mouth with an astonishing burst of flavor. I’d pay $15 again just for those.

The Rosette alla Speck e Bufala ($18; above right) was another remarkable creation—an orb of pasta noodles that collapses to the touch, revealing a cheesy stew of speck and bufala mozzarella.

The aged porterhouse for two ($60; above) won’t put Peter Luger out of business, but it was excellent for a non-steakhouse. Perbacco charges considerably less for it than a steakhouse would, and throws in the sides for nothing.

The service, especially early on, wasn’t quite up to the quality of Chef Bonelli’s kitchen, but it improved as the evening went on. The faux rustic space is easy on the eyes, and the food is surprisingly good.

Perbacco (234 E. 4th Street between Avenues A & B, East Village)

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

Review Recap: Locanda Verde

Today, Frank Bruni awarded the expected two stars to Locanda Verde, while also scolding chef Andrew Carmellini for not doing more:

Renown in the restaurant world can dawn so suddenly and grow so quickly that many chefs get ahead of themselves, winding up a half-dozen paces beyond where they rightfully belong.

For Andrew Carmellini, the opposite has been true. Now 38, he has lagged behind, without billing as prominent or a showcase quite as flattering as he deserves…

But in keeping with the Carmellini story, Locanda Verde doesn’t amount to the exactly right situation or perfect fit for him. It’s not the Carmellini restaurant that many of us have been waiting and hoping for, though it has plenty to recommend it. Hit the menu’s strong spots and you’ll have a terrific meal at a reasonable price.

Like the menu at A Voce, the one here is emphatically market-driven, as the restaurant’s name (which means “green inn”) telegraphs. But the dishes in aggregate tend to be more rustic and less elegant, perhaps a reflection of Mr. Carmellini’s mood, certainly a reflection of the moment.

Bruni has a long history of over-rating Italian restaurants, but he certainly gets the food:

The pasta dishes and entrees weren’t as uniformly successful. While the “Sunday night ragù” on top of big, floppy gigantoni was a porky dream and while a dish called “my grandmother’s ravioli”— filled with short rib and pork and sauced with San Marzano tomatoes — made me want to swap ancestors with Mr. Carmellini, the crumbled mix of meats in a white Bolognese was a total washout, and the noodles in several dishes were slightly overcooked. Neither his grandmother nor mine would approve.

Carmellini’s last place, A Voce, was obviously a two-star restaurant, but it got three from Bruni. Today, he walks it back:

When he left in 2005 to open A Voce, he got his own kitchen, where he did some of the city’s best Italian cooking. But A Voce’s coolly modern, oddly soulless cosmetics were more of a drag on his efforts than a complement to them.

I couldn’t agree more. Although some of the finger-wagging in today’s review strikes the wrong tone, this time he got the rating right.

Braeburn

Note: Braeburn closed in January 2011.

Braeburn came quietly to the West Village last October, where it was important enough to be reviewed by all of the major critics, but dull enough to be greeted with yawns. Bruni and Platt awarded one star apiece. Restaurant Girl awarded two, which in her quirky system amounts to the same thing.

In a way, I can see what they mean. Its faux-farmhouse décor reminds you very much of places you’ve seen before. Or maybe a dozen of them. The menu, too, seems like the highlight reel from other farm-to-table restaurants. The chef, Brian Bistrong, won raves at The Harrison, but like so many in the business, he has moved on to something less ambitious.

But there’s something to be said for a restaurant that does a lovely job with simple things, and makes them just exciting enough that you’re happy you dropped in. Such was the case with a Poached and Panko Crusted Farm Egg ($10) with artichoke hash and parmesan foam. So too a tender Almond Crusted Flounder ($22) with cherry tomato salad, basil, and shallots.

The rest of the menu is along similar lines. There are seven appetizers ($9–13), four sides ($6), and six entrées ($22–28). There’s also a daily special, usually some kind of comfort food; Monday’s was Chicken Fried Steak ($18). The three-course prix fixe is $30, with a couple of choices for each course.

The occasion was a catch-up meal with a distant cousin whom I’d not seen since childhood. I figured Braeburn would be comfortable and quiet. At 6:15 p.m., we had the dining room to ourselves. Our timing was perfect. About two hours later, as we were getting up to leave, the tables had started to fill up, and it wasn’t so quiet any more.

The server seemed to realize that we wanted to talk. She stayed out of the way, but circled back frequently enough to keep track of us. We took our time before ordering and never felt rushed.

