Review Preview: Bar Artisanal

Record to date: 4–2

Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews Bar Artisanal, Terrance Brennan’s cheese-themed brasserie that replaced the doomed Trigo.

The Skinny: We have to admit it up front: we’ve really taken a shine to this place. It’s on the way home, it’s a cuisine that we love, and the menu is perfect for grazing, as often suits our mood after work. Oh, that and the food is very good. We haven’t had a bad dish yet.

All of our visits have been relatively early, before the crowds arrive. Many other reports have complained that as the restuarant gets busy, service starts to slip. We’ve heard it often enough to believe there must be some truth in it.

Other data points? Bar Artisanal’s slightly more ambitious sister restaurant, Artisanal, carries two stars from William Grimes. Bruni visited there in Dining Briefs, finding “some consistency problems.”

Our own rating of Bar Artisanal is 1½ stars, but Bruni doesn’t use half-stars, and in the absence of them I am inclined to round down.

The Prediction: We predict that Frank Bruni will award one star to Bar Artisanal.

SHO Shaun Hergatt

Note: Click here for a more recent review of SHO Shaun Hergatt.

During the two years that the restaurant SHO Shaun Hergatt was under construction, there must have been a thousand times when Chef Hergatt or his investors wondered if they were doing the right thing.

SHO is a luxury French restaurant that makes no compromises—none. It’s in the Financial District, where in my working life there has never been a successful fine dining restaurant, except for steakhouses. To be sure, there haven’t been many attempts. But luxury French dining is a tough bet in any neighborhood. Did I mention we’re in a recession? 

Then there’s the name. Shaun Hergatt is a fine chef, but he doesn’t have a New York footprint: his last outing here was as Gabriel Kreuther’s deputy at Atelier. The obscure Big O in “SHO” is the logo for the Setai, a $154 million, 166-unit condo conversion on Broad Street, just steps away from the stock exchange, where apartments are priced between $815,000 and $4,425,000 [details here].

Despite the long odds against it, Hergatt and his backers have opened the restaurant they dreamed of. We can only hope that the public takes as kindly to it as we did. This is the most ambitious cuisine and the most refined service New York has seen since The Modern and Gilt in 2005–2006. Those with keen memories will recall that both were unfairly panned in the Times.

The space is stunning. You enter the luxurious Setai lobby, ride an elevator, walk past a long bar, then traverse a long corridor with wine walls on either side. and finally reach the dining rooms, appointed in soft browns and deep reds.

The two dining rooms are separated by a partition, so that each one feels small and intimate. Hergatt’s large, immaculate kitchen is open, but behind a heavy glass barrier, so that it is seen but not heard. There is also a more casual dining space at the other end of the wine corridor, which was empty on our visit, but will be used for breakfast and lunch.

Not a penny was spared to build this place, but it is tasteful and serene, not ostentatious or overdone.

At dinner, the menu is $57 for two savory courses, or $69 with dessert. With amuse courses taken into account, this is about $20 less than what the meal is worth. In an interview, Hergatt observed that the median income of downtown residents is $250,000, and they’ve all got to eat. Still, the restaurant will need to attract diners from other neighborhoods. As Amanda pointed out at Eater, Corton proves that “people have no problem spending money on excellent food right now. It just better be excellent.”

SHO Shaun Hergatt is excellent. It is better than excellent. On the strength of one meal, it is the best new restaurant to have opened in New York in at least three years. We do realize that everything can change if diners don’t warm up to the place, but the owners haven’t made any compromises yet, and we assume they won’t rush into them anytime soon. On a Saturday evening, the restaurant was half full, which is not bad on a day when the Wall Street area used to be barren.

On the prix fixe menu, there is a choice of ten appetizers and ten entrées, only a few with supplements. The presentation and cooking techniques are obviously French, but many dishes are accented with Asian ingredients. (The chef himself is Australian.)

