I Don’t Get It: Psilakis Done at Anthos

Update: Anthos has closed. Owner Donatella Arpaia sold the space, which will become a steakhouse run by the Ben & Jack’s family.

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Frank Bruni, back on his old beat, reports today that Michael Psilakis is out at Anthos, where he was chef–partner with front-of-house guru Donatella Arpaia.

This is the third split in their long-protracted divorce, with Arpaia having previously backed out of Psilakis’s Gus & Gabriel Gastropub, and he in turn having left her Italian restaurant, Mia Dona. Both of those moves made some sense, as Psilakis wasn’t really an Italian chef, and Arpaia probably felt she had little to add at Gus & Gabriel.

This time, I don’t get it.

Anthos derived its prestige from Psilakis’s name. Like many high-end restaurants, it is surely suffering during the recession. But given that it is remaining open, Arpaia is better off with Psilakis than a chef no one has heard of. It will probably lose its Michelin star, as restaurants normally do when a chef leaves.

Similarly, Psilakis has now lost the only good restaurant in his portfolio. Such places are seldom money-spinners in themselves, but their cachet leads to other things, like cookbooks and TV deals, and they lend gravitas to the chef’s lower-end places. Think of how much Jean-Georges Vongerichten gets from sprinkling pixie dust on his large collection of restaurants, with his flagship as a loss-leader.

Instead of being a Michelin-star chef, Psilakis is now just a guy turing out mediocre comfort food. What does he do for an encore? Sling burgers?

Belated Review Recap: Strip House

Yesterday, Sam Sifton dropped the expected two-spot on Strip House:

The service is professional and attentive, with none of the gruff theatricality that attends tables at Sparks or Smith & Wollensky. The wine list is comprehensive and interesting, with reds to surprise palates and draw the attention of expense-account auditors alike.

And the food is generally marvelous, the steak often superb. Strip House belongs to Peter and Penny Glazier, the restaurant tycoons who own Michael Jordan’s in Grand Central Terminal, as well as mimeographed Strip Houses in Las Vegas and Houston, in Florida and New Jersey. The Glaziers buy a lot of meat. They use the leverage to secure excellent product.

John Schenk, the executive chef at Strip House since 2006, makes sure of its use. He has his line cooks grill the steaks tight and well, with a thick crust of salt and pepper that highlights the deep flavor of the beef.

We agree with the rating, but we are not quite sure why Sifton is spending so much of his time at restaurants that did not exactly cry out for re-reviews. There is still a long list of Bruni errors that require fixing.

This was the easiest two-star bet we ever took. We and Eater both win $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$6.00		$18.00
Gain/Loss	+2.00		+2.00
Total	$8.00		$20.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	8–9 (47.1%)		10–7 (58.8%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 80–34 (70%).

Recette

Note: Recette closed in April 2016. The chef, Jesse Schenker, cited escalating rents and the limitations of the space: he could not open for lunch, because the dining room was needed for dinner prep. Schenker moved the entire staff over to his other restaurant, The Gander, which remains open, and which (in my view) is a more fully-formed restaurant. Schenker seems to agree, as he told The Times: “Recette was not a failure. It was a steppingstone to where I am today.”

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Recette opened about two months ago in the cute West Village corner lot formerly occupied by Jarnac, which closed in mid-2009. The chef, Jesse Schenker, was a chef de partie at Gordon Ramsay, then ran a catering operation in Harlem (also called Recette).

It’s hard to avoid the feeling that you’ve seen this before. Doesn’t the photo of the 56-seat dining room (above) look like a hundred others that have opened in the last decade?

The menu format seems tired too, with its arrangement of “snacks” ($6–9), assorted cheese and charcuterie ($6–20), “plates” of indeterminate size ($10–23), and side dishes ($5–6).

The server recommended two to three plates (don’t they always?), but when I requested the charcuterie assortment, two other plates, and a side dish, she said that would probably be too much. So I jettisoned one plate and had the right amount of food, though someone with a heartier appetite might well have eaten more.

The concept may be derivative, but everything I had was good.

That charcuterie assortment ($20) consisted of tête de cochon, cacciatore, jambon de Bayonne, and a wonderful foie gras terrine.

Crispy Sweetbreads ($16) worked beautifully with escarole, brown butter, lemon, capers, and parsley. I didn’t take note of the plates served at other tables, but this one was perfect for sharing—as the “plates” at such an establishment should be, but often aren’t. Duck Fat Fingerlings ($6) were also on target.

Recette has been filling up, at least on weekends (always good to see). Service is about right for this type of place. The wine list is short, and in the right price range. None of the by-the-glass options floated my boat, so (unusually for me) I ordered a full bottle of a young Bordeaux ($35) for myself. I wasn’t going to finish it, so it was effectively bottomless.

If the restaurants opening these days aren’t exactly ground-breaking, it’s at least nice to find a place that delivers well made food at an affordable price. Recette does that.

Recette (328 W. 12th Street at Greenwich Street, West Village)

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

Review Preview: Strip House

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews the Greenwich Village steak parlor, Strip House. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 200–1; One Star: 3–1; Two Stars: 2–1; Three Stars: 75–1; Four Stars 2,000–1.

Among the many restaurants overdue for a fresh look, we aren’t sure why Sifty chose Strip House. We love the place, and gave it two stars four years ago. In the Times, William Grimes gave it one star in 2000. We think he missed the mark (or Strip House got much better), but Frank Bruni’s mistakes are far more urgently in need of correction.

