Ed's Chowder House

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Ed’s Chowder House.

A new Jeffrey Chodorow restaurant is a bit like a NASCAR race. You suspect there will be a crash. The only question is when?

You have to at least admire Chodorow’s tenacity. After failures at Mix, Rocco’s, Brasserio Caviar & Banana, Tuscan, Tuscan Steak, English is Italian, Wild Salmon, Kobe Club, and Ono, it’s amazing he has any capital left over. Or patience.

When Chodorow opened Center Cut across from Lincoln Center last year, I thought: “Here, finally, is a restaurant he can’t screw up.” Steakhouses seldom fail in New York, and this is a neighborhood that cries out for more dining options. The Lincoln Center restaurants are packed almost every night, despite the fact that very few of them are great. The area needed a place like Center Cut.

I actually liked Center Cut. I didn’t love it, but it was convenient before a show. It was also a place you could get into, and therein lay the problem. Even in a neighborhood that needed more restaurants, the crowds didn’t warm up to Center Cut: I gave plenty of reasons in my review. Once again, Chodorow had screwed up, as only he can.

Now comes Ed’s Chowder House, built on the carcass that was Center Cut. Chodorow has wisely enlisted Ed Brown of the Michelin-starred eighty one, who knows a thing or two about seafood from his thirteen-year stint at Rockefeller Center’s Sea Grill.

This isn’t a gut renovation—Center Cut’s wine wall still separates the bar and the dining room—but the space is now much brighter and livelier. It’s tough to compare a steakhouse and a seafood shack, but prices here are much lower. Center Cut had $17 cocktails (one of Chodorow’s many errors), but they top out here at $12. There are acceptable wines below $50, which Center Cut didn’t have.

The front area, where I ate, is called the “Chowder Bar.” It has its own menu that partly overlaps the dining room menu, but has a few of its own items—a burger ($15) and a lobster roll ($24), for instance. But the servers there offer you the dining room menu too, which leaves you with a lot to ponder.

Too much, in fact. This is the failing of every Chodorow restaurant I’ve visited. At Wild Salmon, even a physicist couldn’t have calculated the number of variations. Chodorow is positively restrained here, but there are still twenty-five entrées in two categories ($17–35)—half of them in a boxed-off list captioned “simply,” the other half being composed plates.

I would far prefer to see the list of the entrées that the restaurant can do really well—and I guarantee you it’s not all twenty-five of them.

The appetizer list is a bit more sensible, with ten choices ($9–16), but there are four soups ($9–15), nine sides ($6), and the obligatory raw bar. Both menus (dining room and chowder bar) have dates printed on them, which suggests they’ll be revised frequently.

Center Cut had a terrific bread service, and so does Ed’s Chowder House (above left). Among the soups are three kinds of chowder, or you can get a sampler for $12 (above right). I loved the New England clam chowder and the sweet corn chowder, but the Manhattan-style chowder tasted like Campbell’s.

A Savory Lobster Crumble ($16; above left) is listed as an appetizer, but it’s hearty enough to be a small entrée. I would be happy to eat this again. I asked a server to recommend her favorite side dish, and she suggested the Jalapeño Creamed Corn (above right), and this was also very good.

This was the first night for Ed’s Chowder House, so consider this a preliminary view. The Chod himself was in the house. Servers were more polished than I would expect at a brand new restaurant. A cocktail took a bit too long to appear, but the staff got me out in time for my 7:30 concert. There was no attempt to upsell me—a first in a Chodorow restaurant.

If this were really Ed Brown’s Chowder House, I would confidently predict success. But this is also Jeffrey Chodorow’s House, and he’s proved there’s no restaurant he can’t foul up. I’ll be rooting for this one, not for any partisan reason, but simply because it’s always good to have another option at Lincoln Center.

Ed’s Chowder House will get a repeat visit from me. I can only hope that after Ed Brown decamps uptown, the China Grill Management folks don’t screw it up.

