Bar Henry Bistro

Note: Bar Henry Bistro closed in 2012. It became an Austin, Texes-themed place called ZirZamin.

*

Every trend has to begin with one brave establishment trying something for the first time, and having it catch on.

Have you ever visited a place and said, I hope everyone starts doing this? That’s what we said about the wine list at Bar Henry Bistro, which opened in November on one of the few remaining desolate patches of Houston Street.

About that wine list: it’s in two sections: Market and Reserve. On the Market section are 110 bottles, skewing mostly European. For any of these, you can buy half the bottle at exactly half the price. There is a respectable selection of half-bottles, and you can still buy half of those (basically one glass) at exactly half the bottle price.

The half you don’t drink is taken out to the bar, and if no one wants the half-bottle, it’s sold by the glass. Management is betting that there won’t be much waste, and so far it seems to be working. I ordered a glass of 1991 Domaine aux Moines Savennières. Few restaurants would carry that wine by the glass, and at $78 I probably wouldn’t have ordered the full bottle. But it was available to try, because someone had ordered half of it the night before.

There is also a more expensive reserve list (bottle prices mostly in three figures), and these aren’t available by the half-bottle, but as that Domaine aux Moines demonstrates, those who want to explore the market list will find plenty to tempt them. I followed it up with a terrific $7 glass of sherry. (Full disclosure: a second glass of the Domaine and another half-bottle at dinner were comped.)

During the winter, the bar is also serving an obscure cocktail called the Tom and Jerry ($14), recently profiled in the Times, made with eggs, brandy, whisky, warm milk, cinammon, and nutmeg. It’s great for a cold night. The eggs need to be prepped in advance, and even then it’s time-consuming, so they’ll only make a fixed number of them per evening—generally 10 on a weekday, 15 on the weekends. At the beginning of the shift, the numbers from 1 to 10 (or whatever total) are written on the mirror and crossed out as they’re ordered. Once the last one is made, that’s it for the night.

The menu is a bit simplistic, with just five entrées ($16–29), and one of those is a burger. There are about a dozen appetizers and bar snacks—nothing over $14. Indeed, the menu seems to be designed for bar grazers. We enjoyed everything we tried; nevertheless, we had a sense that the food wasn’t as ambitious as the wine list.

At the bar, I snacked on Roasted Almonds ($3) and Marinated Olives($3). A Ceviche special ($9) and Short Rib Tacos ($12; below left) were unmemorable.

We both had the Manhattan Steak ($29; above right), an aged New York strip from Pat LaFreida, the gold standard in beef these days. It was as good as I’ve had outside of a steakhouse, with a recognizable dry-aged tang and a deep exterior char. French fries ($6) were perfect.

We have no idea if the wine program here will catch on, but it strikes us as a fairly low risk for the owners. Most restaurants these days charge out wine bottles at triple the retail price, and of course they don’t pay retail, so they aren’t losing money even if they’re occasionally left with a half-bottle that doesn’t sell. But I don’t get the sense that that’s happening very often, and meanwhile they’re pulling in customers who probably wouldn’t go out of their way for the bistro menu alone.

The dining room is done up in white tablecloths and red velvet chairs supposedly rescued from the Plaza Hotel. Reservations aren’t taken, but we had no trouble getting seated at 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. The bar fills up quickly, though. Don’t forget to bring a sweater: the restaurant is in the cellar of an old townhouse, and it gets cold down there.

Bar Henry Bistro (90 W. Houston St. between Thomson St. & LaGuardia Pl., Greenwich Village)

Food: *
Wine: **
Service: *½
Overall: *½

Review Recap: Ed's Chowder House & Tanuki Tavern

Today, Sam Sifton filed the expected two-fer on Ed’s Chowder House and Tanuki Tavern. We were correct that Sifton would uncork his first zero-star review; but wrong about which one would be the victim.

