Junoon

I wouldn’t call two a trend, and perhaps it’s only a coincidence that two upscale Indian restaurants have opened within the last two months: Hemant Mathur’s Tulsi; and from Salaam Bombay alumnus Vikas Khanna, Junoon, which means passion.

The space at Junoon is much larger than at Tulsi, with a comfortable bar and lounge area bigger than many whole restaurants. There is talent behind the cocktail menu, and a minor addiction to egg whites, featured in three of eight items. I especially liked the Agave Thyme (Reposado Tequila, muddled pomegranate, thyme, egg white, and white peppercorn).

The menu is on the expensive side for Indian cuisine, with entrées from $22–36 (most above $25). It is neither as clever nor as well executed as at Tulsi or Tamarind, but the elegant room and polished service offer sufficient compensation, if you want an unhurried experience where the ambiance is as important as the food itself.

The amuse bouche, as I recall, was a bite-size potato pancake. We shared the wonderful Hyderabadi Pathar Paneer ($12) appetizer, consisting of four small slices of house-made cheese in a turmeric (ginger), mint, and lime sauce.

Among the entrées, a braised lamb shank ($26) with onion, tomato, and yogurt, was the better choice. A Cornish Hen ($24), made in the tandoori oven, was over-cooked and dry. The kitchen sent out an extra entrée, a chicken curry, which was much better, but by this time it was more than we could eat, especially after we’d overdone it on the addictive Naan.

The 250-bottle wine list covers a wide range, priced from $38 to $1,800, with many in three figures but plenty below $50. For a 2006 Haut Bages Averous ($55), the sommelier rolled out a cart and put on a decanting show as if I’d ordered a 1962 Lafite Rothschild. He appeared to be doing it at every table. You may call it pretentious, but hardly anyone in town goes through the full ritual any more, and someone might as well do it. So why not here?

There were petits fours at the end—not memorable in themselves, but you don’t find them in Indian restaurants very often.

The restaurant was fairly quiet on a Sunday evening, traditionally a slow night. I have no idea how they’re doing on the other days, but they do have a large space to fill. I suspect the rent is stratospheric, and I don’t know how many of these places the market can support. The service and ambiance are memorable; the food a shade less so.

Junoon (27 W. 24th Street between Fifth & Sixth Avenues, Flatiron District)

Food: *½
Service: ***
Ambaince: ***
Overall: **

Ai Fiori

The career of chef Michael White is at an inflection point. He reached heights that few chefs even dream of, with a trio of haute Italian restaurants carrying nine New York Times stars and five Michelin stars between them.

But his partnership with the restaurateur Chris Cannon hit the skids late last year and dissolved in January, with Cannon taking the two restaurants that pre-dated his association with White (Alto and Convivio), while White and his investor Ahmass Fakahany took the others.

White now lacks the solid front-of-house organization that Cannon supplied, while he plans new restaurants at a frenetic pace. We liked Osteria Morini, the final restaurant that White opened with Cannon’s assistance, but some critics have complained of inconsistency there.

In November, just two months after Morini, came Ai Fiori (“Among the Flowers”) in the Setai Fifth Avenue hotel. It’s another in the haute Italian genre shared by all of his restaurants except the casual Morini. The food is impressive, but to maintain it as a three-star establishment may require more attention than he is now capable of.

It’s a lovely, elegant, romantic space, although some critics will complain that it’s a generic hotel dining room that could be anywhere—as they did at the other Setai restaurant in New York, SHO Shaun Hergatt. Don’t listen to them! Ai Fiori is the most beautiful new restaurant built since the Great Recession.

You can order à la carte or, the better bet, four courses for $79. This turns out to be a remarkable deal: individually, the starters range from $14–27, pastas $18–25 (not counting a $55 truffle-studded outlier), mains $32–49, and desserts $13–14. Nearly all are orderable on the prix fixe without supplements.

The cuisine purports to be that of the Italian and French riviera, but you wouldn’t guess that by looking at the menu, or for that matter the room. The connection to the riviera is so tenuous as to be practically non-existent.

The amuse bouche, a warm sunchoke soup (above left), was an excellent start. My friend loved the fluke crudo (above right) with sea urchin, lemon oil, and sturgeon caviar.

