Elizabeth

 

Note: There was a series of chef chuffles after this review was written. Elizabeth finally closed in early 2011.

*

The new restaurant Elizabeth showcases several recent trends.

In the first place, we have a former three-star chef working in much humbler surroundings—trying to “make it small” after he’d already made it big. That chef is Doug Psaltis, who worked at both The French Laundry and Country. In the second place, Psaltis is merely consulting, with another former colleague from Country, John Iconomou, in the kitchen day-to-day.

Lastly, there’s a “small plates” format, which at its best encourages grazing and sharing, but at its worst encourages over-ordering or leaves the customer confused about how much to order.

In part, these trends reflect the preferences of some younger diners, who want to enjoy haute cuisine without putting on a coat and tie, who don’t want to be locked into the standard three-course meal, and who don’t want to pay the higher prices that fancier restaurants need to charge to recover their overheads. These trends also reflect tough economic times: the risks and the capital required to open a multi-starred restaurant.

Some of the post-modern, deconstructed restaurants are terrific. Others are derivative—pedestrian—ordinary. Elizabeth is in the latter camp.

The space is configured somewhat like a railroad apartment, with several dark rooms in sequence, leading to a bright, cheery garden space with a large skylight. The garden looks like it dropped in from another restaurant; it looks like nothing like the indoor space. Most patrons seem to prefer the garden. It was full at 6:30 p.m. on a Friday night, but the dark indoor rooms, where we were seated, were empty. They started to fill up a bit later on.

The menu is divided into three categories with five dishes apiece: First ($8–14), Second ($11–13) and Third ($14–19). Naturally, the idea is to encourage you to order one from each category, though we ignored that advice. If our experience is any guide, one appetizer and one entrée (selected from the third category) is sufficient unless you’re unusually hungry.

For the record, desserts are $7–9, a cheese plate $13. House cocktails, at $12–14, are a bit over-priced in relation to the rest of the menu. The wine list is more reasonable, though it is less than half a page, with about 10 choices by the glass and another 10 by the bottle. We had a respectable Shiraz for $45.

 

A Green Gazpacho ($9) with cucumber and passion fruit was probably the best thing we tasted, cool and summery. In the middle of the bowl was a scoop of mango sorbet; the soup was poured over it at tableside.

A lettuce salad ($8) was competently done.

 

Pork Tenderloin ($14) was prepared in the traditional manner, with applesauce, sour cream, and potato latkes. A Crispy Cheese Burger ($14) wasn’t tender enough. It was served with a bizarre frisbee of burnt cheese that was twice the diameter of the bun. Fries ($5) were huge and far too mushy on the inside. I called them “horse fries,” meaning that only a horse could love them.

The restaurant has been open for about six weeks. Some early reports complained about service, but we found it mostly under control. We found nothing at Elizabeth that was worthy of the former chef de cuisine at the French Laundry. The kitchen serves decent comfort food.

Elizabeth (265 Elizabeth Street between Houston & Prince Streets, NoLIta)

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

First Look: Sheridan Square

Note: Click here for a full review of Sheridan Square.

The long-delayed Sheridan Square opens tonight in Greenwich Village. The restaurant has been in a “soft open” for the last couple of days, and after reading a glowing review yesterday on Mouthfuls, I decided to stop in for dinner.

The chef here, Gary Robins, joins a gaggle of former three-star chefs opening in much humbler Greenwich Village settings. Bar Blanc is run by a trio of Bouley alumni, Bobo opened with a former Ducasse chef (who has since left), Commerce has Montrachet’s Harold Moore, and Sheridan Square has Robins, who earned three stars at the Biltmore Room and, less honorably, numerous pans at the Russian Tea Room.

Sheridan Square might be the best of this quartet of restaurants, all within two square blocks of one another. We rated Commerce an outright failure, and Frank Bruni gave it only one star. Bar Blanc got the two stars it likely wanted, but it continues to be dogged by service complaints; we consider it an under-achiever. We liked Bobo (not yet reviewed by Bruni), but the jury is still out; it appears to be righting the ship after a nearly disastrous start.

Bobo certainly has the loveliest space, though Sheridan Square rates a respectable second, with a cheery modern vibe, large windows that admit plenty of natural light, a woodburning stove, white tablecloths, and elegant service. It’s a pity those windows don’t offer something nicer to look at. Like all restaurants located on avenues and major cross streets, the view is nothing special.

