Charlie Bird

Once burned, twice careful? How else do you explain the very good, and yet timid, restaurant that is Charlie Bird?

Let’s rewind a bit. Robert Bohr was a partner and sommelier at Cru, one of the city’s best restaurants of the mid-2000s. Frank Bruni awarded three stars right off the bat. Rumor had it Bruni was considering a fourth. I gave it three and a half stars.

In an era when most restaurants were becoming more casual, Cru actually got fancier in its first four years, 2004–08. By the peak, it had a 150,000-bottle wine cellar, with a list so hefty they presented it in two volumes, each the size of a phone directory.

Then the The Great Recession hit. Hedge fund moguls were no longer dropping in and buying the three- and four-figure trophy wines that the business model depended on. The chef left; his replacement was told to dumb down the menu.

I predicted that plan would fail, and it did. As I asked at the time, when the core of your wine list is bottles in the hundreds and thousands, what does it matter if entrée prices are slashed $5 or $10 apiece? Cru closed in 2010.

Bohr moved onto other ventures for a while before opening Charlie Bird in June. The restaurant is, of course, wine-centric: how could it not be? But neither the food nor the wine attempts anything like the ambition of Cru at any point in its six-year run.

I can understand not trying to reproduce Cru, but with the economy now on an upswing, and restaurants like Costata and Carbone pulling in the high rollers again, I think Bohr could have aimed higher than he did.

Mind you, Charlie Bird is very good for what it is, but the food itself is not destination material. It’s good “neighborhood-plus” Italianesque food, which you can get all over town. The wine list, which The Times’s Eric Asimov recently named one of the city’s twelve best, is what makes Charlie Bird a destination.

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Khe-Yo

Marc Forgione has made the transition awfully quickly. I mean, from chef to restaurateur.

Not long ago, all he had was the formerly Michelin-starred Marc Forgione, where I’ve never been very impressed. Not that I disliked it, but the accolades seemed over-done.

Then, three months ago he opened the Laotian-themed Khe-Yo, followed soon thereafter by American Cut, a steakhouse, both within a few blocks’ radius of the first restaurant. It’s a good way to branch out, as the steakhouse can run on auto-pilot, and the chef at Khe-Yo is a former sous-chef of his, Soulayphet Schwader. It’s a Forgione restaurant in name only.

The dining room isn’t my kind of place: dark and gloomy, a thumping sound track, overly loud. It was full when I arrived for an 8:00pm reservation; our table wasn’t ready until 8:20. The nine-seat bar was full, at first, and there was nowhere to wait.

But for what it is, the service here is very good. The staff apologized profusely, and repeatedly, for seating us late. Once I finally got a bar seat, the tab was transferred to our table. I wouldn’t choose to go back, but if it’s your type of spot, you’ll be well cared for.

The menu is just 14 items (plus one special) in three categories: salads ($11–15), appetizers ($9–13) and entrees ($21–33). I assume these dishes are Laotian (a cuisine I’ve never tried before), but only in New York would the names of the purveyors be added to the name. Khy-Yo serves not just any beef jerky, but Creekstone Farms Beef Jerky.

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Juni

  

You’ve got to give Shaun Hergatt credit for persistence, if naught else. His first fine-dining restaurant won two Michelin stars but took a critical drubbing. The critics acted clowns, but the same clowns (or some of them) are still running the circus.

A lot of chefs would have followed it up with a steakhouse or a noodle shop. But here he is again, giving the critics what they already told him they don’t want.

To be fair, dumb reviews weren’t all that went wrong at SHO Shaun Hergatt. It was in a terrible location, not visible from the street, on an upper floor in a building surrounded with scaffolding and Jersey barriers. Even with the best reviews, I’m not sure he could have overcome that.

Juni (a diminutive of the Latin word for June) isn’t a SHO clone. It doesn’t look like a hotel in Dubai, the room isn’t as spacious or as opulent, there are no tablecloths, he’s not sending out edible gold leaf, and the wine list is far more modest. But it’s still an expensive fine-dining restaurant in a boutique hotel (The Chandler at 31st and Madison), a genre the foodocracy does not embrace.

