Review Recap: The Standard Grill

Record to date: 11–5

Pete “the Hammer” Wells takes it easy on the Standard Grill, awarding one star:

At dinner, as the main courses are being set down, he sends out a cast-iron platter of fried potatoes dressed with pimentón mayonnaise, his spin on patatas bravas, the tapas bar classic. Crisp, smoky, spicy and very hard to resist, this little something rounds out the meal rather than slowing it down.

Small grace notes like this have helped the Standard Grill play to robust crowds since it opened three months ago.

It is not the place I would send friends who want to study the latest contortions of the yoga masters of haute cuisine. But it is exactly where I would direct anybody who needs to recharge by plugging straight into the abundant, renewable energy source that is downtown Manhattan.

I like the fact that Wells makes his one-star review positive (as one-star reviews should be), while finding enough faults to explain why the restaurant doesn’t get two:

The tiled, barrel-vaulted ceiling makes for treacherous acoustics. At times conversations across the room are beamed directly to your table. Sitting by the open kitchen one night, we heard an expediter shouting out orders as if he were communicating with cooks in Jersey City. . . .

What is billed as “million dollar” roasted chicken for two cost $32 and occasioned a service failure you wouldn’t expect if you were paying 99 cents. The chicken was set down before me in a cast-iron skillet. I did not get a plate, nor did the friend who was sharing it with me until he spoke up, and then he was given one scaled for an appetizer.

We didn’t blame the overwhelmed waiter, but we did want to wrap him in a warm blanket and pack him into a cab with the names of a few restaurants that give the staff more than 30 seconds of training before sending them into battle.

The place is full of small oddities: the restrooms that look unisex, but aren’t; the disc jockey in a glass booth whose tunes don’t play in the dining room; the very good chocolate mousse that you are meant to eat with a big rubber spatula. Does any of this make sense? No.

Does it, against the odds, add up to a worthwhile restaurant? Absolutely.

Wells’s off-key takedown of SHO Shaun Hergatt in a Dining Brief five weeks ago makes us wonder if he has the right temperament to review upscale restaurants, as well as downscale ones. We probably aren’t going to find out, as the Times is clearly saving the more important opening for Frank Bruni’s replacement, Sam Sifton, who starts in October.

Employees Only

We visited Employees Only last week as a backup, after our original choice cancelled service due to a busted water pipe. I’d never been, but it had always struck me as a dependable fallback when one has no other plans.

It strikes me that way still.

The name strikes an aura of faux exclusivity: you don’t need to be any kind of employee to get in, though you may find chefs and waiters there late, as the kitchen stays open until 3:30 a.m.

At the more civilized hour that we visited (7:00 p.m. on Friday evening), the bar was full, but the tables, of which there are fewer than a dozen, were empty. Bartenders, or perhaps I should say bar chefs, wore crisp white toques.

Employees Only was a speakeasy before everyone started doing it. You’d better memorize the address, because the name isn’t posted outside. There’s a tiny E.O. logo, which you could easily miss. A seemingly bored doorman stands guard, but he ignores you. A lady dressed as a psychic sits at a table just beyond the door. Once you’re fully inside, the the schtick is over, and the place functions as a normal restaurant.

The menu offers straightforward renditions of continental comfort food classics, all solidly done, if not especially imaginative. Salads are $7–12, appetizers $11–23, entrées $19–27, side dishes $7. Cocktails are on the expensive side, mostly $14–15, though you ought to try one.

The Serbian Charcuterie Plate ($21; above) was ample for two to share. It eludes me how Serbian charcuterie is distinguished from other kinds, but it was a fine selection.

I had to try the Elk Loin ($32; above right), if only because there’s nowhere else to get it. Elk is lean and not gamey, which means it doesn’t have a ton of flavor on its own. It was fun to have once, but I wouldn’t order it again. Orecchiette ($19; above left) was a competent preparation, with house-made Italian sausage, arugula, and parmesan.

Service was friendly and attentive.

Employees Only isn’t quite convenient enough for me to drop in regularly, nor important enough to be a destination, but if you’re hungry and don’t have other plans, it’s nice to know it’s there.

Employees Only (510 Hudson Street between Christopher & W. 10th St., West Village)

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

Review Preview: The Standard Grill

Record to date: 10–5

This week, The Standard Grill is the target of substitute critic Pete Wells’s poisoned pen. At least, we assume it’s poisoned. The last two weeks, Wells has brutalized Gus & Gabriel Gastropub and Hotel Griffou with zero-star reviews.

