Cyrus

10/5/2009
Healdsburg, CA: 29 North Street - (707) 433-3311
Rating (1-10): 10
Price Range: Break the Bank

"A True All-Star"
There are some restaurants that are perhaps beyond this writer's humble critiquing abilities. Cyrus is one of them. This restaurant performs at a high level both in the cooking and the service delivery - with great attention to detail, warmth and friendliness, and utterly delicious food. Be prepared for a top notch type dining experience: swarms of dining room attendants, small, delicately put together plates, formal wear, and carts of lots of expensive stuff (cheese, champagne, desserts, etc). Though this type of dining experience is inevitably a bit stiff, this is a place where it's relatively comfortable. If you want a lavish, pampered experience, Cyrus is a strong recommendation for a date, family dinner, or other type of celebration - at a price tag that you can adjust to your liking.

At Cyrus you have a choice between a couple of tasting menus - the 8-course and the 5-course, and a vegetarian option for both. There are also wine pairing options and cheese courses as well as a champagne cart to kick off the meal. What's nice is that you're not under pressure to do one thing or the other. The server was refreshingly honest, not pushy in any way. When I asked about the vegetarian menu, he said, "Well, it will be delicious, but for me? I need meat." I totally agreed and I'm glad he helped me right my ship. Our dinner selection was the 5-course non-vegetarian menu - except we were also allowed to substitute a corresponding vegetarian selection if we so pleased. In essence, you can craft your own tasting menu if you want; this is a highly accommodating feature that allows guests to explore the menu.

The meal begins with some canapes and amuse bouches which alone could be a great appetizer. The peach, greens, and cream does exactly what it's meant to do: get your hunger going, excite the taste buds and your anticipation. What follows is a parade of entirely distinct courses, each with highly concentrated flavors and pleasing texture. The portions look small but turn out to be just right: They leave you wanting a little bit more but doesn't allow you to get full or sick of it at any point. Our plates ranged from lightly seared hamachi to stuffed fried squash blossoms filled with incredible eggplant and garlic filling to fatty roasted duck to intense mushroom risotto to big fat scallops to lamb tenderloin to foie gras to desserts plates with at least 5 components including, if you're lucky, chocolate filled doughnuts. Pulling off a menu of this breadth and complexity is more difficult to execute that almost any one of the guests can comprehend. But like a superior athlete, they just make it look easy.

What you see in these dishes are meticulously constructed components presented with flare and disciplined creativity. It's not the silly kind of "throw everything you can at it and hope for the best" style creativity - far from it. A large scallop is seared and sits in a pool of ginger-shiso broth, adding a unique feature to what my otherwise be a commoditized dish; it's also one of several items with a distinctly Japanese accent. The mushrooms risotto packs an intense mushroom-ness as such a risotto should, but with strong chive foam and subtle chestnut flavor. The roasted duck is just simply delicious and comes with a slightly greasy but homey potato cake. The lamb roulade is perfectly cooked disks of pink lamb meat which is nice to look at; oddly there was one flavor to every part of this dish which was overwhelmingly strong and heavyhanded - like a dish with too much cumin. Overall, for a lineup of dishes of this complexity, these were artfully plated and impressively executed.

The service is very well-informed, professional, courteous, and warm. They're also the size of a small army and all over every detail. What's nice is that, even though this is a markedly upscale experience, the restaurant retains the warmth and down to Earth vibe of the wine country. As a party on the younger side, we were treated accordingly, with a little more of a relaxed feel without being condescending. We never felt pressure. We were allowed to have no worries and nothing out of our immediate grasp.

All of this comes at a bit over $100, which is about as low as you can go for an experience like this and expect the restaurant to stay in business. In any line of work, I can appreciate commitment to excellence and performance to match. A number rating on a place like Cyrus is essentially meaningless - I loved it and to me, it was an all-star performance. There's no need to focus on a rank or number or grade or star or comparison on it. Doing so would only distract from the enjoyment of it. At the end of your meal, you have a selection of as many house made treats as you want - chocolates, caramels, lollipops and a brownie packaged with a gold label that reads: "Tomorrow??" That's probably the right call since you're going to be really full but also because you'll maybe be able to savor the experience for another day.