Ed’s Chowder House (44 W. 63rd St. btwn. Broadway & Columbus, Lincoln Center)

Review Recap: Gus & Gabriel Gastropub

According to Pete Wells at the Times, Chef Michael Psilakis has his first fail with Gus & Gabriel Gastropub, which receives a devastating FAIR rating in today’s paper:

The anglicized Gastropub of the name is a red herring. Gus & Gabriel’s menu reads like the one at countless casual American pubs, with a few nods to T. G. I. Friday’s and all the strip-mall P. T. Pennyfathers it spawned.

Mr. Psilakis intended to improve mainstream food — fried mozzarella, spaghetti and meatballs, barbecued riblets — by making it all from scratch. The tortilla chips in nachos are fried in house; the ice creams in the shakes and floats are made at Anthos.

This may strike some people as pandering. But the problem with Gus & Gabriel is not that it aims low. The problem is that it fails to achieve even its low aims.

This was the paper’s first FAIR rating since William Grimes’s tenure. Frank Bruni never gave a FAIR. He once said that two kinds of zero—POOR and SATISFACTORY—were enough. The trouble was that most of his SATISFACTORY reviews didn’t convey much satisfaction. If a restaurant is this bad, then it isn’t satisfactory.

Gus & Gabriel is Micheal Psilakis’s seventh New York restaurant in five years. Three have closed (Onera, Dona, and the original Kefi), and this week he severed his ties with another, Mia Dona. The transferred Kefi is a disaster, and so apparently is Gus & Gabriel. That leaves the acclaimed Anthos, but heaven knows if he is actually paying attention to it—it doesn’t get much press these days.

It’s time for Psilakis to stop tossing out ideas like so many bullets out of a machine gun, and focus again on getting them right.

Review Preview: Gus & Gabriel Gastropub

Record to date: 10–3

According to @pete_wells, “This week full reviews return to NYT Dining with a writeup on Gus & Gabriel Gastropub done by some guy named Pete Wells.”

The restaurant is named for Chef Michael Psilakis’s father (Gus) and his son (Gabriel), because “he intends the restaurant’s cooking to appeal to the kid in every adult.” It’s perhaps a slightly more sophisticated version of the comfort food that the Upper West Side is known for: salads, burgers, hot dogs, sandwiches, meatloaf—that sort of thing.

According to the online menu, most of the food is below $15. It’s the kind of place that would originally have fallen to the $25 & Under critic, back when that column contained real restaurant reviews.

Pete Wells has no history of doling out stars, but we can’t imagine that this place is better than the subject of Frank Bruni’s parting review, The Redhead, which earned one star. So that’s our guess for Gus & Gabriel: one star.

Knife + Fork

Note: Knife + Fork closed in late 2010 after a brief, ill-fated re-boot on Avenue A.

I had dinner at Knife + Fork about three years ago, and thought, “I really like this place.” Unfortunately, when a restaurant isn’t in my neighborhood, it takes me a really long time to get back.

I finally returned last week, to find that Knife + Fork is just as good as I remembered it. The background is in my original review, and I won’t repeat all of it. Prices are still quite reasonable for the quality, with appetizers topping out at $16 and entrées at $26. There’s a $24 prix fixe, and the six-course tasting menu remains $45. Small plates at the bar are just $8, or you can enjoy wines by the glass and snack on a gratis bowl of mixed olives.

There is no hard liquor license, as a school is nearby, but there are plenty of bottles in the $20s, $30s and $40s, and an ample selection by the glass, priced at $9–14.

On the night we visited, Chef Damien Bressel was a one-man band, as his wife was out of town and the waiter had called in sick. At least his prep guy was there, but Bressel was greeting customers, waiting tables, and cooking the food without help. He seemed preternaturally calm about doing three jobs at once, and gave better service than many waiters who have nothing more to do. To be fair, we were there quite early, and there were not many customers on a Wednesday evening.

To start, I ordered the Carrot Risotto with ginger purée, topped with a wild chervil salad (above left). My friend had the Foie Gras Torchon (above right).

For the main course, I had the Salmon (above left), my friend the Duck (above right). We didn’t taste each other’s dishes, but mine were both terrific. It’s not easy to make routine dishes like risotto and salmon stand out on a prix fixe menu, but Bressel pulled it off.