He clearly “gets” what the owner, Jeffrey Chodorow, is about:

For more than two decades he has run counter to restaurateurs interested in rubbed-wood authenticity and locavore cuisine. He has stood, always, for brash showmanship, the belief that in restaurants, the whole and complete point of the business is volume. In the face of recessions and in boom times alike he has accumulated more than 25 restaurants and bars in close to a dozen cities, all of them tied to the idea of dazzling, low-cut, cocktail-fueled good times…

From his first foray, the flashy China Grill, to his latest, Tanuki Tavern in the Hotel Gansevoort and Ed’s Chowder House in the Empire Hotel, he has promised that opportunity: fun, against the customer’s outlay of cash.

To our surprise, he thinks that Tanuki is the one that comes the closest to meeting those modest objectives:

The concept at Tanuki Tavern is that it’s an izakaya, or Japanese-style tapas bar. That is not entirely accurate. Really Tanuki is Ono, the immense Japanese-style restaurant Mr. Chodorow opened five years ago, now in a smaller space with almost the same number of seats. He sublets the rest of the space to the nightclub Provocateur. (Mr. Chodorow isn’t in this racket to spill soup.)

The result is young and exciting, with food from the same larder as Ono’s: respectable, perfectly good quasi-Asian fare. Also like Ono, it is pretty in design and execution: Japanese cabinetry and piped-in ’80s rock, LED candles, paper lanterns and two floors of tables full of men and women in clothing inappropriate to the weather. Tanuki is a fine place to drink sake, eat chicken wings and visit a simulacrum of South Beach, Sunset Boulevard, the timeless thump-thump-thump of Saturday night on the Vegas strip. It provides direct transport, in other words, to Chodorowland.

At Ed’s Chowder House, Sifton wonders if the restaurant’s namesake, Chef Ed Brown, has been watching the kitchen:

There was, one night, something of his style and worth in a terrific dish of smoked Chatham cod cakes with a roasted tomato-chili jam… But none of his delicacy was apparent in other meals — in greasy, overdone fried calamari with saffron aioli, for instance, or in celery-heavy, muddy-hued steamed clams with plonk broth…

Did Mr. Brown personally have something to do with the ammonia taste of a particularly elderly wing of skate served with horseradishy mashed potatoes and left untouched on the plate (to the shrug of a waiter)? It seems somehow unlikely.

We lose $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets. Eater wins $2 on Tanuki Tavern, but loses $1 on Ed’s Chowder House, for a net of $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$6.00		$8.00
Gain/Loss	+$1.00		–$2.00
Total	$7.00		$6.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	5–3 (62.5%)		4–4 (50.0%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 74–31 (70%).

Maialino

Among New York restauranteurs, it’s hard to name a more bankable success than Danny Meyer. From Union Square Cafe, to Gramercy Tavern, Tabla, Eleven Madison Park, and The Modern, his restaurants have never failed.

Meyer’s knack for this business can’t be attributed to any one thing. He has a keen sense of “the moment,” he doesn’t do the same thing twice, he puts smart people in charge, and he focuses relentlessly on the customer. At a Meyer restaurant, you’ll never see a bartender who can’t transfer the tab to your table, or a host that refuses to seat incomplete parties. So it was at Meyer’s latest creation, Maialino, where I arrived thirty minutes too early, but they offered to seat me anyway, in a dining room booked solid for the evening.

That was so Danny Meyer.

Maialino, Meyer’s first Italian restaurant, replaces the failed Wakiya in the Gramercy Park Hotel. It’s a perfect location, with panoramic windows facing the park. It’s also perfect for Meyer, whose restaurant empire is all (except for The Modern) in walking distance of Madison Square, allowing him to keep close tabs on his growing brood.

The space is decked out like a modern trattoria, with a design by David Rockwell that seems instantly authentic. We would ditch the checked under-cloths at the tables, which look a bit too Little Italy.

Even Danny Meyer isn’t recession-proof. The antipasti are $9–14, the primi $13–17, the secondi mostly in the twenties. The menu also accommodates grazers, with a wide selection of salumi and formaggi, available individually or on platters serving anywhere from two to six. You’ll spend less here than in most of Meyer’s other restaurants, but we suspect that prices will be $10–20 more per person in a year or two.