There are two gracious, comfortable dining rooms, decorated in taupe and other muted colors, with custom flower prints on the walls and a large floral centerpiece. The flower motif is in the food too, with colorful petals on many of the dishes. Servers are in navy suits and ties, runners in dark blue coats, with a low diner-to-staff ratio. There’s a heavy ceramic pedestal at every place setting, and plates are served on top of this. Water glasses, silverware, and serving pieces, etc., are first-rate.

The cuisine is recognizably Hergatt, but there is a hint of the new Nordic here and there, with a heavy dose of crisps, flower petals and herbs, assymetric platings, and austere presentation. Whether you like this style of cooking or not, it is obviously labor- and ingredient-intensive, and beautiful to look at.

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Pagani

I’ve run out of ways to describe enjoyable, inexpensive, faux-rustic Italian restaurants. But there are never enough of them when they’re done well.

Pagani, named for a former music store that once occupied its bright West Village street corner, is done well. You might’ve guessed that if you’ve been to the owners’ other place, the Upper East Side restaurant and wine bar Uva, which we visited a couple of years ago. It has similar charms.

The owners hired Taavo Somer to oversee the décor, which ensured it would be attractive, comfortable and unoriginal. Wisely, they let him nowhere near the food. Mark Barrett, a veteran of Tabla and Babbo (and quite a few other places), runs the kitchen.

The menu is the typical multi-category broadsheet, with a variety of snacks, cured meats, and cheeses as the opening act. Starters and salads are $8–12, pastas $16–21, main courses $19–27, side dishes $6. That qualifies as inexpensive these days.

None of it is very adventurous: even picky eaters could return again and again, without repeating a dish. It all just sounds so good. Four of us were able to sample nine items, and there wasn’t a dud among them. We’d happily order any of them again. There’s a steady 4–5 ingredients per dish, and they all make sense. It feels odd to write that, but it’s often not the case.

 

Apple fennel salad ($10; above left), with arugula, feta cheese, pistachio, and olive oil, was a bit on the tart side, but after some discussion we rated it a success. The obligatory Farm Poached Egg ($9; above right) keeps company with mushrooms, spinach, and crispy pancetta vinaigrette.

 

The Sliced Garden Zucchini salad ($9; above left), with grilled corn, string beans, and almond vinaigrette, had a pleasant lemony flavor. The Soft-Shell Crab special ($10; above right), served breaded and deep-fried, won’t be available by the time you read this: order it next year.

Folded Chicken ($19; above) is terrific, the least-expensive entrée and one of the best. The bird has plenty of company: arugula, Parmigiano, tomatoes, spinach, and dried figs. It never feels like too much.

 

Rich Potato Gnocchi ($19; above left) with walnuts, gorgonzola, and black truffle, were lovely. Garganelli ($19; above right) with whole wheat pasta, spicy sausage, spinach, red onion, and tomato sauce, were more conventional but exactly as they should be.

 

The desserts are a highlight: the Chocolate Banana Pudding Sticks ($9.50; above left) and the Fruit Torte ($7.50; above right).

The two-page wine list (mostly Italian) is not as deep or as compelling as at Uva, but perhaps that’ll change as the restaurant matures. In the meantime, it is at least fairly priced, with a majority of the bottles—even the majority of the reds—below $50. You rarely see that any more. A 2009 Sicilian red was $45.

We reserved our table of four the same day; nevertheless, the restaurant was packed, so I assume they get a lot of walk-ins. It took a server about 15 minutes to take our order, and only then did he get around to mentioning the specials. After that little glitch, the meal went smoothly.

As I noted, there’s nothing terribly original about Pagani, but if you’re in that neck of the woods, it’s a fun place you’d never get tired of.