For dessert, crème brûlée was more pedestrian—nothing wrong with it, but not memorable either. Bressel comped a separate order of it for my friend. (He hadn’t ordered the prix fixe, and would normally have had to pay an extra $8 for it.)

It’s no small accomplishment to keep a “mom & pop” restaurant in business after three years. The accolades haven’t exactly poured in (the Times never reviewed it), but there must at least be a local following. Knife + Fork deserves wider exposure than that. The impressive food and the charming atmosphere remain compelling draws.

Knife + Fork (108 E. 4th St. between First & Second Avenues, East Village)

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

Fall Restaurant Preview

Ah, autumn. Changing leaves, nippy air, and a slew of new restaurants competing for attention. We took Florence Fabricant’s full list from the Times (here, here), and edited out those not in Manhattan, or that don’t appear to be full-service restaurants. What follows is a brief description of each place and an early guess about whether we’re likely to visit.

ABE & ARTHUR’S Franklin Becker cooking in the former Lotus space. 409 West 14th Street. Late September. Probably not. Sounds like all the drawbacks of the Meatpacking District, with none of its virtues.

A VOCE COLUMBUS Time-Warner outpost of the restaurant founded by Andrew Carmellini, now helmed by Missy Robbins. Third Floor, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, (212) 823-2523. Sept. 9. Most Definitely: reservation September 26.

ARDESIA Wine bar and Italian small plates in far west Clinton. 510 West 52nd Street, (212) 247-9191. Mid-September. Probably not: It’s a crowded field, and there are many others more conveniently located.

BALABOOSTA Jewish cooking with North African and Middle Eastern accents. 214 Mulberry Street (Spring Street). December. Neutral: Doesn’t sound compelling to me, but I’ll wait for reviews.

BAR HENRY Bistro/wine bar in the west village. 90 West Houston Street (Thompson Street). Sept. 12. Neutral: Sounds like a hundred other places, but maybe this one will stand out.

B CLINTON Michael Huynh cooks a 3-course prix fixe for $29—at least, when he’s there: 6 Clinton Street (Houston Street). November. Probably not: I am so over Michael Huynh.

BILL’S BAR & BURGER American pub food, operated by Stephen Hanson. 22 Ninth Avenue (13th Street). Late October. Probably: The Full Hanson is always worth a look.

BISTRO VENDÔME Parisian bistro in the old March space. 405 East 58th Street. Late October. Definitely: We have a weakness for these French places.

THE BRESLIN BAR AND DINING ROOM Ken Friedman and April Bloomfield hope to do better with meat than the John Dory did with fish. Ace Hotel, 20 West 29th Street, (212) 679-2222. Mid-October. Definitely: We’re happy to dine anywhere April is cooking. Assuming we can get in.

CANASTELS Recreation of a 1980s “hot spot”. 41 East 58th Street. April. Probably not: Sounds very skippable.

CASA LEVER Lever House is reincarnated as an Italian seafood joint. 390 Park Avenue (53rd Street), (212) 888-2700. Late September. Probably: We’re curious, but worried this genre is getting hackneyed.

EAST SIDE SOCIAL CLUB Italian Family-style from the owners of Employees Only and Macao Trading Company. 230 East 51st Street, (212) 355-9442. Late October. Neutral: We’re fans of these guys, but is this their best idea?

ED’S CHOWDER HOUSE Ed Brown’s seafood shack replaces the shuttered Center Cut at Lincoln Center. 44 West 63rd Street, (212) 956-1288. Sept. 17. Definitely: ’Cuz we’re at Lincoln Center a lot, and we have to eat somewhere.

THE EMPIRE ROOM Cocktail bar in a former Art Deco bank branch in the Empire State Building. 350 Fifth Avenue (33rd Street). November. Neutral: We’ll wait to see what the cocktail specialists say.

GANSEVOORT 69 A new diner and comfort-food spot in the old Florent space. 69 Gansevoort Street (Greenwich Street), (212) 691-0069. Sept. 14. Probably not: We don’t buy into the Florent nostalgia.

GINA LA FORNARINA An Upper West Side trattoria. 279 Amsterdam Avenue (73rd Street). November. Probably not: It would have to be awfully good to lure us here.