Braeburn (117 Perry Street at Greenwich Street, West Village)

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

Review Preview: Locanda Verde

Record to date: 6–3

The NYT took its sweet time posting the teaser for tomorrow’s review: Locanda Verde. We’ll therefore skip the analysis and go straight to the prediction: Bruni + Carmellini + Italian = 2 stars.

Daisy May's BBQ

Perhaps I’m better off that Daisy May’s BBQ isn’t better located. If it were easily reachable by subway, I’d be there a lot more often, and I’d be doing even worse on my diet.

Daisy May’s is at 46th Street and Eleventh Avenue. They could hardly have chosen a less accessible location in Manhattan. Not even buses go there, and the closest subway is a solid fifteen minute walk away. The neighborhood itself is ugly, much favored by auto repair joints and strip clubs. Despite that, Daisy May’s is clearly not doing badly, but in the East Village they’d be minting money.

But Daisy May’s is where it is, so I seldom go. Our last visit was three years ago, when we had the rack of lamb for two, a special that needs to be pre-ordered. Recently, I saw a couple of blog posts about the Oklahoma Beef Rib (HowFresh Eats, Cynical Cook)—a cut of meat most BBQ places don’t serve—and decided I had to have one.

Unfortunately, the cashier misheard my order, and I got the beef brisket combo instead (photo below). I should have been suspicious, as the brisket combo is only $14, while the beef rib combo is $21.50. I just shrugged, and assumed I was getting an early-bird special, or something like that. Bad assumption.

As you can see, Daisy May’s is still bare-bones, although they’ve now got a beer license, so it’s no longer strictly BYO. The brisket (lower-right in the photo) came with two sides; I chose the mac & cheese and the baked beans with burnt ends. It was all very good, but not worth the long walk from Eighth Avenue.

They clearly had the beef ribs—other diners were eating them, as I looked on with envy. It was just a misunderstanding. Perhaps it was all for the best. I wasn’t that hungry, and the beef ribs are huge. There’s always another day.

Yankee Stadium

On Saturday, we paid our first visit to the new Yankee Stadium. Unlike our trip to Citi Field last month, we had a beautiful day. It was the tenth anniversary of David Cone’s perfect game. Cone was on hand to toss the ceremonial first pitch to Yankee manager Joe Girardi (photo below), who was his catcher on that historic day.

The Yankees are the city’s best pro team, but they have the lesser stadium. In every respect, we found it inferior to Citi Field, including food service, seating, wayfinding, traffic flow, and subway connections. After the game (a 2–1 Yankee victory), it took us about 45 minutes to exit the stadium and get into the subway, about twice as long as it took at Citi Field. Fewer of the seats are covered at Yankee Stadium than at Citi Field. I would not want to be here in the rain.

If I didn’t know otherwise, I would think the two stadiums were constructed about twenty years apart. Citi Field is state-of-the-art. Yankee Stadium already feels obsolete.

Of course, the Yankees have one thing the Mets don’t: a winning team.

abc

Review Recap: Monkey Bar

Today, Frank Bruni awarded one star to Monkey Bar:

It’s a clubhouse, its members making their way to it not from the 18th hole but from the vanity fairways of Condé Nast, I.C.M., Time Warner and the like. Maybe they take a moment to glance at the listed appetizers and entrees, maybe not. It hardly matters, because they’ve been here often enough to know what’s what, and the lighting is too magnanimously dim for an annoyance like reading.

The obvious question is: why?

It opened about four months ago. But it didn’t open equally to everyone, as I learned when I called, using a pseudonym, to make a reservation. I wasn’t simply told that 6:30 was the closest to a prime time that I could hope for; I was told that anything better was for people with private lines to the owners…

All of that would be more objectionable if it weren’t just an amplified — and curiously forthright — version of the haughty games so many restaurants play.

And it would be less forgivable if there wasn’t actually something to savor on the far side of the velvet rope, along with signs that Mr. Carter and his crew truly care about that.

So let me see if I have this straight. It’s almost impossible to get in at a reasonable time, unless you’re a friend of Graydon Carter’s. And once you do get in, you’re as liable as not to be served mediocre food. Maybe you’ll see a celebrity or two…but you can do that on TV.

Once again, Bruni awards one star—supposedly meaning “good”—to a restaurant that isn’t good, thereby making it impossible to give one star to the restaurants that have truly earned it.