There’s a divided kitchen, with most of the cooking done in the basement, and some of the finishing and plating done upstairs in view of the dining room. I don’t quite understand the allure of open kitchens, but this one seemed to be humming along efficiently without being too much of a distraction.

The seasonal (“Late Spring”) menu is priced about in line with the neighborhood’s other upscale newcomers, with starters $11–19, entrées $24–36, and side dishes $8. I counted at least four entrées that are prepared in the wood-burning oven, and I suspect they’ll be among the most popular. I wasn’t happy to see two entrées with “m.p.” instead of a price (lamb, strip steak). Given the ease of reprinting these days, and a seasonal menu that changes frequently, how hard is it to reprint when the price changes?

A mis-named appetizer called “Crispy Squash Blossom” ($17) was mildly disappointing. The brown fritter in the photo is basically an oddly shaped jumbo lump crab cake with a tangy mango chili sauce. The corn salsa and avocado were a bit more exciting, but seemed to have parachuted in from a different appetizer. A couple of ugly shards of lettuce didn’t add anything either, and for the life of me I couldn’t find any squash.

I adored the Wood Grilled Carolina Trout ($24), plated with golden beets in a honey ginger vinaigrette, wild rice, garden beans and yuzu hazelnut brown butter. Everything in this dish worked beautifully together, punctuated by two ample filets of tender trout and a mild smoky flavor imparted by the wood-burning oven.

Service was about as smooth and assured as I’ve seen in a restaurant that is not yet technically open. I did not order wine, but the wine list, though not particularly deep, seemed to be fairly priced, with plenty of bottles under $50 and a good selection by the glass. I had a couple of terrific cocktails, but there was no printed cocktail menu. Bread service could be better, with only humdrum sourdough bread and a caraffe of olive oil as the only choice.

I don’t assign ratings to restaurants that are not yet open, but Sheridan Square seems to have all of the pieces in place for a solid two stars. I look forward to coming back again in another month or two.

Sheridan Square (138 Seventh Ave. S. between W. 10th & Charles Sts., West Village)

The Payoff: The Harrison

After a week off, Frank Bruni returns today with a review of The Harrison, clocking in at the upper end of two stars:

How often, really, do you go through four appetizers, entrees and desserts without confronting a total bore, a total bust or an overwrought underachiever?

Take it from someone who spends as many hours dining out as a cat does dozing: not often. Even the best, most exciting restaurants stumble from time to time over their own ambitions. They’re exhilarating rides, but also risky ones.

The Harrison, in contrast, is the very definition of dependable, poised to impress you, if not quite wow you…

Like the Red Cat, which is technically its older sibling but feels like its younger one, the Harrison doesn’t promise or deliver out-and-out excitement. But it safeguards against disappointment as well as just about any other Manhattan restaurant.

We haven’t yet visited The Harrison under new chef Amanda Freitag, but Bruni’s review captured the spirit of the place as we recalled it from past visits, though his complaint about the décor seemed off-key: “…the Harrison’s visual evocation of a country inn in the big city still strikes me as more stodgy than cozy.” We don’t find it stodgy at all.

We win $3 on our hypothetetical one-dollar bet. Eater, who had predicted three stars, loses a dollar.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$87.50		$103.67
Gain/Loss	–1.00		+3.00
Total	$86.50		$106.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	39–18		41–16

Revolving Door: Ed Cotton Out at Veritas

Eater reports that Veritas chef Ed Cotton has been fired. Gregory Pugin, currently sous chef at L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, will be replacing him.

There’s no doubt that Cotton is gone: his name is now completely banished from the Veritas website. The second half of the story is mere rumor, but believable enough that we’ll run with it. [Update: The Times confirms the story.]

Historically, the food at Veritas has been very good, but low-key and not-at-all showy, which allowed the restaurant’s nonpareil wine collection to take center stage. We thought that Ed Cotton’s menu at Veritas still merited three stars, but as we were never there under founding chef Scott Bryan, we had nothing to compare it to. Some people thought that Veritas had lost a step.

If they’ve hired Pugin, it surely means the owners are ready to serve food that can command as much attention as the wine list does.

