Tag Archives: bars
Ciano
CLOSED
Shea Gallante is perhaps best known as the former chef of Cru, the now-shuttered restaurant with a hefty tome of a wine list and prices that went into the thousands. The only thing more starched and staid that the atmosphere was the clientele, consisting mostly of older men murmuring reverentially over their wine. If you paid attention, you could hear a bleating side-note: the food was quite good. But it almost seemed inappropriate to mention the fare, as long as it went with that Bordeaux.
Mirroring the trajectory of the New York dining scene, Gallante decamped from Cru after the crash to open a new, more casual place. Italian, of course. If the sky were raining hellfire, New Yorkers would immediately head to the nearest homey Italian restaurant for comfort food. But don’t expect to find a cozy afterthought of a meal at Ciano. (more…)
Red Rooster
It seems like every time an establishment of note opens in Harlem, people say, “Isn’t it great Harlem has finally gotten its own wine bar/Target/Fairway?” But Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster on Lenox Avenue should not be interpreted as a great new restaurant for Harlem. His effortlessly multi-cultural take on soul food, in which traditional Southern dishes get an injection of Indian curry, Swedish cardamom and Ethiopian injera, is a great addition to the entire New York dining scene.
That’s not to say a local crowd isn’t already smitten with the place. The horseshoe-shaped, copper-topped bar was packed three deep when Governor Patterson swept in to dine at Red Rooster on his last night in office. There are two dining levels and an open kitchen flanked by DBGB-esque black walls scripted with white lettering: recipes in Swedish and fanciful drawings of whisks. Despite the care that was put into the decor, it doesn’t feel at all stuffy. (more…)
Posted in American, food, Harlem, New York restaurants, restaurants, Scandinavian, Southern
Tagged bars, New York
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Osteria Morini
When chef Michael White said to the New York Times this past August that “if his surname had been Italian, the city’s food establishment would have rallied around him sooner,” he had a point. Names like “Batali” or “Donatella” inspire hoards to flock to their restaurants for Italian food, whereas “Michael White” sounds like an off-key version of “Marco Pierre White” of English fame.
So if you did actually discover the ethereal, exquisite pasta at Michael White’s Alto, you felt as if you’d been let in on a wonderful secret. The city’s best pasta was not at a rustic rock and roll townhouse downtown but surprisingly in the center of Midtown, with a sleek backdrop of blue-lit walls and wine bottles. Go to any serious restaurant in Italy and you will find that they aspire to the same level of excellence and haute cuisine. When there’s a particularly deft hand like White’s involved in the pasta, you can taste the magic at the first bite. (more…)
Posted in food, Italian, New York restaurants, restaurants, Soho
Tagged bars, Michael White, New York
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Dressler
CLOSED
Feeling overwhelmed by the number of new restaurants opening these days? As New York gets caught up in a vicious cycle of newness – diners relentlessly pursuing the latest trends, chefs quickly moving on from one restaurant to cash in on the next, and dining rooms that feel like pop-up shops – the thing we crave is not the latest It food item, but consistently good cuisine and genuine warmth.
To be able to return to a place year after year and still find the chef in place and the atmosphere reliably charming is a European dining standard, so it’s no wonder that the Michelin guide reviewers have taken to Dressler, making it one of three places in Brooklyn to get starred. But it’s also a reminder that more New York restaurants used to be this way too until we got so incurably faddish. The turn-of-the-last-century craftsmanship of the metalwork in Dressler’s Viennese-style bar and dining room – exquisite latticework over panels of light and ornate chandeliers, both made by artisan sculptors in Brooklyn – indicates that this place was never intended to be some flash in the pan. (more…)
The National
What’s in a name? The National – not the indie café on the Lower East Side, but the latest endeavor by Geoffrey Zakarian in Midtown – is one of about five places now named “the National” in New York. And in that way, the name says it all: This restaurant seeks to capitalize on the comfortable tiled American bistro trend started by smaller restaurants, package it and remarket it to the Midtown crowd.