Ad Hoc

10/4/2009
Yountville, CA: 6476 Washington St - (707) 944-2487
Rating (1-10): 9
Price: High End

"Luxury in Sweatpants"
Ad Hoc is an inviting, casual neighborhood spot serving ultra-satisfying four-course set meals using French Laundry ingredients at about $50 per person. If that doesn't sound awesome, I don't know what does. This is a restaurant everyone can love, many can afford (at least on vacation), and all would appreciate. Ad Hoc can serve as your casual meal or your fancy meal - regardless it might be some of the best food you will have in the Napa Valley.

Comfort is the name of the game here and it begins with the entry to the restaurant, which features a nice open space, free of tables or any other obstacles to crowd you as you wait. You might grab a drink at the bar or just wait near the front, but you won't feel cramped, rushed, or harried either way. The decor is clean and simple, and the hard wood colors give a nice warm feeling to the room. The service is also pleasant and friendly, clearly trained to keep things laid-back; this is high class food but they remove the pretense from the experience. Unfortunately, the server was a bit strong on the upsell, which always rubs me the wrong way, as if to make us feel bad about not spending more.

Ad Hoc offers a set menu that changes each night except certain nights, which are designated for a special dish, such as Monday night fried chicken. On our visit, the offering was a salad with ham, pasta with cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, and beef short ribs, a cheese course and a banana split for dessert. The salad was probably the best I have ever had - certainly the most memorable. Maybe it's just me but I find it difficult to describe the taste of leaves. But these were crisp and bursting with flavor that one might associate with green things. Thin sliced ham was the perfect salty complement to the acidic dressing, which lightly coated the lettuce. This was a rare case where the dressing supported the greens, and not the other way around.

The main course featured large cubes of beef short ribs along with flat pasta served in a saute pan with roasted vegetables and crispy, salty bread crumbs over top. Often, slow-cooked meats are cooked to a consistency that renders a knife unnecessary because the meat is pulverized to shreds by extensive exposure to low heat; it's good, no doubt, but you're losing a little bit of the character and flavor of the ingredient by trying to make it so tender. For example, pulled pork often tastes more like the sauce that it's mixed in rather than actual pork. At Ad Hoc, the beef short rib tastes very much like beef and maybe as a result, they don't even need sauce. The consistency is distinctly meaty and they don't in fact just melt in your mouth; though they were tender and gave way with ease to fork and knife, they retained a bit of toughness as a reminder that this, afterall, meat not pudding.

The accompanying pasta was covered thinly in oil but had no real sauce. Again, this allowed for the ingredients to be showcased and not masked: the tart sweetness of the tomatoes; the earthy cauliflower; the crunch of the breadcrumbs (which were a salty substitute for cheese, as one astute observer remarked); and of course the pasta along with the chunks of beef. The dish was extremely good, satisfying, healthy, unfussy, period.

Many in the area mentioned that Ad Hoc was their favorite restaurant. I'd be hard pressed to find a better value and I'd consider it a matter of course to include this in at least one Napa visit.

Commerce

4/18/2009
West Village: 50 Commerce St (near Barrow St) - (212) 524-2301
Price Range: High End
Rating (1-10): 7

Commerce is a moderately fancy but casual and boisterous restaurant serving high quality New American-y dishes in an unassuming part of the West Village. It’s a lively and noisy spot which might not be the best area for quiet conversation, but good for an environment where you feel comfortable to laugh as loud as you want. The food is rich and strongly seasoned while the service is friendly though a bit harried thanks to the packed bar and generally intense atmosphere.

One thing to appreciate at any restaurant is an effort to put out good bread. I’ve always been of the belief that the bread itself has the potential to be the best thing on the table. The quality of the bread also indicates a lot of things about the restaurant: soul, genuine interest in serving quality product no matter the P+L, and genuine interest in the customer experience. After all, the bread is a free offering and one that only serves to take up space in a stomach that might otherwise be fed something with a price tag. In other words, there’s not a whole lot in it for the restaurant. At Commerce, they offer a selection of various types of breads – from rolls to pretzel bread to more traditional wheat bread to more crusty selections. It’s all quite good and does in fact leave a lasting impression. The bread basket peaks the curiosity and deserves a tip of the cap.