Rolling the Dice: The Harrison

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni takes a pulse check on TriBeCa standout The Harrison under new chef Amanda Freitag. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 10-1
One Star: 6-1
Two Stars: 3-1
Three Stars: 5-1 √√
Four Stars: 12-1

The Skinny: It may not be fair, but chef changes at existing restaurants don’t get the same press as brand new restaurants, even where the change is fairly dramatic. The Times is the only paper in town that at least makes the attempt, however irregularly, to re-review restaurants where there has been a significant change of personnel—and indeed, sometimes when there hasn’t been.

When Amanda Freitag took over at The Harrison, owner Jimmy Bradley told Grub Street, “We were doing French cookery in a New American style, but with Amanda the menu is going to be lusty, soulful, rustic Mediterranean-inspired cookery.” That’s enough to make The Harrison, for all intents and purposes, a brand new restaurant. But as it’s still called “The Harrison,” the rest of this town’s critics have basically ignored it.

So I don’t have any kind of critical baseline to go on here. I can tell you that William Grimes awarded two stars shortly after The Harrison opened in 2001, with the Little Owl’s Joey Campanaro in the kitchen. Bruni wrote a favorable Diner’s Journal follow-up after Brian Bistrong took over.

I can also tell you that I’ve loved The Harrison both times I visited. The chef has changed, but what hasn’t changed is Jimmy Bradley’s sure-handed touch, which was good enough to attract a generous two-star Bruni review for Bradley’s other restaurant, The Red Cat.

Eater is taking the three-star odds, betting that Bruni will award three stars for the same reason he did at Dovetail: for the price, The Harrison is very good indeed, with appetizers mostly below $15 and entrées mostly in the mid-twenties. We also realize that Italian or Italian-influenced menus, if they are good, often get a “bonus star” from Bruni.

Against that, we haven’t heard the kind of raves about The Harrison that we heard about Dovetail, and we subscribe to the theory that three-star restaurants usually don’t hide in plain sight. Our gut tells us that if Freitag were turning out three-star food, lots of folks would have noticed by now. Bruni has given out a lot of three-star ratings this year: at some point the average needs to return to normal.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award an enthusiastic two stars to The Harrison.

Bar Milano

 

Note: You can probably guess what rating Bar Milano got from Italian-loving Frankie two-stars, despite “bungled pastas.” The rest of the dining community, including us, had a more muted response. Bar Milano closed at the end of 2008 and has re-opened as a clone of the same owners’ more casual place on the Lower East Side, ’inoteca. That spot closed in September 2012.

*

There’s no shortage of great Italian restaurants in New York, so it’s tough for a new one to command attention. So far, Bar Milano is off to a great start. In the first six weeks, reservations have generally been tough to come by.

It helps to have Jason Denton running the show. With four previous establishments (’Ino, ’Inoteca, Lupa, Otto), he has shown a knack for the kind of stylish-yet-casual restaurant that feels like a neighborhood place, but has the following of a dining destination. It’s something that many restauranteurs aspire to, but that Denton seems invariably to get right. Joining him here are brother Joe Denton (’Ino, ’Inoteca) and chefs he lured from two of those restaurants, Eric Kleinman (’Inoteca) and Steve Connaughton (Lupa).

A name like “Bar ______” can mean almost anything these days (just like “Bistro” or “Brasserie”). This is the fifth Bar Something-or-other that I’ve reviewed this year, and they have little in common. I’m not sure it has much to do with “Milano,” either. The cuisine is allegedly Northern Italian, but only in the loosest sense.

Rattlesnake

There is indeed a lovely bar here, and the house cocktails are worth a look. From a set called “Lost & Somewhat Forgotten” I had a Rattlesnake ($13), with Rittenhouse rye, Pernod, lemon juice, powdered sugar and egg white. The bar tab was transferred to my table without complaint, which ought to happen all the time, but often doesn’t.

There are 20 American whiskies available for a classic Manhattan cocktail, or 10 gins for a classic Martini. The menu offers no suggestions for any of the 9 vodkas.

Bread service

The dinner menu is somewhat pricey for this patch of Third Avenue. Success will depend on attracting a destination crowd, as the Dentons have historically done at their lower priced restaurants. Antipasti here are $10–15, primi $9–24, and secondi $20–43 (but most under $30). An eight-course tasting menu looks like it’s a bargain at $85.

Bread service is a bit spartan, with two people asked to share a single slender bread stick, a small slice of bread and an equally puny dinner roll.

