White Street

Can someone find the right restaurant for Floyd Cardoz? Perhaps White Street is the one, but I am not so sure.

Cardoz first came to widespread acclaim with Tabla, the modern Indian restaurant he opened with Danny Meyer in 1998. It got three stars from Ruch Reichl right out of the gate. We thought it was still in top form the first time we tried it, in 2006.

But by then, Tabla had fallen off the city’s culinary radar. Meyer and Cardoz must have recognized that: by 2009, the formal dining room menu was discontinued, which only put off the inevitable. Tabla closed in late 2010.

Just over a year later, Cardoz re-appeared in another Meyer place, North End Grill in Battery Park City. We liked it, and so did most critics, but it built up a reputation as an expensive cafeteria for Goldman Sachs next door. Once again, the chef was doing respectable work, totally off the culinary radar.

Cardoz left North End Grill in April 2014, saying that he wanted to open another Indian restaurant in New York. By July he’d changed his mind, or perhaps had it changed for him by investors who couldn’t make the numbers work. So White Street was announced, promising “American [cuisine] with global touches.” Those investors include Dan Abrams and Dave Zinczenko, backers of John DeLucie’s The Lion, a precedent that hardly inspires much confidence.

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Park Avenue Autumn

As a general rule, I don’t believe restaurant spaces are “cursed”. Consecutive failures at the same address are usually attributable to explainable human errors, and not any supernatural intervention.

I might just have to revise my view if Park Avenue Autumn (and its three seasonal cousins) fails in its new home, which has seen four restaurant concepts in four years, all from the same ownership group, Alan and Michael Stillman’s Fourth Wall Restaurants. The company has a strong record of populist success (Smith & Wollensky, Quality Meats, Quality Italian), everywhere but here.

In its original home, almost forty blocks north, this restaurant lasted twenty-two years, first as Park Avenue Café, and starting in 2007, as Park Avenue what-have-you, with the name, signage, décor, servers’ uniforms, and menu changing with the season every three months. That lasted six years, before losing its lease at the end of 2013.

After General Assembly quickly flopped earlier this year, the Stillmans decided to re-launch “a more casual, accessible version” of their Park Avenue concept. Design firm AvroKO is on hand once again with a modular décor, which evokes the current season with pitch-perfect precision, but within a matter of days, can be swapped out for the next. It might be too Disney-fied for some tastes.

By the end of its run uptown, Park Avenue Season had matured into a solid two-star place: I liked my second visit (in 2011) quite a bit better than the first (2007). The restaurant was usually full at prime times. But that was in a much smaller space, and in a neighborhood where the locals don’t wince at entrées averaging in the mid-$30s.

Located at a comparatively dead spot on Park Avenue South, the massive floor plan worked to the disadvantage of Hurricane Club, Hurricane Steak, and General Assembly, the first three concepts the Stillmans tried here. In this cavernous labrynth of connected rooms, the charm of the original Park Avenue hasn’t quite survived. Meanwhile, the promise of a supposedly “more casual, accessible” restaurant does not apply to the bill: it’s as expensive as ever. (The online menu is posted without prices—a strictly low-class move.)

Zene Flinn and Benkai O’Sullivan are co-executive chefs. Flinn was with the team uptown, and the menu here is very much in the same spirit as the original, with most of the dishes inspired by the season. It might almost be called old-fashioned, with appetizers $15–19, entrées $19–38 (almost all over $30), and side dishes $10. The downtown crowd might be disoriented in a restaurant with no sharing plates, “large format” dishes, or tasting menus.

The ten-page wine list (available online with prices—such a concept!) doesn’t offer many bargains, but it is not unfairly priced in relation to the food. The 2004 Château Berliquet was $76, a shade over two times retail, and the sommelier decanted it—always a nice touch.

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Botequim

Marco Moreira and Jo-Ann Makovitzky, the husband-and-wife restaurateurs, have not exactly rushed to expand. After opening the upscale French restaurant Tocqueville in 2000, they waited seven years to move it down the street, so they could launch the Michelin starred sushi den 15 East in its former dining room.

That was it for another six years, until they opened The Fourth, an all-day American brasserie in the new Hyatt Union Square, which landed with a thud. The critics mostly ignored it, and that may have been an act of kindness. Reviewing for the Daily News, Michael Kaminer said the restaurant felt like it belonged in an airport: “everything feels vetted by committee, from office-suite décor to a meek menu with just enough Food Network flourishes to excite out-of-towners.”

