Review Recap: Rye and Benoit

Today, a befuddled Frank Bruni files on Rye, awarding the expected one star:

It’s a somewhat confused and confusing enterprise, starting with the location, just far enough off any main artery to recommend some clear, possibly ostentatious signage….

But the confusion doesn’t stop at the ill-advertised entrance. Maybe because Rye hasn’t quite worked out what it really wants to be, it confronts you with too many riddles, complicating your effort to plot a coherent experience and undercutting its considerable sexiness and charms. Although it’s a restaurant worth knowing about, it’s not as simply and easily navigable as it should be.

Much of its menu promises fine dining of a relatively tame, buttoned-down sort: a beet salad with micro arugula and goat cheese; duck confit with wild mushrooms; pan-roasted halibut with haricots verts and sugar snaps; roasted chicken with spring vegetables.

But a disappointingly succinct list of wines suggests that, alternately, the real point of Rye is its cocktails, some of which come with the currently fashionable allotment of one large cube of ice, all of which can be savored at a long, gorgeous mahogany bar that visually dominates the dining room.

To that end there is, wisely, a menu category for snacks. Only here, too, nothing is quite what it appears to be. The sliders — one made with pork belly, another with short rib — are in fact closer to full-fledged sandwiches. And a meatloaf sandwich listed with them is a snack the way Godzilla is a garden lizard.

We agree with Bruni that restaurants sometimes need to do a better job of indicating what’s a snack and what’s an entrée, but was that really the best meme for this review? The emphasis on cocktails rather than wine is hardly a novelty these days.

Why did he bother to review this place? We assume it’s boredom. In the end, most of the dishes he likes are salad and bar snacks. There are a hundred places like this in Manhattan. Had it been on the other side of the Williamsburg Bridge, we doubt he would have bothered.

* * *

Julia Moskin returns to Benoit, finding it much as we did: improved under new chef Pierre Schaedelin, but still phoning in the service:

Last year, Alain Ducasse brought in the chef Pierre Schaedelin to upgrade this New York branch of his bistro empire. Mr. Schaedelin has sharpened the flavors, improved the desserts, and broadened the menu until it now has many of the true pleasures of Paris — though it’s still shadowed by mindless service à la Midtown….

But there is a hint of airline food in the blandly rich repetition and limp sides of “mixed vegetables,” and more than a hint of highway robbery in $11 cold tomato soup and the aforementioned choucroute.

Benoit gives a warm welcome at the door and cheery wine service, but waiters seem to hope that dinner customers will leave early and stay away forever. A cold entree was reheated and sent back shrunken and overcooked.

Thus ends Alain Ducasse’s last, best chance to get the Times back to Benoit.

Marea

Chris Cannon and Micheal White, owner & chef respectively of the new restaurant Marea, are too smart to actually announce that they are gunning for four stars. That hasn’t stopped others (Ben Leventhal, Mister Cutlets) from making ambitious predictions on their behalf, but Messrs. Cannon and White have been wisely silent.

You just know it’s true, though. White has earned three NYT stars on a trio of occasions—at Fiamma Osteria, where he no longer works, and at Alto & Convivio, where he still does. You just know he wouldn’t have signed up for $700,000 in annual rent and a luxurious make-over of the old San Domenico space, if all he wanted was another three-star restaurant.

When I saw the opening menu, my heart sank: it featured over 85 items in almost a dozen categories. No three- or four-star restaurant tries to serve so many things, especially in the early days. It is often a recipe for disaster; it is seldom a prescription for excellence.

When we visited on Saturday evening, we found a menu slightly simplified, but it still offered over 70 items, or about double what it should, even allowing that some of them are crudi or raw bar selections that require minimal preparation. The unfortunate result was predictable: rubbery squid; cold pasta; over-cooked sturgeon.

