Rolling the Dice: Fishtail

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni reviews David Burke’s Upper East Side seafood shack, Fishtail. The Eater odds haven’t been posted as of 6:05 p.m., but we’re going to go ahead and record our bet anyway.

Update: Well, it turns out that Eater never did post the odds. Lucky for us, as our prediction (below) was wrong, so we avoided losing $1 on our hypothetical bet.

The Skinny: Fishtail had a rough early start. The original executive chef, Eric Hara, left in late February to take over the Oak Room. Dallas native John Tesar replaced him in March. We’ve heard nothing about the restaurant since then. The only major-media review, one star from Adam Platt, pre-dated Tesar’s arrival.

We liked Fishtail, rating it at 2½ stars. Like Platt, we visited while Hara was still there. Our only complaint was that the tables were packed uncomfortably close together. The fish, however, was impeccable. What we cannot assess is whether the kitchen is consistent, and whether it has improved or regressed since Tesar took over.

There are a dozen reasons why a restaurant like Fishtail would not appeal to a nitwit like Platt, even if the fish were prepared perfectly. Bruni is a far more intelligent critic. Nevertheless, the vibe of an Upper East Side socialites’ restaurant is not likely to appeal to him, and no doubt he will find some of Burke’s compositions too cute for their own good. We’re fans, but sometimes we feel that way ourselves.

Our guess is that Bruni wouldn’t be bothering to review this place so many months after the opening review cycle, unless he had something positive to say. To award one star would be an insult, and while Bruni has done that plenty of times (and will again), he’s not likely to do it for a restaurant everyone had forgotten about.

The Bet: We are betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Fishtail.

White Slab Palace

Note: White Slab Palace closed in October 2011. As of May 2012, the space is Grey Lady, a New England-style raw bar.

*

White Slab Palace has been open since late February on the Lower East Side. The cuisine is vaguely Scandinavian, but the vibe is more like a “bar that serves food” than a true restaurant. The narrow space has a long, high counter with tall bar stools. The there are about a dozen low-slung wooden tables next to the tall windows facing out on Allen & Delancey Streets.

A forthcoming expansion into the neighboring space promises a more formal dining room, but we decided not to wait for that. Alas, we should have waited, or better yet, skipped White Slab Palace altogether. This was one of the most disastrous meals we’ve had in a long time.

Food took about 45 minutes to arrive. “Sometimes, we need to give the kitchen a nasty stare,” the server admitted. At last, our main courses were delivered, bypassing the appetizers entirely. We had both ordered the meatballs—just four smallish things the size of golf balls, dried out and over-cooked. No wonder they took 45 minutes.

A moment later, a plate of deep-fried stuff arrived. We thought it might be an appetizer. Then we had a taste. It was a fish-like substance, apparently a herring, just as parched as the meatballs. There were other deep-fried fishy things on the plate, none of which we could stand after more than one bite. Our server circled back: “You didn’t order that, did you?” Nope.

We weren’t sure what was happening next, but finally the appetizers came. An order of shrimp tasted like it had been swimming too long with the herring. We tasted one shrimp apiece and gave up. A hunk of lamb was so densely packed with gristle that my knife could not get through it. This was apparently a cheap cut that needed braising it hadn’t gotten.

That was the end of White Slab Palace for us. The server conceded that it was a rough night, but didn’t offer to comp anything to make up for it. Food, beer and cocktails set us back $117, including tax and tip. Oh, and they don’t take credit cards.

White Slab Palace (77 Delancey Street at Allen Street, Lower East Side)

Food: awful
Service: slow
Ambiance: it’s a bar
Overall: awful

Mas (farmhouse)

Mas was a restaurant we instantly liked when we first visited, a shade under three years ago. Despite our enthusiasm, I had no particular eagerness to return. The food is good, but not in a specific way that you can’t get anywhere else. And Mas is hard to book, partly because it is not on OpenTable.