Mare e Monte (below left) is one of the more original dishes, an alternating stack of diver scallops, celery root, and black truffles, with bone marrow and thyme, served inside of a hollowed-out bone. It’s an instant classic.

Oddly for a Michael White menu, the pasta and risotto section of the menu lists just six items. Risotto (above right) with escargots, parsley, parmigiano, garlic chips, and cotecchino was good but unmemorable. My friend thought the Trofie Nero (below left), squid-ink pasta tossed with shellfish, was the better choice.

The butter-poached lobster (above right) deserves the praise heaped upon it in just about every Ai Fiori review that I’ve read. Normally $37 if ordered on its own, it’s available on the prix fixe without a supplment: remarkable.

White hired pastry chef Robert Truitt away from Corton. His work here is less impressive. Baba al Rhum (above left) tasted stale not very rummy. However, my friend loved the chocolate sformato cake (above right) with its molten core. The kitchen sent out an extra dessert (below left), the description of which I didn’t note, and the meal ended with a plate of petits fours (below right).

The wine list runs to 43 pages, and you can do some serious wallet damage, but there are also plenty of reasonable choices in the $40s and $50s. We took the sommelier’s recommendation for an $82 Gewurtztreminer and weren’t disappointed.

The bar is one of the more comfortable, civilized places for a drink in midtown, and well worth a visit in its own right. Eben Freeman (formerly of the now-departed Tailor) is responsible for the cocktails, which are expertly made, as you’d expect, but lack the whimsy that he’s capable of.

On a Friday evening, the space appeared to be around 2/3rds full. Reservations at Ai Fiori have generally been available at just about any time: it is not the immediate hit that Marea was. I suspect that’s a product of too many high-end Italian places opening in a short time span, and perhaps some Michael White fatigue. The location, at Fifth Avenue and 36th Street, is something of a dead zone, and the restaurant’s presence is not obvious from the street. (You enter the hotel and then up a spiral staircase to reach it.)

My meal here was probably the best I’ve had at any of White’s restaurants. To produce at this level consistently, White will need competent deputies who can operate it on his behalf.

Ai Fiori (400 Fifth Avenue at 36th Street, in the Setai Hotel, East Midtown)

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

Lyon

Note: Owner–partner François Lapatie left Lyon in June 2012, and the restaurant closed later that year. The space is now Cole’s Greenwich Village.

*

Can French cuisine regain the dominant position it once held in New Yorkers’ hearts and dreams? Perhaps the route is from the bottom up.

Lyon Bouchon Moderne is a step in the right direction, a casual bistro from the restaurateur François Lapatie, formerly of the Michelin-starred, and now closed, La Goulue.

Perched on a heavily trafficked West Village intersection, Lyon is beautifully decorated in the authentic fashion. But hard tabletops and mirrored walls turn the long, narrow space into an echo chamber: for much of the evening, I couldn’t hear my companion without cupping my hand over my ear.

Termed a bouchon, the Lyonnais term for a meat-centric bistro, Lyon’s menu is studded with carnivore bait, like boudin noir, bacon-wrapped loup de mer, a green salad with bacon, and so forth. Prices are modest, with appetizers $10–14, entrées mostly in the $20s (a Niman Ranch strip steak au poivre at $45 is an outlier), side dishes $6–8, desserts mostly $9–10.

The wine list fits on a single page, and as you’d expect, is dominated by reds. There are more bottles at $75 and above than I think a restaurant in Lyon’s price range can justify, but there are enough choices below $50 to satisfy the casual diners that a place like this presumably attracts.

There’s an emphasis on Beaujolais, with eight bottles in a separately captioned section of the list, but I found a 2006 Domaine Les Côtes de la Roche Saint-Amour ($49) too shallow and bitter for its age.

With the food, I can’t find any fault at all. Pieds de Porc ($22; below left) was impeccable: two plump cakes with pig trotters and foie gras, a light coating of mustard, and a stew of green lentils and sherry vinegar. This is a dish I dream about.

My companion had the Pintade ($27; above right), a breast of guinea fowl, root vegetables, and thyme. I sampled a bit of the fowl, which was plump and tender.