 
Left: Tajarin con Porri Selvatici; Right: Agnolotti di Gamberi

We had mixed reactions to our pasta starters. Tajarin con Porri Selvatici ($17), or pasta with ramps and bread crumbs, had a nice crunchy texture. I liked the way the ramps were integrated into the dish, instead of being just seasonal add-ons used mostly for show.

But Agnolotti di Gamberi ($18), or shrimp-filled pasta with peas and mint, was not nearly as appetizing, with the taste of peas being far too dominant.

 
Left: Costolette di Maiele (pork chop); Right: Cotoletta alla Milanese (veal chop)

A pork chop ($26) and a veal chop ($32) were both expertly done, though if I’d stumbled on either preparation in another restaurant, I wouldn’t have associated them with Italy. The pork chop lay on a bed of escarole and was topped with a mustard fruit somewhat redolent of applesauce; the veal chop had a light, delecate bread crumb crust.

The meal ended with a couple of small petits-fours that seemed, like the bread service to start with, a little skimpy.

Service was polished and attentive, but this was the Friday evening before Memorial Day, and the dining room was clearly less busy than it would ordinarily be.

The Dentons told W Magazine that they envisioned Bar Milano as “a fun three-star place.” Bar Milano is fun, but it isn’t three stars. The food here is generally solid, but there are some soft spots on the menu, and there isn’t enough Milano in it. Like their other restaurants, it is a slightly over-achieving neighborhood place.

Bar Milano (323 Third Avenue at 24th Street, Gramercy)

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

Restaurant Outlook

Welcome back to Restaurant Outlook, the quasi-weekly highly subjective listing of restaurants we’re paying attention to.

Fairly New

• Bar Milano — Early reviews are mixed, but the Lupa/’Inoteca guys have a strong track record. Reservation: tonight.
• Elizabeth — Former Country chef de cuisine Doug Psaltis is designing the menu here. It’s only a consulting gig, which makes us skeptical, and Psaltis seldom remains anywhere for long, which makes us doubly skeptical. But at a low price point we’re willing to roll the dice. Reservation: May 30.
  
• Savarona — The rare serious Turkish restaurant in New York is surely worth a try. Reservation: May 31.
  
• Hundred Acres — This Marc Meyer/Vicki Freeman follow-up to Provence opened last week. It will be in the Five Points–Cookshop haute barnyard vein. A hit is no sure thing, but I wouldn’t bet against them. Reservation: June 6.
  
• Scarpetta — Italian restaurant by Scott Conant, formerly of Alto and L’Impero. Early reports are promising, but it’s in the Meatpacking District, which hasn’t seen a serious restaurant in years. Reservation: June 7.
• The Redhead — There’s a twenty-page Mouthfuls thread about the Thursdays-only family-style meal, but it didn’t get my attention till the Times review this week. No plans to visit yet.
• Duane Park — This sequel to Duane Park Café looks interesting, though there aren’t many reviews to go on. No plans to visit yet.
  
• Merkato 55 — Reviews have been mediocre. We’ve had several reservations, all cancelled for various reasons. My girlfriend no longer wants to go, so I’ll have to drop in one night after work. No plans to visit yet.
• Greenwich Grill — Of interest mainly because it’s near the office. No plans to visit yet.

Forthcoming

All of these restaurants have been announced or mentioned in the press, but some of them may be a long way off.

• Lever House — Bradford Thompson is taking over the kitchen next month. We’ll wait for the early reports before we decide whether to pay a visit.
  
• Bouley v 3.0 — David Bouley’s move to the Mohawk Atelier Building at 161 Duane Street. Expected “by the fall.”
  
• Susur Lee’s first New York restaurant at 200 Allen Street on the Lower East Side, also expected “come fall.”
  
• Brushstroke, another Bouley restaurant, at 111 West Broadway. Given the well chronicled problems getting this restaurant off the ground, I would be surprised to see it before 2009.
  
• Restaurant Liebrandt, with Paul Liebrandt (formerly of Gilt) at the helm. This week, Eater reported that it’s “set to go into the old Montrachet space.” We walk by there regularly, and haven’t seen the slightest whiff of activity.

Pegu Club

 

I’m a newcomer to the cocktail revolution. The timing and temperament of my dining habits are such that I’m more likely to have a sit-down meal with wine than to have a liquid dinner at a bar. But the craft and care that goes into the better cocktail menus has started to get my attention, if belatedly.

