La Vineria

Note: La Vineria has moved to 737 Ninth Avenue at 50th Street, the former home of La Locanda dei Vini, another Italian restaurant by the same owners. The new chef is Massimiliano “Max” Bartoli, formerly of the Miss Williamsburg Diner.

*

La Vineria is an unassuming trattoria that one could easily overlook, on a stretch of West 55th Street dominated by much larger places—indeed, despite knowing the address, I walked right by it the first time. Once inside, you quickly forget you’re in Midtown. The space is cozy, with the décor dominated by an exposed kitchen and a high shelf lined with old wine bottles that encircles the room.

The menu features pizzas ($14–17), antipasti ($9.50–14), pastas ($15–25) and main courses ($15–34). Many of the pastas have a heavy meat or fish component, accounting for some of the higher-priced dishes. These included the Pappardelle with duck ragout and seasoned mushrooms ($18), which I thought would have benefited from a heftier helping of duck than was offered. My friend was delighted with the mixed seafood stew ($24.50).

The wine program at La Vineria is something to celebrate. On a list with a couple of hundred selections, there are 23 reds under $45, including ten choices $30 or under. We were delighted with a 2003 Valpolicella at $30, which had a bouquet so fragrant that I couldn’t help holding the glass up to my nose every time I took a sip.

Our party of 25 guests took up about two-thirds of the restaurant. Naturally, in such a small space the kitchen and service staff struggle at times to keep up, as they are not normally geared up to serve so many meals at once. Under the circumstance, they did an admirable job.

For a moderately-priced dining option, in a neighborhood where most good restaurants cost a lot more, La Vineria is worth a look.

La Vineria (19 West 55th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, West Midtown)

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

Le Boeuf à la Mode

Note: Le Boeuf à la Mode closed in June 2008. As of 2011, the space is an American bistro, East End Kitchen.

*

Le Boeuf à la Mode is one of the last remaining classic French bistros, in a city that was once full of “Le” and “La” restaurants. It’s run by the same French family that founded it in 1962, and one suspects the menu hasn’t changed much in all that time. Thanks to a renovation in the 1990s, it doesn’t have the same time-warp feeling as Le Veau d’Or, and it is also a bit larger.

However, one is still acutely aware of a bygone era. My friend and I are in our 40s, and we were surely the youngest people there. The restaurant, which seats 90, was less than half full. In the most recent New York Times review—perhaps the only one—John Canaday awarded two stars in 1975.

We ordered the four course prix fixe at $38.50. A duck mousse terrine was uncomplicated, but offered all the simple pleasure such a dish should. I am fairly certain the soup was the same cream of leek that John Canaday raved about, though to my taste it was merely average. Chicken breast stuffed with spinach and goat cheese (a recited special) was excellent. I seldom order chicken in a restaurant, but the promise of goat cheese was enough to tempt me, and I wasn’t disappointed. For dessert, a blueberry tart was rather forgettable.

Le Boeuf à la Mode’s perch on 81st Street is too far out-of-the-way for me to consider becoming a regular. Besides, I liked Le Veau d’Or’s ancient charm slightly better, and it is closer. But if you are hungry for the old-fashioned French classics, Le Boeuf is certainly worth a look.

Le Boeuf à la Mode (539 East 81st Street between First and York Avenues, Upper East Side)

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

Varietal

Varietal has been open less than a month. Food blogger Augieland is already smitten, as are many of the eGullet community. The concept draws on several ideas at once, and it remains to be seen if they will gel. It is a wine bar, with some 70 selections by the glass. There are savory courses too, which have drawn mixed reviews so far.

But what has everyone raving are the inventive desserts of Jordan Kahn, who has stints at The French Laundry, Per Se, and Alinea on his resume. We dropped by at around 10:00 p.m. on a Saturday night after our dinner at Applewood, and were seated after about a ten-minute wait. The dining room was nearly full at that hour, although it had cleared out considerably by the time we left.

You’ll either love or hate the décor. The chandelier (pictured above), made from inverted wine glasses, is a work of genius. But the austerity of the stark white walls is relieved only by several undistinguished blow-up photos of grapes. The all-white theme is even more apparent in the front bar area, where there is another very clever sculpture made with wine glass stems.

