Marc Forgione

I visited Marc Forgione this week with colleagues from Chicago, who invited me to dinner, and—as is often the case—asked me to pick the restaurant. They were buying, which made the choice a bit awkward: deciding how someone else’s money would be spent. It needed to be a solid choice, without seeming to take advantage.

Marc Forgione had been in the back of my mind ever since it won a star in the 2010 Michelin Guide. With its rustic chic decor and seasonal cooking, it’s the kind of New York place that out-of-town visitors would like. Prices don’t break the bank, with entrées in the high $20s and low $30s.

I visited Marc Forgione two years ago, when it was called Forge. The cuisine struck me as solid neighborhood bistro food. Nothing wrong with that, but not Michelin territory. Frank Bruni apparently felt the same, denying it a full review in lieu of the Dining Briefs treatment.

My colleagues loved it, but I still don’t get the Michelin star. A Caesar salad was pedestrian. The dressing had been applied in the kitchen, leaving the lettuce slightly soggy by the time it reached the table. It was a basic salad that anyone could do at home—probably even me.

Sea bass was more impressive, a tender rectangle of fish with a crisp crust. The menu, however, had described it as “whole crispy red snapper.” The server advised that the kitchen was substituting bass for snapper, but did nothing to alter the impression that it was a whole fish—which it was not.

Both dishes seemed a tad over-salted, as I recall from my previous visit. Unlike my previous visit, there is no amuse-bouche. The bread service remains first-rate, with pillowy-soft rolls straight out of the oven.

The restaurant may be holding its own, if exactly thriving: All-you-can-eat pork sliders are just $16 on Tuesday evenings, with all-you-can-drink Brooklyn Lager for $14. It was not crowded on a Wednesday evening either, and it is practically always available on OpenTable.

Marc Forgione (134 Reade Street between Greenwich & Hudson Streets, TriBeCa)

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

Flex Mussels

I don’t know if it was good planning or good luck, but when Flex Mussels arrived on the Upper East Side in late 2008, it was just in time to salve the wounds of a recession-scarred city.

With scarce exceptions, the neighborhood has never been known for culinary adventure. But the last eighteen months have been a particularly good time for focused restaurants that fill a narrowly defined, inexpensive niche. Hence, we’ve got places dedicated to sausages, mac ’n’ cheese, meatballs, and of course, pizza.

Flex Mussels does that admirably. No need to guess what to order, except for which variety of mussels you want—and in that regard, the restaurant is very, um, flexible. I know, bad joke. Couldn’t resist.

Anyhow, they come in nearly two dozen variations, such as the Maine (lobster, smoked bacon, corn, white chowder, parsley) and the Bisque (lobster, brandy, tomato, garlic cream), both of which we had.

Another, called “The Number 23” on the menu, varies daily. I believe it had sweet corn and ham when I tried it. Whichever version you choose, you get a stainless steel bowl full of plump, steamed mussels, and a deep, nearly inexhaustible broth that you’ll want to drink like soup or sop up with bread.

The mussel dishes are priced between $18.50 and $20.50. There’s a handful of other entrées priced from $21–29, and a steak for $32. If you’re tempted to order them, I’d have to ask why you came to a place called Flex Mussels.

The appetizers, all competently executed, are more routine. You can’t go too far wrong with a goat cheese salad ($13; above left) with yellow beets, candied walnuts, and apples. Nor with a very good chowder ($10; above center), made not with clams, but with mussels and bacon.

A dish called Burnt Fingers ($16; above right) offers fried calamari, shrimp, oysters, and shallot rings, with a spiced aioli dip. The point of serving it on a square of butcher paper somewhat eluded me.

The mussel dishes look mostly the same and are somewhat immune to photography—at least with my amateur equipment. The fries ($6) are wonderful.

The space is deceptively large, as the storefront is narrow, but it goes back a long way. You enter into a cramped bar area, with a separate dining counter lined with stools for walk-ins. If you sit there, you won’t have much elbow room. Then you go back, and you realize there is a lot more space. The decor isn’t fancy, but it suits the restaurant’s nautical theme. It works on the Upper East Side, and it would work on Martha’s Vinyard, or on Prince Edward Island, where the first Flex Mussels opened.

The wine list is wallet-friendly, with most of the whites less than $65 a bottle. An enjoyable 2005 white Burgundy, “Les Coeres,” was $52.

Frank Bruni gave Flex Mussels one star last year, generally agreeing with our assessment of the food, but complaining about several service issues. We experienced none of that; if anything, service was better than it had to be, especially on a lovely Saturday evening with the restaurant nearly packed to the gills.