The restaurant also has the same problem that plagued San Domenico: it is a large space, and it is difficult for a kitchen to keep up, especially when so many of the dishes are as overwrought as they are here. We know that Michael White can cook, but predictions that he would get four stars out of the gate seem to us premature—that is, assuming Frank Bruni doesn’t have a lobotomy between now and August.

Marea means tide in Italian, and the cuisine is all seafood, aside from a couple of bail-out dishes for landlubbers. The menu is hedged for the economy, as it naturally would be. It suggests, in small print, the four-course prix fixe at $89. You can still order à la carte and get out for less money, although by no means cheaply.

Just to list all of the menu categories is exhausting: snacks to share ($9–14); crudi ($11–17, or $23 for three); six kinds of oysters ($3.50 ea.; $35 per dozen); caviar; antipasti ($17–24); primi and risotti ($24–36), secondi ($35–47), whole fish & shellfish ($39–49 per pound). The whole fish offer a choice from among four sauces and six sides; there seems to be no way to order the sides separately.

It took us quite a while to absorb all of this. The $89 prix fixe precludes the whole fish; you can choose one antipasto or crudo, one pasta or risotto, and one secondo, though a number of them carry supplements. We finally decoded the whole menu and were ready to order.

Polipo, or grilled octopus (above left) was a rubbery disaster, rendering irrelevant the bed of rice, fava beans, and yellow tomatoes on which it lay.

Tartare of Hawaiian blue prawns, chanterelles, and almonds (above right) was fine, but a bit flat. The almonds were draped casually over the top of the tartare, but not really integrated in the dish. We had similar misgivings about most of the things we tried.

Gramigna (above left) caught my eye because it wedded smoked cod and speck, along with leeks and gremolata. It was the more successful of our two pastas, but for the life of us we couldn’t detect any smoked cod. “I wonder if they forgot it,” my girlfriend remarked.

Ferratini (above right) arrived not warm enough, and it also suffered from poorly calibrated ingredients. It allegedly contained manila clams, calamari, and hot chilies, but the latter ingredient was singular. We counted just one chili, and it contributed nothing to the flavor of the dish.

A long wait ensued for the secondi. We were in no hurry, but the delay foretold another culinary misfire. Storione, or Columbia river sturgeon (above left) arrived tasting like dry sponge, along with another miscellaneous mixture of ingredients—chanterelles, spring garlic, and citrus.

Seppia, or grilled Mediterranean cuttlefish (above right) seemed to have been correctly prepared, and it was somewhat more intriguing, as one is seldom served the whole animal. But again, it had little to do with its dance partners: braised escarole, livornese sauce, and wild oregano.

Dessert was the only fully successful course: a pineapple cheesecake with coconut sorbet (above left); a panna cotta with blueberries (above right). [This is the only course for which I do not have a printed menu, so these descriptions might not be quite right.]

There were no amuse courses, as one normally expects at a restaurant serving an $89 prix fixe. The breads were excellent, especially a focaccia; at the end, a meager quartet of chocolate petits-fours was yet another reminder of the amenities Marea still lacks, in light of its price range.

When the kitchen is under control, Marea will be a lovely place to dine. The multi-million dollar rehab of the dowdy old San Domenico space is stunning, without being ostentatious. You can’t avoid noticing how lovely it is, but it doesn’t get in your way. The serving pieces are lovely too, including a gorgeous charger plate I’d love to take home.

The staff render polished service. The lengthy wine list has plenty for the $50-and-under crowd (like us). A sommelier visited our table unbidden and immediately directed us to a happy choice in our price range. When we got home, I realized I hadn’t taken a copy of the menu and would have no hope of remembering all of the Italian names and ingredients. I called the restaurant back, and they emailed it to me that same evening. At 12:15 a.m.

We do not doubt that Marea is capable of turning out multi-star food. On some days, and for some guests, it may be doing so now. But nothing we tried, even had it been executed properly, approached the potential of the city’s gold standard for seafood, Le Bernardin. Perhaps it is a disservice to Michael White that anyone suggested Marea was in the same league.