We asked to share the four-course dessert tasting ($35). The server blundered, and we actually got two full orders of the dessert tasting. I did not realize this when the first course arrived—assuming that the kitchen had been considerate enough to divide the portions. But it was clear, both to us and our server, by the time the second course arrived, that we’d received twice the amount we wanted. To the restaurant’s credit, they continued with double orders of the third and fourth courses, but did not charge us for them.

The four-course dessert tasting is far more than most people will want. For the typical appetite, one portion to share is ample for a couple who have already had a full dinner. Indeed, any one of the courses would be nearly enough to be a dessert on its own. The desserts are of course enjoyable in their own right, but the artfulness of the platings almost makes you regret digging in. You just want to gaze at them, as you would paintings in a museum.

Most of the desserts have about half-a-dozen ingredients. I certainly can’t remember them all, though fortunately I think I’ve found descriptions on various Internet sites.

1) Sweet potato ice cream, yogurt, yuzu, picholine olive. The actual color was closer to orange than the photo shows. The olive was dried and shredded—you can see the crumbs at the back of the photo. An excellent starter.

2) Wolfberry puree, rigid lime sabayon, broken macaroons, tonka bean cream, soybean, ketjap manis. This was the most gorgeous of the four desserts, and probably the most successful.

3) This is the only dessert for which I cannot find a description, but we enjoyed it nearly as much as the wolfberry, above.

4) Chocolate Gel, Pear Sorbet, Mushroom Caramel, Brown Butter.We thought this one was a little too similar to the third dish. We particularly admired the cylinder of pear in the middle of the dish, which was the consistency of an egg yolk and “ran” with pear juice when punctured. But after that, we left the rest of the dish unfinished.

Although our server was no doubt chastised for sending a double order into the kitchen, she proved to be quite knowledgeable about the food, describing the complex dishes without a hitch. She recommended a lovely dessert wine to go with our tasting, which at $17 was neither the most nor the least expensive they had. The courses came out fairly slowly—no surprise there, given the complexity of the platings—but we were in no hurry.

A judgment on the savory menu must await a future visit, but for its desserts alone Varietal is a welcome addition to the restaurant landscape.

Varietal (138 West 25th Street between 6th & 7th Avenues, Chelsea)

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

Applewood

Note: Applewood closed in March 2016.

Hardly a month goes by that I’m not writing about yet another restaurant that specializes in seasonal ingredients, locally sourced from artisanal farms—what New York’s Adam Platt calls an “haute barnyard.” As Platt puts it, these restaurants are “country-themed, supplier-obsessed, [and] increasingly expensive.”

Few restaurants wear their organic souls on their sleeves as proudly as Applewood, which has been wowing diners in Park Slope since September 2004: “We use only hormone- and antibiotic-free meats and poultry. Our fishes are always wild and never farmed… Our produce is procured from biodynamic, organic and/or local farms.”

Applewood is on the ground floor of a Victorian townhouse, on one of the side streets just steps away from Seventh Avenue, one of the main drags in Park Slope. It seats about 45, in a cosy room that looks like it could be transplanted from the countryside, although the noise level quickly reminds you you’re the city. All the tables were occupied, although I had no trouble getting a 7:15 p.m. Saturday evening reservation just a few days in advance.

You quickly find out what Frank Bruni meant, when he wrote, “Sometimes the food at this restaurant reads better than it eats.” Out of four plates ordered between us, only my friend’s appetizer, Crispy Vermont Pork Belly ($11) really lived up to its promise. It was accompanied by caramelized apples and roasted hazelnuts, and a pepper jelly puréee provided an unexpected spicy kick.

I started with the Warm Vermont Ham Confit ($10, pictured below), served with pickled red onions and a parsley-jalapeño sauce. In this case, the expected flavor punch from the jalapeño sauce never materialized. Fresh (not smoked) ham can be a dull meat, and the accompaniments didn’t rescue it here.

