White Slab Palace

Note: White Slab Palace closed in October 2011. As of May 2012, the space is Grey Lady, a New England-style raw bar.

*

White Slab Palace has been open since late February on the Lower East Side. The cuisine is vaguely Scandinavian, but the vibe is more like a “bar that serves food” than a true restaurant. The narrow space has a long, high counter with tall bar stools. The there are about a dozen low-slung wooden tables next to the tall windows facing out on Allen & Delancey Streets.

A forthcoming expansion into the neighboring space promises a more formal dining room, but we decided not to wait for that. Alas, we should have waited, or better yet, skipped White Slab Palace altogether. This was one of the most disastrous meals we’ve had in a long time.

Food took about 45 minutes to arrive. “Sometimes, we need to give the kitchen a nasty stare,” the server admitted. At last, our main courses were delivered, bypassing the appetizers entirely. We had both ordered the meatballs—just four smallish things the size of golf balls, dried out and over-cooked. No wonder they took 45 minutes.

A moment later, a plate of deep-fried stuff arrived. We thought it might be an appetizer. Then we had a taste. It was a fish-like substance, apparently a herring, just as parched as the meatballs. There were other deep-fried fishy things on the plate, none of which we could stand after more than one bite. Our server circled back: “You didn’t order that, did you?” Nope.

We weren’t sure what was happening next, but finally the appetizers came. An order of shrimp tasted like it had been swimming too long with the herring. We tasted one shrimp apiece and gave up. A hunk of lamb was so densely packed with gristle that my knife could not get through it. This was apparently a cheap cut that needed braising it hadn’t gotten.

That was the end of White Slab Palace for us. The server conceded that it was a rough night, but didn’t offer to comp anything to make up for it. Food, beer and cocktails set us back $117, including tax and tip. Oh, and they don’t take credit cards.

White Slab Palace (77 Delancey Street at Allen Street, Lower East Side)

Food: awful
Service: slow
Ambiance: it’s a bar
Overall: awful

Mas (farmhouse)

Mas was a restaurant we instantly liked when we first visited, a shade under three years ago. Despite our enthusiasm, I had no particular eagerness to return. The food is good, but not in a specific way that you can’t get anywhere else. And Mas is hard to book, partly because it is not on OpenTable.

Of course, its absence from OpenTable is for a reason: Mas is habitually full, even with an extra back room added in late 2007, which increased the size of the dining room from 40 to 55 seats. Last year, Mas got a rare gift: a second review from Frank Bruni, who upgraded it to the two stars it deserved in the first place. (His earlier one-star review was one of the more egregious errors of his first year on the job, though it doesn’t seem to have hurt the restaurant.)

Mas is still as lovely as we found it in December 2006. The seats and tables are comfortable, the warm faux farmhouse décor is inviting, the service is polished. If you notice such things, the china and stemware are some of the most elegant of any New York restaurant, including the four-stars.

There’s a recession going on, but you wouldn’t know it at Mas. If ordered à la carte, the appetizers are $14–23, and the entrées $32–36. Those high prices apply to the wine list too, where you’ll struggle to find a red under $60.

The menu is awfully confusing. The front page offers a $68 four-course prix fixe with specific dishes listed. The server goes on to explain that those dishes are available à la carte as well, and anything on the carte can be substituted into the prix fixe at no extra charge.

If that’s the case, then why is the menu structured that way? As I heard the same lengthy explanation repeated at multiple tables, I wondered why they don’t just do the obvious thing: print everything à la carte, with a note at the bottom: any four courses, $68. (A six-course tasting menu, with the courses not named, is $95.)

We started with an amuse-bouche of smoked duck (above, right) that was more interesting to look at than taste.

A White Asparagus Soup (above left) was just fine, but my girlfriend reported that a Roasted Beet and Goat Cheese salad was too salty. All three of us ordered the Long Island Duck Breast (above right). It was one of the more tender duck preparations I’ve had in a while, with a beautiful layer of fat below the skin. But accompaniments of sweet potato, bacon & leek gratin, with savoy cabbage in a bacon cream and beet sauce, sounded a lot more interesting than they were.

My sense of Mas now is that it is a terrific place for a romantic dinner or a special occasion, and I would happily go there again with the right guests. The cuisine and wine list are solid, but arguably over-priced. For the food alone, Mas isn’t quite exciting enough to win a place in the regular rotation.

Mas (39 Downing St. between Bedford St. and Seventh Ave. South, West Village)

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

The Minetta Burger

Note: Click here for a review of the steak at Minetta Tavern.