In contrast, the steak tartare appetizer, which was recommended by the server, was below average. Obviously the point of this dish (raw beef) is to taste the essence of the meat flavor in its unadulterated form. But the overabundant quenelle of cream and chives atop the chopped meat serve to mask, rather than accentuate, the flavor of the meat. I can still vividly remember the meat flavor of the steak tartare that I ate at a market restaurant in southern France 7 years ago. But at Commerce, I struggled to get any sense of the taste of the tartare even as I was eating it – in fact, I could barely tell what was beef and what was other stuff by looking at it.

In the entrees, the chicken for two, which has received rave reviews and has become something of a signature dish of the restaurant, does much better. The dish takes 45 minutes from when you order it, so be ready for a wait. This isn’t highlighted as drawback however – in fact, there’s something nice about the idea that a restaurant insists on doing things the right, if inefficient, way – kind of like taking time to create real paella, rather than serving rice pilaf in 10 minutes.

The chicken is cooked whole, presented, and then butchered into two halves and plated. The meat is deliciously moist, and nicely seasoned with herbs (and I’ve read, truffles but wasn’t entirely sure) under a crispy skin. It’s a very rich, salty dish as the chicken is accompanied by pureed potato (somewhat like a thinner version of mashed potatoes), a brown sauce, and small pieces of croutons (the stuffing) soaked in juices of foie gras. It’s a neat idea to have the ultra-flavorful croutons accompany each bite of meat – providing a boost where it’s difficult for seasoning to reach deep in the body of the chicken. The dish is well-thought out, carefully executed, decadent and sleep-inducing satisfying.

Despite the success of the chicken dish and my recommendation to get it, at $28 per head, it’s pushing the limits of what is essentially half of a roast chicken with some fancy fixins. As good as it is, I would hesitate to call it the best game (no pun intended) in town, and certainly not dollar for dollar. A whole Peruvian rotisserie chicken, for example, can be found for under $10 and it can deliver just as much, if not more flavor, juiciness, and seasoning. The moral of the story is that, while you will get high quality, you should be prepared for high prices as well on the menu at Commerce.

The interior is very pleasing but it’s hard to put a finger on exactly why. Although I don’t often make restaurant comparisons, Commerce has the feel of a place designed by the masterful Kevin McNally – like a Schiller’s or Pravda. The yellowish lighting of the restaurant, simple but inviting décor, and shiny tile walls give it a feel like a bistro feel from a bygone era. It’s a fun vibe - kind of like that of a dinner party after everyone's gotten drunk - and it makes you feel part of a scene. The servers, runners and bussers do well to dip and dodge and maintain a friendly, communicative demeanor in the somewhat frenetic environment and crowded bar area. It’s not ultra attentive service but it’s not that kind of place either. The mostly financy, yuppied out, decidedly undiverse clientele here don’t seem to mind as long as drinks are in hand and the food is there. No one’s here for 4 stars, they’re here to loosen up, even if they do happen to be wearing a blazer.

In the end, I’m not convinced that this restaurant offers the best value but I’d bet that you will be satisfied with the meal – which may just make it worth it. Commerce suits the bill for a cozy but very lively, slightly off the beaten path restaurant tucked in the backstreets of a well-trodden area. Drinks are good, the mood is vibrant bordering on party, menu selection is appetizing, and the execution of the food is very solid, but it comes at a West Village premium.

Craft

2/25/2008
Gramercy: 43 E. 19th St (between Broadway and Park) - (212) 780-0880
Price: High End
Rating (1-10): 8

Given the hype that has built up around Craft and its chef/owner Tom Colicchio, Craft invites a higher level of critique than most other restaurants. At the same time, with the prices being what they are – around a $100 tab for a full meal – high expectations are a given. And when you jump into the TV limelight like Colicchio has, it is understood that his flagship restaurant is gonna be under greater scrutiny.

