NY Journal at the High Sierra

The Summit of Mammoth Mountain, 11,023 feet. Two more pix below.

Sad News: Eighty One closing

Steve Cuozzo in the Post has the sad news that Eighty One will be closing after service on Sunday, April 4. Cuozzo, who was always a fan of the place, thought that it served “possibly the best food in the Upper West Side’s history.”

Chef Ed Brown summarized Eighty One’s problem eloquently:

We started as a destination restaurant in a destination location. When the world fell apart, we changed to cope with it, with a lower-priced menu and more accessible food. But we weren’t able to change people’s perceptions that we were a special-occasion place — which is why we were always full for special occasions, but not on a daily basis.

He might also have mentioned Frank Bruni’s respectful but not ecstatic two-star review—probably one less than it deserved—and the fact that the hotel entrance was hidden by scaffolding for much of the two years the restaurant existed.

Review Recap: Chin Chin

Today’s stop on Sam Sifton’s restaurant irrelevance tour is Chin Chin, which gets one star:

There was a time in New York when the fundamental distinction in Chinese restaurants was not among regional cuisines, but among Manhattan neighborhoods. There was Chinatown Chinese, of course: voir-dire lunches, chop-suey perfection, the mystery and excitement of dim sum served over sticky floors. And there was uptown Chinese: cocktails and Peking duck served on starched white tablecloths, with prices to match. This, too, had its charms.

Chin Chin belongs to the latter camp. The restaurant is not particularly Cantonese, as was true of many of the early upscale Chinese restaurants in Manhattan. It is not Sichuan, either, nor tied in fact to any particular Chinese cuisine. It is what Mr. Chin calls a “restaurant chinois.”

But never mind that French talk. Order a dry martini and allow the pressures of the city to recede in its glow. Chin Chin is as American as pork dumplings and sticky spareribs, cold noodles with sesame sauce, three-glass chicken and fried rice.

As we noted yesterday, there is little point in re-reviewing such a place, except to change its rating. In our haste, we misquoted Bryan Miller’s review of a quarter-century ago: he gave it two stars, not one. Hence Sifton’s rating is one star, not the two we predicted.

Nevertheless, we suspect Sifton could go on all year re-reviewing decades-old one and two-star restaurants that are not what they used to be. What is the point?

Faustina

Note: Faustina closed in December 2010. The hotel changed hands, and the new owners wanted to install a new restaurant. Multiple operators have run the space since then. As of January 2014, it is Narcissa, a restaurant from Dovetail owner/chef John Fraser.

*

Most restaurants open around the husks of old ones, as it’s a lot cheaper to renovate a space that already has a commercial kitchen. The transformation that turned the failed Table 8 into Scott Conant’s Faustina was unusually speedy—taking only about a month. Perhaps that’s because its home, in the Cooper Square Hotel, couldn’t do without a restaurant for very long.

Conant has had the midas touch for years, from L’Impero to Alto (now run by Michael White), to Scarpetta. We found the latter wildly over-rated (three stars from Bruni), but perhaps it is more consistent now; we have never had the urge to re-visit.

I assumed that Faustina would be a lazy restaurant. Nothing against Conant, but it was obviously thrown together quickly. To our surprise, Faustina is actually very good, and certainly much more enjoyable than our first visit to Scarpetta.

The menu is evolving. The original concept made us shudder: “small plates”. Neither of the early reviewers, Steve Cuozzo nor Alan Richman, was happy about that. There’s now a section of the menu offering piatti grande, which I’m assuming is new, as no review mentioned it. Richman complained of a menu with nine sections. There are now seven, which is a step in the right direction.

Those menu categories—at least this week—are Bread & Olives ($4–6), Cheese & Salume ($6), Raw Bar ($12–23; selection $68), Piatti ($9–19), Pasta & Risotto ($14–21), Piatti Grande ($31–42), and Sides ($9). Nothing like mixing-and-matching English and Italian.

At the bar, there’s a different menu, mostly a subset of the dining room menu with a few extra items. I compared the two: for the dishes on both, the prices are the same. A La Freida burger (what else?) was introduced this week. Given the popularity of bar dining, they might as well have one menu.

As always at such places, one is unsure of how much to order, and doubtful of whether the server’s advice can be trusted. We ordered—all to share—a small plate, a pasta, and a large plate, and it was still more food than we could eat.

We liked the hefty Lardo-Wrapped Prawns with rosemary lentils ($16; above left), even if we couldn’t taste much lardo. Spaghetti with octopus ragu ($15; above right) justified Conant’s well deserved reputation as a pasta champion.

Oddly, both of these were served at once, after which we were advised that our entrée—er, large plate—would take 25 minutes. Apparently it had not occurred to them that the two appetizers—er, small plates—ought to be served as separate courses.