I don’t quite get the breathless excitement over Keith McNally’s latest restaurant, the reborn Minetta Tavern. Then again, I have never understood the excitement for Keith McNally’s other restaurants—most of them formulaic French brasseries. He’s got a good grasp on the format, but does this justify the long lines and impossible-to-get reservations?

Even Bloomberg’s Ryan Sutton had to admit defeat, conceding he hired a concierge service to get him into Minetta at a decent hour, after multiple failed attempts to get in on his own. Restaurant Girl didn’t let on how she got in, but she does not dine anonymously, which perhaps is all we need to know.

Last night, I decided to take a flyer on the bar at Minetta Tavern, figuring it was early enough (5:45 p.m.) that I would get a seat.  Sure enough, there was exactly one stool free when I arrived. The staff were friendly and accommodating—well beyond my expectations. I was expecting “attitude” at the host stand, but there was none of it.

Minetta Tavern shares its chefs with Balthazar, the McNally establishment to which it is most similar. The Minetta menu is slightly less expensive, and has slightly fewer offerings than Balthazar does. Most notably, it lacks Balth’s humungous plateaux de fruits de mer ($65 & $110 respectively), and it offers burgers, which Balth does not.

There are two burgers at Minetta Tavern, the Minetta Burger ($16) and the La Freida Black Label Burger ($26). Both Restaurant Girl and Bloomberg’s Sutton thought the lower-priced option was better. We tried the purported Black Label product at City Burger a few months ago, and weren’t impressed. Later on, La Freida explained that City Burger wasn’t getting the real Black Label blend, which was available only at Minetta. We weren’t going to fall for that trick again. It was the Minetta Burger for us.

And I fine burger it was: thick, juicy, and flavorful. Oh, and they nailed the fries, too. It’s not cheap, but this is a burger I could eat every week. I asked the kitchen to hold the caramelized onions that normally come with it. When the beef is this good, who needs onions?

There’s much more to Minetta Tavern, which I’ll be back to sample another day. Yesterday belonged to the burger.

Minetta Tavern (113 MacDougal Street between Bleecker & W. 3rd Streets, Greenwich Village)

Benoit

Note: This is a review under Chef Pierre Schaedelin, who left the restaurant in October 2010. Click here for a review under his replacement, the former Payard and Balthazar chef, Philippe Bertineau.

*

We returned to Benoit last Saturday—our third visit (past reviews here, here). The good news is that Benoit is doing well: it was as crowded as I’ve seen it since the opening weeks, this time last year. The bad news is that the service was slow, with long waits even for basic things, such as getting a wine list.

To start, we shared the charcuterie platter with cornichons and Dijon mustard ($42; below). Though nominally a serving for two, our group of three was unable to polish it off. Only at Bar Boulud have we seen a charcuterie assortment this good, this varied. I’m hard pressed to say which is better.

Unfortunately, that left us not very hungry for our main courses (not the restaurant’s fault). My girlfriend had the Steak aux Poivres ($38) and my mother the trio of Colorado Lamb ($36). Both struck us as competently done without being, in any sense, special.

The Braised Pork Shank ($21; above) was a fascinating dish, unlike anything I have ever seen. It was a hefty hunk of smoked ham, braised on the bone and flaked with a spicy mustard sauce. I am not a fan of smoked ham and probably wouldn’t have ordered it if I had realized how it was prepared—the menu just said “pork.” However, the dish was beautifully prepared, and I cannot really fault anything except the description.

Benoit is still uneven, but for its best items, the restaurant is well worth a return visit. The slow service dismayed us, but I am hoping we caught them on a bad night.

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

Jean Georges

Note: Click here for a more recent review.

Even four-star restaurants have to adapt. A couple of years ago, the dining room at Jean Georges got a make-over. I’m not the one to itemize all of the changes, as I visited the original space only once, but the space now seems brighter and yet more spare—a kind of Scandanavian economy that ensures no distractions from the food and the adjoining Central Park views.

The current recession brought another change: a $58 four-course menu that is served from 5:30–6:00 p.m. and from 10:00–11:00 p.m. (At other times, the minimum entry point is $98 for four courses.) Those might not be ideal dining hours, but it’s still the lowest available price point of any four-star restaurant, or indeed, of just about any luxury restaurant in the city. For that Jean Georges deserves to be applauded.