When there is a re-review with no intervening event (such as a move, a chef change, or a remodeling—none of which has happened at Strip House), the rating almost never remains the same. There is no point in picking Strip House out of nowhere, only to deliver the same message as Grimes did.

As Eater noted, Sifton dropped a goose egg last week on Choptank, and it surely won’t happen two weeks in a row, besides which it would be the wrong result, and Strip House isn’t important enough to demote.

That leaves a promition to two stars as the only sensible bet.

Review Recap: Choptank

Today, Sam Sifton dropped a surprisingly harsh goose-egg on Choptank. Despite liking many dishes, he found the food highly uneven and unfaithful to its Chesapeake namesake:

Choptank the restaurant opened this winter on Bleecker Street in Greenwich Village, taking the watershed as its muse and Baltimore as its butler. The restaurant evokes the Chesapeake region in the way that dorm rooms at Johns Hopkins do: Duck Head khakis in the dresser and lacrosse sticks leaning against the desk, postcards from Rehoboth Beach tacked to the wall along with the covering board from grandfather’s sloop, a thrift-store oil painting, sconces from mom.

So there ain’t no pit beef here, hon. Too low-class. No steamed crabs on paper tablecloths, either. (Though they say come summer.) You can’t buy a can of Natty Boh beer. (The company doesn’t distribute up north.) There is a fine Ostrowski’s Polish sausage sitting with its pretzel brother on a plate, garlicky as a Pigtown housewife, but there is no John Waters to Choptank, much less Avon Barksdale or Stringer Bell. The restaurant’s vibe is suburban, as safe as Cal Ripken.

The food is to match, especially among the appetizers: crab dip out of a Junior League cookbook, with potato chips russet with Old Bay seasoning, all celery salt and heat; church-supper Virginia ham, with biscuits that taste morning-made and midday-refrigerated.

We liked Choptank better than Sifton did, but he paid more visits and sampled more of the menu. We agree that if it’s that uneven, zero stars is the correct rating. We are surprised, however, that he bothered to waste a a review on a place he considered so unimportant. Whatever.

We and Eater both lose a dollar on our hypothetical bets.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$7.00		$19.00
Gain/Loss	–1.00		–1.00
Total	$6.00		$18.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	7–9 (43.8%)		9–7 (56.2%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 79–34 (70%).

SHO Shaun Hergatt

Note: Shaun Hergatt left the eponymous restaurant at the end of July 2012. As of August 2012, the space was called The Exchange, with an inexpensive menu by new chef Josh Capone. That restaurant closed in April 2013. As of October 2014, it is Reserve Cut, a kosher steakhouse.

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We paid a return visit to SHO Shaun Hergatt recently. Our previous visit was probably one of our two or three best meals of 2009.

The mainstream critics practically ignored SHO—including no full review in The New York Times. Despite that egregious error, business has picked up. We found it full on a Saturday evening, in contrast to our last visit, when it was practically empty.

The base price remains $69 prix fixe for three courses at dinner (à la carte at lunch), plus a flurry of canapés, amuses-bouches, petits-fours, and so forth. It is probably the best high-end restaurant deal in the city. The obligatory tasting menus have appeared: $110 for six courses or $220 for fifteen.

We ordered the six-course tasting. Our enthusiasm for the restaurant is undimmed, and as this is our second review of SHO, we’ll keep our comments brief.

We started with a trio of canapés (above left), of which we failed to get an intelligable explanation. Then, as amuse-bouche, a Kumamoto oyster with crème fraiche (above right).

The first savory course was a superb Venison Tartare (above left) with perigord truffle. We also loved a Maitake Mushroom Soup (above right) with black trumpet pavé and celeriac foam.

The kitchen sentout an extra course (above left): a soft poached quail egg with langoustine, black truffle, and cauliflower purée. This was terrific, but I must admit we couldn’t taste the langoustine, if it was there at all.

Wild Striped Bass (above right) was impeccably prepared.

We had two preparations of lobster (above left; the photo was after I’d already taken a few bites). Although the lobster itself was beautifully done, I didn’t think creamy polenta added much to the dish.

We also had two preparations of veal tenderloin (above right). The preparation with sweetbread ravioli (pictured) was much better than the one with veal tongue.

As pre-dessert (not pictured), we had a vanilla crème with orange butter, citrus segments, and chocolate. Dessert (also not pictured) was a chocolate soufflé, candied kumquats, and ice cream. This was followed by more petits-fours (left) than we could possibly eat.

Service was first-rate. The staff recognized us, but as far as we could tell, everyone got the same treatment.

The patrons filling SHO on a Saturday evening are clearly not a neighborhood crowd. Despite the lack of media adoration, the word has gotten out.

Many people thought it was a fool’s errand to open a place like SHO in the current economy, and particularly in the battered Financial District, in a building covered in scaffolding, on a street closed to traffic. Of course, most of the planning was done in the boom times, and there is little they could have done to change it—even assuming they wanted to. Luckily for us, they stuck to their guns, and opened the best new restaurant of 2009.

SHO Shaun Hergatt (40 Broad Street near Exchange Place, Financial District)

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

Review Preview: Choptank

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton reviews the West Village’s casual seafooder, Choptank. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Goose Egg: 50–1; One Star: 2–1; Two Stars: 3–1; Three Stars: 500–1; Four Stars: 25,000–1

While we loved Choptank for what it is, it struck us as fundamentally a one-star concept—in the good sense of that term. Sifton has been less inclined than his predecessor to toss out two-star ratings like candy bars. We therefore have little hesitation in predicting a positive one star for Choptank.