The word Maialino refers to suckling pig, which recurs in several dishes. The pièce de resistance is a half-pig for $68. We were tempted to try it, but it feeds two to three people, and would have been wasted on us.

 

Zampina di Maialino, or Suckling Pig’s Foot ($14; above left), offered an ample bounty of smoky pink pork meat. It was served on a bed of heirloom beans that weren’t very good. Malfatti al Maialino, or suckling pig ragu with arugula and hand-torn pasta ($17; above right), was under-seasoned; the flavors barely registered.

 

Coda alla Vaccinara, or oxtails with carrots and celery ($23; above left), were tender from braising, but they were served in a dull sauce. Bistecca, or aged sirloin ($29; above right), was an enjoyable hunk of meat for a non-steakhouse, but the beans that accompanied the pig’s foot made an unwelcome re-appearance.

Service was excellent, as you expect in a Danny Meyer restaurant. Meyer himself was in the house, and stopped by most tables to say thanks, including ours. He said thank you again as we were leaving. Such is his reputation that we had much higher hopes for the food. But at a Danny Meyer restaurant, you can safely assume it will get better.

Maialino (2 Lexington Avenue at 21st Street, Gramercy Park)

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

Review Preview: Ed's Chowder House & Tanuki Tavern

Tomorrow, Sam Sifton files his first double-review, hitting Jeffrey Chodorow’s latest failures restaurants: Ed’s Chowder House and Tanuki Tavern. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows:

Ed’s Chowder House: Goose Egg: 10 - 1; One Star: 3 - 1; SIFT HAPPENS: 5-1; Three Stars: 20 - 1

Tanuki Tavern: Goose Egg: 3 - 1; One Star: 2-1; SIFT HAPPENS: 7 - 1; Three Stars: 25 - 1

Despite my incessant joking at Chodorow’s expense—let’s face it, who doesn’t joke about this guy—I actually liked Ed’s Chowder House when I dropped by in September. I was there for a drink last night, and we’re going again in January. I sampled only a little of the menu on that earlier visit, but it strikes us as a quintessential one-bagger.

Chodorow is the past master of building new restaurants on the smouldering husk of previous failures, and Tanuki Tavern is one of these. We’ve avoided the place like the plague. We have no intel at all, but if Sifton is ready to give his first goose egg, this would be a perfect time for it.

We predict that Sifton will award one star to Ed’s Chowder House and zilch to Tanuki Tavern.

Rhong-Tiam

Note: Rhong-Tiam moved to 87 Second Avenue, in the former Kurve location, after the space reviewed here was shut down by the Department of Health.

*

The annual Michelin ratings are always good for a surprise or two. For the most part, I’ve been a supporter, even if I disagreed with some of the choices. What’s the point of ratings that just echo what everyone else has already said? The status quo can survive some shaking-up. Most of the Michelin ratings are defensible; many are more accurate than those the Times critics issue, and then fail to keep up-to-date.

But Rhong-Tiam, awarded a star for the first time in the 2010 Michelin ratings, isn’t just a surprising choice. It is utterly baffling. It’s the first Michelin-starred restaurant I’ve visited, where I could not imagine where the rating came from.

Let us be clear: Rhong-Tiam, which opened in March 2008, is a respectable addition to the Greenwich Village dining scene. Drop by if you’re in the neighborhood; you’ll probably like the place, as we did. But it is not destination cuisine, and it isn’t the best Thai food in New York. The tire men haven’t honored any other Thai restaurants, and they should not have honored Rhong-Tiam.

With that out of the way, understand that the food at Rhong-Tiam is good, and we liked most of what we we ordered.

 

Duck buns ($7; above left), made with duck confit and hoi-sin sauce, had a nice, bright flavor. Thai Sausages ($6; above right) would have been fine, if they hadn’t been dried out from over-cooking.