We started with three canapés, any one of which would have qualified as an amuse-bouche in many restaurants. The beggar’s purse with caviar and sour cream, topped with gold leaf (above left, rear) was staggeringly good. The amuse itself (above right) was a blizzard of ingredients, including a tiny shrimp, served on a porcelein shell, and that sitting on a bed of salt flecked with ground peppers.

The Red Chili and Coconut Milk Glazed Quail (above left) was the only dish of the evening that struck me as underwhelming. It was a perfectly satisfying dish, but a rather simple concept compared to everything else we were served. Double Duck Consommé (above right) offered a rich broth and a raviolo filled with chicken and truffles.

Yogurt Marinated Poussin (above left) was wonderful, and I should note that the portion was double what is shown here; two extra pieces of chicken came out of the kitchen in an extra serving bowl. Veal Tenderloin (above right) was fork-tender and served with a luscious, foamy sauce.

The cheese course (above left) was more than generous: five French imports, all of which I’d happily eat again. We also loved pastry chef Mina Pizarro’s Rhubarb Tart with ginger cremeux and lychee sorbet (above right).

Naturally, there were petits-fours, including macaroons that exploded with sweet filling when we bit into them.

The portions here are arguably a bit dainty, but counting the various amuses you’re getting six courses for the price of three. At $69, this is one of the least expensive luxury fixed-priced menus in the city, and right now it is one of the best.

On the wine list, bargains are harder to come by. Most bottles are in three figures. The mostly-French list bottoms out at $55, and I believe there were only two choices at that level, with many more options in the $70–80 range. After consulting with the sommelier, we chose one of $55 bottles (2005 Thierry Germain Saumur Champigny) and were deeply satisfied. The top of the list is a magnum of 1953 Château Petrus at $15,000; the most expensive single bottle I saw was $8,000.

The service was practically flawless, with broths and sauces applied table-side and finger bowls delivered after each course in case we’d picked up quail or chicken bones with our hands (we hadn’t). Warm, house-made breads came with two contrasting soft butters, each in its own dome-covered dish. At one point, I looked up and saw that the truffle butter had been replaced with a fresh serving, even though we’d used only half of it.

There was a slight hint of over-eagerness. One runner seemed keen to figure out whether we wanted the cocktail list or the wine list; he should just leave both. The instant I picked up the wine list, a server appeared to ask if I wanted assistance. I said I would in a few minutes, after I’d looked through it. After what felt like 30 seconds, the sommelier appeared. But given the ambition of the project, one can understand their desire to please, and it shone through time after time. They even emailed us the next day to ask how we had enjoyed our visit.

A report of one visit can hardly be definitive, and we make no claims that it is. We sampled just one-fifth of the menu. Things could change dramatically if the restaurant becomes a hit, or if the customers don’t appear and it has to retrench. We can only say that this meal was very close to the best that can be had in New York.

SHO Shaun Hergatt

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

Update from an Angry Little Man

So now I’m the guy known to the blogosphere as the Angry Little Man, thanks to the magnanimous chef Joe Dobias, a/k/a “JoeDoe.” My girlfriend suggested that we should pitch that title to the Food Network. Every week, viewers could tune in to see which restaurant I am going to pan next. If Guy Fieri can be a cable star, why can’t I?

It seems Joe has a habit of lashing out whenever even a slightly negative review appears. When Eater’s Amanda Kludt posted a mixed, but encouraging snapshot in the restaurant’s first week, Dobias banned the whole Eater staff from his restaurant. No wonder the place is empty at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday evening.

Yes, I know the East Village is a late-arriving crowd, but I don’t know of any half-decent place that is still empty at 8:00. Maybe Chef Joe ought to think about why that is, instead of lashing out at his customers.

I didn’t think JoeDoe was terrible. I thought it was promising, but a bit frustrating. It is possible I would have returned—that is, before Dobias opened his mouth. And if you read the comments on this and other blogs, apparently many other people have drawn the same conclusion. For a restaurant that clearly has not been a runaway hit, this isn’t the kind of publicity Dobias needed.