Among the pro critics, Sam Sifton of the Times (who awarded one star) and Steve Cuozzo of the Post (who awarded two) are in broad agreement, finding Lyon very good at its best, but also uneven. [Due to their differences in interpretation of the star system, Sifton’s one and Cuozzo’s two are essentially the same thing.] We may have fortuitously avoided the clunkers, or maybe Lyon is getting better, as Cuozzo suggests.

Because Sifton is an incompetent buffoon, he insisted that Lyon needs “An entree that every third person in the restaurant orders,” a new index to success that I’ve not encountered in any other review. I realize that a dish made from pig parts will never be the people’s choice, but the trotters fit the bill for me.

Lyon was nearly full on a Thursday evening; service was as attentive as it needed to be. The loudness of the room would make me hesitant to return with anyone whom I wanted to converse with. Dinner at the bar, some night after work, is the more prudent course.

Lyon (118 Greenwich Avenue at W. 13th Street, West Village)

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

The Burger at Fatty Johnson's

Fatty Johnson’s is a pop-up restaurant [now closed] from Zak Pelaccio of Fatty Crab / Fatty ’Cue fame. The cartoon figure in the logo might be Samuel Johnson—I am not sure. When Pelaccio explained his idea to the Times, he didn’t really clear it up.

It replaces his goat-centric restaurant Cabrito until he figures out what to do with the space, which he told the Times will offer “a slightly more grown-up menu and service style.” The bartenders at FJ are sticking with that story, saying that renovations will begin around March 1. It will still be “Fatty something.”

According to the website, the menu changes daily. Several of the dishes are what Pelaccio called “ham centric,” as if that were a surprise. The other night, he was offering a mean-looking cassoulet (I mean that as a compliment), perhaps suggestive of the more Frenchified cooking style that he has in mind for the permanent restaurant that will be coming next.

I had come for the cheeseburger, which Robert Sietsema of the Village Voice loved so much. There are options with ham and a fried egg on top, but I didn’t think a burger needed all that help.

My favorite burgers have a thicker patty than Fatty Johnson’s, but this one isn’t bad at all. It had a nice, crunchy crust and a faintly smoky flavor. The staff said that it has a 70/30 beef/fat ratio, which is more fat than most burgers. But then, this is a fatty joint, after all.

The fries, or rather, fried confit potatoes, were too greasy and not crunchy enough for my taste, although that didn’t stop me from finishing them.

The burger is a trifle expensive for what you get. It’s $14 by itself. The ham and egg, if you go that route, can punch it up to $18. Neither option includes the fries, which are an extra $7. In contrast, the Minetta Burger at Minetta Tavern—a better product at a better restaurant—is $16 and it includes the fries.

Fatty Johnson’s is a bare-bones space right now, as a pop-up is meant to be. It was close to empty at 6:00 p.m. on a Saturday evening, but the staff said that it normally fills up after 8:00. A number of well known “guest bartenders” have been featured. Nobody famous was on duty when I visited, but we had a good dialogue about cocktails, as the expression goes.

Fatty Johnson’s (50 Carmine St. between Bedford & Bleecker Sts., West Village)

What Happens When

Note: What Happens When closed in June 2011, after five months. It had intended to remain open for nine months, but could no longer continue after it lost its liquor license. With sufficient effort it probably could have been reinstated, but for a restaurant that had planned to close anyway in October it wasn’t worth the expense.

*

Just one word . . . pop-up. It seems to be the latest restaurant trendlet. Exactly where the term originated is beyond google’s capacity to answer, but you don’t find many references before 2010.

The notion of a “pop-up restaurant” is somewhat elastic. It can take many different forms. The one clear requirement is planned extinction: these places aren’t meant to last. Some exist for just a night or two.

Then, there’s John Fraser’s new pop-up, What Happens When — though he prefers the term “temporary restaurant installation” — which he insists will die after nine months, if not sooner.

Fraser is best known as chef of the Michelin-starred Dovetail on the Upper West Side, which is still doing fine. My two meals there (here, here) were slightly meh, although I liked his work at Compass.