 

Moo-Na-Rok, or Pork on Fire ($13; above left), is the dish the Times loved. The intense heat chili heat catches up with you slowly. By the time you’re finished, your gums are burning, though I am not sure you can detect the pork by that point. Duck Chu Chee ($14; above right) with house-made curry gravy was a more balanced dish: plenty of heat there too, but you could actually taste the duck.

The drinks menu is non-alcoholic, and at first I assumed there was no liquor license. When I asked, the server mentioned two beers and four wines, along the lines of, “Cabernet, Malbec, umm,…hmm, Merlot, and I think Pinot Noir.” That didn’t give us much confidence, so we had a couple of Thai beers at $6 each.

Rhong-Tiam’s reservation system is a bit strange. You fill out a form on their website and receive an email a few minutes later. But the email is not a confirmation, just a promise that they’ll call you later, which they never did. So I called them, though it wouldn’t have mattered. On a Saturday evening, the restaurant was only about half full. Most of the patrons seemed to be the right age to be NYU students. The décor isn’t much more memorable than a dorm room, but the space is quiet and comfortable.

Rhong-Tiam offers an excellent value: our meal was just $64 before tax and tip. You are much better off ignoring its undeserved Michelin rating and appreciating Rhong-Tiam for what it is.

Rhong-Tiam (541 LaGuardia Place between Bleecker & W. 3rd Streets, Greenwich Village)

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

Harbour Sinks

As first noted Wednesday in the Feed, and confirmed today on Eater, West Soho’s Harbour has closed.

We enjoyed our meal there in June, but noted at the time that this restaurant could be in for stormy sailing. Fine dining has consistently struggled in this part of town, which is ill-served by mass transit, lacks a large residential community, and has no major attractions to lure pedestrians.

As I’ve noted in review after review, there is no reason why destination restaurants couldn’t succeed here, but there would need to be a game-changer—the kind of restaurant that makes people want to go out of their way. Harbour did not turn out to be that restaurant.

We were on Harbour’s mailing list, and in recent months received one “special offer” after another. Many of these started to seem like desperation, and we figured the end was near.

We feel for the owners, who dropped major coin on the build-out: reportedly $4 million. The curse of Hudson Square has struck again.

Review Recap: Madangsui

Can I just admit that I was bored by today’s one-star review of Madangsui? Will you still respect me in the morning?

Commenters on the New York Times website were perplexed that “Manhattan’s best Korean barbecue restaurant” merits only a star, but it seemed rather clear to us:

Madangsui is not much to look at, really, just a long fluorescent-illuminated room with chocolate accents, almost barnlike, with exhaust hoods over the tables and a carpet down the center, leading to the tea station, the bathrooms and the kitchen. The clientele runs to groups of celebratory young Koreans texting as they eat, office parties and passers-by from local hotels; it is hardly a clear picture of fine dining in New York. But jiminy crickets, is the dining fine.

But first, a warning: responsibility for the pace of a meal at Madangsui belongs to the diner alone. Service at the restaurant is brisk, almost brutally efficient… .

But make sure not to ask for your barbecue, not yet. Diners who order soups and appetizers at the same time as main dishes at Madangsui will receive, far more often than not, the main dishes in advance of the appetizers. This throws a wrench into the works. Be firm on this point and be happy.

In a system that awards one conflated rating for food, service, and décor, these things have to take their toll. Besides that, it is no insult to get one star, which means “good”. True, it was so debased during the Bruni era that readers have been conditioned to expect that one star is an insult. Sam Sifton is re-training them.

We and Eater both predicted the one-star outcome. We both win $2 on our hypothetical one-dollar bets:

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$4.00		$6.00
Gain/Loss	+$2.00		+$2.00
Total	$6.00		$8.00
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	4–2 (66.7%)		4–2 (66.7%)

Life-to-date, New York Journal is 74–29 (72%).