That said, Craft is a restaurant that would please almost anyone. The atmosphere is a relaxed, casual kind of formal with a balance between sleek, clean design and homey warmth – perhaps echoes of Colicchio’s experiences at Gramercy Tavern. Classic rock and more modern hits bump at a comfortable volume and the dishes are presented in the middle of the table to promote a “family-style” meal. All of the food was at least good and came in pleasing portions – and the desserts were a particularly nice end to the meal. However, the service was an obvious weakness and lacked the soul and spirit of both the surroundings and the food. If you can get past an attentive but potentially way-overserious server, then Craft is a fun place where you’ll be treated to satisfying dishes and feel comfortable and cool in the process.

The food is strongly seasoned (pretty heavy on the salt) and representative of Colicchio’s locavore, simple style. It takes a good deal of culinary intelligence and understanding to know the kind of subtle twists to make uncomplicated dishes outstanding, memorable, and unique. Colicchio has made a career out of his ability to do this and commands respect the food world over, for this reason. Our sweet potato agnolotti was a great example of this – sweet potato filled pockets of pasta in a butter sauce. The server described the pasta as pillows, and this turned out to be an excellent description of this incredibly soft, fluffy pasta. The sweetness of the potato was controlled perfectly and a crispy, salty starch crusted on top the pasta added exactly the desired kick of salt.

If you’ve got a spending appetite, the guinea hen ravioli with black truffle is an extravagant appetizer featuring two large ravioli, served in a jus, and topped with a healthy serving of truffle shavings. The gamey flavor of the hen takes precedence over the black truffle, which nonetheless adds an irreplaceable earthy aroma and subtle irreplaceable flavor. Is it luxurious? Yes, and I think that’s why you should order it; it just doesn’t get that much more lavish. Sometimes it’s important to just let go and say, ‘when in Rome…’

The best value items were the vegetable sides – for example, the hen of the woods mushrooms sides: a surprisingly generous portion of crispy, yet meaty pan-fried mushrooms. It seems like this quantity (one order was enough for two) and quality of these raw mushrooms alone would cost this much in a store. I’m not complaining.

Sweetbreads entrée is served as one giant, crusty, pan-fried piece in a huckleberry jus. There’s something satisfying about seeing the sweetbread presented in this way, like a fat steak; often, sweetbreads are served as a bunch of smaller nuggets, but the big hunk of sweetbread just looks bolder, gutsier (no pun intended). The sweetbread is juicy and tasty although the huckleberry sauce is somewhat flavorless. The diver scallops entrée features a few large, seared scallops which works fine but not anything to write home about. The shallot butter sauce is nice but otherwise, Colicchio doesn't give you a particularly compelling reason to orde it. Scallops are scallops and the most important part is the sourcing. These were good enough but something the home cook could execute these just as well. Meh.

Desserts at Craft were utterly satisfying. The blood orange sorbet hits with powerful essence of the fruit, strong tartness, and controlled sweetness. I loved this sorbet. Chocolate soufflé isn’t a new creation of course, but you kind of have to tip your hat when a dish of this delicacy is nailed. Consistency is so important to a soufflé and in this case, it was perfect: fluffy, soft and substantive and not foamy or 99% air. Again, this dessert is not oversugared, and so you get the true flavor of the chocolate.

The service at the table was for me, the lowlight of the experience. The servers were well-dressed, quick, attentive, and extremely knowledgeable about the menu – but unflinchingly rigid and borderline unfriendly. Our main server explained that the “paradigm” of ordering off the Craft menu was for each person to get an appetizer, main course, and side dish. Not only was his guidance somewhat obvious, “paradigm” seems like a word better saved for discussions about the political world order or solutions to the financial crisis. Our servers just looked like they weren’t having any fun. Hamsters in a wheel. One of our servers did not crack a smile once, which wasn’t so much rude as it was strange. Fortunately, they’re good at doing their jobs efficiently and invisibly, so you don’t have to get pulled down into their own personal gulag. I’d chalk this up to an aberration because a restaurant of this quality would never last in New York if the service and the atmosphere were always so badly mismatched.