Many commenters have made a similar point: every time a chef sends a dish out of his kitchen, customers are going form an opinion, and they’re probably going to tell their friends. This blog is just a slightly more public way of doing that. My typical post does not have many readers. I don’t make or break restaurants.

Chef Dobias wonders why we finished our food and made no complaint while we were at the restaurant. Well, we finished our food because we were hungry. We did not think it was great food, but it was certainly edible. We did not complain because we seldom do. We saw no point in asking the Chef to prepare our food again.

No one is going to change Chef Dobias, as an interview at Grub Street makes clear:

At Cornell I was taught the customer is always right, but the customer is not always right.

We’ll leave it at that. Links below.

In Pity of Joe Dobias [Strictly Platonic]
Adventures in Public Relations: The Bellicose JoeDoe [Eater]
Chef Joe Doe Speaks Out About the New York Dining Circus [Grub Street]
Maddened Restaurant Owner Blasts Bloggers, Other “Angry Little Men” [The-Feedbag]
Adventures in Public Relations: JoeDoe Strikes Back! [Eater]

Locanda Verde

Note: Click here for a later review of Locanda Verde.

When Robert DeNiro opened the restaurant Ago last year in his new Greenwich Hotel, he made every mistake in the book. It was a formulaic, over-priced copy of an out-of-town restaurant whose chef had no commitment to New York. Imports tend to do badly here, but Agostino Sciandri, for whom it was named, was practically a no-show, thereby ensuring Ago’s doom.

At Ago’s replacement, Locanda Verde, DeNiro gets everything right. The chef, Andrew Carmellini, has done acclaimed work at two different three-star restaurants—Café Boulud and A Voce. Carmellini is both chef and partner here, and he has no other projects distracting him. It even says at the bottom of the menu, Cooking Today: Andrew Carmellini & Luke Ostrom, as if to emphasize that the chef is not just a distant consultant. No item costs more than $25.

I never had Carmellini’s food at Café Boulud, but I did visit A Voce before he left. It was certainly very good, but over-rated at three stars, in a clear example of Frank Bruni’s pro-Italian bias. Some of its deficiencies were not Carmellini’s fault. The space was both ugly and raucous, and the service not good enough for a place serving $39 short ribs and wine bottles in three and four figures. But there was no doubt Carmellini could cook.

At Locanda Verde, he serves “neighborhood Italian” food, perhaps slightly dialed down from A Voce, but not by much. This time, the space and the service support the concept, instead of being at war with it. Ken Friedman (Spotted Pig, John Dory, Rusty Knot) re-did the décor, happily not in the over-wrought style that has marred some of his earlier efforts. The tables are a tad small, and the space gets a bit loud when full, but in light of the price point I have no complaints.

The menu is in the five-part format that is common for Italian restaurants these days, with small plates called Cicchetti ($7–10), Antipasti ($12–16), Pastas ($14–19), Secondi ($19–25) and Contorni (6–7). The wine list averages around $50–60 per bottle, with many reasonable choices below that level, and several as low as $35.

I visited twice last week, the first time alone, the second with my girlfriend, so I was able to sample a bit more of the menu than usual.

There are a few different crostini. Fava Bean on prosciutto bread ($7; above left) was either a comp or a mistake, but it was wonderful—probably the best of the crostini that I tried. Morel mushroom crostini ($7; above right) were nearly as good, if a bit messy.

Focaccia bread (above left) is so hearty that it’s almost like a slice of pizza. Gnocchi with local tomatoes ($17; above right) were as good a rendition of that dish as I have had.

Lamb meatball sliders ($11; above left) are succulent and gooey, but you had best wear a bib. Blue Crab with jalapeño and tomato ($9; above right) were my least favorite of the three crostini I tried, not because there was anything wrong with them, but because the others set such a high standard. 

Some of the dishes have odd names, like “My Grandmother’s Ravioli” ($17; above left), which will make you think Carmellini had a blessed childhood if his grandmother could cook like that.