HAPPY FACE Japanese noodle joint from the AvroKO people. 1695 Broadway (53rd Street). October. Probably: If it’s AvroKO, it’ll at least be pretty to look at.

HIGHLANDS Scottish food and single malt scotch in the old P*ONG space. 150-152 West 10th Street, (212) 229-2670. Mid-October. Neutral: We’re fond of Scotland, but this could be a tough sell in Manhattan.

LE CAPRICE NEW YORK Pricey French comfort food in the Pierre Hotel. 795 Fifth Avenue (61st Street). Early October. Definitely: Because Mr. Cutlets told us not to.

LOS FELIZ Tacqueria in the old Suba space. 109 Ludlow Street (Rivington Street), (212) 228-8383. Sept. 8. Neutral: We’ll wait for the reviews.

MAIALINO Danny Meyer does Italian in the failed Wakiya space. 2 Lexington Avenue (21st Street). November. Definitely: Because it’s a Danny Meyer place.

MARK RESTAURANT BY JEAN-GEORGES AND MARK BAR BY JEAN-GEORGES Jean-Georges Vongerichten will be doing something—he’s just not sure what. The Mark, 25 East 77th Street. Late November. Definitely: Any JGV restaurant is at least worth a taste.

MERMAID OYSTER BAR Danny Abrams cloning the Mermaid Inn, in the space that was Smith’s. 79 Macdougal Street (Bleecker Street), (212) 260-0100. Late September. Neutral: We’ll wait for the reviews of this, yet another seafood place.

MOMOFUKU ??? RESTAURANT David Chang and Tien Ho, in an as-yet unnamed restaurant in the former Town space. Chambers Hotel, 15 West 56th Street, (212) 974-5656. Late fall. Definitely: Do I need to explain it?

OBAO NOODLES & GRILL Yet another Michael Huynh restaurant. 222 East 53rd Street. October. Probably not: Wake me up when it’s over.

NUELA Latino restaurant in the former Sapa space; was to have been helmed by Douglas Rodriguez, but now will be cheffed by a disciple of his. 43 West 24th Street. October. Probably: What can I say? We’re intrigued.

PULINO’S BAR AND PIZZERIA Nate Appleman’s cooking; Keith McNally holds the rolodex. 282 Bowery (Houston Street). Mid-December. Probably: It will likely be good, but can we get in?

QUATTRO GASTRONOMIA ITALIANA A Miami transplant in the Trump SoHo. 246 Spring Street (Varick Street), (212) 299-1062. Late December. Probably not: Sounds like a generic trattoria for models with breast implants.

RABBIT IN THE MOON Gastropub that chose the second-best name, because “Spotted Pig” was already taken. 47 West Eighth Street (Fifth Avenue). November. Neutral: Could be fun, could be derivative.

ROBATAYA NY Robata from the Sakagura and Soba-ya people. 231 East Ninth Street (Second Avenue), (212) 979-9674. November. Probably: Sounds like a fun place to take my 14-year-old.

SD26 Tony and Marisa May re-booting their San Domenico concept downtown. 19 East 26th Street, (212) 265-5959. Sept. 15. Definitely: We hope Chef Odette Fada’s sojourn in Italy has rejuvenated her cooking.

TIPSY PARSON Comfort food from the Little Giant people. 156 Ninth Avenue (20th Street), (212) 620-4545. Late September. Probably: We liked Little Giant and are happy to give these folks our business.

TRAVERTINE Elegant Mediterranean cooking from a Babbo vet. 19 Kenmare Street (Bowery), (212) 966-1810. Late September. Neutral: We’re not familiar with this one, so we’ll wait and see.

BOBBY WERHANE/JOSHUA MORGAN RESTAURANT As-yet unnamed seafood shack in the former Bar Q space. 308-310 Bleecker Street (Grove Street). November. Neutral: There are an awful lot of seafood shacks coming this year.

The West Branch

Note: West Branch closed in July 2010.

Tom Valenti has made a living at giving Upper West Siders haute comfort food. Ouest was an instant hit when it opened in 2001, in what was then a culinary desert at Broadway and 83rd. Two years later, he had another hit at ’Cesca (with which he has since severed his ties). Both got two stars from the Times.

