These companion rooms vary widely: some are separately reservable, others are not. Some are far more casual than the multi-star restaurants they’re attached to; others don’t vary much at all. Some serve a completely different menu; others serve an à la carte version of the main dining room menu.
Nougatine is separately reservable, has a completely different menu, and is much more casual than its four-star companion. Of course, the word casual must be taken in perspective, on a menu where a $19 cheesburger shares the stage with $72 Dover sole. Most of the entrées, though, are in the $24–38 range that defines New York’s “upper middle,” while appetizers range from $12–23.
The space, originally a lounge for the adjoing Trump International Hotel, was long an afterthought, seldom professionally reviewed. Nougatine received its first New York Times review in late 2012 (Pete Wells, two stars), a mere fifteen years after the flagship next door received four stars from Ruth Reichl right out of the gate.
The owners of The Greenwich Project, a new restaurant in Greenwich Village, must be commitment averse. Their corporate name is The Project Group, and all of their restaurants are The ______ Project. With names like that, you can do anything. All options are open.
They have a candidate for the world’s worst restaurant website, which cannot be bothered to transmit basic information like hours of operation or menus.
Their facebook pages are slightly more informative. Slightly. As I gather, The Mulberry Project, in Little Italy, is known mainly as an inventive cocktail den. The Vinatta Project (in the former Florent space), is a cocktail and comfort food spot. Or perhaps I’m mistaken. It’s hard to tell.
The Greenwich Project aims higher. There’s talent in the kitchen: Carmine di Giovanni, a former chef de cuisine at Picholine and David Burke Townhouse. Those places aren’t cheap, and this one isn’t either. With appetizers $15–21 and entrées $28–39, you’re going to drop some coin to dine here.
There’s no doubt Manhattanites will pay those prices at the right restaurant, but there’s not much margin for error. They’ll need a cavalcade of strong reviews and word-of-mouth to keep the place full.
Andrew Carmellini is one of those chefs who can do anything, and get coverage. No doubt the Public Theater realized that, when they invited him to open a new restaurant in their newly-renovated building, the former Astor Library.
The theater gave him a gorgeous, cloistered space, dimly lit with dark paneling and comfortable seating. Once you’re inside, it doesn’t look at all like a restaurant attached to a performing arts center. It’s open most days till midnight, Thursdays to Saturdays till 2:00am — hours clearly intended to attract more than just a pre-theater audience.
What’s missing is a reason to go. The food is competent, of course, as you’d expect at any Carmellini place. But it feels phoned in, as if Carmellini spent fifteen minutes on it before turning his attention to the next project.
The menu is divided in three “Acts,” with various snacks ($6–13), appetizers ($12–15) and entrées ($17–27). Perhaps they were worried about pushing the metaphor: desserts are labeled, simply, “desserts” ($7–9). All of it is fairly obvious stuff.
You know what a prix fixe menu is, right? And you know what a “small plates” menu is, right? If the two get married and have children, what do you get?
Meet Feast, a prix fixe restaurant with menus structured like a sequences of small plates. We loved it. To us, it was the best of both worlds—though others might not be so fond of it. Such is the case when a restaurant tries to fiddle with tradition.
The main menu offers a choice of three “feasts.” As of last week, the options were the Farmer’s Market Feast ($38), the Scallop Feast ($49), or the Nose-to-Tail Lamb Feast ($48). According to a recent email from the restaurant, the scallop feast will shortly switch to soft-shell crabs, and lamb will morph to pork. And so on.
Each feast consist of an appetizer course with four plates, an entrée course with another four, and a dessert. All prices are per-person, and the entire table must order the same feast. There’s also a separate (and small) à la carte menu, which the restaurant is clearly trying to downplay. Most tables seemed to be ordering feasts, which is the whole point of the restaurant.
So you get nine plates, served as three courses, at a pretty damned good price. Unlike a tasting menu, it doesn’t go on for hours. Unlike a small-plates restaurant, there’s no guessing how much to order, nor upselling from servers trying to entice you into ordering more than you need.
The chef is Christopher Meenan, a former chef de cuisine at Veritas. The food is not as ambitious, but it’s pretty good, and you get dinner for just about the price of an entrée at Veritas. It just might be just about the best meal for two, under $100 (before tax, tip, and drinks), that we’ve had in quite a while.
The entrance at Neta could easily be missed. Like many sushi restaurants, it’s an inconspicuous storefront on a side street and does little to command attention.
That’s just fine for Neta, which is not meant to attract walk-ins, or those who just happened to stumble upon it. Everyone there, comes with a purpose.
Sushi aficionados have been packing Neta since March last year, when two former Masa acolytes fled the mother ship, and opened this much humbler joint in Greenwich Village.
All this is relative. At Masa, you’ll drop $450 per person before drinks, tax, and tip. At Neta, the omakase options are $95 or $135, or you can order à la carte (much like Masa’s sister restaurant, Bar Masa).
When you pay 70 percent less, obviously there is a difference. Neta is crowded and loud, even on a Tuesday evening. It serves mostly local fish species. The textural contrast between fish and rice is more blurry, less clarified. A piece of toro doesn’t bring the waves of unctuous flavor that it does at Masa.
But you’re paying $135, not $450, and surely that counts for something. Practically the entire $40 difference between the two omakase options goes into a serving of Toro Tartare & Caviar, a wonderful dish early in the meal, which sells for $48 all by itself if you order à la carte.
Altogether, there are 13 courses. The first half of this procession is more impressive. A Szechuan peppercorn spiced salmon stands out, as does a serving of grilled scallops and sea urchin; likewise, spicy lobster and shrimp. Among a sequence of sushi and rolls, a flight of fluke, soft-shell crab, and grilled and marinated toro was the highlight.
Sushi chefs in the U.S. send out desserts as if by obligation, though they haven’t much to say. Still, Neta has improved on Masa with a serving of peanut butter ice cream. I’m not sure I’d be happy if I’d paid $8 for it (the à la carte price), but at the end of a long omakase it felt just about right.
The service is far less formal than at classic sushi spots, but still reasonably good. We were seated at a table (the bar was full), and that makes for a less personalized experience. I frequently had to ask for dishes to be described a second time, when the first couldn’t be heard over the din.
I wouldn’t put Neta in the upper ranks of the city’s best sushi restaurants, a category that certainly includes Masa, along with Sushi Yasuda, Kurumazushi, Soto, Sushi of Gari, and 15 East. Neta’s not in their league, but it’s certainly very worthwhile.
Feel free to click on the slideshow below, for photos and descriptions of all the dishes we were served.
Neta (61 W. Eighth Street, east of Sixth Avenue, Greenwich Village)
Food: Sushi and Japanese small plates Service: Informal but attentive Ambiance: A sushi bar and cramped tables, in a space that’s too loud
Tuesday, May 28, 2013 at 07:47AM 
Nougatine is the casual front room at Jean-Georges, the analogue of such companion places as the Bar & Lounge at Daniel, the Lounge at Le Bernardin, the Bar Room at The Modern, or the Salon at Per Se.