By the way, we’re not insinuating that those reviews were unfair. We haven’t been to either restaurant, and are in no position to disagree. It’s just unusual to see consecutive zeroes at the Times, and it underscores the uncertainty of this critic interregnum: Wells marches to his own beat.

We’ll assume, as we did last week, that Wells is going to give out at least one star. Would he give two? That’s what Adam Platt did, though the food accounted for only one of those stars—the scene, the other. Is Wells a sceney guy? Heaven knows.

We haven’t been to the Standard Grill, but nothing we’ve read suggests it’s destination cuisine, our standard for two stars. We’ll therefore hold our breath and bet on one star for the Standard Grill.

A Voce Columbus

Note: Click here for a more recent review of A Voce Columbus.

*

A Voce Columbus opened last week, taking over the failed Café Gray space. The original downtown branch is now called A Voce Madison. Missy Robbins, a respected Chicago chef who used to be a favorite of the Obamas’, heads up both operations.

I never quite bought into the hype for the original A Voce. Even with Andrew Carmellini at the helm, the food fell short of the three stars Frank Bruni had awarded. Factor in an unpleasant space and inattentive service, and I awarded the restaurant just two stars.

I am not a fan of noisy restaurants, especially expensive ones. Café Gray was crowded, loud, and distinctly unpleasant. For a restaurant with most entrées in the 30s, this was unacceptable. Consumers agreed, and Café Gray is no longer with us.

At A Voce Columbus, one of Café Gray’s errors has been rectified: the kitchen no longer blocks the entire view of Central Park, though it still blocks a good deal of it. The dumbest restaurant design of the decade couldn’t be entirely corrected without gutting the space down to the studs. They’ve done the best they could, opening and brightening up the gloomy shell of a space that Café Gray left behind.

But they didn’t fix the noise. If anything, it is worse. With nothing but hard surfaces everywhere, the room is an echo chamber. My hand was cupped to my ear all evening. Couples nearby were shouting at each other to be heard. Is this a restaurant or a NASCAR race? A Voce’s owners clearly aren’t sure.

A Voce Columbus is not as expensive as Café Gray, but it’s not a cheap date. Our dinner for two was $172.50 before tax and tip. If you order wine, you’ll have trouble getting out for much less than that. Antipasti are $11–16, primi $17–25, secondi $24–38. Service is much improved over my recollections of A Voce Madison, but it does not make up for the cacophonous space.

Missy Robbins’s food struck us as timid and uninteresting. Most of what we tried was flat, under-seasoned, and unmemorable. You’d be happy to drop in if it cost half as much. But I wouldn’t go out of my way for this food, even if the room were much more pleasant.

I give full props to the bread service, though (above right), with a terrific olive oil ricotta spread.

We shared an appetizer and a pasta. Crispy sweetbreads ($14; above left) had the texture of pork belly, and you can never go too far wrong with that, but the smear of polenta underneath them might as well have been Gerber’s baby food. Orecchiette ($19; above right) were dull, and I could barely taste the pork jowl swimming inside.

Branzino ($28; above left) and Lamb Chops ($34; above right) were cooked correctly, but they were not much more adventurous than what one might do at home. The heirloom tomatoes under the branzino had the most basic preparation; likewise the lentils and lamb sausage that came with the chops.

Crisp baked strips of flour lightly dusted with sugar passed for petits-fours.

Servers did a good job of keeping track of our table. I am always nervous when the wine bottle is kept at a central station, but the sommelier kept our glasses replenished.

I could not tell if the sommelier failed to hear me over the din, or if he was upselling. When I asked for a wine recommendation below $60, he kept pointing to bottles above $60. I finally just gave up and ordered one of his suggestions at $68—very good, but $10 more than I had asked for.

A Voce Columbus is less than two weeks old, and I am always wary of judging a restaurant so early. However, it appeared to me that the kitchen executed everything as it was intended. The food just wasn’t very interesting, especially at these prices. Of course, we sampled only a fraction of the menu, but I won’t be dragged again into such an unpleasant space to try any more of it.

A Voce Columbus (10 Columbus Circle, Time-Warner Center, 3rd floor)

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

Review Recap: Hotel Griffou

Record to date: 10–5

Star bettors could be in for a rough few months. After five years, it was usually apparent what Frank Bruni would do. Pete Wells has thrown a curve ball two weeks in a row, first dumping a FAIR rating on Gus & Gabriel Gastropub, and today unloading the dreaded SATISFACTORY on Hotel Griffou:

At every restaurant I’ve seen, a three top is a four top missing a chair.