I was fortunate enough to see the Porchetta ($22; above right) come out of the oven. The carcass is wrapped in a cylinder, the skin scored and seasoned. I assume that they cook one of these slowly for many hours. If you order this dish, which you should, you’ll get a substantial helping of it.

We also had the Orichiette ($16; above left) with rabbit sausage, sweet peas and fiore sardo, a rich, satisfying dish. We finished with the panna cotta (above right).

On both visits, service was attentive and polished, much better than I would expect for a restaurant this new, this busy, and this inexpensive. The staff transferred our bar tab to the table without our having to request it.

At Locanda Verde, the concept that was so expasperating at A Voce comes together perfectly. Let’s hope that Andrew Carmellini remains here for a long, long time.

Locanda Verde (377 Greenwich Street at N. Moore Street, TriBeCa)

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

Review Recap: Spice Market

Today, the Brunatrix bends Spice Market over the table and administers a one-star spanking:

When Spice Market opened its doors in the fleetly evolving whirl of Manhattan’s meatpacking district in early 2004, it…suggested the possibility of excellence in a genre often content with frivolity.

Today it suggests the steepness of many a restaurant’s decline once it has made its first, glowing impression, especially if the restaurant was conceived as, or destined to be, the parent of money-making offspring elsewhere. Said restaurant comes out of the gate strong, whipping up the buzz and establishing the brand, but once that mission is accomplished, its motivation falters. Its cooking deteriorates. Sloppiness creeps in…

While it still looks gorgeous, sends out the occasional superb dish and delivers a measure of fun, much of its menu is executed in a perfunctory or even slapdash fashion. Once a compelling destination, it’s now a modest diversion.

He has some choice words for Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who is still nominally the chef at Spice Market, even though the menu hasn’t changed in five years:

Mr. Vongerichten is equal parts proud artist and profit-hungry entrepreneur, on the one hand making big-hearted contributions to the city’s restaurant scene while on the other wringing as much lucre from his stardust as he can.

Jean-Georges the Great helps finance and promote Wylie Dufresne at wd-50 and Jim Lahey at Co. pizzeria. He imports — and collaborates with — serious Japanese talent at Matsugen, a principled restaurant with remarkable prix fixe deals at lunch and dinner. He keeps careful watch over his outstanding flagship, Jean Georges.

Jean-Georges the Not-So-Great presides too distantly and cavalierly over the likes of Vong, Mercer Kitchen and Spice Market. He’s clone-happy, and in 2006 established a special wing of his empire, Culinary Concepts by Jean-Georges, to supervise his swelling brood of restaurants in hotels worldwide. That wing oversees all the Spice Markets.

This is yet another one-star review that reads like zero. Although one star is supposed to mean “Good” in the Times nomenclature, Bruni has often used that category for reviews like this one, where the tone is overwhelmingly negative.

It creates a perception that one star is an insult, and makes it difficult to give one star to places that actually are “Good.”

Pera

I keep a running list of restaurants to try, but some of them stay on the list for a long time. Pera is one of those. Its location, in the shadow of Grand Central Terminal, is one we seldom visit. The opening reviews, respectful but not ecstatic, suggested it could wait until we had an excuse to be in the area. Frank Bruni awarded one star in February 2007.

Pera is better than we expected. It isn’t quite destination cuisine, but the space is comfortable, the service is excellent, and everything we tried was prepared with care. The cooking isn’t especially ambitious, and the menu is static, but what they serve they do well.

We walked in on a Saturday evening on the way back from a Mets game at Citi Field. I chose Pera partly because I was sure we could walk in without a reservation. To my surprise it was nearly full. It turned out that nearly all the patrons were part of the same wedding rehearsal dinner party. Pera strikes us as not a bad place for that type of party.

Captioned a “Mediterranean Brasserie,” the menu straddles the Greek–Turkish axis. It includes Small Plates & Mezes ($6–19; sampler $22), snack plates called pidettes ($4 ea.), salads ($11–15), grilled meat & fish ($19–36), and side dishes ($6–11). A tasting menu of sorts, labeled the “Pera Tradition,” is $45 pp.