The space is pleasant enough. Tile floors plus wood-paneled walls plus flattering lighting create a nice environment for an after-work dinner or a quick bite if you’re staying in the Benjamin hotel above. The National is definitely an improvement on existing options in the area. But about halfway through the meal you might notice a certain emptiness – there’s no art on the walls, no sense of a singular personality behind the design or food, and a focus-grouped feel to the final product. (more…)
Posted in American, food, French, Midtown East, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, New York
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Lunch: Peels
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Let’s face it: this neighborhood really doesn’t need another trendy restaurant. The Bowery between Houston and Astor Place is already home to restaurants by Daniel Boulud, Scott Conant and Keith McNally. Nevertheless, the partners behind trendy Freeman’s, Taavo Somer and William Tigertt, picked the Bowery for their new restaurant Peels, and what it became is something of a surprise: a neighborhood restaurant, the only thing the neighborhood lacked.
Perhaps because New Yorkers are constantly subjected to an onslaught of modernity – HD video advertising in Times Square, PDA menus – we’re suckers for old timey things like tin ceilings and Amish beards on hipsters. Step into Peels and you feel as if you’re stepping into a diner-like place that existed out on a rural route 50 years ago. There’s a wooden counter perfect for lunching alone and a communal table in the center. The walls and yes, tin ceilings are whitewashed and inlaid with mirrors, and a whole roomy third of the downstairs is allocated to a coffee bar, so you don’t have to battle your neighbors for the urns of half and half and retro aluminum sugar bowls. (more…)
The Lambs Club
A friend of ours once had a suitor we nicknamed “Dinner in Midtown.” That was what he asked her to do on their first date, and from then on, the prognosis for the relationship was not good. Could anything be less sexy, less likely to lead to a romantic liaison than dinner in Midtown? No.
Little has happened in past ten years of the New York dining scene to change this. Midtown restaurants can be interesting, full of power brokers and good food, or they can be utterly lame, full of frat-guy brokers and Houston’s-esque steakhouse fare. But in either case Midtown restaurants have been consistently unsexy – until now. (more…)
Posted in food, Midtown West, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged American food, bars, Eric Wilson, fireplaces, foie gras, New York
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Riverpark
The first hurtle in getting to Tom Colicchio’s new restaurant Riverpark is convincing your taxi driver that it exists. Ours had to be coaxed to drive through the imposing metal gates on First Avenue towards the river, perhaps unconvinced he wasn’t heading right into the maw of Bellevue. When we arrived, we found a brand new industrial park where the wind whipped in from the river. The metal and glass building lobby had all the warmth of the set of Gattica, and beyond that, the hangar-sized, spotlit restaurant itself wasn’t much cozier.
Alas, we were in for another episode of When Bad Spaces Happen to Good Chefs. Though we came in rooting for ‘wichcraft chef Sisha Ortuzar, who has plied us all these years with delicious sandwiches of roast pork with jalapenos and white anchovies with warm egg, the jarringly chilly space did not put us at ease. One of the reasons we chose this restaurant for dinner with out-of-town friends was for the view, though this is visible mainly from the bar area, and the Williamsburg waterfront isn’t all that impressive. But it’s good to have at least one geographical reference, or you might wonder, as D. said, “Are we in Dallas?” (more…)
Posted in American, food, Murray Hill, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, New York
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The Fat Radish
When fashion people heartily endorse a restaurant, one’s suspicions are immediately aroused. Do they serve actual food there? Or merely a substance one can push around the plate while admiring the crowd, as at Indochine or Monkey Bar? This is a tribe that espouses the joy of cooking with sugar substitutes and raw cacao nibs, a tribe that professes to actually like the taste of kombucha. So when the praise started rolling in for new, vegetal-themed British restaurant the Fat Radish, we had to go experience it for ourselves.
Rest assured, the “fat” in name is merely playful, so you can still wear your skinny jeans here. Owned by the people behind Silkstone, a catering company that caters largely to – surprise! – the fashion industry, the Fat Radish skews towards British food. Not like the Breslin, however: there’s nary a pig’s foot in sight. Instead the array of greens and legumes on the menu speaks to the fact that that the Brits were into this organic, locally-sourced thing way before we were. Look at Prince Charles and his cute little vegetable garden! (more…)
Posted in British, food, Lower East Side, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, duck, New York, vegetarian restaurants
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Brindle Room
Though it’s a noble goal, authenticity isn’t always what you want when seeking out imported regional specialties. Take saucissons bourguignons. Few New Yorkers would likely complain that there isn’t enough tripe in French sausages here. Just pork and beef is fine, thanks.