Pegu Club, which turns 3 in August, is practically the senior citizen of the post-modern cocktail circuit. It “hides in plain sight,” like many places in the genre—in this case, behind a barely labeled red door on Houston Street. No one who casually walks by would realize it’s a bar. Even those who are looking for Pegu Club sometimes have trouble finding it.

The bar is named for a nineteenth-century British officers’ club in Burma, and one can just detect a bit of the fin-de-siècle elegance they were aiming for. It’s a large, comfortable, and beautifully decorated space, with plush table seating and comfortable bar stools.

 
Left: French Pearl; Right: Poquito Picante

Pegu Club takes its ingredients seriously, with house-made infusions, shots carefully measured, and sodas poured from fresh bottles. I tried three of them (all $12), starting with the Little Italy, a Manhattan variant made with an Italian bitter called Cynar (“CHEE-nar”). The bartender actually took a sideways glance at me as I took my first sip, to see if I’d like it as much as he predicted. I’d imagine he was pleased with the broad smile on my face. I also loved the French Pearl, made with gin, pernod, muddled mint, lime juice, and simple syrup.

I wasn’t as pleased with the Poquito Picante, which didn’t live up to the promise of “just a little bit of heat.” The jalapeño floating on top was merely decorative. The other ingredients, cilantro, cucumber, gin, cointreau and lemon juice, made a bland impression.

I wonder if Pegu Club is leaning too much on the menu it opened with, and if the restless inventiveness of the city’s better cocktail chefs is still present here. The same handful of ingredients recur in many of the drinks—for instance, five of them include mint; five have lemon juice. That’s a lot of repetition on a short menu. I didn’t run out of choices, but I don’t know if there’s enough variety to justify many repeat visits.

That said, there’s still plenty more that I’d like to come back and try.

 

There’s food here, too. There’s a beverage recommendation for each item on the brief food menu, but in a number of cases there was no such item on the cocktail menu. You’d think they could clear that up.

The smoked trout deviled eggs ($10) have been on the menu since the beginning (Frank Bruni raved about them). In a word: wow! The little flecks of trout have a smoky taste almost like bacon, which nicely complements the curry mayonaise on the eggs. I didn’t quite get the point of chopsticks as a serving utensil, as the eggs were far too slippery to pick up that way. I used my hands.

A vegetarian spring roll ($12) was much more bland, but it was a decent enough snack.

The service was excellent, but in fairness I came quite early in the evening—I was the first customer, in fact—so I can’t attest to what it’s like when they fill up.

I’m only just beginning my journey through the city’s great cocktail places, but I doubt that there are many as comfortable as Pegu Club, and many of the drinks here are already modern classics.

Pegu Club (77 W. Houston St. between West Broadway & Wooster St., SoHo)

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

Gray Kunz and the Short Rib Derby

 
Left: Café Gray; Right: Grayz

Note: Café Gray and Grayz have both closed. Café Gray will be replaced by a clone of A Voce. Grayz re-opened in January 2009 as Atria, with Gray Kunz’s former chef de cuisine, Martin Brock, as executive chef. After four short months, it bit the dust.

Café Gray will shortly be closing, a victim of sky-high rents at the Time Warner Center. That will leave the talented chef, Gray Kunz, with just one restaurant, Grayz, which struggles with problems of its own.

Linking both restaurants is one of this town’s great chefs and his destination dish, the legendary braised short ribs. He served a version of the dish at the four-star Lespinasse, and it anchors the menus at both Café Gray and Grayz.

Recently, I tried the short ribs at both places. I wondered: how are they different? how are they alike? I also wanted to bid farewell to Café Gray, and to see if Grayz is as good as some message board enthusiasts say it is.

* * * 

At Café Gray, one can’t help escaping the glimmer of what might have been. In previous visits, I’ve never had the slightest doubt about the food: Kunz can cook rings around anyone. But the room: oh, the room! It’s noisy and ugly, and it interposes an open kitchen between diners and the world’s best view.

If you’re going to visit Café Gray, its final weeks are the best time. I found it mostly empty on a Wednesday evening. There’s no escaping the bone-headed design, but at least I had a pleasant supper without contracting a migraine.