Of course, its absence from OpenTable is for a reason: Mas is habitually full, even with an extra back room added in late 2007, which increased the size of the dining room from 40 to 55 seats. Last year, Mas got a rare gift: a second review from Frank Bruni, who upgraded it to the two stars it deserved in the first place. (His earlier one-star review was one of the more egregious errors of his first year on the job, though it doesn’t seem to have hurt the restaurant.)

Mas is still as lovely as we found it in December 2006. The seats and tables are comfortable, the warm faux farmhouse décor is inviting, the service is polished. If you notice such things, the china and stemware are some of the most elegant of any New York restaurant, including the four-stars.

There’s a recession going on, but you wouldn’t know it at Mas. If ordered à la carte, the appetizers are $14–23, and the entrées $32–36. Those high prices apply to the wine list too, where you’ll struggle to find a red under $60.

The menu is awfully confusing. The front page offers a $68 four-course prix fixe with specific dishes listed. The server goes on to explain that those dishes are available à la carte as well, and anything on the carte can be substituted into the prix fixe at no extra charge.

If that’s the case, then why is the menu structured that way? As I heard the same lengthy explanation repeated at multiple tables, I wondered why they don’t just do the obvious thing: print everything à la carte, with a note at the bottom: any four courses, $68. (A six-course tasting menu, with the courses not named, is $95.)

We started with an amuse-bouche of smoked duck (above, right) that was more interesting to look at than taste.

A White Asparagus Soup (above left) was just fine, but my girlfriend reported that a Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese salad was too salty. All three of us ordered the Long Island Duck Breast (above right). It was one of the more tender duck preparations I’ve had in a while, with a beautiful layer of fat below the skin. But accompaniments of sweet potato, bacon & leek gratin, with savoy cabbage in a bacon cream and beet sauce, sounded a lot more interesting than they were.

My sense of Mas now is that it is a terrific place for a romantic dinner or a special occasion, and I would happily go there again with the right guests. The cuisine and wine list are solid, but arguably over-priced. For the food alone, Mas isn’t quite exciting enough to win a place in the regular rotation.

Mas (39 Downing St. between Bedford St. and Seventh Ave. South, West Village)

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

The Minetta Burger

Note: Click here for a review of the steak at Minetta Tavern.

I don’t quite get the breathless excitement over Keith McNally’s latest restaurant, the reborn Minetta Tavern. Then again, I have never understood the excitement for Keith McNally’s other restaurants—most of them formulaic French brasseries. He’s got a good grasp on the format, but does this justify the long lines and impossible-to-get reservations?

Even Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton had to admit defeat, conceding he hired a concierge service to get him into Minetta at a decent hour, after multiple failed attempts to get in on his own. Restaurant Girl didn’t let on how she got in, but she does not dine anonymously, which perhaps is all we need to know.

Last night, I decided to take a flyer on the bar at Minetta Tavern, figuring it was early enough (5:45 p.m.) that I would get a seat.  Sure enough, there was exactly one stool free when I arrived. The staff were friendly and accommodating—well beyond my expectations. I was expecting “attitude” at the host stand, but there was none of it.

Minetta Tavern shares its chefs with Balthazar, the McNally establishment to which it is most similar. The Minetta menu is slightly less expensive, and has slightly fewer offerings than Balthazar does. Most notably, it lacks Balth’s humungous plateaux de fruits de mer ($65 & $110 respectively), and it offers burgers, which Balth does not.

There are two burgers at Minetta Tavern, the Minetta Burger ($16) and the La Freida Black Label Burger ($26). Both Restaurant Girl and Bloomberg’s Sutton thought the lower-priced option was better. We tried the purported Black Label product at City Burger a few months ago, and weren’t impressed. Later on, La Freida explained that City Burger wasn’t getting the real Black Label blend, which was available only at Minetta. We weren’t going to fall for that trick again. It was the Minetta Burger for us.

And I fine burger it was: thick, juicy, and flavorful. Oh, and they nailed the fries, too. It’s not cheap, but this is a burger I could eat every week. I asked the kitchen to hold the caramelized onions that normally come with it. When the beef is this good, who needs onions?

There’s much more to Minetta Tavern, which I’ll be back to sample another day. Yesterday belonged to the burger.

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