As of late, Tom Colicchio has become a superstar in the culinary world thanks to the hit tv show TopChef and his ever expanding restaurant empire, which includes a steakhouses (CraftSteak), high-end sandwich restaurants (‘Wichcraft), and several Crafts across the country. I certainly can’t blame him for cashing in on his fame. He has paid his dues and worked hard to get to the top of this brutal industry. At the same time, you wonder if the individual establishments take a little bit of a hit in quality; dilution of the top chef’s attention usually does that.

Since I did not go to Craft in its early days, I can’t say whethere there has been a decline. But it seems that Craft, despite its strengths, doesn’t have the excitement or energy of a restaurant gunning for #1 in NYC. It’s good but not great and there are newer restaurants of a similar style that I’m more excited about. Granted, these are restaurants that might owe their existence to Colicchio and the culinary trends that he helped foster: well-seasoned, seasonal, ultra-fresh food; simple but difficult cooking; and emphasis on a few elemental ingredients in each dish. But I can’t help feeling that Craft is no longer on the vanguard of this movement; rather, it is a solid restaurant amongst a growing crowd. Colicchio has expanded into other business lines and avenues to promote his food philosophy; Craft has reached cruising altitude, which most any restaurant would certainly envy.

At Craft, you can reliably expect great food in a fun place – service not withstanding. I'd give it a try but at this price level, there's a lot of places in town to try too.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns

10/19/2008
Poncatino Hills, NY: 630 Bedford Rd - (914) 366-9600
Price: Break the Bank
Rating (1-10): 10


I think the most appropriate word to describe Blue Hill at Stone Barns is ‘idyllic.’ It says something when, even after waiting on your reservation for two months at an already hyped restaurant, it utterly blows you away. If you have the opportunity and a bit of a budget, go - and make it an all-day affair. You’ll enjoy fresh varieties of food you never knew existed, presented delicately, playfully, and tastefully. You’ll learn about what you’re eating and where it comes from. You’ll be coddled by an army of smiling, earnest, and comfortably formal staff. You’ll see where everything comes from as you stroll the sprawling countryside before or after your meal. For a day, you’ll feel like a Rockefeller.

Of course, Blue Hill at Stone Barns has the unfair advantage of being situated on a picturesque upstate Rockefeller upstate. For a chef, for a restaurant, I could not imagine a more ideal setup: a fully functional farm to source natural, seasonal, and ridiculously local food, well-financed backers, a campus of beautifully preserved old stone structures, and a food-aware clientele. But they seem to have found the perfect chef for this set up: Dan Barber, who has become something of a hero within the local, natural food movement. Chef Barber splits his time between his restaurant in the Village and this restaurant and despite his rising national celebrity, he’s actually here, in the kitchen.

True to its mission, all parts of Blue Hill at Stone Barns work in rhythm with nature, a restaurant within a broader ecosystem. No wonder Chef Barber is so admired in the eat fresh, eat local Alice Waters movement. You don’t need signs telling you it’s “All Natural” or “100% Organic” or “Certified Free Range.”

That’s all a given. The restaurant fits so seamlessly into the farm, and follows and maximizes the environment it’s in. Somehow, being here brings a calm over you, some kind of Update New York Zen.

There are many wonderful restaurants in NYC with the same food philosophy as Stone Barns, but you just can’t get a truly living-off-the-land kind of experience in the Village, not even at Blue Hill’s NYC outpost itself. One server offered to go pick tea leaves to make tea for a nearby table. Kind of says it all.







It’s almost intimidating to walk into a place with such a depth of knowledge about the production and preparations of food and ingredients (in fact, it’s a learning institution than runs tours and educational programs for children and various groups). But it’s not in a snobby way, it’s just what they do and love.

For brunch, Blue Hill offers a tasting menu of several courses that aren’t laid out on the menu. Instead, the server asks some questions to gauge your preferences, eating restrictions, and adventurousness. And then the menu shifts, so what one table gets will probably differ from what the next table gets. It’s flexible, personable, and fun.