 
Left: amuse-bouche; Right: petits-fours

Service was polished and seamless. The amuse-bouche was a small spoonful of chickpea yogurt, and there was a nice plate of petits-fours at the end.

I left Café Gray with a bit of sadness. This restaurant should have been, could have been, so much better.

* * *

Grayz is living proof of what happens when a promising restaurant botches its opening. The trouble here was that Kunz couldn’t decide if he was opening a bar that served snacks or a restaurant with a bar. The muddled concept was confusing, and early reviews weren’t favorable.

The menu has been revised, and it makes more sense now. The entrées, which numbered just three when I visited in the early days, have now been expanded to six. Whether you want a full meal or just to…well, “graze”—Grayz can accommodate you.

The interior design betrays indecision about the concept. You still feel like you’re in a bar that serves snacks, but the service is very good, and the food is first-class. Think of it as an elegant restaurant where the bar is closer than you’d like it to be, like a social misfit elbowing in on your privacy.

Despite its flaws, Grayz deserves your attention.

Unfortunately, it’s hard for a restaurant to get the word out after the early review cycle has concluded. The tables were less than half occupied on a Wednesday evening, and according to reports I’ve read elsewhere, that’s not unusual. The GM came over after my meal, greeted me warmly, and gave me his card. Grayz is still trying to cultivate a following.

 
Left: Bread service; Right: Weisswurst

To begin, Grayz offers the same wonderful spears of warm bread as before, with a Lebanese yogurt, spice, and olive oil dressing. I was better behaved this time: I stopped after only one.

I ordered the Weisswurst ($12), or German sausage, which comes with a homemade brown mustard. I’m not a connoisseur, so I don’t have much to compare it to. I loved the delicate casings, but the mustard was definitely needed, as the meat didn’t have enough flavor on its own. The bright-red cast-iron serving dish got in the way of my knife and fork.

To close, the petit-four was a hollow cylinder of crisp brown chocolate on a bed of sugar.

The cocktail menu here is a cut above the norm. I tried two of them, the Badminton Cup and the Aviation, both $14. My table was close enough to the bar that I could hear the conversation between the bartender and one of his customers—a post-modern meditation on the “art of cocktails.” I thought, “This is so 2008.”

* * * 

So, what about the short ribs?

 
Short ribs at Café Gray (left) and Grayz (right)

As you can see from the photos, they are quite similar. The manager at Grayz said he believes the meat is prepared identically. At Café Gray, it’s served on a bed of soft grits; at Grayz, it’s creamed spinach. The price is $41 at Café Gray, $39 at Grayz.

If I could have only one before I die, I’d choose the Grayz version. It was served on the bone; at Café Gray, there was no bone. At Grayz, it was slightly more tender, and spinach goes better with beef than grits. You could argue, though, that $39 is awfully dear for short ribs, even Gray Kunz’s.

* * * 

Kunz says that Café Gray will re-open at another location—rumored to be the current Oceana space.. He’s known to be a slow-poke, so I wouldn’t hold my breath for it. Wherever he goes, his first act should be to fire himself as an interior designer. But while we wait for Café Gray’s reincarnation, Grayz will be quietly chugging along.

Give Grayz a try. You could be pleasantly surprised.

Update: Grayz will close on August 10, 2008, for a facelift, re-opening on September 1. The downstairs catering space will become a proper restaurant, and the upstairs space—reviewed here—will presumably become what it was meant to be: a lounge.

Grayz (13–15 West 54th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Who is in the Kitchen at Mai House?

Note: Click here for a more recent update.

There are strange doings at Mai House. In January, founding chef Michael Bao Huynh was out. Or was he? Apparently, it was just a misunderstanding: he had merely gone AWOL for five weeks.

In March, Top Chef contestant Spike Mendelsohn launched a tasting menu at Mai House, based on the food he’d prepared on the TV show.

Yesterday, the mystery of Huynh’s whereabouts was apparently resolved: Gael Green reported that Huynh had taken over at Rain, on the Upper West Side. And today, Eater reported that Mendelsohn was fired at Mai House. Eater reported, at first, that another Top Chefer, Lisa Hernandes, was replacing Mendelsohn, but later in the day this was retracted.

If this were any other restaurant, we’d assume an Eater Deathwatch was in order. But because it’s a Drew Nieporent restaurant, we figure it’ll all get sorted out. We love Mai House, and want it to live long and prosper.

But who is in the kitchen?