Casa Nonna

When investor Jimmy Haber and chef Laurent Tourondel broke up their BLT Restaurant Group last year, expansion strategy turned out to be the sticking point. Haber “wanted to develop new restaurants that were more affordable, appealed to a wider audience and did not carry the BLT name.” Tourondel did not want any other chef as an equal partner.

Haber’s rustic Italian joint, Casa Nonna (“Grandmother’s House”), finally sent Tourondel packing. According to Crain’s, the Washington, D.C. restaurant threw off $70 million in annual revenues. You can see why Haber would expand in that direction, and why Tourondel would consider it a threat. [Correction: $70 million was the group revenue; see comment below.]

In truth, even the group’s high-end BLT restaurants were gradually losing relevance: there were too many of them for Tourondel to do much more than lend his name to efforts that were increasingly derivative. Haber’s plan to focus on food for the masses was probably the more sensible one. He was headed in that direction anyway.

Tom Sietsema, restaurant critic for The Washington Post, gave Casa Nonna two stars out of four. I have no idea whether that’s justified. But in New York, where there are dozens of excellent rustic Italian restaurants, the bar is much higher.

The 200-seat Casa Nonna in far west midtown is handsomely decked out in a Corporate Italian way. When the 3rd Casa Nonna opens, heaven knows where, they’ll hand over the blueprints and source Italian knick-knacks from the same second-hand supplier that decorates the likes of Applebee’s.

Chef Amy Brandwein’s menu is somewhat predictable and a shade on the expensive side. Antipasti are $6–13, primi $17–28, secondi $21–45 (but most in the $20s), contorni $6–10. These aren’t outrageous prices by midtown standards, but Casa Nonna is competing in a crowded field, and for the same money you can do better elsewhere.

Whole Grilled Branzino ($26; above left) was very good, although plenty of New York restaurants offer the same item. Guance di Maiale, or braised pork cheeks ($23; above right) was the only item on the menu that seemed slightly unusual. The plating would win no awards, but the white wine tomato ragu and creamy polenta complemented the pork nicely.

Located on an uninteresting block near the garment district, west of Eighth Avenue, Casa Nonna isn’t an immediate hit. On a recent Wednesday evening, there was a decent crowd at the bar, but we had the dining room very nearly to ourselves. The site is a bit too far away from Broadway to be an obvious pre-theater place, and it isn’t interesting enough to be worth a detour.

Casa Nonna (310 W. 38th Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Del Posto

Del Posto isn’t a four-star restaurant. You already knew that, right? Sam Sifton of The Times is the only critic to have made that claim. Of the city’s  four-star restaurants, Del Posto has the fewest supporters.

Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton gave it just two stars, which errs in the opposite direction, but Sutton recognizes an an essential truth: a four-star restaurant needs to make you say wow! Not after every bite (which would be impossible), or even every dish, but at least sometimes.

There wasn’t much wow in our meal at Del Posto, which is not a complaint, just a reflection of where Del Posto stands, when soberly assessed. Almost every dish we tried, with exceptions I’ll note later on, was extremely well prepared. A careful, competent craftsman is at work here: chef Mark Ladner. Not many Italian kitchens in New York could produce a meal like this.

But a four-star restaurant needs to be a “category killer,” and the food at Del Posto is not. It is roughly on par with the better three-star Italian restaurants, like Marea and Babbo. Del Posto, of course, differs from them stylistically, but the gustatory pleasure it delivers is about the same.

What sets Del Posto aside are the atmosphere and service. Critics may sniff that the grand dining room feels like it belongs in Vegas, and even in Italy itself one probably wouldn’t encounter such a setting. No matter. For an elegant Italian meal, there’s nothing in the city more comfortable, or more relaxing, than Del Posto.

The service, too, does a passable imitation of high-end French models, with its armies of runners, sauces poured tableside, purse stools for the ladies, and so forth.