Not at Hotel Griffou, where we were sent to the bar while someone hunted down our table. The restaurant has four dining rooms, and we had an excellent view of one, a bright space with long beer-hall tables that sat empty. We imagined that they were being held for a group. Naturally, this is where we were seated, 50 minutes after we had arrived.

I was afraid that if I returned they would hit the one-hour mark and lead me to a produce crate by the dishwasher. So I stayed away…

The cooking is hard to classify, partly because the menu is divided into “Seasonal” and “The Classics.” In the first category are garden-variety takes on Mediterranean-derived dishes… As modern as these dishes were, their presentations were often scattershot, as if the food had been lobbed in the general direction of plates as they sailed toward the kitchen door.

Frank Bruni never gave two goose-eggs in a row, as Wells has now done. Bruni’s philosophy seemed to be that, as the Times does not review every restaurant—indeed, it does not even come close—there’s not much point in calling attention to places that aren’t any good. So he gave out just enough goose-eggs to remind readers that it was possible to get less than one star.

I’ve long felt that too many of Bruni’s one-star reviews sounded like zero, and it led to a perception that one star could never be a compliment. Wells could be giving the star system a long-overdue course correction, which would be terrific if Sam Sifton keeps it up.

Unfortunately, I doubt that we’ll be so lucky. I suspect that the worthwhile restaurants have been laid aside for Sam Sifton, which has left Wells to pick up the scraps. Poor fellow.

Mari Vanna

The new restaurant Mari Vanna can make at least one strong claim: it isn’t a clone of a hundred other places. It did not open on the same expensive block as Gramercy Tavern and Veritas because there was huge demand for home-style Russian cooking. So I have to assume the owners actually believed in what they were doing, which is an excellent start.

The name, pronounced like “marijuana,” is apparently fictitious. We are supposed to believe we’re in Mme. Vanna’s parlor, where a privileged few feast on Russian classics like borscht and beef stroganoff. Companion restaurants in Moscow and St. Petersburg operate like private clubs, to which only the annointed are given a key. They wisely ditched that idea, but a bit of it remains. When we arrived, there was a placard on our table that read, “Reserved For Mark [sic].”

The only pro review comes from Sarah DiGregorio of the Voice, who complained of “suffering three hours of Soviet-style slow dinner service.” No one could call this a fast-food place, but we didn’t experience anything like that. And the food, if not revelatory, is certainly very good.

The menu is compact, with six appetizers ($12–25), five salads ($12–17), three soups ($10), and six entrées ($18–27). Naturally, there are vodkas: 70 of them. The wine list is a bit too expensive, with hardly anything under $50.

The décor looks like a cross between a fin de siècle Moscow parlor and an antique shop with little knick-knacks lining the shelves (photos here). There are fancy chandeliers, little doilies at every place setting, candles at every table, and lovely china that does not always match. The area near the front, where we were seated, is a bit cramped; the tables seem to be more spread out in the back.

The bread service (above left) was very good, with a house-made spread that seemed to be a mixture of butter, sour cream and dill.

We ordered two appetizers, but our server was confused, and only one came. It was for the best, as the Hachapuri (cheese pie) was more than enough for two. It resembled a cheese pizza, but richer, thicker, and heavier.

The first entrée listed is a braised duck leg. The server chided me for trying to order it. “Won’t you have something Russian?” I figured that anything on this menu was already Russian. Apparently not.

So I switched to the Rainbow Trout ($27; above left) with chanterelle mushrooms in a white cream sauce. This was a very well executed dish: a whole fish, split and filleted, with mushrooms stuffed inside. Again, it was very rich, and two could easily have shared it.

My girlfriend had the Chicken Kiev ($25; above right), which was much better than we expected for a dish so often phoned in at lesser restaurants.

The restaurant was full on a Saturday evening, with much of the clientele Russian-speaking, from what we could overhear. Service was friendly and mostly attentive—a tad on the slow side, but not bothersome, as we were in no hurry.

I don’t have much of a basis for comparison, as I haven’t tried many Russian restaurants. Okay, none. But we had a relaxing time at this somewhat unusual restaurant, and the food is certainly a lot better than it needs to be.