The West Branch arrived last fall, after a long gestation. The name comes from a tributary of the Delaware River, where Valenti likes to fish. Also, the restaurant is a branch of Ouest, offering similar, but simpler cuisine at a much lower price point. Here, the average entrée price is around $20, as opposed to about $30 at Ouest.

In the large space, which was formerly three separate storefronts, he has 170 seats to fill. He has divided it up smartly into several adjoining rooms, so that you don’t feel like you’re in a dining barn. The classic bistro décor is easy on the eyes. We suspect it gets noisy when full, but on Labor Day that wasn’t an issue.

Valenti might want to consider updating the website. It still consists of nothing more than a splash page that says, “Opening Summer 2008.”

The menu plays it straight, consisting almost entirely of well known classics.  With gizzards, livers and hearts on offer, you couldn’t accuse Valenti of pandering. Still, it’s not an especially creative menu—not that it needs to be. Sometimes, comfort food well done is exactly what one wants.

We can offer only a preliminary verdict on the food, as our weekend of over-eating left us with room only for entrées.

Duck Confit “choucroute” ($19; above left) was executed flawlessly, including pork sausage, thick-cut bacon, and a bed of sauerkraut. House-made pappardelle bolognese ($19; above right) was a basic dish, but just as satisfying.

The West Branch impressed in other ways, too. We loved the warm, house-made bread with soft butter. We ordered a nice French country wine for around $35, and the server circled back frequently to refill our glasses.

It may not be an “ambitious” restaurant, but on this occasion The West Branch delivered on its ambitions perfectly.

The West Branch (2178 Broadway at 77th Street, Upper West Side)

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

Born Round by Frank Bruni

I’m a slow reader. Frank Bruni’s memoir, Born Round, is two-week-old news. I finished it yesterday.

Let me first say what this book isn’t: a kiss-and-tell recap of Bruni’s five years as New York Times restaurant critic. There are twenty chapters, and he isn’t even offered the job until the sixteenth. There are anecdotes about the reviewing gig, most of which have been excerpted on various websites. But even if you don’t already know them, they’re not the reason for reading Born Round.

No, the book’s unifying theme is Bruni’s battle with a minor compulsive eating disorder. I have to call it minor, because he’s not Karen Carpenter, and he hasn’t had a rubber band surgically wrapped around his stomach. But he has struggled with self-loathing for much of his adult life. He would turn down dates if he was seven pounds too heavy. At his nadir in the early 2000s, he was upwards of 85 pounds overweight.

I can relate to some of this. At about the time Bruni hit rock-bottom, I was around 30 pounds overweight. Bruni solved it with relentless exercise. His willingness to endure six-mile runs and sadistic trainers is probably what saved him. For me, the only answer was deprivation. Today is a Wednesday. I haven’t had a full meal since Sunday, and probably won’t again until Friday. The only things I eat in the meantime are small snacks, and only a few of them. Despite that, I’m still the ever-elusive seven pounds away.

Before he hit bottom, Bruni tried just about everything: vomiting, speed, Prozac, starvation, Atkins, and many other dieting fads. Each step forward was countered with two steps back. He ate voraciously and indiscriminately. A maternalistic Times colleague wondered if he could become a restaurant critic without endangering his health.

Ironically, the reviewing job gave him the structure he needed. When eating 7–10 big meals per week is part of your job, you can’t rationalize it away. There’s no saying, “I’ll just go on a diet tomorrow.” There can be no diet. Knowing that there was no escape provided the motivation Bruni needed to stay in shape. The money he saved by not having to pay for his own meals went to trainers and health clubs. After five years of eating for a living, he is in the best physical shape of his life.

None of this would be compelling reading if Bruni wasn’t such an entertaining writer. He’s at his best when he’s writing about himself. Family members couldn’t possibly be as perfect as he makes them out to be. But when he turns inward, he writes with self-deprecating humor that makes even the most humdrum material stand out:

There were other problems with Prozac as well. While it diminished my sex drive only modestly, it pushed back its satiation much more substantially, so that I found myself going round and round the block without any sure sign that I’d ever get to pull into the garage. As often as not I just gave up and left my car idling at the foot of the driveway.