Likewise, though authentic poutine has its devotees in Quebec, you might not want to recreate it exactly. Fast food fries slathered in mystery-meat gravy and piled with heaps of cheese that’s a cross between regular and cottage cheese is an acquired taste, even in a drunken state at 1am – which is generally when poutine is consumed in Montreal, under the fluorescent lights of a take-out shop. (more…)
Posted in American, East Village, food, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, beef, beer, burgers, duck, New York, steak tartare
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The Hurricane Club
CLOSED
New York is having a Polynesian moment. New places like Painkiller, Lani Kai, and the Hurricane Club are channeling Hawaii and Bora Bora with exotic rum drinks that should keep summer going long into the dark days of winter. But don’t say “tiki”: The Hurricane Club is more like the tiki bar and restaurant as viewed through the sophisticated retro lens of Mad Men, with a wink and a nod, drinks in coconuts sipped under a crystal chandelier.
On a recent night there, Marie Fromage and I eyed the elaborate mise just for cocktails: fresh flowers, parasols, pineapple wedges and all sorts of other tropical accoutrements were lined up on the bar. The drinks that resulted were deftly mixed and not too sweet. The #12, Chef Richard Leach’s MF Mai Tai ($12), had a distinctly Asian twist with lychee and mandarin with Hurricane Rum as the base. (more…)
Kin Shop
Good food is a lot like good clothing in one regard: Surround yourself with enough cheap copies, and you’ll forget what the real thing is like. Such has been the case for Thai food in the Village over the past 10 years. While Korean and Japanese restaurants have gone up and up in quality and stature, authentic Thai places like Holy Basil went on the decline as numerous “Asian fusion” concept restaurants piled in, angling for customers (NYU students) by plying them with the lowest common denominator of the nation’s cuisine (sugar).
All it takes is one look at the menu outside the door to divine that Kin Shop, the new restaurant by Perilla chef Harold Dieterle, is not for students. Several of the shared entree dishes are in the $20+ range, and the green-tinged decor beyond the plate glass windows is sophisticated if casual. We went in hoping to rediscover the true draw of Thai cuisine: a complex mix of flavors and spice, spice, spice. (more…)
Posted in food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Thai, West Village
Tagged bars, duck, Harold Dieterle, New York
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Coinstot Vino
On the same pedestrian walkway is the relatively undiscovered Coinstot Vino, another bar au vins with small plates. This one has a much bigger selection of tapas, most priced under 10€. A creamy, delicious burrata (6€) arrived with a salad sprinkled with pickled red pepper, giving just the right contrast to the dish.
Strong Place
You wouldn’t think Court Street would need another bar – until the right one opens, and it feels like it should have been there all along. The latest addition to the neighborhood, Strong Place, is a grown-up bar with a staggering 24 beers on tap and 14 more available by the bottle. The vintage industrial interior with its exposed brick walls, wooden bar and science lab stools feels like Brooklyn’s answer to the Otherroom in the West Village.
There’s a spacious restaurant here too, and though we didn’t have time to delve into the entire menu, the deviled eggs served as the perfect bar snack. Creamy and fresh with a kick at the finish, these eggs doubled down on spice with cayenne on top and peppery olive oil underneath.
Posted in American, Boerum Hill, food, New York restaurants, restaurants
Tagged bars, beer, Brooklyn
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Seersucker
Have you ever discovered a new favorite place only to see it splashed all over the New York Times several days later? That’s what happened to us with not one but two places last week. Our only hope is that the Brooklyn location will keep (some of) the masses from swarming them.
Place number one is Seersucker, a refined little Southern restaurant that recently opened on Smith Street in Carroll Gardens. Behind an unassuming exterior with stained glass and plants in the window, the inside has a modern farmhouse feel, with polished exposed brick walls, plain wooden tables, lab stools at the bar and Wilco on the stereo. (more…)
Posted in American, Carroll Gardens, food, New York restaurants, restaurants, Southern
Tagged bars, Brooklyn, New York
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