It was the $58 menu that brought us into Jean Georges the other night. With a $74 burgundy added to the tab, we were still out of there for $205 before tip, making this one of the better meals we’ve had for the price in quite some time.

The $58 menu offers no choices, except at dessert: you are going to get the three savory courses they’ve mapped out for you. However, it is not a bad selection at all. If I’d ordered these dishes at full price, I would not have been disappointed.

We started with a trio of amuses-bouches (above left): a swirl of pickled rhubarb on a disc of mozarella, a peekytoe crab fritter in a light mushroom sauce, and an herbal chicken broth. The crab fritter was the best of these. The chicken broth seemed like a throw-away. The appetizer (above right) was classic Vongerichten: cubes of delicate hamachi paired with Japanese cucumber.

The next two courses were superb, and at least to me, bracingly original. First was a goat cheese gnocchi with caramelized artichokes, rosemary and lemon zest (above left). I wrote in my notes: “remarkable”.

The last course was an arctic char (above right) with a rhubarb compote, ramp ravioli and olive oil foam. It had a sweet–tart contrast that Vongerichten is so well known for. The tart elements were slightly over-powering to my taste, but I give full credit to the ravioli and the fish itself, which was more tender than I thought possible.

We had our choice of any dessert on the regular menu. I chose “Caramel” (above left), while my Mom chose “Chocolate (above right). (“Rhubarb” and “Apple” were the other options.) It all seemed competent to me, but not as memorable as the savory courses.

We concluded with the usual array of petits-four, including the house-made marshmallows (left).

The service seemed more polished than it was on our last visit, but it surely helped that the dining room was not yet full. I still think that Jean Georges is a half-step behind the city’s other four-star restaurants, but this was my best meal to date in any Vongerichten establishment. I should schedule another visit while it is still possible to eat here at bargain prices.

Jean Georges (1 Central Park West at 60th Street, Upper West Side)

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

Peking Duck House

A couple of weeks ago, we headed down to the Peking Duck House for—well, you can probably guess.

The ways of this restaurant are a bit mysterious. When I called for a reservation, they claimed not to take them for parties fewer than six, but plenty of two-tops seemed to be waltzing right in (past the long line) to pre-reserved tables.

Our party of three waited at least half-an-hour to be seated at around 7:00 p.m. on a Friday evening. When we left, less than 90 minutes later, the walk-in line was even longer. As I noted in a previous review, this restaurant is geared to turning tables with military precision, though the food they serve, by its nature, takes a while to eat.

Most parties seemed to order the house special. For a fixed price of $36.50 per person, you get  a whole Peking duck (as long as you have at least three people) and some number of additional appetizers and entrées, depending on party size. The amount of food is obscene: even with four people, instead of three, I doubt we could have finished it.

After the appetizers (above), the duck (below) was presented tableside, then whisked away to be carved. There seems to be one chef who does nothing else.

After the superb duck, the entrées (above) seemed almost superfluous. It would probably be better if they were served separately, but as the restaurant wants to turn tables, they were served at the same time as the duck, which made for an awfully crowded table. A dessert of fresh sliced fruit (left) went barely touched.

If you can look past the factory atmosphere, the Peking Duck House remains an essential restaurant for its signature ingredient, which it prepares as well as anyone.

Peking Duck House (28 Mott Street between Pell and Mosco Streets, Chinatown)

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

The Payoff: La Fonda del Sol and Txikito

We were half-right, half-wrong about Frank Bruni’s double-review of La Fonda del Sol and Txikito. The latter restaurant got the expected singleton:

Across many meals here I had wonderfully memorable food (suckling pig as fine as any in New York beyond Eleven Madison Park’s); ridiculous food (a rib-eye so excessively fatty and undercooked it was almost inedible); food that fell somewhere in between (the crosscut spareribs, with too much bone and too little pork); and food that never tasted the same twice. The meatballs in a shellfish broth could be hard and dull or tender and nuanced. It depended on the night.

Although the prices on individual items are low, the bill can climb surprisingly high, especially considering the plainness and tightness of the quarters.

But to our surprise, La Fonda got the deuce. It’s not that we doubted La Fonda deserved two stars (it clearly does), but that we didn’t expect Bruni to see it that way. With two-star restaurants being a rarity these days, we had figured that any place he deemed worthy of the deuce would at least get the courtesy of having a review to itself. But Bruni’s review patterns were made to be broken:

Although the menu has weak spots, with a few too many dishes not from the heart but from a marketing plan, [Chef Josh DeChellis’s] cooking here feels less forced and more exuberant than it did at any of the other restaurants where I tried it.