So what is Fraser doing in a restaurant that he’ll kill after nine months? As he told Frank Bruni:

He was wondering what it might be like to have a restaurant he could fool around with and walk away from when, less than three months ago, he happened upon the SoHo space, on Cleveland Place, where Le Jardin Bistro had just closed. The landlord was willing to write an eight-month lease, beginning in December, with a likelihood of several month-by-month renewals until the building, mostly vacant, can be redeveloped.

What Happens When is not so much a pop-up, as a string of them. Once a month, the menu, the décor, and the soundtrack will be tossed out and re-done. The current version looks just as temporary as it was meant to be, but it’s nicer and more polished than many restaurants I could name that don’t have sell-by dates.

Part of the funding is coming from Kickstarter, a creative arts seed money site. This is an unusual approach, as restaurants, pop-up or otherwise, are practically always treated as profit-seeking ventures. It makes you wonder what would be possible, if the culinary arts were more often funded like the rest of the arts, with donated money?

Mind you, he’s not giving the food away. The menu is $58 prix fixe. After three cocktails ($13 each) and coffee ($5), the bill came to $102 before tax and tip. That’s a fair price for food that would have a good shot at three New York Times stars if the restaurant were permanent. Of course, if the restaurant survives for the full nine months, he’ll need to come up with eight more menus as good as this one.

Fraser has a graphic artist, an interior designer, and a composer on his team, for what he calls “an ever-changing culinary, visual, and sound experience.”

Your eyes may glaze over when you see all of the hand-doodled drawings explaining the “inspiration” for what’s called “Menu No. 1”: blue cold conflict expectation ice intensity reflection tension Winter.

There’s a faintly wintry feel to the current menu, but if there is any reflection or tension in the offerings, the connection entirely eluded me.

The menu is brief (just four appetizers and five entrées), and so are the wine and cocktail lists, also suffixed with “No. 1.” The current cocktail list offers three creations, all named for characters in Hamlet: Polonius (gin, mandarin orange juice, sweet & dry vermouth), Ophelia (photo below; vodka, dry vermouth, pickling liquid), and Laertes (rum, allspice, lime, honey). Again, how these related to the “inspiration” wasn’t quite clear, but they did pair well with the food.

The meal began with a trio of amuses bouches (above right): from right to left, a bracing pea soup, an onion dip with croutons and pickled ramps, and “ants on a log,” served with a champagne cocktail.

The bread service (above left) is wonderful here, as it always is at Fraser’s restaurants: a warm garlic–olive oil roll with a hint of cheese and black pepper.

The appetizer (above right), referred to as “potato skins” on the menu, is much more elaborate than that. Hollowed-out fingerling potato skins join forces with pickled sausage, sorrel, and a wheat beer fondue.

I was comped an excellent spiced foie gras and rabbit terrine (above left). (It’s not listed on the menu, and I didn’t see it at any other tables.)

The guinea hen entrée (above right) had many supporting players, and I can’t do justice to all of them. I especially liked the buckwheat crèpe (left side of the plate). The breast of guinea hen itself was just a shade less tender than it should have been, but the conception of the dish was first-rate.

Desserts came around on a cart, a startlingly old-school idea at an anything-but-old restaurant. The menu doesn’t credit a separate pastry chef, and the desserts (three of them, I think) didn’t quite have as much inspiration as the savory courses. I had the rice pudding, which was just fine, but you could have it anywhere.

There are some obvious compromises at What Happens When. Fraser told Frank Bruni that it cost about $100,000 to build, as opposed to over $2 million at Dovetail. The chairs supposedly came from eBay, though I’d take them any day over the backless bar stools that you have to endure at the Momofuku restaurants.

He certainly hasn’t skimped on service. I saw a small platoon of chefs behind the half-open kitchen window, and there are certainly enough servers for the 65-seat room. The tables have small silverware drawers, and you’re encouraged to lay the table yourself, but after the first course the staff replaced the silverware, as they would at any other restaurant.

Reservations are accepted through the nascent Urbanspoon online site, instead of the more established (but far more expensive) OpenTable. Availability most days is typical of a hit restaurant in New York City: 5:30 or after 10:00. If What Happens When wasn’t temporary, you’d have to ask if that could last? At a restaurant that is expected to be gone in nine months, the question doesn’t matter.