Flex Mussels (124 E. 82nd Street between Third & Lexington Avenues, Upper East Side)

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

Review Recap: Pulino's

Today, Sam Sifton gets back on the straight-and-narrow, awarding one star to Pulino’s Bar & Pizzeria. There’s an acknowledgment that the owner, Keith McNally, is working from a template, though Sifton doesn’t seem to hold it against him:

Mr. McNally is an important figure in the recent social history of Manhattan. His restaurants have introduced or enhanced neighborhoods all over downtown: Pravda and Balthazar in SoHo, Pastis in the then-quiet meatpacking district, Schiller’s on the Lower East Side, Morandi and Minetta Tavern in the West Village.

Now, there is Pulino’s. You can sit at the bar there, drink Campari and read the newspaper, as you can at any of Mr. McNally’s establishments, feeling grand under a ceiling that soars above a checkerboard floor, surrounded by distressed mirrors, chicken-wire glass, towering walls covered with liquor bottles. The room evokes Schiller’s and Pastis alike, and is as recognizably McNally as the man himself, standing rumpled as Eeyore by the pass to the kitchen.

He seems to love most of the food, finding only a few flubs and a “punishingly loud” room. Presumably, these are the reasons why the restaurant got just one star, rather than the two that McNally and Chef Nate Appleman likely expected. (These days, practically everybody thinks they deserve two stars, unless they’re gunning for three or four.)

But according to most of the reading I’ve done, one star was the correct rating. This is the Sam Sifton of last year, as opposed to the recent Sifton, who has been pulling stars (and restaurants) out of a random number generator.

The review came awfully fast, though. Pulino’s opened to the general public on March 26, and Sifton’s visits were probably wrapped up by April 23, just four weeks later. (The Times photo shoot was on April 28; it needs to be scheduled, and Sifton is unlikely to have paid additional visits after that.) Perhaps Sifton expected some complaints: on the blog, he notes that the restaurant was open an additional two weeks for “friends & family.”

Still, I think he should have given McNally and Appleman a few more weeks. It might not—indeed, probably would not—have changed the rating, but would have been more fair to the restaurant.

Kenmare

Note: Consulting chef Joey Campanaro left the restaurant in February 2011. As of April 2011, his replacement was Gilbert Delgado, a Del Posto/Breslin/Spotted Pig alum. Kenmare closed in October. As of 2013, the space is a Japanese small-plates restaurant called MaisonO.

*

The aughts have been awfully kind to Joey Campanaro, with big hits first at The Harrison (two stars from William Grimes), then at The Little Owl and Market Table (two stars each from Frank Bruni), with a failure at the short-lived Pace as the only blemish on his resume.

Much as we liked Little Owl and Market Table, we thought that Bruni overrated them. The Little Owl owed its reputation to just a few basic dishes (the sliders, the pork chop, the burger). Everything there was nicely done, but it wasn’t destination dining and shouldn’t have been portrayed as such. Our opinion of Market Table was much the same.

With Kenmare, which opened recently in the failed Civetta space, there are signs that Campanaro’s imagination is finally running close to exhaustion. The restaurant is larger than the Little Owl and Market Table combined, and lacks both the intimacy and polish of its predecessors. The menu is dreary, the kitchen’s work slapdash.

A Risotto du Jour ($14; above left) was a sign of sad things to come: it was served in an unwarmed bowl and was already slightly cool when it reached us. We liked the gooey egg yolk on top, but there was no sign of the promised black truffles, except for some itsy bitsy black specks that made no flavor impression.

The Chicken ($19; above right) is clearly supposed to remind you of the Little Owl’s signature dish, The Pork Chop, though it is a poor substitute. The chicken itself is beautifully prepared, but it wasn’t helped by dull and lazily-plated escarole and butter beans.

Veal Cutlet ($25; above left) was a disaster. A diner would be embarrassed to serve it. The runny salsa verde tasted like barbecue sauce out of a bottle, and the veal was tough. We gave up after a few bites.

Cauliflower and broccoli with toasted breadcrumbs ($6; above right) was a fine, if uninspired, side dish.

Rhubarb Crisp is in season. Kenmare’s version ($9; right) is very good, although we haven’t found a bad one. If you visit Kenmare, perhaps you should skip the savory courses and go straight to dessert. 

Aside from that, nothing at Kenmare impressed us. The décor is lively and bright, but you’ve seen it a hundred times before. Tables are tightly spaced. The serving plates look like they were bought second-hand. The place has been open for only a month, and already some of them are chipped.

The rather abbreviated wine list is fairly priced, but uninteresting.

Kenmare has been packed in the early days, thanks in large part to the reputations of Little Owl and Market Table. If those places were slightly overrated, at least they were charming, and fulfilled their modest ambitions admirably. Kenmare can’t even do that. It’s just a big box, and not a very good one.

Kenmare (98 Kenmare Street between Mulberry Street & Cleveland Place, NoLIta)

Food: Fair
Service: Decent
Ambiance: Fair
Overall: Fair