For the main course, both of us had the Grilled Vermont Veal ($24, pictured below)—“free range,” we’re assured, which means the beasts have a bit of leisure before they’re slaughtered. It was served with caramelized brussels sprouts and turnips. An applewood smoked bacon sauce promised excitement, but it was pedestrian. The veal had a welcome crisp outer crust, and I enjoyed my portion, but my friend said hers wasn’t tender enough.

Even the wine list played along with the barnyard theme, with organically-grown wines specially pointed out. I found the list a tad over-priced, but we found a satisfactory (non-organic) shiraz at $45 to our liking. Two wonderful homemade breads came with a choice of three luscious spreads, but alas no butter knife.

Applewood tries earnestly to please, and I’m sure it’s possible to have a wonderful meal here. But we found ours merely adequate. With so many similar restaurants to choose from, we won’t be in a rush to go back.

Applewood (501 11th Street between 7th & 8th Avenues, Park Slope, Brooklyn)

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

Blaue Gans

This time last year, it looked like super-chef Kurt Gutenbrunner was veering dangerously close to over-exposure. Within three months, his two-restaurant empire (Wallsé, Cafe Sabarsky) doubled, opening THOR on the Lower East Side in September 2005 and Blaue Gans in TriBeCa in December.

Perhaps Gutenbrunner realized that he’d stretched himself too far. He pulled out of THOR—the restaurant least like the others—leaving himself with three unique but strongly related restaurants. At all of them, the focus is on Austrian food, a niche that Gutenbrunner has nearly to himself.

Blaue Gans (pronounced BLAU-uh gahnz), which means “Blue Goose,” is the most casual of Gutenbrunner’s trio of restaurants. It occupies a space that was once the restaurant Le Zinc, and Gutenbrunner made only minimal changes on taking it over. The walls are covered with vintage posters, most of which are unrelated to the Austrian theme. There are no table cloths, butter knives, or even bread plates to go with the excellent bread service. Servers, many of whom seem to be Austrian imports, tend to get stretched when the restaurant fills up—as it does, at least on a Friday night.

The surroundings at Blaue Gans may scream “casual,” but Gutenbrunner still takes his Austrian cuisine seriously. The chef himself was in the house on Friday night, which suggests he didn’t open Blaue Gans merely to make a quick buck. I suspect the restaurant may be his laboratory, with the more successful dishes graduating to his West Village flagship, Wallsé. (A short list of handwritten specials accompanied the main menu.) As far as I can tell, the Wiener Schnitzel you get at Blaue Gans is the same Wiener Schnitzel you get at Wallsé, except it costs $8 less.

Appetizers at Blaue Gans are $8–12, but there’s a separate menu category for sausages, which are $7–8. My friend and I tried the pork and beef sausage and the smoked pork sausage (both $8), served with sauerkraut and horseradish mustard. We thought the smoked pork sausage was a tad more interesting, but I would happily try either one again.

For the main course, my friend ordered the pork belly ($21), which must have been one of the largest helpings I have ever seen. I ordered the pork schnitzel ($22), which was wonderful—as Frank Bruni described it, “The meat had been dusted with flour and cooked with veal stock, cream, button mushrooms and bacon.”

Like everything else at Blaue Gans, the wine list has many reasonably-priced entries. We settled on a bottle of gewürztraminer at $36 that was more than satisfactory for our hearty, casual meal. The bill came to $103 with tax, before tip.

One positive development is that, as of January, Blaue Gans now takes reservations, a convenience much more helpful to those of us who want to make definite plans. And I am reasonably certain my future plans will include Blaue Gans again. As my friend put it, “I could eat like this every day.” Well, maybe not: the food here isn’t exactly lo-cal. But when you’re in the mood for a calorie splurge, it doesn’t get much more decadent than this.

Blaue Gans (139 Duane Street between West Broadway and Church Street, TriBeCa)

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

WD-50

I haven’t had the best luck with restaurant visits on holidays, such as New Year’s Eve. Restaurants tend to simplify and reduce the scope of their menus, while charging more—in some cases a ton more—than they normally would. Our dinner last year at Picholine was a particularly egregious example of this: $800 for two, for a menu that wasn’t worth half that.