Why nine months? Fraser told Bruni that even if the building remained available, What Happens Next wouldn’t continue: beyond that, it would become another permanent restaurant, negating the whole point of a venture that you can play with, and then dispose of. But if it works, it’s hard to believe that someone else, if not Fraser himself, will try the same thing again.

The current menu will be in place until February 25.

What Happens Next (25 Cleveland Place between Kenmare & Spring Streets, Soho)

The Red Rooster

It was hard not to be skeptical of Marcus Samuelsson’s new Harlem restaurant, The Red Rooster. The talented chef who had once served stellar Swedish cuisine at Aquavit, had bombed out twice since then, first with terrible Asian fusian cuisine at Riingo, and then with phoned-in pan-African cuisine at Merkato 55.

The list of the chef’s current restaurants is depressing: a surf & turf place here, a burger joint there. It makes you wonder if there’s anything he actually believes in, culinarily speaking. The Red Rooster, featuring American cuisine, is yet another concept that doesn’t resemble anything he has previously done.

Its prolonged gestation didn’t help. Announced last February and originally slated for an October opening, it was delayed repeatedly before finally opening in mid-December. Samuelsson gave preview dinners all over town, and actually won Top Chef: Masters, with the Red Rooster cited as his flagship restaurant, even though it didn’t exist yet, and wouldn’t for another five months.

For a while, Samuelsson couldn’t miss an opportunity to look foolish, most notably when he announced that bartenders at the new restaurant would be asked to submit “audition videos,” with the “winner” selected by a public vote. I have to assume that Samuelsson dropped that hare-brained scheme, since we never heard any more about it.

In September, the Red Rooster earned four stars on Yelp, even though it was three months away from serving its first meal. Yelp staff deleted the entry, but it was back again in November, again at four stars.

Did I have enough reasons to shun the place? Absolutely. I went anyway. Guess what: The Red Rooster is pretty good.

Samuelsson’s ambition here is modest, but he nails it. The space looks like “Keith McNally Comes to Harlem,” a breezy brasserie set-up with shelves of knickknacks, an open kitchen, a bright glass-lined liquor wall, a spacious bar, and ample communal table seating for walk-ins. He serves lunch and dinner currently, brunch on weekends, with breakfast expected later on.

The menu, with a vaguely African American slant, has a bit of everything, but the only outright pandering is Steak Frites with truffle bearnaise, which strangely finds its way into the cuisine of every nation, and at $32 is the most expensive item. The couple next to me ordered that steak, and it looked great, but you can get it anywhere.

If this is American cuisine, I’m not sure there’s any region or restaurant in America that it resembles, but that’s just fine. I’m gratified to see a menu with just nine appetizers ($9–15) and eight entrées ($14–32), which tells me Samuelsson has done a lot of editing, and everything he serves is probably going to be good.

A couple of items resemble the Swedish classics Samuelsson has served before (Gravlax with Purple Mustard; Meatballs with mash and lingonberry), but most hew to the American theme, even if his interpretation of them is unique, or at least unusual.

An appetizer of Dirty Rice and Shrimp ($9; above left) was accented with aged basmati and curry leaves. Hearth Baked Mac & Greens ($14; above right) comes out of the entrée section. The macaroni, made with three cheeses (gouda, cheddar, comté) had a satisfying crunch.

Portions are ample, and I left a lot of food behind. The couple next to me ordered a bowl of warm nuts ($4) from the “snacks” section of the menu: “This dish could feed six people,” the husband said, as he offered to share it with me. A side order of corn bred ($4) came with two thick slices: warm and buttery, it hardly needed the extra butter that came with it.

Even on a Sunday evening, the restaurant was almost full, but I was seated immediately at one of the communal tables. For a while, it seemed like the server had forgotten me—the water glass remained empty until the meal was nearly over—but the food came out promptly. The space has a lively buzz, but the ambient noise isn’t overbearing.

Samuelsson himself was in the house (and introduced himself), which I hadn’t expected on a Sunday—but then, the professional reviews have yet to appear, and you never know when a critic will drop in. I think they’re going to like this place. The food is well made, coherently thought out, and certainly a big improvement over anything I know of in the area.