That has to be one of the better paragraphs about masturbation ever penned.

In case you haven’t heard, Bruni is gay. He writes volubly about his sex life, stopping only at the bedroom door: the film of Born Round will get a PG–13 rating with nothing left out. Growing up gay doesn’t seem to have caused him much trouble. Though his beloved Italian grandmother never knew, the rest of his family found out promptly before he was twenty, and he doesn’t seem to have suffered for it.

As a journalist, Bruni has led a charmed life, attracting one plum assignment after another. Writing well on a deadline comes easily to him. He’s also a dabbler. The five years he spent as restaurant critic appear to be the longest he has ever spent at anything. He is able to write about any subject on the shortest notice, which has spared him the necessity of developing real expertise. If he has a lifelong intellectual passion for any particular field, the book shows no evidence of it.

There is, of course, passion for family—gregarious, prosperous, well-fed, and relatively untroubled. There are two poignant deaths; aside from that, time with family is what makes him happiest. The lack of drama makes some of these episodes a tad less interesting than the rest of the book. After a while, many of the holiday dinners start to sound the same.

By now, it’s old news that Bruni did not have the conventional background for a restaurant critic. The book makes clear just how little experience he had. Until he was appointed Rome bureau chief for the Times—just two years before he got the restaurant gig—practically his only dining memories outside of the home were lowbrow: junk food, fast food, diners, chains and bodegas. Cold noodles with sesame paste was as close as he came to a gourmet experience, aside from an annual meal with Dad at the Four Seasons, and a steakhouse here and there.

After he got the restaurant job, the Times sent him on an immersion course in fine dining. Pierre Gagnaire in Paris—sampled on a whirlwind tour—seems to have been the only Michelin three-star restaurant he had ever tried in his life. The food was secondary on that occasion. The only memory he shares is that of dining in the same clothes he wore on the plane, because Air France had lost his luggage.

He has since been to a couple of other three-star places—none in France—which explains his bias as a critic. He waxes rhapsodic about ricotta cheese in Italy and Tyson’s chicken in Detroit, but the French restaurants are a blur. Indeed, given his lack of preparation for the job, it is miraculous that his tenure as a critic didn’t turn out a lot worse.

Ultimately, the book is about Bruni’s triumph over binge eating. The last chapter attempts to distill the lessons he’s learned. I don’t know how many readers will find themselves similarly situated. That’s not my case, as I’ve solved the problem my own way.

I found the book entertaining nevertheless. Bruni’s in his early 40s, but he’s had a lifetime’s worth of experiences. He makes them well worth reading about.

Aureole

Note: This is a review under chef Chris Lee, who left the restaurant in December 2010. Chrisophe Belanca, the former chef of Le Cirque, replaced him for five months, then departed in April 2011. The current head man is Marcus Ware, a sous chef who had been with Aureole for four years, dating back to its Upper East Side townhouse days.

*

If you want to time the stock market, don’t ask Charlie Palmer. In 1988, he opened Aureole on the Upper East Side just in time for a recession. This summer, he moved the restaurant to Bryant Park—again, right in the middle of a recession.

Palmer seems to be recession-proof. He has at least sixteen restaurants to his name—opening, it seems, about one per year, in a career long enough to have weathered the economy’s ups and downs. He hasn’t actually run the kitchen at Aureole since 2001. The list of chefs who’ve worked for him is like a Who’s Who of the restaurant industry.

His relationship with the critics has been up and down. At River Café, he got two stars from Marian Burros in 1984, then three from Bryan Miller in 1986. At Aureole, Miller gave him two stars in 1989 and upgraded him to three in 1991.

The tony Upper East Side townhouse on East 61st Street, for which Palmer paid $3 million in 1987, got a facelift in 1999, prompting a re-visit by William Grimes, who promptly knocked the restaurant back down to two stars. My only visit was perhaps a year or two later. What sticks in my mind is not the utterly forgettable food, but an irritating electronic wine list that resembled an Amazon Kindle (before such things existed). I’m a gadget guy, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Last year, Palmer decided to move to the Bank of America building at Bryant Park. He hopes that his loyal Upper East Side regulars will folow him there, while he picks up business clients and theatergoers who wouldn’t venture to the old location. He’s on an ugly block, but the space has an $8 million makeover by Adam Tihany, bearing an uncanny resemblance to the last half-dozen projects Tihany has done.