These prices are a tad on the high side, especially if you order at the upper end. However, there are also some bargains, and portions are large. The wine list somewhat compensates for the food prices, with plenty of bottles at $45 or less.

The meal began with soft house-made bread (above left), served with crumbly feta cheese.

An order of Chicken Livers ($8; above left) came from the Small Plates section of the menu, so I didn’t expect much. It actually came with four nicely-seasoned grilled livers and a small side salad. In the photo, the food is obscured by a leaf of pita dough, which you can use to build your own sandwich. Pita dough seems to be a theme at Pera, but I just ate the livers with my knife and fork.

A salad of Grilled Vegetables & Halloumi Cheese ($15; above right) was also pretty good, although the cheese seemed a bit over-crisped. 

Two of our entrées showed a distinct lack of ambition: Lamb “Adana” ($26; above left) and Filet Mignon Medallions ($33; above right), both sent out with leaves of pita and garnishes (not shown). Both were uncomplicated but well prepared, and there is something to be said for that.

The quotes in Pasta “Moussaka” ($23; above right) signalled that we would not be getting the traditional Greek version of the dish. It was more like a deconstructed version of a classic moussaka, with pappardelle pasta, lamb and eggplant ragu, and shaved parmigiano. For all that, it was probably the best item we tried, and it was certainly the most creative.

Pera isn’t a “drop everything, you must go” kind of restaurant, but I would certainly visit again next time I’m in the vicinity.

Pera Mediterranean Brasserie (303 Madison Avenue between 41st–42nd Streets, East Midtown)

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

Review Preview

Record to date: 3–2

Tomorrow, Frank Bruni corrects one of the most egregious errors in recent New York Times reviewing history, when he will demote Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market.

The Skinny: Spice Market currently carries three stars, thanks to Amanda Hesser in 2004, when she served as interim critic before Frank Bruni arrived. The much-ridiculed and much-lampooned review began with these memorable bon-mots:

As you approach Spice Market, Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s new restaurant on West 13th Street, the stench of blood and offal from the surrounding meatpacking district intensifies. It’s hardly an olfactory amuse-bouche.

It turned out that Vongerichten had written a gushing jacket blurb for Hesser’s book, Cooking for Mr. Latte, which the Times admitted that Hesser ought to have disclosed. (Vongerichten later claimed that he had never met her.)

No one thought that Spice Market was a three-star restaurant then, when it had Vongerichten’s full attention, and it certainly isn’t one now. When I visited two years ago, I gave it 1½ stars, an option not open to Bruni, as his system lacks half-stars.

I am not saying that Bruni will demote Spice Market because this blog does not consider it worthy of three stars. It’s because nobody does. There have been no intervening events that would justify a return visit, except to correct the rating, and it has only one direction to go: down.

Bruni has done this to Vongerichten before, when he double-demoted Vong and Mercer Kitchen, knocking two stars off the rating of each. The only question here is whether Bruni will give Spice Market the full-body slam (one star or even zero), or if he’ll leave Vongerichten with a shred of dignity intact (two stars).

We can see it going either way, but we have to go with a full-body slam. Let’s charitably assume that the original rating should have been two stars. Does anyone doubt that the restaurant has gotten sloppier over the years, and that it has less of its owner’s attention than any in his large empire? How could the rating today not be lower than the “correct” original rating? Now add Bruni’s well known disgust for the whole Meatpacking Scene, and the blatant cynicism of the place, and the odds point to a monumental smackdown.

The Prediction: We predict that Frank Bruni will give one star to Spice Market.

JoeDoe

Note: The chef’s response to this review and my response to him are in the comments. My follow-up comments are here.

I’m going to go out on a limb, and guess that when Joe Dobias was trying to pick a catchy name for his East Village restaurant, he didn’t hire any publicity or marketing firms for advice. That might explain how he came up with JoeDoe, a name that conveys—nothing in particular.