When they said “large plate,” they weren’t kidding. The Glazed Berkshire Pork Chop ($31; above left) was the largest pork entrée we’d ever seen. The photo doesn’t do it justice. With one more side dish, three people could have shared it. From the descriptions, all of the piatti grande seem to be like that—very large portions that a sane solo diner couldn’t order.

The server presented the double-chop table-side, then whisked it away to be cut into sections. We’re not sure how Italian it is, but it might be the best pork entrée in New York, blowing the Little Owl’s to smithereens. A side of herbed fries ($9; above right) was a greasy mess; the evening’s only disappointment.

The décor, as Richman noted, could be a hotel anywhere. We never visited Table 8, but we understand it is little changed. The trip to the rest room, as many reviewers have noted, is a trek so long you’ll be tempted to leave breadcrumbs to show you the path back home. That’s often the case with hotel restaurants.

Servers wear ties and work with brisk efficiency. A sommelier comes to your table unbidden, though the wine list is neither as long nor as varied as it ought to be. Like everything else at Faustina, that could change.

In sum, Faustina is promising indeed. We don’t know when we’ll get around to returning. Unlike Scarpetta, we’d very much like to.

Faustina (25 Cooper Square (Bowery between 5th & 6th Streets), East Village)

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

Review Preview: Chin Chin

Tomorrow, the increasingly strange voyage of Times critic Sam Sifton takes him to Chin Chin, one of the city’s few upscale Chinese restaurants that has a modicum of critical acclaim.

The Eater oddsmakers are so shellshocked by last week’s bizarro threespot for Colicchio & Sons that they’ve declined to set a line this week. Nevertheless, we’ll wade in. We haven’t dined at Chin Chin in nearly twenty years, and we don’t know anyone who has, so our prediction is based purely on meta criteria.

Chin Chin hasn’t made any news lately: there is no new chef or renovation that would compel a re-review. Bryan Miller awarded one star in 1987. Why review it again unless something has changed? A demotion is always possible, but you very rarely see a one-to-zero downgrade in the Times, as there are probably hundreds of restaurants that got one star originally, but have slipped since then. Zero-star Chinese food is too commonplace to be worth spilling ink on.

That leaves an upgrade as the most likely outcome, so we’ll go ahead and predict two stars for Chin Chin.

Bistro Vendôme

Bistro Vendôme opened in early February in the former March space, which had been vacant for nearly three years, after its replacement, Nish, quickly flopped in early 2007. The chef here is Pascal Petiteau, who worked at the nearby Jubilee and finally has his own place.

I remember March only vaguely, as my lone visit was nearly six years ago, and I never made it to Nish. The décor now is bare bones, but the space seems much brighter than it used to be, relying on natural light flooding through wide windows on three levels. There will be outdoor terrace dining in good weather.

There is a long, spacious bar at the front of the townhouse that Bistro Vendôme occupies, which I am fairly certain wasn’t there in the March days. The host stand is past the bar, and this leads to mild confusion, as customers coming in are a bit unsure, at first, about where to congregate. The restaurant was packed on a Saturday evening—always a good sign for a place mainly dependent on neighborhood business—but the host was a bit overwhelmed, and we were not seated until half-an-hour past our 8:00 p.m. reservation. A cocktail at ordered at the bar tasted mostly of tonic water. Service at the table, however, was just fine.

The menu offers classic, inexpensive French bistro food, straight up and without complication or distraction. It is all done well, but not beyond the better classic French places that many NYC neighborhoods have. (Disclosure: We had the pleasure of dining here during “Friends & Family,” courtesy of a publicist’s invitation, but our review is of the meal we paid for.)

We wondered about how many bushels of green salad the restaurant consumes per day, given its prominence in two fine appetizers: a Crispy Goat Cheese Cake ($10; above left) and an off-menu special, Crispy Sweetbreads ($10; above right).

Ribeye steak with sauce au poivre ($30; above left) was fine for a non-steakhouse preparation, and the fries were perfect. We’re a bit past Cassoulet season, but I had a hankering for it anyway ($24; above right), and the chef nailed it. Duck confit, bacon, and garlic sausage were on target, and so were the beans.

For a restaurant this inexpensive, I would like the wine list to have a few more choices below $50; a 2005 Guigal Crozes Hermitage was $54, and there weren’t many French reds below that level.

The packed house seemed to be mostly an older, Upper East Side crowd. As far as we are concerned, there can never be enough good French restaurants. Sutton Place agrees with us, if last Saturday’s crowd was any indication.

Bistro Vendôme (405 East 58th Street, just east of First Avenue, Sutton Place)

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

Review Recap: Colicchio & Sons

This morning at 3:00 a.m., Tom Colicchio was spotted dancing nude in the Lincoln Center Plaza fountain.