If Tihany’s work is unoriginal, at least it’s effective. The new Aureole, like so many luxury restaurants these days, is a bifurcated space, with a spacious, bustling bar room and a quiet dining room. As there’s nothing to see on 42nd Street, Tihany gave dining room patrons a view of the bar room, dominated by a towering wine wall that puts most others to shame. Soft fabric wallpaper absorbs sound, even when the room is nearly full, as it was last Saturday evening

I have my doubts about the bar room, where most of the dinner entrées are above $30, and a burger is $19. At those prices, Aureole won’t be my first choice for a bar dinner.

The dining room offers an $84 prix fixe and a rather odd $115 parallel tasting menu (eight courses served in pairs). The prix fixe is comparable to other restaurants in Aureole’s league, assuming the food lives up to it.

Chef Christopher Lee, who won two Michelin stars at Gilt, has been running the kitchen since earlier this year. The menu is a mixture of his own ideas and Palmer’s own classics. If he can ace every meal the way he aced ours, he should win back the third star that William Grimes took away.

The amuse-bouche was a plate-cleansing raw scallop (above left).

The “Scallop Sandwich” (above left) has been on Aureole’s menu from the beginning. Bryan Miller found “a brittle lid of sauteed potatoes…atop the meltingly tender scallops glossed with a citric-edged shellfish stock,” but Grimes it “a very oily eating experience.” As of today, the dish is a winner again, with a delicate nugget of seared foie gras as a bonus.

Another Foie Gras appetizer (above right) is an appealing marriage of unlikely ingredients: blueberries, corn bread, pickled jalapenos, and macadamia nuts.

Crispy Black Sea Bass (above left) was flawless, and an extremely generous portion too.

Another dish, styled “Canadian Lobster Tail vs. Berkshire Pork Belly” (above right) was an example of the side-by-side entrées that the new Aureole seems to favor. Oddly enough, it carried no supplement—the only entrée that did was King Salmon ($10). Anyhow, we thought the lobster won this duel by a narrow margin.

I don’t recall what was in the pre-dessert (shown left), but the desserts themselves were terrific. I adored a sweet corn soufflé (below left), a preparation I do not recall seeing on any other menu. (No doubt someone will write in that Ducasse did it 20 years ago, but in any case it was new to me.)

Cheeses (below right), sourced from Austria and Germany, were wonderful too.

A selection of petits-fours followed, of which we chose three from a larger selection, along with warm brown sugar beignets.

The large wine list (in a printed book this time) took a while to digest, but it was well worth it. Focused on France, with cameos from other nations, there are choices ranging from $40 to four figures. A $66 Volnay, near but not at the bottom of the list, was terrific.

I assume that Palmer brought his service team over from 61st Street. Their work was polished, their choreography a pleasure to watch. We started dinner with a cocktail, and we appreciated that we were not rushed into ordering. They wisely understood that we wanted time to relax.

Many upscale restaurants are re-tooling these days, including Bouley, Café Boulud, Chanterelle, and Oceana. It’s a little too facile to say that they’re all going downscale. Bouley actually got fancier, and while Aureole has added a more casual bar room, the dining room is very much in the spirit of the former location. Except it’s better.

Aureole (One Bryant Park [42nd Street W. of Sixth Avenue], West Midtown)

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

Who Will Take Over Café des Artistes?

As everyone knows by now, the charming but over-the-hill Café des Artistes has closed.

Both the space and the name are owned by the Hotel des Artistes, the apartment building in which the restaurant resides. I am quite sure that someone will re-open it. The question is, who?

How about Drew Nieporent? He told Bloomberg:

“I wooed my wife there over many a dinner and brunch,” Nieporent said in a phone interview from Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. “I loved the Mitteleuropean sensibility George brought, that flair, that imagination, those pates. He has been a mentor to me and a very good friend…”

“It’s a great space,” said Nieporent, “and I’m always interested in great spaces.”