Perhaps the common-sense solution this year would have been to stay home, and save the blow-out meal for another evening. But I reasoned there must be a New Year’s Eve dinner in New York that isn’t a rip-off, and I was determined to find it. At WD-50, we hit pay dirt. It was my first holiday meal at a fine dining restaurant that was worth every penny. I reasoned that the eccentric avant-garde chef Wylie Dufresne wouldn’t suddenly start serving airline food just because he has a captive holiday audience. Dufresne did not disappoint.

At WD-50, the nine-course tasting menu normally sells for $105 [since increased to $125]. I don’t mind a reasonable premium, and the cost on New Year’s Eve was $145. That included a champagne toast, and a free disposable camera and party favors on every table, so the price was fairly close to what you’d pay anyway. The optional wine pairings were $85, again a reasonable cost for 9 half-glasses apiece.

This was the menu, with wine pairings shown in italics:

Crispy carmelized cauliflower, bone marrow, wild American caviar
Cava, Avinyo Brut, NV (Penedes, Spain)

Oyster, salsify, fried lentils, kimchee puree
Cava, Avinyo Brut, NV (Penedes, Spain)

Foie gras in the round
Viognier “Sanford and Benedict” Cold Heaven 2005 (Santa Barbara, CA)

Smoked eel, blood orange “zest,” black radish, chicken skin
Pouilly-Fuisse “La Croix” VV Robert-Denogent 2004 (Burgundy, France)

Melted cheddar, black truffle, crispy potato, powdered toast
Pink Wine Pax 2005 (Sonoma, CA)

Mediterranean bass, edamame-rye bread, chive mashed
Valpolicella Classico Superiore TB Bussola 2003 (Veneto, Italy)

Lamb loin, cucumber, pickled tongue, spicy pear, sorrel
Shiraz “Lloyd Reserve” Coriale Vinyards 2001 (McLaren Vale, South Australia)

Banana puree, hazelnut, coffee, parsnip
Commanderia St. John NV (Lemesos, Cyprus)

“Creamsicle,” rooibos, squash, orange blossom
Commanderia St. John NV (Lemesos, Cyprus)

Mango jelly-mastic; Milk chocolate-menthol

Champagne toast
Guy Charlemagne Rose Brut NV (Champagne, France)

Many of the dishes are really indescribable. Dufresne and pastry chef Alex Stupak create combinations of ingredients that you’d never imagine together. How, for instance, does one think of smoked eel, blood orange, black radish, and chicken skin? Just to ask the question is to realize how bizarre it is. And how successful. My friend, who said she normally hates eel, loved this dish.

“Foie gras in the round” was another really odd concoction. Somehow, Dufresne managed to produce little pellets of foie gras, each about half the size of a small pea. Incredulous, we asked the server how it was done. He replied that it’s a trade secret, but it involves liquefying foie gras and combining it with another liquid, an explanation that only adds to the mystery.

Each dish is rather small, and sometimes an ingredient is just a dash of crumbs, such as the powdered toast that came with the melted cheddar, or the light dusting of ground coffee that came with the banana puree. Dufresne’s gimmickry does not stand in the way of good solid cooking. The Mediterranean bass was impeccably prepared, as was the lamb loin.

With so many wacky experiments on the menu, not all could be hits. The gooey oyster (our second course) was dull and not very appetizing. But that was really the only course that I could have done without.

The restaurant was full, and service was a bit variable. Several times we were served food before the associated wine pairing arrived. When I asked our server to slow down the parade of courses, he replied, “Sorry, I don’t control the kitchen.” Our reservation was at 9:00, and we didn’t leave till past midnight, so I wouldn’t say we were pushed out the door. Still, it wasn’t an acceptable answer at a restaurant of WD-50’s calibre.

WD-50 is one of the more casual fine-dining restaurants in town, although on the Lower East Side it’s hard to imagine anything more formal. There were guests in sport coats and fancy dresses, and there were guests in t-shirts and jeans. Most were on the young side, although one table was taken by two older ladies.