More important, it reflects a steady, precise hand. A tried-and-true combination of octopus with potato seemed fresh again, because the kitchen got precisely the tenderness it wanted from the octopus and the firmness it sought in the potato, so that each was a textural mirror and mimic of the other.

At lunchtime, when so many restaurants put on their B if not C games, La Fonda served me a fillet of wild striped bass so vividly white in color and melting in consistency it could have been a snowdrift. The fish got a thrillingly salty, nutty charge — and some nice crunch — from the pumpkinseeds scattered over it.

We and Eater thought that Bruni would award a single star to both places. On our hypothetical one-dollar bets, we win $2 for Txikito and lose $1 on La Fonda, for a net gain of $1.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$127.50		$148.67
Gain/Loss	+1.00		+1.00
Total	$128.50		$149.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	58–26 (69%)		60–24 (71%)

Rolling the Dice: La Fonda del Sol and Txikito

The Line: We missed BruniBetting last week with the flu, but for the record our bet would have been the same as Eater’s: no stars for Charles. Oddly, we find ourselves nearly always in agreement with Eater these days. We realize that’s boring, but there’s no point in disagreeing for its own sake, especially where imaginary dough is on the line. Anyhow, back to business.

Tomorrow, Frank gives us a Spanish twofer, taking a fly on La Fonda del Sol and Txikito. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

La Fonda del Sol
Zero Stars: 10 - 1
One Star: 3-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 25-1
Four Stars: 10,000-1

Txikito
Zero Stars: 7-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 5-1
Three Stars: 500-1
Four Stars: 20,000-1

The Skinny: Eater gives a good explanation why both of these restaurants will get the singleton, but we have an even better one. In Bruniland, the line between two stars and one is the line between good and mediocre, between important and humdrum, between destination and also-ran. Though one star is supposed to mean “good,” in Bruni’s world it almost never does.

Two-star reviews have been extremely scarce this year. So we figure that if Bruni thought that either of these places merited the deuce, he would let it have a review all to itself. As best we can recall, Bruni has never awarded more than one star in a double review if the Times had never reviewed the restaurant before—as is the case with both of these establishments.

For the record, we really liked La Fonda del Sol, but the other critics haven’t been as wild for it as we were.

The Bet: The year of the one-star restaurant continues. We are betting that Frank Bruni will award one star to both La Fonda del Sol and Txikito.

Easter Food Bounty

Here are the food highlights from last week’s Easter feast.

Hors d’oeuvres

Fresh Tomatoes & Mozzarella; Roast Chicken

Rack of Lamb

Vinegar Hill House

[Kreiger via Eater]

Vinegar Hill is a tiny Brooklyn neighborhood, nestled between the Brooklyn Navy Yard to the north and DUMBO to the south. Like many recovering neighborhoods, there are lovely blocks and others that look like a disaster area.

Then there’s Hudson Avenue between Front and Water Streets, where you’ll find elements of both side-by-side. As I was walking to Vinegar Hill House, I first encountered the dilapidated building on the left, below. I thought, “Surely I must be in the wrong place.”

Next door, I found the restaurant, which occupies a former carriage house and movie set. It’s a bit gussied up (though not much) since chef Jean Adamson (ex-Freemans) and her husband (who also live in the building) opened the place late last year. There’s a lovely outdoor courtyard where they’ll be serving food when weather permits.

Though the walk to get here isn’t pretty, diners have had no trouble finding the place. The 40-seat dining room was about 2/3rds full by the time I left at 7:00 p.m., and a party of 11, most wearing sport coats and nice dresses, was just arriving.

Adamson keeps the menu simple, with a frequently changing list of about eight appetizers and five entrées, many of which exploit the large wood-burning oven that you can’t help but notice in the open kitchen. The choices aren’t adventurous, but there isn’t a “bail-out dish” either—no burger, no strip steak.

I especially liked the Wood Fired Tart ($9; above left) with mushrooms, crème fraîche and thyme. The same ingredients seemed to re-appear in a house-made Tagliatelle ($14; above right), which seemed more pedestrian, but perhaps I should have realized the similarity before I ordered.

Service was friendly, and there seemed to be an ample number of staff for the small space. It does not strike me as a destination restaurant, but I’d be more than happy to return if I am in the neighborhood again.

Vinegar Hill House (72 Hudson Avenue between Water & Front Streets, Brooklyn)

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