Sadly, Chef White now cannot take the one obvious step that would improve Marea tremendously, which is to cut the menu in half. That would smell of desperation—admitting defeat just as the critics are starting to take their measure of the place. So he will continue to tinker around the edges and hope that he can send out winners when he has to.

Marea (240 Central Park West between Seventh Avenue & Broadway, West Midtown)

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

Review Preview: Rye

Record to date: 2–2

Say what? Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews Rye.

The Skinny: Haven’t heard of Rye? We hadn’t either. A bit of elbow grease with the google got us to the restaurant’s humble website. Apparently its first mention in the Times was just two weeks ago, when it got the full FloFab:

RYE Vintage décor sets the tone in this transformed bodega. There are 10 ryes at the bar, and the chef and co-owner, Cal Elliott, formerly of Dressler, serves inventive American fare: 247 South First Street (Roebling Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn, (718) 218-8047.

We figure that Bruni was already well into his sequence of visits and dropped a hint to her Flo Fabishness that maybe his review shouldn’t be the first time keen-eyed Times readers hear of the place.

Bruni loved Dressler, awarding two stars—which for that kind of place is like winning the lottery. (We liked Dressler too, though we gave it a more realistic one star.) That’s really our only data point, since no other critic has reviewed Rye, and we haven’t seen any food board posts we can rely on.

From the photo on the website, Rye looks like a dressed-down Dressler, which itself is hardly a bastion of formality. Bruni never gives zero stars to obscure places no one has heard of, and we’re hard pressed to believe it gets two when the rest of the city has not yet awakened to it. The menu shows only five entrées, all of which sound like solid neighborhood comfort food.

The Prediction: With the Brunz now in his lame-duck phase, anything is possible. However, we take the safe money this week, and predict that Frank Bruni will award one star to Rye.

Aldea

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Aldea.

*

George Mendes and his investors must have the patience of saints. After a build-out of nearly two years, their restaurant Aldea has just opened in the Flatiron District. Luckily for them, it is worth the wait. Aldea may be the best restaurant that has opened this year.

Mendes certainly has the pedigree to turn out excellent food. His New York background alone includes stints at Bouley, Lespinasse, Wallsé, and most recently, Tocqueville, where he was chef de cuisine. He also staged at several Michelin-starred places in Europe.

The build-out is flat-out gorgeous, with a design by Stephanie Goto. The bi-level space is not as elegant as Corton (nor is it intended to be), but it has a similar quiet elegance. The shimmering glass walls inside and at the doorway are especially striking.

You can sit at a bar facing the open kitchen, but we sat at one of the tables, which are both comfortable and quiet.

The menu is loosely inspired by Mendes’s Portuguese heritage (the restaurant is named for the village his family comes from). It is not a long menu, and we appreciate that. We’d rather choose from the handful of things the chef is convinced he can do well, especially when he is breaking in a new kitchen

There are just four Petiscos, or small bites ($6–9), five Charcuterie ($8–15), six appetizers ($10–15), and eight entrées ($19–27). The chef would probably have been serving $34 entrées last year (and we wouldn’t have minded), but he has wisely adjusted to reality.

The wine list is realistic too. It’s just two succinct pages, most of it pitched at $50 and under.

I started with a snack of Pickled Ramp Bulbs ($7; above), with cripsy pig ears, apple, and a spalsh of cumin yogurt. If you haven’t tried pig ears, this is the dish that could turn you into a convert.

For the appetizer course, we had two of the charcuterie selections, the Rustic Pork Terrine ($8; above left) and the Foie Gras Terrine ($15; above right), both technically excellent, though neither as memorable as the pig ear salad or the entrées to come.

Pork Belly ($19; above left) comes from Bev Eggleston’s reknowned herd, and Mendes nails it. Arroz de Pato ($20; above right) is Mendes’s take on paella, with three kinds of duck (confit, chorizo and duck cracklins) on a bed of rice.