In 2003, William Grimes of the Times awarded two stars to WD-50, noting Dufresne’s undeniable talent, but also that “diners are more likely to respond with respect than love.” Three years into the experiment, Dufresne is as sure of his palate as an adoring public is sure of him. This was my second visit to WD-50, so I’m fairly confident that this New Year’s Eve performance was no fluke. WD-50 isn’t for everyone, but for those open-minded souls willing to to think broadly, it’s as good a restaurant as there is.

[Update: In March 2007, Frank Bruni of The Times upgraded WD-50 to three stars.]

WD-50 (50 Clinton Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets, Lower East Side)

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

Cafe Mozart

Note: Cafe Mozart closed in July 2008.

*

Cafe Mozart is a respectable casual dining option before a concert at Lincoln Center, in a neighborhood where many of the restaurants are over-priced. I was there last night with two friends.

I loved a Duo of Goat Cheese Tarts ($9). One of the tarts was made with herb-roasted Roma tomatoes and Niçoise olives; the other with mushrooms and onion marmelade. Plenty of restaurants would charge over $10  for that appetizer. An accompaniment of salad greens was entirely superfluous.

Pignoli and dijon crusted salmon ($22) was a far less happy affair. The fish was too dry, and it was not rescued by an overpowering tomato sauce or dull risotto. One of my companions ordered, I believe, a chicken caesar salad in which the chicken was barely more than a rumor, but my other friend was pleased with her choices.

My friend tried to make a reservation, but she called repeatedly for several days, and the restaurant never answered. The host was surprised to learn this was the case. Luckily they weren’t busy last night, but I hear the place fills up on weekends. Service at Cafe Mozart isn’t fancy, with the crew who deliver the plates not knowing who ordered what. We had two different versions of the menu between us, each with different spelling errors. However, wines by the glass are under $10, and that at least is something.

Both the website and business cards promise “World’s Finest Desserts.” We were too full to test that claim, but we noted that there are more desserts than appetizers and entrees put together, so it’s clear where the restaurant’s priorities lie. The decor is unpretentious, but adequate for a casual restaurant.

Cafe Mozart (154 West 70th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, Upper West Side)

Food: Satisfactory
Service: Acceptable, but sometimes careless
Ambiance: Casual
Overall: Satisfactory

P. J. Clarke's on the Hudson

I tried P. J Clarke’s on the Hudson with my 11-year-old son about a week ago. It is basically a slightly more upscale version of Houlihan’s. Spectacular views of New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty are about all that distinguishes it from a mass of similar restaurants around town.

Frank Bruni wasted a reviewing slot here, awarding zero stars:

It’s better than snobs would like to think and worse than contrarians would hasten to claim, which may be another way of saying that it’s usually serviceable and sometimes respectable.

At least he provided a history of the world-famous urinals.

For the record, a Farmer’s Omelet ($10.80) for me and a Buffalo Chicken sandwich ($12.20) for my son were unobjectionable. Service was pretty much invisible until it was time for the check, and suddenly our server became unnaturally chummy.

The original P. J. Clarke’s has been on the Upper East Side for something like 12o years. Perhaps it has some residual charm that this mass-produced version lacks.

P. J. Clarke’s on the Hudson (Four World Financial Center, Battery Park City)

Food: Acceptable
Service: Mediocre
Ambiance: Just like Houlihan’s
Overall: Acceptable

Gordon Ramsay at The London

Note: Gordon Ramsay at The London closed in October 2014. Local professional reviews were uniformly terrible, but the restaurant had two Michelin stars for most of its run, losing them only in its final year. The New York media paid practically no attention after the opening period, but somehow it remained open for eight years, outlasting many other imports, including two Alain Ducasse fine-dining restaurants, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House and Adour, both of which had far more critical acclaim than Ramsay.

The visit described below was from the restaurant’s early days, with founding chef Neil Ferguson, who was quickly fired after bad reviews. We paid a later visit in 2007, where we had a “Master Class” meal prepared by Ferguson’s replacement, Josh Emett. Later on, Markus Glocker took over; he later moved to Bâtard, where he earned a Michelin star.