Tipsy Parson

 

Tipsy Parson is the encore restaurant from the same team that scored such a big hit at Little Giant on the Lower East Side. It hews to the earlier restaurant’s comfort-food roots, but a bigger kitchen allows a more substantial menu. Where the Little Giant is limited to just half-a-dozen apps and just as many entrées, the menu here offers a wider variety of starters, salads, oysters, charcuterie, entrées, side dishes, and bar snacks.

The space is nearly double the size of the Little Giant, which made me worry whether the owners would be able to scale up to the challenge. Those worries are borne out by the inconsistency of the food, but if they can clear that up, this is a cuisine we would happily eat any day of the week.

I arrived early and ordered a snack—figs stuffed with chestnuts and topped with bacon (left). This is perfect bar food, but for some reason the chef served three of them, an odd choice for a dish that will be frequently shared. In all fairness, many chefs have made that error, as if there is a mystical perfection in the number three, no matter what the customer may require.

Cocktails were not such a happy experiment: both of those that I tried were too sweet, including a champagne sidecar that seemed to be nearly all champagne.

The industry has changed since Little Giant opened in 2004. Back then, places were showing how cool they were by not taking reservations. Some restauranteurs would even have the chutzpah to claim this was what the customer wanted: it meant one could always drop in and be sure of getting a table, provided one was willing to wait long enough. In reality, this was pure selfishness on the owners’ part: it meant they didn’t have to bother keeping track of who was coming, and they didn’t have to deal with no-shows.

A few hugely successful places have clung to this model (Boqueria, Momofuku, Spotted Pig), mainly because they could, but many of these no-resy places wound up taking them later on, including Little Giant. Tipsy Parson was on OpenTable from Day One. They could no doubt survived a while on walk-in business alone, given the inevitable curiosity that attends any new restaurant. Instead, they sensibly decided to court reliable repeat business instead, and recognized that many diners want the assurance that they can eat at a time certain.

I know we wouldn’t have been there without a reservation. The restaurant kindly accommodated us, even though my friend was a half-hour late.

 

We suspected that the entrées would be large, so we shared a salad of warm spinach, which was wonderful, as were the house-made Parker House rolls.

 

Both entrées suffered from execution failures. A pork shank was enormous, but over-cooked. Duck was perfectly cooked, but the portion was (by comparison) on the small side, and the vegetables accompanying it were too bitter.

 

A side of Brussels sprouts was terrific. Macaroni & cheese was just fine, but didn’t erase the memory of the even better version of it served at Little Giant.

Early on, the service seemed just a bit anxious, as if they were eager to get our table back. Later on, the server disappeared for long intervals. Just about all of the restaurant’s 75 seats were full when we left, and it appeared there weren’t quite enough staff to handle the rush.

The décor tries to capture the homespun rustic chic that so many restaurants aim for these days, but at least they got it right. The noise level wasn’t bad, but as we were seated at a corner table with no one nearby, that might have been atypical.

Tipsy Parson doesn’t quite have its act together yet, but the menu is extremely appealing, and when the kinks are ironed out this should be a fun place to visit.

Tipsy Parson (156 Ninth Avenue between 19th & 20th Streets, Chelsea)

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

Review Preview: Madangsui

Sam Sifton’s last four reviews have been big-budget productions: Aureole, Oceana, A Voce Columbus, and SD26. All were, in a sense, mandatory—the Times couldn’t be the paper of record without reviewing such highly-publicized openings.

We had a feeling he was overdue for another review plucked out of nowhere—the kind of review filed because he wants to, not because he has to. Sure enough, tomorrow Sifton visits Koreatown stalwart Madangsui.

The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows: Zero Stars: 100 - 1; One star: 2-1; Sift Happens: 5 - 1; Three Stars: 1,500 - 1.

Sifton so far hasn’t been throwing out two-star ratings like candy, the way a certain well known predecessor did. The precedent, as Eater notes, is Imperial Palace, which received a glowing onespot. We agree with Eater that one star is by far the most likely rating.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful

Randolph, New Jersey
December 5, 2009