The kitchen’s execution seemed to us absolutely flawless. We suspect that Mendes has dialed down his ambitions here—an entirely understandable strategy in these price-conscious times. This is still a deeply impressive restaurant. We can only hope that his achievement will get the recognition that it deserves.

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

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

Scenes from the High Line

The High Line is an elevated railroad running from Penn Station down to the Meatpacking District. It was built in the 1930s to get freight trains out of pedestrians’ way on Tenth Avenue.

City planners didn’t have the best timing. The line was built just as the west side of Manhattan’s importance as a freight destination had started to wane. It saw only limited service, and had only occasional use until the last trains ran in 1980.

The line originally went all the way downtown, but the segment south of Bank Street was demolished in the 1960s, and the segment between Bank and Horatio Streets was demolished in the 1990s. What is left of the High Line ends abruptly at Gansevoort Street, in the Meatpacking District.

When I moved to New York, the High Line was considered an eyesore. The Giuliani Administration intended to demolish it, but two residents of the area, Robert Hammond and Joshua David, hatched the idea of turning it into an elevated park. It seemed absurd at first, but they found the the Bloomberg Administration considerably more receptive to the idea.

The first section of the High Line opened last week, from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street. The second section, from 20th to 30th Streets, is expected to open in 2010. The final section, from 30th to 34th Streets, is still privately owned, and its future has yet to be determined.

I paid a visit one evening last week, after work. The transformation is miraculous. I’ll describe it only briefly, and let the photos speak for themselves.

Above left: A typical section of the High Line near its southern end, where it actually passes through a former warehouse. Above right: An “amphitheater” at 16th Street looking out over Tenth Avenue.

Above: The amphitheater.

Above left: View of Chelsea Piers. Above right: Another view of the greenway.

Above: The former railroad tracks are integrated into the design.

Above left: Looking back on where we’ve come. Above right: The second section (20th to 30th Streets), currently under construction.

Above: Exit at 20th Street. There are five entrances (Gansevoort, 14th, 16th, 18th, and 20th Streets). However, during the early period, when crowds are expected to be heavy, all but the Gansevoort Street stairs are exit-only. There is also elevator access at 16th Street.

The Bone-In Strip at Minetta Tavern

When Frank Bruni pronounced Minetta Tavern “the best steakhouse in the city” and awarded an improbable three stars, our eyes rolled.

“There he goes again,” we thought, conjuring up the image of countless restaurants over-rated during his tenure.

But we’ll give Bruni credit for one thing: the man likes his steak, and he likes it the same way we do: dry-aged prime, with a crunchy charred crust. So if Bruni thought Minetta was the city’s best, we figured it certainly wouldn’t be bad. We had to try it.

There are really only two options, a bone-in New York strip and a côte de boeuf for two. I’m leaving aside the Tavern Steak ($21), which looked pretty good when another diner had it, but it’s neither aged nor prime. And I’m also ignoring the filet mignon, which can never be a serious test. And since I was alone, that côte de boeuf wasn’t an option either.

The strip it was. And, oh my! was it good: more marbled than the typical strip, cooked on the bone to give it more flavor, and including a “tail” of half meat, half fat that most restaurants trim off. Equally impressive, it was just $36.

I cannot say for sure that it was better than the Steak for One at Wolfgang’s, which was $0.50 more expensive the last time I had it. But it was certainly as good, and certainly more remarkable for being served on the bone, which few restaurants do.

A side of leafy spinach ($8) was commendably done, but not memorable the way the steak was.

Once again, I sat at the bar, which had just one stool available at 5:30 p.m. Service was a bit more distracted than last time, when I had the burger. This place is bursting at the seams. When I left, at around 6:45, there was a hostess standing outdoors with names on a clipboard. I wouldn’t call her a bouncer—actually, she was quite friendly—but I gather her job was to turn away walk-ins.

We’ll go ahead and give the steak 3 stars, since we haven’t had better, but you’ll have to put up with some hassles if you want to try it.