*

Gordon Ramsay at The London Hotel is the latest New York restaurant vying for four stars from the Times and three from Michelin. The loudmouth chef already operates what is arguably the best restaurant in London (the three-star Gordon Ramsay at Royal Hospital Road), along with a bunch of others, including The Savoy Grill, which I visited last summer.

The pathway to hell is littered with chefs that opened New York restaurants with four-star aspirations, only to fall short. We’ll have to wait till late 2007 for the Michelin Guide, but Frank Bruni in the Times and Adam Platt in New York both delivered withering two-star smackdowns to Gordon Ramsay.

Meanwhile, plenty of people are making reservations to find out for themselves. It isn’t quite the hot ticket that Per Se was (and still is), but prime times nevertheless fill up quickly. I booked my date at Ramsay exactly two full months in advance, and a 6:15 p.m. reservation was the best I could get.

Ramsay offers two seven-course tasting menus at $110 or a three-course prix fixe at $80. While no one would call it inexpensive, it a bargain compared to other top-echelon New York restaurants. Had the major reviews been favorable, I suspect these prices would have gone up promptly. Now, perhaps they’ll be stable for a while.

I was keen to order the tasting menu, which Ramsay calls the “Menu Prestige.” My friend chose the vegetarian tasting menu, and we tried a few bites of each other’s plates, so I got a pretty good idea of what Ramsay’s cuisine is about. There aren’t any “Wow!” dishes, but there are no duds either. It is very classical and correct cooking, all executed to a high standard.

The bread service came in two flights. First, there were slices of crisp bread with two spreads: cream cheese and foie gras. I could do with plenty more of that foie gras spread. There was also a choice of sourdough or multi-grain bread with unsalted butter.

This was the tasting menu:

1. Amuse bouche: White bean and mushroom soup with black truffle. Served in an capuccino cup with the soup whipped in a foam, in fact resembling capuccino.
   
   
2. Pressed foie gras and game with port sauce and pickled mushrooms. A rather unmemorable terrine.
   
   
3. Lobster ravioli with celery root cream and shellfish vinaigrette. An excellent dish, and I would have liked more of it.
   
   
4. Striped bass fillet with pak choi and caviar velouté. Probably the highlight of the meal.
   
   
5. Roast cannon of lamb with candied onions, confit tomatoes and marjoram jus. A peculiarly named dish, and for no good reason. There were several slices of rack of lamb, off the bone, and 8-hour braised lamb shoulder. My friend, who usually does not touch lamb, enthused about the braised shoulder, saying it was “the kind of lamb I could eat.”
   
   
6. Cheese cart. Not as impressive as at several other high-end restaurants (e.g. Chanterelle, Picholine), but certainly very respectable, and I thoroughly enjoyed all that I had.
   
   
7. Apriocot soufflé with Amaretto ice cream. A can’t-miss dessert.

The vegetable tasting menu had the following:

1. Amuse bouche: Vegetable soup
2. Marinated beetroot with ricotta and pine nut dressing
3. Sweet onion gratin with Parmigiano Reggiano
4. Cep risotto with shaved truffles
5. Chef’s Preparation, seasonal vegetables
6. Chocolate mousse [substitution]
7. Apricot soufflé with Amaretto ice cream

My friend’s two favorites were the amuse bouche (which, like mine, came in a small coffee cup) and the chef’s preparation of seasonal vegetables. You wouldn’t think a plate of sautéed vegetables could stand up as an entree, but Ramsay made it work, and my friend couldn’t stop singing its praises. The kitchen was also happy to accommodate my friend’s request for a substitution, as neither of the standard choices for the sixth course (grilled pineapple or the cheese cart) appealed to her.

I requested a wine pairing, and the sommelier did an excellent job for $60 each. We hadn’t discussed price, and I actually expected him to come in considerably higher than he did.

Service was friendly and generally excellent, with only minor flaws that at a less-expensive restaurant one wouldn’t even bother to notice. Our meal took a bit more than two hours, which seemed just a tad rushed. It’s difficult to pace a tasting menu, and this one needed a bit more leisure. At one point I asked a server to slow down, but it didn’t seem to make much difference.

The room is comfortable and elegant, with tables widely spaced, and heavily padded armchairs to sit in. Our table would have been large enough for a party of four at many restaurants. 