Mari Vanna (41 E. 20th Street between Park Avenue & Broadway, Flatiron District)

Food: ★★
Service: ★½
Ambiance: ★★
Overall: ★★

Review Preview: Hotel Griffou

While we wait for Sam Sifton, the Times’s Pete Wells is trolling the landscape for insignificant restaurants that do not demand the gravitas of a full-time critic. Last week, he gave us the smackdown of Gus & Gabriel Gastropub. Tomorrow, we have Hotel Griffou.

I doubt that Wells will deliver the goose egg two weeks in a row, but no critic yet has suggested that Hotel Griffou is an Important Restaurant. By process of elimination, we arrive at one star for Hotel Griffou.

Bouley

I am late to the party with this review, in that the new Bouley opened almost a year ago, and our meal there was over a week ago. Recollections of specific dishes have faded a bit, but my feelings about the restaurant itself are perfectly clear.

Bouley restaurant is now in its third and most elegant location. It started out in the space that is now the Italian restaurant Scalini Fedeli, then moved to the space that is now Bouley Bakery. In late 2008, Bouley finally got the palatial dining room that the chef had always wanted. Louis Quatorze could be happy here. It is expensive and stunning.

The restaurant does not want for business. Every table was occupied on a Saturday evening in early September, and at 10:30 p.m. there were still new parties being seated. David Bouley has one of the top fine-dining brand names in New York. He is recession-proof.

The various Bouleys have yo-yo’d between three and four New York Times stars, most recently three, courtesy of Frank Bruni. Even he, never one to be wowed by elegance, acknowledged the over-the-top sense of privilege that one gets by dining here. Words can’t describe it.

But there is unevenness in the food and service, which is the one defect a change of venue could not rectify. There’s a large service brigade, and they’re all in a hurry, which leads to carelessness. More than once, wine glasses and serving trays came crashing to the floor. A runner was scolded loudly for delivering food to the wrong table (not ours).

More seriously, not until we got to the molten chocolate cake was a dish delivered at the right temperature. Amidst a long parade of courses, almost every one was lukewarm. Plates were not pre-warmed, and most of them sat on the pass too long. The food here is accomplished, but it is undermined after it leaves the chef’s hands.

We were, however, treated with courtesy and care by the many captains, sommeliers, and runners who waited on us. You cannot eat cheaply at Bouley, but it is one of the few restaurants in its class that offers dining à la carte, with appetizers $14–21 and entrées $36–43. There are two tasting menus, $95 and $150. We had the latter, all nine courses of which unfolded over four hours.

The amuse-bouche (above left) was a Cauliflower mousse with trout caviar and 25-year-old balsamic vinegar. Next was the Porcini Flan (above left) with Dungeness Crab and Black Truffle Dashi. One can understand the raves this dish has received, but as would be the case all evening, it needed to be warmer. This was followed by a Foie Gras Terring (below left).

Unlike most tasting menus in town, there are choices for most courses. We split for the next course, one of us having the Cape Cod Striped Bass (above right), the other an Organic Farm Egg (below left) with Serrano ham and a blizzard of other components.

Lobster (above right) was, once again, not quite warm enough.

The next savory course offered a choice of Foie Gras (above left) and Squab (above right).

The final savory course was the only outright failure. A whole “All-Natural Pennsylvania Chicken,” supposedly baked “en cocotte,” was brought out in a large glass vessel. Imagine our surprise when it was returned to the kitchen for plating, and three wan slices of breast appeared (above left), once again lukewarm—spa cuisine at its worst. How could such a beautiful bird could yield so little? What became of the dozen other chickens that paraded by us? Was there just one Potemkin chicken, brought out for show, but having nothing to do with what we were served?

Rack of lamb (above right) came out without a flourish, but the meat was on the tough side, and as you may have guessed by now, lukewarm.

Desserts ended the evening on a high note, even if we were too full to fully appreciate them. There was a Strawberry and Rhubarb parfait (above left), and then a crème brûlée birthday cake (above right).

We moved onto “Chocolate Frivolous” (above left) with five different variations on chocolate, with which the house comped a glass of Maury. The petits-fours (above right) were excellent, too.

Portion sizes for this nine-course menu were on the large side. The chocolate alone was more than I eat most evenings for dinner. I do not recall feeling more full after a long tasting menu.

I can’t imagine why David Bouley’s service team so often lets him down. He can afford the best, and he ought to be getting the best. Of course, I am phrasing my complaints in relative terms: we didn’t experience bad service. But we didn’t get what the chef and the room deserve.