Minetta Tavern (113 MacDougal Street between Bleecker & W. 3rd Streets, Greenwich Village)

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

Aimless Bruni Speculation

Frank Bruni was named New York Times restaurant critic on April 8, 2004. His first review appeared 62 days later, on June 9, 2004 (Babbo, three stars).

The first non-Bruni Times review will be published on August 26, 75 days from now. This suggests that if the Times does not name a successor sometime roughly within the next 2–3 weeks, there will likely be another interim critic, as there was between William Grimes’s departure at the end of 2003, and Bruni’s arrival.

Bruni, of course, had to relocate from Rome, where he had been the bureau chief. Someone who already lives in New York, and who is familiar with the local restaurant scene, wouldn’t need as long a runway.

It has been 29 days since Times editor Bill Keller announced that Bruni was stepping down. Aside from Eater.com’s long list of candidates, posted that same week, I haven’t seen any speculation or rumor-mongering, which suggests the Times is doing a good job of keeping its search private.

We can only hope that as Keller sifts through candidates, he is taking our advice to heart.

Top Chef Masters: Episode #1 Recap

Last night was the première of Top Chef Masters, the spin-off from Bravo’s popular Top Chef series, which just completed its fifth season.

There are a few differences between the two shows. In Masters, the chefs are all established pros at the top of the business, many of them with Michelin stars, James Beard awards, etc. They’re competing for charity. Instead of a large cast that is whittled down week-by-week, each episode has just four chefs, only one of whom survives. After six weeks of this, there will be a “championship round” in which the individual winners return to face each other.

There is much less pressure, and much less drama than on Top Chef. None of the “Masters” sees this show as a career-maker or breaker. In Episode 1, they all seemed to be doing it for good-natured fun. And of course, because they are all more experienced than the Top Cheftestants, most of the dishes looked pretty good.

As on Top Chef, there are two challenges—Quickfire and Elimination. And as on Top Chef, the challenges practically always involve a ridiculous contrivance that the chefs would never face in real life.

This week’s contestants were Hubert Keller of Fleur de Lys in San Francisco; Christopher Lee of Aureole in NYC; Tim Love of the Lonesome Dove Western Bistro in Fort Worth; and Michael Schlow of Radius in Boston.

For the Quickfire Challenge, they had 60 minutes to make desserts for a Girl Scout troupe. Schlow admitted that desserts are his weak spot, and it showed. He served a pile of brown mush that the scouts quickly dismissed. Tim Love and Chris Lee over-thought their dishes. They didn’t look like what any sensible person would serve to children. That left Keller, whose dessert got five out of five stars from the troupe. (Points scored in the Quickfire carried over to the Elimination round.)

For the Elimination Challenge, they had to cook dinner for college students, using only a hot plate, a toaster oven and a microwave, and doing the prep in Pomona College dorm rooms. All four chefs did a pretty impressive job, especially under these conditions. I would have been happy to eat any of these dishes. Tim Love nearly ruined his food when he accidentally put it in the freezer overnight, but he made a good recovery. Schlow’s dishes were the most boring; I have already forgotten what they were.

Keller won the Elimination, with Lee second, Love third, Schlow last. Keller, of course, had carry-over points from his Quickfire performance, but it he would have won even without that advantage. He mopped the floor with the competition.

Kelly Choi hosted. She did a fine job but is nowhere near as hot as Padma Lakshmi. The three judges were British critic Jay Rayner, retired New York Magazine critic Gael Greene, and Saveur editor-in-chief James Oseland. They were remarkably kind to the chefs. It was nowhere near as brutal as Judges’ Table on Top Chef.

Everyone expected Rayner to go after the chefs like an attack dog, maybe because that’s his reputation in Britain, or maybe because he’s so damned scary looking. He was actually a perfectly reasonable guy. Oseland seemed to love everything. This is the first time I’ve seen Gael Greene without a hat covering part of her face. She looked like Archaeopteryx, but like Rayner, was charming and polite to the chefs.