The wine list is superb, as it is at all of the Batali–Bastianich restaurants. The sommelier steered me away from the $115 Barolo I had chosen, to another bottle he considered a better choice, that cost $10 more. Decide for yourself if that counts as upselling, when you’re already on the hook for half a grand.

But he ably performed the whole decanting ritual far too seldom encountered in these days, and his recommendation was indeed very good.

Del Posto was always very expensive, and it has gone up considerably since Sifton gave it the fourth star. Almost immediately, the à la carte menu was dropped. A five-course prix fixe (now the least expensive option) jumped from $95 to $115, the tasting menu from $125 to $145.

Reservations, which were once plentiful, are now a bit tougher to come by. Four weeks in advance, I could do no better than 6:15 p.m. on a Friday evening. They don’t rush you, though: we were there for over three hours.

There was a trio of amuses bouches (above left). I don’t remember them individually, but they were very good. Bread service (above right) came with two spreads, the latter (on the right) made from lard (pig fat).

On the five-course menu, which we had, each diner chooses an antipasto, a secondo, and a dessert. Of the appetizers, I was more impressed with Lidia’s Lobster Salad (above left) with tomato and celery, which had a good, spicy zing. In comparison, an Abalone Salad (above right), with grilled asparagus and ramps, tasted flat.

I believe our first pasta was the Ricotta Pansotti (above left) with black truffles, probably the best dish of the evening. But that was offset by the evening’s only dud, a Lobster Risotto (above right), which was too soupy and over-salted.

Both entrées struck me as uncomplicated, although skillfully prepared. I thought that Sliced Duck Breast (above left) was sliced too thin, but my friend loved the dish. I had no complaints at all with Grilled Pork (above right), served with a hearty accompaniment of smoked whey, white asparagus, fava beans, and pickled cherries.

The desserts were superior. This being a birthday, the kitchen sent out cake, then wrapped it up for us to enjoy the next day.

I’m afraid we didn’t take note of which desserts we ordered (above), but we loved them. They were the strongest part of our meal at Del Posto. I believe the one on the right is the Butterscotch Semifreddo.

The evening ended in the usual blaze of petits fours (above left) and a wonderful chocolate sculpture (above right) that I felt quite guilty about not finishing.

No other Italian restaurant in New York can deliver an experience like Del Posto—assuming that its full-on embrace of unabashed luxury is your cup of tea. Many diners today find such meals oppressive. If it’s just the food you are interested in, you will eat about as well at Marea or Babbo, at Ai Fiori or Felidia, all of which offer à la carte menus that put you in much greater control over how much you want to order, and how much it will cost.

We werent’ really wowed by anything we tried. The best dishes were certainly excellent. Maybe I would give four stars if there were another one or two dishes as good as the pasta with truffles and the desserts; and if there were no duds like the lobster risotto; or flat-tasting dishes, like the abalone salad.

I’m glad that the owners, Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich, gave a four-star Italian restaurant their best shot. It is certainly much improved over our first visit, when I gave it 2½ stars. It doesn’t quite deserve four, but New York is better with Del Posto in it.

Del Posto (85 Tenth Avenue at 16th Street, Far West Chelsea)

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

Double Crown

Note: Double Crown closed in August 2011. It was replaced by Saxon & Parole with the same chef (Brad Farmerie), focusing on game and domestic meats.

*

This has happened to all of us: you get to the restaurant, and the host asks you to wait at the bar until your party is complete.

What happened last night at Double Crown took arrogance and audacity to new heights. When I arrived, the host said:

Your guest is here. She went to the ladies’ room. When she gets back, I’ll take you to your table. Feel free to wait at the bar.

This was in a practically empty dining room.

In a busy, casual restaurant, I respect the policy of not seating incomplete parties. Why should the host keep someone else waiting, while I sit at a half-empty table, waiting for guests who may never show up, or who could be considerably delayed?