Bouley (163 Duane Street at Hudson Street, TriBeCa)

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

Civetta

Note: Civetta closed in November 2009. The space re-opened as Kenmare.

*

A restaurant like Civetta would not normally attract much notice, but for its pedigree. It has shared ownership with the Sfoglia team, and many hoped—expected—that the earlier restaurant’s success on the Upper East Side would be transferred downtown.

I must admit that I never bought into the Sfoglia hype. On my one visit, it seemed utterly unremarkable—the kind of place that I would consider only if I were in the neighborhood, assuming it wasn’t so crowded and cramped.

At Civetta, even Sfoglia’s modest ambitions are not duplicated. Sfoglia, at least, comes across as an earnest mom and pop place. Civetta, which means Owl in Italian, is just marginally better than the mine run of Little Italy restaurants on nearby Mulberry Street.

The space is on two levels. The ground floor derives its charm from a spectacular carved wood bar with a solid marble counter, which hails from an earlier era. The staff could not tell me its history, except that it was there before; that much I had figured out on my own. The rest of the room, with its wooden tables and knick-knacks on the wall, is like many other places you’ve seen.

The basement looks like it’s a new build-out. It’s designed to appeal to the late-night hipster set, with a crass décor having nothing whatsovever to do with the ground floor. We have no idea if it’s succeeding. By the time that crowd would have arrived, we were already back home. The dining room was close to full at 8:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. We suspected that the San Gennaro Festival had something to do with it.

The bread service (above left), replicated from Sfoglia if memory serves us right, was just fine. They even provided olive oil for dipping, after we asked for it.

The strength of the menu is two dozen antipasti ($8–18). It appears the pasta prices have moderated a bit after early reviewers complained, but the secondi all hover around the $30 mark. We were skeptical, so took a pass on them, ordering just antipasti and pastas.

The antipasti were stronger: Lamb Polpettini, or meatballs ($12; above left); Arancini ($12; above right), stuffed with fontina and sausage.

Seafood Risotto ($24; above left) was generic. The shrimp tasted like they came out of the freezer. Rigatoni Bolognese ($22; above right) was lukewarm and had the consistency of shoe leather.

With many compelling dining options within half-a-dozen blocks’ radius, we see no particular reason to recommend Civetta. If you go, stick with the antipasti.

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

Food: Average
Service: Acceptable
Ambiance: Acceptable
Overall: Average

Shorty's.32

Note: Shorty’s.32 closed in September 2011, the victim of “bad business decisions.”

*

At Shorty’s.32, the backstory is a familiar one: a fine-dining chef opens a neighborhood comfort-food spot. We’ve seen it all over town.

At Shorty’s, that chef is Josh Eden, who cooked at several restaurants in Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s empire, eventually working his way up to chef de cuisine at JoJo. The diminutive Mr. Eden picked up the nickname “Shorty,” and the restaurant has 32 seats, which explains the otherwise inscrutable name.

You’ll find little of Chef Vongerichten’s influence here, just standard upscale American comfort food priced slightly on the expensive side, with appetizers $8–14, entrées $16–30, and side dishes $7. Based on the hearty portions we were served, we’re not sure why anyone would really need a side dish here.

The wine list is priced in line with the menu. Reds range from $28–180, with an emphasis on lesser known producers. I loved a 2005 Alliet Chinon “Vieilles Vignes” Cabernet Franc ($60), which I was able to taste by the glass because the bar happened to have a bottle open.

The food was all competently prepared, but a few days later I had already forgotten most of it. Fortunately, I had the photos to remind me. Crabsticks ($14; above left) were basically cakes served in the shape of spring rolls. Braised Pork Belly shared the bowl with a Cranberry Bean Salad ($12; above right).

The dishes Frank Bruni liked, when he awarded one star, are still on the menu. He was not fond of a pork chop in “a soggy milieu of mashed yams.” Replacing it is Pork Milanese ($24; above left), suffocated by a pea shoot and radish salad. Bruni liked the Braised Short Ribs ($29; above left). I found the saucing too heavy, but the side of elbow macaroni was just fine.

A glance at Chef Eden’s resume might lead you to expect culinary fireworks. There are none. What you do get is solid comfort food, worth a look if you happen to be in the area.

Shorty’s.32 (199 Prince Street between Sullivan & MacDougal Streets, SoHo)

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