It’s ironic that classic French cuisine is in supposedly decline these days, but the most classically trained chef gave the best performance.

Review Recap: Savoy

Today, Frank Bruni bestows the expected deuce on Savoy, Peter Hoffman’s 20-year-old haute barnyard trailblazer:

It’s easy to forget about Mr. Hoffman and about Savoy, whose leafy, principled menu now seems less a breath of fresh cooking than the default setting of the urban bistro, where a chef contemplates ramps in May, butternut squash in November.

But if Savoy is no longer a trailblazer or paragon — and if, indeed, it makes a more modest impression than a latter-day temple of ethical eating like Blue Hill — it remains an attention-worthy restaurant, on account of how deeply pleasant an afternoon or evening here can be. Its low-key charms haven’t faded since its opening in 1990, and its adjustments over time have been wise ones.

Bruni seems to prefer the bustling downstairs bar to the refined dining room. Such a surprise! Perhaps if the restaurant were renamed Momofuku Savoy Bar, it would earn an extra star. His assessment of the two rooms is completely bass-ackwards:

Ask to sit downstairs. While both dining rooms have working fireplaces, the street-level one feels at once more intimate and livelier.

No, Frank, it’s the upstairs that is more intimate. There are a hundred restaurants that offer what Savoy offers downstairs. Upstairs is where it shines.

Sueños

Note: Sueños closed in March 2014.

*

We don’t make a habit of following Frank Bruni around the city, but he caught our attention last week when he recommended Sueños, chef Sue Torres’s modern Mexican restaurant in West Chelsea. Unusually for us, we didn’t have other plans, and Sueños was available.

Torres moved up the NYC restaurant ladder, working at La Grenouille, “21”, and Arizona 206 (among many others) before becoming head chef at the Rocking Horse Café at the tender age of 23. In 2003, she moved to Sueños, where she is both chef and owner. In the Times, William Grimes awarded one star. Aside from a brief fling with Los Dados in the Meatpacking District in late 2007, Torres has kept her focus on Sueños, and that’s probably a good thing.

The space is delightful, making the best of an oddly shaped layout. To get in, you pass over a gang plank that passes between two buildings. Initially, you’re in an ample bar area, where the margaritas are wonderful.

There are two dining rooms, where the exposed brick is painted in bold, saturated colors. They wrap around a courtyard decorated with a fountain and scrub brush. It allows natural light into a space that would otherwise seem claustrophobic. We were in the smaller of the two rooms, a glass-enclosed porch that appears to have been manufactured out of the gap between two buildings.

We had no trouble getting a reservation the day of our visit, but the restaurant was mostly full. The server said that Frank Bruni’s blog post was certainly helpful, but that they’d been doing well anyway. (He also said that Bruni was not recognized on any of his visits.)

The inexpensive menu has appetizers priced from $6–10, entrées $17–25, and side dishes $5. A five-course tasting menu is $50. It’s a concise document that fits on just one page.

Every table gets home-made bean dip with corn bread (above), which is a wonderful way to start a meal.

Both the Shrimp Stack ($10; above left) and the Chicken Chilaquiles ($10; above right) featured the bright, forward flavors and the balanced seasoning that Torres is known for.

Pork Tacos with warm apples ($18; above left) and Hanger Steak Tacos with queso and black beans ($19; above right) showed that same excellent sense of balance, but neither one could be eaten as intended. The pork tacos were too messy and too hot to pick up, while the steak tacos quickly leaked through to the outside of the soft tortilla shell.

The wine list had plenty of options in the right price range. We settled on a $29 Spanish red that was just fine, though I haven’t noted what it was. Service was smooth and unobtrusive. We lingered both at the bar and at the table without ever feeling rushed.

Non-formulaic Mexican food is hard to find in the city. Based on the sample we had, I get the feeling that the farther you stray from Mexican classics, the more interesting Chef Torres’s food becomes.

Sueños (311 W. 17th Street, west of Eighth Avenue, Chelsea)

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