Our first dish was a roasted eggplant broth mixed with various wild mushrooms, a deeply yellow, creamy poached egg, and a type of spinach. The mushrooms are the main feature – large, earthy chunks in a savory, slightly acidic yellow broth. Next up, freshwater, smoked eel in a Manhattan-style chowder with miniature cubed vegetables – carrot, celery, garlic, potato, maybe more, in a bright orange tomato broth. The veggies are crunchy and slightly sweet, and the eel, which is caught in northeastern streams, is a bit tough because at this time the eel are spawning, working hard, getting tougher. It’s a smoky, gamey, and oddly appealing.

A pork plate followed, with braised pork belly glistening with fat, pork sausage that reminds you how meat is supposed to taste, roasted mini apple (who knew?), apple puree, pork jus, and fresh collard green leaves. This is a pork lover’s dream but – and this is a small matter - a tad too much sweetness from the apple. On the next plate sat a fat chunk of braised lamb’s neck with jus, a squash blossom, and an assortment of shell beans – rich, salty almost corned beef flavor, layered with fat. The dish is wonderful to look at. But our (only) criticism was the choice of fat-laden braised meat dishes in two consecutive courses, which is a bit heavy.

For dessert, we got three plates for two people: a play on strawberry shortcake with mini strawberries, citrus, cream between two blinis, and vanilla bean ice cream and yogurt on the side; pumpkin and chocolate cake with a righteous piece of pumpkin, and ice cream; and an apple dessert layered with meringue and ginger ice cream on the side. This is some of the best dessert I’ve ever had with elements that blend beautifully together. The strawberry and the apple desserts were my favorites.









We enjoyed the meal along with several cups of tasty Brazilian bean coffee over the course of three swift but careless, leisurely hours. Blue Hill service is impeccable and friendly, and it seems like the staff flash a warm smile whenever they pass by your table. They clearly love the food and the mission here, and are happy to discuss the backstory of where it all came from, who is responsible for cultivating it, etc. It’s ‘you can do no wrong,’ bend over backwards, ‘no request is unreasonable’ kind of service. Their attention to detail and conversational manner add to a brand of hospitality befitting of the atmosphere. (And one thing I noticed – no ice in the water! Ice often makes water too cold and also clumsy to drink. Here, they don’t pour ice in your glass, a novel, smart idea.)

The entire estate is tastefully decorated with clean lines and modern furnishings while retaining the rustic outdoor feel. We sat in a banquette that looks out across the rest of the dining room which is surrounded by windows that stream in sunlight and surrounding scenery. The dining room features high ceilings, exposed buttresses, and great people watching as well as food spying on other tables. It’s comfortable and classy, clean and efficient. You want to be here. All told: the cost per person was $77. By any standard, this is more than fair.

After our meal, we took a kitchen tour, saw the herb garden, and the wandered surprisingly freely around the grounds and adjacent state park. You want to see where the pork comes from? Go check out the pigs. Beef? Cows. Arugula? Greenhouse. Chicken? Chickens. Honey? Bee farm. You get the idea.

Maybe it's the whole idea of going to Stone Barns and being in this setting that predisposes a visitor to being utterly taken by this place. That may be why I walked away with almost no thought to how it could have been better. One thing is clear: Chef Barber’s life is not bad. During our post-meal exploration of the Stone Barns grounds, he jogged by us down a winding path with fall foliage colors in the background – probably catching a breath of fresh air before heading back to his culinary playground to plan what items to showcase at dinner. You should really see it for yourself.

Walter's Cafe

7/18/2008
Portland, Maine: 15 Exchange St - (207) 871 -9258

Price: Mid-Range

Rating (1-10): 6

Walter's Cafe is an enjoyable dining experience set in a nice space in the heart of the port area of Portland, Maine. The food is ambitious but is hit or miss, the wine list is good, and the service is decent. All in all, it's not bad but it's not great. You should go here for the ambiance and the steak, but several of the dishes were disappointing.