Although downtowners still think of Harlem as remote, the restaurant is literally half a block from the 2/3 express train stop at 125th Street: from many points in Manhattan, it’s probably closer (by train) than many popular downtown and Brooklyn places. But Samuelsson surely knows that he’ll need neighborhood support. For food this good, and at these prices, I think he’ll get it.

The Red Rooster (310 Lenox Avenue between 125th & 126th Streets, Harlem)

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

The National

Who am I to tell Geoffrey Zakarian that he should be doing More Important Work? Although he clearly has the talent, or at least used to, the chef who gave us Town and Country is now content to consult on phoned-in hotel menus.

He has opened two of these in the last few months, The Lambs Club and The National. The Lambs Club purports to be a much fancier place, and therefore its unevenness and lack of ambition are harder to forgive. At The National, with entrées hovering in the mid-twenties, you can be happy with unoriginal ideas skillfully executed, and that’s what you get.

The National has a prominent street-level perch in the Benjamin Hotel, but I doubt it was hotel guests alone that accounted for a packed dining room on a Thursday evening. Just steps away from the busy 6 Train stop at 51st & Lex, The National is in the perfect location to be a cafeteria for the East Midtown office crowd, and I suspect that’s where many of the guests came from.

At 7:00 p.m., there were no tables and only a couple of bar stools available. It’s the kind of place where the bartenders are so busy that they won’t open a tab without taking custody of your credit card, and where I never got to order a second drink because they were too preoccupied to notice that I’d finished the first one.

But the kitchen serves a great pork chop (above left), especially bearing in mind that it’s only $24, and it comes with broccolini and a side of excellent cheese grits. One doesn’t really need another vegetable, but I had to try the Crispy Brussels Sprouts ($7; above right) with pancetta and whole mustard, one of the best sides I’ve had in a while.

The diner to my right invited me to take a photo of his steak frites ($28; above). I didn’t taste the steak, but it was a thick hunk of New York Strip, and it appeared to be perfectly cooked to medium rare. I did try the hand-cut fries, which were great. Another diner gave me a taste of her Baby Artichoke Sandwich ($13) with feta, hummus, eggplant, and pepperoncini. I would never order that, as I dislike eggplant and only tolerate artichokes, but I have to admit it was tasty.

If The National doesn’t attempt very much, it is at least good at what it purports to do, and it doesn’t charge very much. The David Rockwell interior looks like half-a-dozen other places he’s done, but it’s fine for what it needs to be.

The National (557 Lexington Avenue at 50th Street, East Midtown)

Food: *
Service: Satisfactory
Ambaince: *
Overall: *

Balade

On the list of under-represented cuisines in New York City, Lebanese must be pretty close to the top. The Zagat Guide lists just three Lebanese restaurants, of which I’ve tried only one—the over-produced Ilili.

Missing from the Zagat Guide is Balade, which opened in the East Village a year ago. Despite a lack of critical attention (not a single pro review that I can find), it isn’t doing badly—at least on a Friday evening, when it was about 3/4ths full by 8:00 p.m. Nevertheless, it seeks (and in my view deserves) more attention.

(Before I proceed, in the interests of full disclosure, I need to tell you that I dined at Balade at the publicist’s invitation and did not pay for my meal.)

The name Balade means “fresh” in Lebanese. It’s an apt description, as just about everything is made in-house. The one drawback is that many customers are likely to mis-pronounce the name: roughly, it’s bah-lah-day.

The menu rambles a bit, and in its noble eagerness to offer something for everyone, takes a while to parse. There are six categories, plus sides and desserts. Many items have askerisked references to a glossary on the front page. If I were up to me, I’d ditch the glossary and explain each item where it appears.

Outside of a handful of entrées in the high teens (just one over $20), almost everything is below $15, and many are below $10. As is often the case on menus that avoid the term “appetizer” or “entrée,” it can be difficult to tell how much food you’re getting. I wound up with two appetizers and a dessert. I enjoyed everything, but if I were ordering again, I might have chosen a more substantial second course.

The meal starts with warm house-made bread (below left) and a wonderful spiced olive oil for dipping.