OK, not quite, but we are sure he was out celebrating into the wee hours after winning an improbable three stars in the Times for his almost universally panned restaurant, Colicchio & Sons.

We don’t feel badly for having widely missed the mark with our one-star prediction. Nobody in town thought the review was going down that way. It is not often that a restaurant gets three stars in the Times when every other critic (and most bloggers) thought it was worth, at best, one.

It’s also not often that a restaurant announces a 30 percent price cut just days before the review comes out. It tells you a lot about the kind of review Colicchio thought he was going to get.

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

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$8.00		$20.00
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–.00
Total	$7.00		$10.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	8–10 (44.4%)		10–8 (55.6%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 80–35 (69.6%).

The Smith

The Smith never made it to the top of my must-visit list when it opened in 2007. The restaurant, as Frank Bruni noted, “didn’t make all that loud and persuasive a case for attention among all the other clamorers.”

But on Friday evening, when I was looking for a restaurant not too far from east Chelsea, where the food would suit my 15-year-old son, the Smith fit the bill perfectly. Better yet, the Smith is on OpenTable. These days, I hardly go anywhere unfamiliar if it is not on OpenTable. It’s simply not worth a trip, only to face an unknown wait.

The Smith actually didn’t have to be on OpenTable. On a Friday evening, it was packed—mostly with NYU students, or so it seemed to us. We appreciated that our reservation was honored fifteen minutes late, never a sure thing at a place so crowded. Fortunately, we got a corner table, which meant that the unsufferable din assaulted us on two sides, instead of all four. The Smith is as loud a restaurant as we’ve visited in quite some time.

The menu offers American brasserie food at recession-resistant prices, with starters and snacks, $10 or less, sandwiches, pastas and entrées $19 or less (except steaks, which are in the $20s). The by-the-glass wine list (most $10 or less) is longer than it has to be, and selections are also offered by the caraffe or the “big caraffe.” House cocktails are mostly $11, beers $6–8.

The kitchen did a respectable job with Caesar Salad ($9; above left). The pork chop ($19; above right) was decent, but the accompanying “sweet potato hash” (apples, bacon, cider glaze) tasted like it had simmered too long.

My son loved the lobster roll ($23; above left)—a special served only on Fridays. The burger ($15; above right) was respectable, but not as good as the one we had at Choptank a few weeks ago, at the same price.

I wouldn’t mind returning to the Smith if the dining room weren’t so loud. As it is…well, this is the East Village, an area not exactly starved for restaurants. I’d drop in again (outside of prime time) if I were, oh, within a three-block radius.

The Smith (55 Third Avenue south of 11th Street, East Village)

Rating: ★

Review Preview: Colicchio & Sons

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews Tom Colicchio’s latest and not-so-greatest, Colicchio & Sons. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 3–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 20–1; Three Stars: 400–1; Four Stars: 25,000–1.

Tom Colicchio doesn’t need my sympathy, but I am starting to feel sorry for the guy. Today’s pan in Time Out New York is the latest of many, including our own in early February. Actually, I have yet to see a positive review.

This is a place that I am quite sure Colicchio believes is capable of operating at a three-star level. That was clearly his intention when he abruptly jacked up the price to $78 prix fixe about a month ago. He reversed the decision last Friday after just three weeks. I cannot recall any other restaurant where this has happened.

By Friday, Colicchio would have known that the restaurant was going into the Times this week. (I have been in restaurants where the Times photographer was in the house; the photos are normally shot about a week in advance.) He wouldn’t have cut prices if he thought there was any chance at getting the trifecta from Sifton. So we can safely guess that even Colicchio knows that he will not get three stars.

At this point, Colicchio will be relieved to get two stars. We don’t think it’s quite as unlikely as Eater does, but we certainly agree that it’s not the most probable outcome. We also think there are enough hits on the menu here to avoid the dreaded goose-egg, much as Colicchio may deserve it for sheer chutzpah alone.

In short, we agree with Eater that Sam Sifton will aware one star to Colicchio & Sons.

Chef Blinks: Colicchio & Sons Abandons Prix Fixe

After less than a month, Tom Colicchio has abandoned the prix fixe at Colicchio & Sons, returning to the original à la carte format. We called it chutzpah to charge $78 for such a mediocre restaurant, and apparently other customers agreed.

Colicchio is no dummy, so I have to wonder what he’s thinking when he tells the Village Voice:

He also noted that he felt the sticker shock of a prix fixe would be less jarring than the sticker shock of a $30 main dish, which clearly wasn’t the case.

Now that’s just daft. If main dishes are $30 and the prix fixe is $78, it follows that you are charging the customer $48 for the appetizer and the dessert. No wonder people had a problem with that, especially at a restaurant where 12 of the cooks are new:

Are there going to be inconsistencies? Of course.

Uh, huh.