Pagani (289 Bleecker Street at Seventh Avenue South, West Village)

Food: Rustic Italian
Service: Friendly but a bit slow
Ambiance: Blonde woods, mirrored walls; Taavo Somer playbook

Rating: ★

Michelin New York 2014 Ratings

The Michelin New York 2012 ratings were announced this afternoon. As always, we’re back with our tabular listing, after the jump, of the stars from 2006 (the first year) to the present.

There are fewer “head-scratchers” this year — actually, no new stars that seem completely ridiculous, like Shalizar in 2010 or Heartbreak in 2012. There are a few hold-overs, like Jewel Bako, that some people violently disagree with, but I don’t consider that as bad—if “bad” it is—as a new error, and there aren’t a lot of those.

Most of the city’s professional critics hate the Michelin ratings. They don’t want to admit that a French tire company is as good at it as they are. The fact is, all of the pro critics get restaurants wrong; sometimes, ridiculously so. Unlike Michelin, they practically never revisit their errors.

To give a couple of examples: Jonathan Benno’s Lincoln Ristorante had a terrible start in the fall of 2011. Most of the early reviews were lukewarm. Those critics are probably never going back. It’s not that they’re cruel or stubborn: they just don’t have the mandate to keep re-checking their old reviews. Lincoln now has a Michelin star. The tire guide was able to recognize the improvement. The pro critics couldn’t.

Picholine was demoted in 2012 from two Michelin stars to one, and this year from one star to zero, reflecting the restaurant’s decline. The New York Times? The best they can do is Frank Bruni’s three-star review from 2006, not likely to be updated anytime soon.

Many people found Gordon Ramsay’s previous two-star rating incomprehensible, but no local critic had reviewed it in years. People who said the rating was wrong had no clue. How could they? Anyhow, this year it suffered a rare demotion from two stars to zero. Given the restaurant’s recent troubles, it is no surprise.

Of course, there are individual Michelin ratings I disagree with. No one could construct such a list and please everybody; my list no doubt would displease some of you. But by and large it’s a more accurate list than any professional critic in this city can produce, simply because the pro critics spend so much of their time at restaurants that are brand new, and have only rare opportunities to revisit them.

The summary is below, the tabular listing after the jump.

Promotions:

• Jungsik, from one tar to two

Star Regained:

• Babbo, from zero stars to one (last starred in 2008). I am not sure what cost Babbo its star in 2009, or what changed to get it back again.

Demotions: (not counting closed restaurants)

• Gordon Ramsay at the London, from two stars to zero.

• Picholine, from one star to zero.

Starred in First Year Eligible:

• Aska
• Carbone
• Ichimura at Brushstroke
• Le Restaurant
• The Musket Room

The top three received multiple favorable reviews from the professional critics. The latter two have not, but they’re not complete head-scratchers like some of the Tire Man’s past star awards.

Other Restaurants Starred for the First Time:

• Caviar Russe. Probably the most surprising newly-starred place, but this restaurant has gone almost totally under the critical radar for years. Who knew?

• Telepan. Much deserved after all these years.

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db bistro moderne

Let’s bow down to Daniel Boulud’s genius. None of his New York restaurants have ever failed. Even at the flagship Daniel, which some people find stodgy, he has managed to keep it just enough up-to-date to remain popular and relevant.

More remarkably, he did this without ever abandoning his French roots, during many years when his cuisine was not exactly fashionable. Even that Italophile and Fracophobe Frank Bruni never gave him a bad review.

Boulud renovates his restaurants after a decade or so. Both Daniel and Café Boulud went under the knife at around their tenth anniversaries. This summer, it was db bistro moderne’s turn. I’m sure it was still doing decent business, but after a dozen years it was Boulud’s most off-the-radar restaurant. It was time.

My two previous meals there were in 2004 and 2006, so I don’t recall the original very well. The interior has been totally redone by Jeffrey Beers International in mirrors and dark paneling (see Eater.com for photos). They’ve added a bar, which the original db bistro lacked. Most of the tables have tablecloths. It looks a bit corporate, but very much in Boulud’s style, and appropriate for a neighborhood that sees a lot of hotel and commercial traffic. Boulud was never the sawdust and heavy metal type.

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