But Double Crown wasn’t busy, and my date had arrived. Asking me to wait at the bar in that situation is beyond absurd.

Beyond that was a loud sound track that made pleasant conversation difficult; a hackneyed faux Asian décor phoned in by the folks of AvroKO, who’ve done better work elsewhere; and a Vongerichten lite fusion menu that seems to have lost its focus since Frank Bruni awarded two grade-inflated stars in 2008.

The website claims that, “Double Crown explores the aesthetic and culinary dualities arising from the British Empire’s forays into Southeast Asia.” The British influences have disappeared, assuming they existed in the first place. What we have now is pan-Asian miscellany, filtered through an East Village twenty-something comfort food lens.

At least it is not terribly expensive. Most appetizers are $13 or less, most entrées $27 or less. Cocktails were $12, including a great chipotle sour made with three kinds of whisky. That passes for a bargain in Manhattan these days. Bread service (below left) was pretty good too, with two kinds of rolls and soft butter.

A whole braised short rib for two, served on the bone ($44; above right), and coated with an unspecified spice mix, was tender and flavorful, but short rib is hard to mess up if you braise it long enough. I realize that braised meats are prepared long in advance, but this came out literally five minutes after we ordered it—before the wine was poured, in fact. It came with a decent Asian mushroom salad.

The wine list, printed on the back of the menu, is a grab bag with no particular focus. There’s an ample selection of inexpensive bottles, or you can go into the triple digits for bottles that I couldn’t imagine drinking with this food. A 2007 Weninger Zweigelt at $36 was one of the more enjoyable inexpensive bottles I’ve seen in quite some time.

The server kept the wine on a counter away from the table, and I wondered if she’d be attentive enough to keep our glasses charged. Surprisingly, she was. But after the wine was finished, and we wanted our bill, she was nowhere to be seen.

When Double Crown opened, the Bowery was just beginning to sow its oats as a dining destination. Nowadays, if you’re in the area, Pulino’s, DBGB, or Peels are all better bets. And if you have a hankering for Chef Brad Farmerie’s best work, Michelin-starred Public and The Monday Room aren’t far away.

Those are all better options than Double Crown.

Double Crown (316 Bowery at Bleecker Street, NoLIta/East VIllage)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Uneven
Ambiance: Loud and Hackneyed
Overall: No Stars

Bistro Lamazou

Note: Bistro Lamazou closed in July 2012. In a familiar story, they closed for renovations, then two months later announced that the closure was permanent.

*

I don’t spend much time in Kips Bay, but apparently Nancy and Aziz Lamazou did everything right: their neighborhood cheese and sandwich shop, Lamazou, has fans galore.

So they decided to double down, opening a new restaurant, Bistro Lamazou, taking over a store that used to be a Blockbuster Video. The space is striking, with two bars (one for liquor, the other cheese), a communal table, and an ample dining room, which I fear may be too large for the area.

The chef, Jean-Claude Teulade, who once worked at La Côte Basque, offers a menu centered on North Africa (where Aziz Lamazou is from), though it pays tribute to many other cuisines. The Times describes it as French, a somewhat misleading label.

The menu, with its many categories, meanders more than it should. Appetizers are roughly $8–18, entrées $18–29, though it is sometimes hard to tell which is which. The burger is $18, which strikes me as audacious.

A whole section of the menu is captioned “From the Cheese Bar.” Given the owners’ background we had to try some. The Cheese and Charcuterie Sampler ($24; left) was bizarre, with its centerpiece a fountain of prosciutto and melon balls dangling out of a martini glass, with cornichons and pickled onions on the side. (It also came with a plate of bread, not pictured.)

It was far too much for two people. Four could have shared it happily. The ingredients were fine, but the selection balance was off: it could have used more cheese and less meat, especially coming from a team that specializes in the former.

Entrées were ample too: Couscous with Lamb & Vegetables ($27; above left); the Braised Lamb Shank ($25; above right). If no new culinary ground was broken, they were well prepared and attractively presented.