There’s an ample selection of vegetarian dishes throughout the menu, including more than half of the eighteen Mezza (starters). They’re $5–9 individually, or $16 for a selection of four vegetarian items. In the photo (above right), I had (clockwise from the top):

1) Tabouleh (parsley salad with burghul wheat, chopped onions, tomatoes, olive oil, and fresh lemon juice)

2) Hummus (chickpea puree with ground sesame seeds and lemon juice)

3) Warak Einab (stuffed grape leaves with chickpeas, tomatoes, garlic, and rice)

4) Labneh with Toum (cream cheese made from Greek yogurt infused with Lebanese thyme and crushed garlic)

There was an additional serving of bread, for spreading, but in the end I decided just to eat off the plate. The Labneh with Toum (nine o’clock in the photo) was deliciously creamy, the Tabouleh (twelve o’clock) a good, spicy contrast to the others. I felt journalistically obligated to try the hummus, and although it was just fine, I think the more unusual dishes are a better bet.

There are menu categories for sandwiches, or sandweechet ($6–10), Lebanese Pizza, or Manakeesh ($6.50–12) and “Pita Pitza” ($10–12). There’s also a “Taste of Lebanon” for $10 that offers three mini-pizzas, and as I was eager to know what Lebanese pizza would be like, I ordered that.

In the photo (below left), clockwise starting from the 10 o’clock position, the selection was:

1) Jabneh (Lebanese white cheese)

2) Zaatar (wild dried thyme, sesame seeds, sumac and olive oil)

3) Lahme Baajin (seasoned ground beef, diced onions and tomatoes)

The dough was thin and baked crisp. Of the three, I liked the spicy Lahme Baajin the best. The Zaatar was interesting, but a bit dry for my taste, and the cheese was pedestrian.

Dessert was flawless: first, two half-scoops of ice cream (above right): pistachio and a creamy native Lebanese flavor with a name I don’t recall. And then the Kenafa ($5; below left): baked ricotta cheese topped with bread crumbs, syrup, and crushed pistachio. This is a wonderful dessert: if you eat nothing else here, you must save room for it.

Lebanese White Coffee ($2.50; above right) is not coffee at all, but uncaffeinated rose water, more like tea, served with a small cup and a personal-size mini-kettle—an excellent way to close.

I can’t opine on the service, since the visit was a pre-arranged comp. Patronage ranged from large groups to solo diners at the bar, and as far as I could tell they were getting the attention they deserved. The 55-seat space is comfortable but un-fancy, in a way that matches the neighborhood.

The term “Neighborhood Lebanese Restaurant” doesn’t really exist in New York, but if it did, Balade would be the model. It’s inexpensive and casual, the food is well made, and there are enough choices for every mood and appetite.

Balade (201 First Avenue between 12th & 13th Streets, East Village)

Gastroarte née Graffit

Note: Gastroarte was called Graffit when this review was written. As noted below, the name was often mistaken for that of an unrelated restaurant, Graffiti. After the latter sued, Graffit changed its name to Gastroarte. For a more recent review, click here.

*

There isn’t exactly a glut of avant-garde Spanish cuisine in New York. One has to applaud chef Jesús Núñez’s gumption, if nothing else, in putting such a place in one of the city’s most conservative dining neighborhoods, the Upper West Side.

The chef was formerly a graffiti artist, so he chose the name Graffit—an unfortunate error, as a web search confuses it with the better known East Village restaurant, Graffiti. (On a google search for “graffit restaurant new york,” 7 of the first 10 hits, including the first four, were for Graffiti, not Graffit.) The reference isn’t that important anyway: the wall art at Graffit was created with spray paint, but not in a way that resembles the graffiti New Yorkers are familiar with.

There are fumbles in the menu design, as well. Diners seated in the bar area receive a tapas list ($6–14), while those in the dining room get a separate menu with traditional appetizers ($10–18) and entrées ($23–27). The distinction between bar and table dining is blurry these days; offering different menus to two classes of guests just creates confusion.

We were seated in the dining room, and therefore didn’t receive the tapas menu. A Mouthfuls poster who did, said that the tapas are so amply portioned that two of them would be a sufficient snack for four people, which somewhat contradicts the whole point of tapas.

In the dining room, the appetizers are generously portioned, too. We ordered five of them to share: we went home stuffed, and we didn’t even finish them.