After dinner, we were offered a tour of the kitchen. It is a huge space, as the same kitchen is responsible for the main dining room, the adjoining London Bar (a casual “tapas” restaurant), and I believe the hotel’s room service operation as well. Everything is immaculate, and you can easily see why they are proud to show it off. We walked by the chef’s table that blogger Augieland raved about. I’m sure the guests there are fed like kings, but with servers and touring diners constantly walking by, it’s no place for privacy.

Ramsay did not earn the coveted four-star ranking from Frank Bruni. The Times critic has been on the job for 2½ years, and has yet to award four stars to a restaurant that opened on his watch. (For the record, Bruni was the first to rate Per Se and Masa, but they were already open before he landed the job. His other four-star write-ups have been re-reviews.) Surely he is itching to pull the trigger. But Bruni has made it clear that he has little interest in traditional formality. Bruni also has the modern critical bias (shared with many others) against restaurants that do classic things well without generating a lot of excitement.

I have only one meal to go on, but if I were reviewing for the Times, I would have awarded three stars. In its elegance and polish, Gordon Ramsay is in some respects better than many of the three-star restaurants I’ve visited, but it doesn’t have the “Wow!” factor that the best restaurants deliver.

Gordon Ramsay at The London (151 W. 54th Street between 6th & 7th Avenues, West Midtown)

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

The Harrison

Note: There have been many chef changes at the Harrison. Click here for a more recent review.

In late 2001, restauranteurs Jimmy Bradley and Danny Abrams made a gutsy move: they opened The Harrison just a month after 9/11. Obviously the concept had long predated the attacks, but many with queasier stomachs would have postponed the opening or backed out entirely.

In those days, with many of the streets still cut off from traffic, you could barely get to The Harrison. But Bradley and Abrams were confident that the restaurant’s fortunes would rise as the neighborhood bounced back. Two months later, they were proud parents of a two-star restaurant (per William Grimes in the Times).

The Harrison is a close cousin of the flagship Bradley/Abrams property, The Red Cat in Chelsea. But I was not very much enchanted with The Red Cat; it seemed to me a decent neighborhood restaurant, nothing more. The Harrison has a dash of elegance that I found lacking in The Red Cat, and the cooking seems to me more accomplished.

I dined at The Harrison last night with a colleague. Coincidentally, we both landed on the identical menu choices. We started with Pork Belly ($12), a decadently rich preparation that must be one of the highest-calorie appetizers in New York. Breast of duck ($28) was perfectly prepared, served on a bed of quark spaetzle, and accompanied by a kicker of seared foie gras curiously not mentioned on the menu. At the end, we shared a cheese plate, which was also excellent.

I recognize the reasons why immigrants often land in the restaurant industry, but it can be frustrating at a restaurant of The Harrison’s calibre when the server can’t quite communicate. Before we ordered, he blurted out, “We have grilled salmon” (he pronounced it sal-mon). He was obviously telling us a daily special, but couldn’t explain anything about its preparation. We had already settled on the duck anyway (specials should be explained before you start contemplating the menu, not after), but he wasn’t making much of a case for that poor salmon, except that it was “grilled.”

When our plate of seven cheeses arrived, the explanation was incomprehensible. We decided not to trouble him further. Aside from that, service was just fine. Our server clearly understood our orders, even if his explanations were lacking.

I like the room at The Harrison. It’s not the restaurant’s fault that there are large glass doors lining two of the dining room’s four walls, and there are also tables along those walls. Glass is a poor insulator, and on a cold winter night those tables will get chilly. We were at such a table, but luckily it hasn’t been a very cold December. As temperatures start to fall, those tables may start to feel like Siberia. In the summer, they’re probably delightful.

I don’t know if everything at The Harrison is as good as the pork belly, the duck, and the cheese plate, but it has been a long time since a restaurant in this price range hit a home run on all three courses. To drink, we had a sublime Saint-Emilion, Grand Cru, 2001 Chateau Haut-Segottes, at $68.

The Harrison is certainly worth another visit.

The Harrison (355 Greenwich Street at Harrison Street, TriBeCa)

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