The wine list is ambitious, for a restaurant like this, with more than fifty bottles, mostly from France, Italy, and Tunisia, with plenty of options below $50. But I was less impressed when I ordered a 2005 Valpolicella Classico Superiore, and was presented with a 2008, which the server did not notice until I pointed it out. The printed price, $42, would have been a bargain for an ’05. Not so much for a bottle three years younger.

Aside from that, service was fine for a restaurant roughly two months old. It was not crowded at 8:00 p.m. on a Wednesday evening. It’s a cute place, and I would certainly visit again if I were in the neighborhood.

Bistro Lamazou (344 Third Avenue between 25th & 26th Streets, Kips Bay)

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

Alfama

In the restaurant industry, second chances are rare. The Portuguese restaurant Alfama got one, re-opening in East Midtown in late May after losing their lease in the West Village two years ago.

They’ve done a handsome job of building out their new digs. It’s a bright, comfortable (if casual) space. The small dining room has a West Village-y intimacy, despite a location where restaurateurs tend to build big.

But it’s not on a block that gets a lot of foot traffic, so they’ll need good word-of-mouth to build a following. The restaurant wasn’t busy on a Friday evening, but as it was Fourth of July weekend, I wouldn’t draw any conclusions.

The chef, Francisco Rosa (same as at the previous location), has installed a menu with a mixture of crowd-pleasers and more challenging dishes. No one at my table was willing to share the rabbit meatballs, despite my assurance that they’d taste “just like chicken.” Chicken gizzards anyone?

It’s not terribly expensive: dinner for three was about $120 before beverages, tax, and tip. Appetizers are $4–16 each, entrées $21–32, sides $4–7, desserts $7–10.

The amuse bouche (below left) was a bit of spicy tuna tartare on a spoon.

Both appetizers were very good. Flambéed Portuguese Sausage ($10; above right) arrived literally on fire: the server advised us to let it burn for a couple of minutes before blowing out the flame. We also liked Pulled Lamb crostini ($14; below left).

Grilled Sardines ($19; above right), an announced special, made a good simple entrée.

Mariscada Alfama ($32; above left), or seafood stew, is probably the most complex of the entrées. Red Snapper ($25; above right) was of the simpler variety, although I especially liked the crisped skin, along with the tender fish inside.

Abade de Priscos ($10; above left) is one of the stranger desserts I have had in quite some time, described as: “A Mystifyingly dense Custard of Egg Yolks, Sugar, Port Wine and Prosciutto, served with a Prosciutto tuille and Lemon Sorbet.” Prosciutto makes just as bad a dessert ingredient as it sounds. I left this creation half-uneaten. Pasteis de Nata ($9; above right), or traditional Portuguese custard tarts with cinnamon and confectioner’s sugar, were a much better bet.

The restaurant had gained its liquor license only a day or two before our visit, and there were only a handful of bottles on the wine list. The one we had ($39) was unmemorable, but fine enough at the price. In any case, more are coming, and according to The Times, the selection will be heavily Portuguese, as it should be.

It’s nice to see another solid option in a cuisine that is under-represented in Manhattan. To keep the rent affordable, the owners had to settle for a mediocre block. Here’s hoping that diners take a few extra steps out of their way, to give Alfama a try.

Alfama (214 E. 52nd Street, east of Third Avenue, East Midtown)

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

Szechuan Gourmet (39th Street)

Last year, I visited Szechuan Gourmet on 56th Street, the newest branch of that venerable and successful chainlet. I wanted to try the 39th Street branch that had won two stars from Frank Bruni in 2008.

On a menu with 100 items and numerous daily specials, it is impossible to draw definitive conclusions from just two dishes. Nevertheless, we liked Szechuan Gourmet 39 much less than SG 56.