Makovitzky later told the Village Voice that the bi-level space was too large. Over the summer, they turned the basement into a month-long Brazilian pop-up called Botequim (Portuguese for pub), which was successful enough to take over the space permanently. Mr. Moreira, the chefly half of the duo, is from Brazil, so it is perhaps a bit surprising that he waited so long to showcase the cuisine of his native land.

Thereis much to admire about Botequim. The strong wine list (unfortunately not online) offers a heavy dose of Portuguese and South American wines not often featured at New York restaurants. (We were pleased with the 2010 Quinta do Carmo: $47.) The menu is modestly priced, with most appetizers $15 or less, and most entrées in the $20s.

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Paulaner

It’s hard to screw up a beer hall, but Paulaner nearly failed, opening in November 2013 and closing just five months later for “renovations”. Evidently, the original décor “felt too much like an Applebee’s and needed a stylish kick in the pants.”

Successful second acts are rare in the restaurant business, but there are solid names behind the revamp, which opened in May under new management. Wolfgang Ban (of Seäsonal, Edi & the Wolf, and The Third Man) and Stephen Starr vet Markus Tschuschnig are co-owners. The executive chef is Bavarian Daniel Kill, from Kurt Gutenbruner’s chain of Austrian restaurants (Wallsé, Blaue Gans, Café Sabarsky, The Upholstery Store).

I never visited Paulaner v1.0, but the redesign doesn’t seem that dramatic (see the before and after photos on Eater). Still, it is a clear improvement. Photos on the walls have been ditched, leaving bare brick. Tables are now a darker wood. The long center aisle of the dining room is now taken up with communal tables and wooden benches. At the edge of the room, a row of rectangular tables is replaced with half-moon shaped booths.

The restaurant remains affiliated with the German beer of the same name. At the back of the restaurant, there are two huge copper and stainless steel fermenting vats imported from Germany. Beers brewed on-site are served unfiltered and unpasteurized.

The menu is inexpensive, with starters (appetizers, cheeses and sausages) $9–14, entrées $14–23, and side dishes $5–7. Portion sizes are ample, as you’d expect in a German restaurant. There’s a modest wine list (all $10 a glass). Cocktails are $11; beers $5, $7, or $13, depending on the size. When was the last time you saw food and alcohol this cheap, at a place run by a Michelin-starred chef?

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Michelin New York 2015 Ratings

The Michelin New York 2015 ratings were announced last week. We’re back with our annual tabular listing of stars won and lost over the ten-year history of the Guide.

The Michelin Guide offers the best single list of New York’s best restaurants, mainly because the list is updated annually. Most of the city’s professional critics review a restaurant once, within its first year in business, and do not return for many years, if ever—even if the restaurant has changed substantially.

To give three examples from the 2015 Guide, Aquavit was promoted from one star to two, under its new chef, Emma Bengtsson. The NYT displays Sam Sifton’s 2010 review under former chef Marcus Jernmark. Saul lost its Michelin star after moving to the Brooklyn Museum. The NYT displays Pete Wells’ 2007 review, when Saul was in a much smaller dining room in Boerum Hill. Lastly, A Voce Columbus lost its star after losing its chef, Missy Robbins. The NYT still displays Sam Sifton’s 2009 review, when Robbins was there.

Similar examples from earlier years are abundant. The NYT still displays Frank Bruni’s 2007 review of Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Perry St. Michelin took away its star in 2011, after Mr. Vongerichten’s son Cedric took over the kitchen. The NYT still displays William Grimes’ 2002 review of Vongerichten’s Jo Jo. The restaurant lost its Michelin star for the second and final time in 2010.

We don’t think the Michelin inspectors are more competent at reviewing restaurants than the city’s other professional critics. They’re just more nimble.

In the 2015 Guide, there are no new three-star restaurants, three promotions to two stars (Aquavit, Blanca, and Ichimura), and fifteen new one-star restaurants, most of which opened within the last year or two. Picholine got its star back, after a year’s absence. There were no restaurants starred out of nowhere, after many years unstarred, such as Caviar Russe and Telepan in the 2014 Guide.

Particularly notable demotions include Daniel (three stars to two); Annisa and Oceana (one star to zero), both of which had been starred for nine consecutive years, since the first Guide.

Starred restaurants that have never had a New York Times review of any kind, include Andanada, Caviar Russe, Danny Brown, Juni, and ZZ’s Clam Bar.

A summary of changes and a ten-year tabular listing are after the jump.

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