Although we liked all but one of our appetizers, they tended to cloy. Normally, appetizers are sized for one person. Most of these dishes were just too heavy or too monotonic for that: you wouldn’t want to finish them.

However, you get plenty for your money: the food bill for two was just $62, and that included a dual amuse bouche (above right) and petits fours (bottom right) at the end.

“Not Your Average Egg” ($13; above left) is a seasonal vegetable stew. This was one of our favorites, although it ought to have been a shade warmer. The “Egg” in the middle is actually cauliflower molded around a runny egg yolk.

Carrot “Cake” ($11.50; above right) is a savory carrot dish with cheese and asparagus. This was one of those dishes that started out well, but was too overwhelming for even two people to finish.

Oxtail Ravioli ($13.50; above left) with apple and sunchoke cream sounded promising, but it came to the table lukewarm. Fried Squid Spheres ($12; above right) with roasted pepper, lemon, and saffron mayonaise are a wonderful idea, but it’s another dish that I was glad to be sharing. Two spheres per person was enough, and the dish had five.

Beef Tongue ($12; above left) was an ample enough portion to be an entrée, with two hefty pieces of tongue—deep fried, I believe. It’s another good dish that I wouldn’t have wanted to finish alone.

The restaurant occupies the lower level of an Upper West Side townhouse. The layout resembles a railroad apartment, with four thematically distinct spaces: communal tables up front for walk-ins, a bar, a dining room, and a rear atrium with skylights that can be opened in good weather. With exposed brick walls and no tablecloths or curtains to absorb sound, the space gets a bit noisy when full.

Despite some errors of concepion and execution, there is obvious potential in this cuisine. The menu is not static, as there were several announced specials (including the tongue dish). With some refinement, Graffit could make the leap to compelling from merely promising. Located just three blocks north of Lincoln Center, it’s a welcome addition to the pre-concert dining scene. The only question is whether this traditionally conservative neighborhood will embrace it.

Graffit (141 W. 69th St. between Broadway and Columbus Ave., Upper West Side)

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

Tulsi

Note: This is a review of Tulsi under opening chef Hemant Mathur, who is no longer with the restaurant as of January 2015.

*

Tulsi is the new haute-Indian restaurant from the former Dévi chef, Hemant Mathur. The name, the Times kindly informs us, means “holy basil.”

Dévi attracted a devoted following, including a favorable two-star review from Frank Bruni and, for a while, a Michelin star. I also gave it two stars. The restaurant is still in business, under the supervision of Mathur’s former partner, Suvir Saran. It has survived numerous ups & downs, including closing for a while when the original management gave up on it.

Most of the Indian food in New York is inexpensive and interchangeable. The challenge at such a place is to persuade diners that the price premium is worthwhile. It’s the reason why Dévi struggled at times, and why Tabla is the only restaurant Danny Meyer has ever closed.

At Tulsi, there are recognizable favorites, like Tandoori Lamb and Rogan Josh, but most of the menu consists of more unusual items, such as the appetizers we tried, Tandoori Tofu ($9) and Manchurian Cauliflower ($11) in a chilli garlic sauce. Goat Dum Biryani ($24) was probably the most conventional of our choices, offset by the wacky but wonderful Pistachio Chicken ($22). We found the flavors spicy, bracing, and (at least to us) highly original—at least for New York.

We ordered comparatively inexpensively, but most of the fish and meat entrées are over $25, and there are several over $30. I wouldn’t mind paying those prices for food of this quality, but long-term success will require building up a cadre of regulars who believe in the chef. Fortunately, Mathur brings a loyal following with him, from his previous stops, although the location (not convenient to any subway stop) somewhat discourages impulse visits.

The wine list is expensive too. I didn’t see many options below the mediocre $52 Domaine Chamonard that we ordered. The bill was $128 before tax and tip—certainly well worth it, in our estimation, but more than most diners are accustomed to pay for Indian food. Partly, you are paying for a lovely, romantic space (even nicer than Dévi), which must be one of the nicest ever built for Indian cuisine in New York.

Tulsi (211 E. 46th Street between Second & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Food: **½
Service: **½
Ambiance: **½