I thought that Sun-Dried Pork Belly with Leeks ($14.95; above left) might be the pork belly dish that Bruni liked. On re-reading, I am not sure, because Bruni called it an appetizer and didn’t mention leeks. This was apparently meant to be an entrée, but it is not really a successful one. The bacon was cloying and a bit too greasy. It needed heat or textural contrast, which the leeks didn’t supply.

My son ordered less adventurously, choosing Prawns in Spicy Garlic Sauce ($20.95; above right), a dish offered (in some form) at every Chinese restaurant in town. This was certainly a much higher quality version of it.

If I cannot offer a definitive comparision of the food between the two Szechuan Gourmet branches, I can certainly say that 39th Street is a far less pleasant space than 56th Street. No one would call the uptown branch elegant, but it feels like a restaurant, a place you wouldn’t mind lingering in. Here, you order, you eat, you leave.

At 8:00 p.m. on the Sunday evening of a holiday weekend, when many New Yorkers were out of town, we waited about 10–15 minutes to be seated in a full dining room. Service was inattentive, although the food came out promptly.

There is certainly more of the menu I would like to try, but as more-or-less the same menu is available at 56th Street, I think I’ll go there.

Szechuan Gourmet (21 W. 39th St. between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Telepan

Note: Telepan closed in May 2016, leaving the chef, Bill Telepan, without a restuarant. (Telepan Local, his Tribeca restaurant that was supposed to be a casual version of Telepan, failed miserably in 2014.)

Telepan had a respectable ten-year run, but as we noted in the review below, he had to scale back the original concept to stay aligned with what the neighborhood would pay, and even so, the restaurant wasn’t consistently full. He told The Times that, eventually, he reached the point where he couldn’t raise prices enough to keep pace with escalating costs.

In a sense, Telepan fell between two genres. Its Michelin star signaled a level of quality that the chef clearly wanted to maintain, but that doesn’t come cheap. It was too expensive to be an every-day restaurant, but didn’t attract enough guests to be a special-occasion place either.

*

I hated my first visit to Telepan, more than five years ago. For some odd reason, I nevertheless gave it 1½ stars. As I now see them, a star (even just one) is supposed to be a compliment, and there was very little about the meal that I liked.

Nevertheless, other reviews were generally good, and friends continued to recommend it, so Telepan was on my list of restaurants deserving a second chance, which it finally got last week.

The four-course prix fixe, which was $55 in 2006, has risen by just four dollars, to $59. If you order à la carte, the prices seem not to have changed at all: an over-priced restaurant has become a fairly-priced one.

The menu is still divided into three parts—starters ($10.50–15), mid-courses ($21–26), and entrées ($29–35—a format I dislike, but that has become more common, though still by no means prevalent. The use of fifty-cent price increments on some items feels a bit cheesy.

Of course, when prices are basically unchanged after five years, something is usually lost. What was once a flight of three amuses bouches is now one (above left), a plate of pickled radishes in a dipping sauce. But the bread service (three kinds) is excellent.

We weren’t that hungry, so we ordered entrées only. Wild Striped Bass ($33; above left) and Roasted Trout ($29.50; above right) were both presented simply, and very good for what they were.

Perhaps because of the overwhelming trend in favor of more casual dining over the last five years, Telepan’s décor, which once seemed dull, now seems upscale, bordering on elegant (though not quite there). The service is more polished than it was, then. The twenty-five page wine list offers a wide selection and price range, but the lower end (in the mid-$50s) is reasonable for this type of restaurant. If you want to spend three thousand bucks on a 1999 Screaming Eagle, you can.

The restaurant was not crowded on a Wednesday evening, but we dined early—6:00 p.m. for a 7:30 Lincoln Center curtain. When prices are virtually unchanged five years later, one can safely conclude that Telepan isn’t a runaway hit. However, it has hung on and improved, and we are better off for that.

Telepan (72 W. 69th St. btwn Central Park West & Columbus Ave., Upper West Side)

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