Of course, “Momofuku” conveyed nothing in particular before David Chang turned it into a household word, but usually it’s better to choose a name that conveys at least something about the kind of food you’re trying to serve. We can’t all be David Chang.

Dobias describes his cuisine as “Aggressive American,” whatever that means. He certainly has a way with words when it comes to naming his dishes. During Passover season, he served liver and bacon on challah, calling it “The Conflicted Jew.” Other examples on a recent menu include “Some Really Nice Butt” and “Duck Egg is King.”

He works in a tiny slip of a space scarcely bigger than a bathroom (above right). There is a prep kitchen downstairs, and runners bring stuff in throughout the evening, but Dobias seems to do all the cooking and plating by himself.

The restaurant has just seven tables and six bar stools, which is probably as much as Dobias can handle when it is full—if it ever is. On a Friday evening, just one other table was occupied.

The menu is uncomplicated, with just half-a-dozen appetizers ($9–12) and as many entrées ($19–27). There are also several bar snacks at about $4 each, but during happy hour they’re free. We had the Mutton Meatballs (left), which were the best thing we had all evening. A comped order of fried chickpeas was excellent.

The beverage menu offers an array of house cocktails and “prepared beers,” the latter being mixed drinks made with beer instead of spirits. I lubricated my meal with a couple of these, as I don’t recall seeing them in any other restaurant, and the wine list was minimal.

I loved the Hipster BBQ (Dale’s Pale Ale, organic vodka, seasoned salt, fresh lime and zest), but I didn’t care for the somewhat bitter taste of Alice in JoeDoe Land (Smuttynose ale, absinthe, gingered kumquat, chamomile tea).

As we sat down for dinner, the staff pointed out a rule prohibiting photography, which purportedly annoys the other guests—notwithstanding that there weren’t any, aside from a loving couple at the opposite end of the room who, we are sure, did not notice our non-flash camera. So we are unable to show you the photos of what we ate, which looked a lot better than it tasted.

A Veev Cured Scallop ($12) made a dull impression. Veev (a brand of vodka) contributed little, other than its fancy name. A schmear of jalapeno mayo was more than the scallop needed, but not enough to spread on the accompanying crisp bread. A salad of cured pork on lukewarm cooked green vegetables also misfired.

Pork belly, a posted special, was over-cooked and dry. “Duck, duck, hock,” consisting of tiny gnocchi, a duck egg, and I believe duck ham, was at least correctly prepared, though I would be in no rush to order it again. (The website says that the third ingredient is rock shrimp, but I am pretty sure that is not what we had.)

On Eater.com, editor Amanda Kludt described JoeDoe as “a restaurant that means well,” but found it “disappointing and somewhat bafflingly presented.” That’s about right. It’s obvious that Dobias didn’t open this restaurant to get rich, and he certainly doesn’t take the easy way out. Its quirky offerings often sound interesting, but when the plates arrive the payoff isn’t there.

In a neighborhood that teems with compelling dining options, it’s hard to take JoeDoe seriously. I’d stop in for a cocktail and a snack; then head elsewhere.

JoeDoe (45 E. 1st Street between First & Second Avenues, East Village)

Food: mediocre
Service: good
Ambiance: pleasant
Overall: disappointing

Citi Field

We paid our first visit to Citi Field yesterday. We did not try to visit Danny Meyer’s restaurants, Shake Shack and Blue Smoke (see red arrow, above). That area was packed all game long, despite the rain and a crowd well short of a sell-out. I figure we would have missed at least a couple of innings just to get there and back.

Honestly, I don’t understand the point of paying $90 for a game ticket, only to stand in line for mediocre burgers and barbecue.

The game got started (above left) and was halted in the 8th inning due to rain (above right). It later resumed, only to see the Mets lose 3–1.

Waiting in Line for the iPhone 3GS

We’re sticking with our iPhone 3G, purchased last year, but this was the line at the Soho Apple Store on Friday at around 6:00 p.m.