Steer clear of the caesar salad which was unremarkable and simply a head of romaine on a plate with some caesar dressing and cherry tomatoes. Zero points for ingenuity on a barely passing caesar. I would also not recommend the lobster pasta or the mushroom pasta, both of which come with a delicious sounding description but end up being somewhat boring. The ingredients - lobster and wild mushrooms respectively - sound amazing and then come out and are kind of ho-hum, maybe not the best usage (for example, I'd rather just have the lobster in the shell with butter and lemon).

The star here is the steak and I would definitely go back just for that. It comes with a stilton butter, which is very nice and adds that strong salty flavor. Also on the plate is sauce bordelaise, which is fine and doesn't hurt, but it's more just along for the ride. The meat is incredibly tender and delicious. I was savoring every bite and wish there was another. It has been a while since I've had a steak this good in a restaurant, and fortunately, it's not at steakhouse prices.

Walter's Cafe is a pretty good restaurant and it might suit your fancy but it's not a place that left a particularly strong impression or elicits a strong recommendation from me. Unless you're talking about the steak, which blew my mind.

Cafe Gray

6/19/2008
Midtown: Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center
Price: Break the Bank
Rating (1-10): 9

A few thoughts, since this restaurant no longer exists. I went here with a friend during its last week before close to try the spring tasting menu, Gray Kunz's "greatest hits." For some restaurant go-ers, upper upper end, white tablecloth dining is unappealing as it stinks of elitism, discomfort, stuffiness, and severe cash loss. But when you enter a restaurant like this, with such warm and detailed-oriented service, it's hard not to appreciate the level of effort that goes into running an ambitious restaurant: this is great hospitality. As in any line of work, there should be people working this hard, investing as much effort, and trying to be as good as possible at what they do.

There are of course some more rigid etiquette rules in a place like this, but I'm very impressed with places that are classy yet comfortable. This is what Cafe Gray was. Multiple people are at your beck and call, making it seem as if there are no inconveniences at all. You're made to feel ok asking for anything, and they'll try very hard to find a way to accommodate you. The cooks personally deliver the plates to your table from the open kitchen. It's partly service, partly show and you're the priority. At the end of the night, one of the managers gave us a tour of the restaurant and kitchen, which overlooks Columbus Circle and Central Park - a restaurant view that's hard to top. It's expensive no doubt, so you should almost expect these things for the price tag, but it's nice to see when the restaurant delivers, because such meals can last a lifetime - and the memory can be of a value that cannot be captured in monetary terms.

The decor was actually a bit strange and seemed to be from a bygone decade; glitzy but too much brown, and in need of a refresher. But hey, it's a small gripe - I am no interior decorator, after all - and more to the point: the food, which was generally French-based but with lots of Asian twists (particularly Southeast Asian) was declicious and interesting. Not all of it was great but most, if not all, were memorable.

The mushroom fricasse risotto was the top dish - al dente risotto with incredibly deep mushroom flavor, garlic, and truffle oil. The essence of mushroom in this dish was awesome. One of Kunz's signature dishes is a coconut encrusted red snapper atop crab and green papaya, surrounded by a green curry sauce. It's good but overhyped - the meat was very juicy and tender but lacked dynamic seasoning and the crust was neither crusty nor coconutty. The best part, however, was the crab and papaya - which complement each others' sweetness and freshness surprisingly well. The braised short ribs course was a generous portion, served with delicious soft grits (and I usually can't stand grits) and mustard sauce. The meat was tangy and softened to a no-knife-needed consistency. It hits the spot for a slow cooked meat glutton like me, but I'd prefer if there were fewer flavors and more muted tanginess/sweetness (also, the presentation was a bit bizarre, not all that subtle or good looking). This was followed by a chilled lemongrass soup with yogurt lime sorbet and candied pistachios: refreshing, sweet and light after a lot of hot food, and the crunchy pistachios worked great with the flavor of the cold soup. The dessert, a hazelnut souffle and cardamom ice cream, was well-crafted but too sweet. But by that point, I was already at a level of happiness where I just didn't care and ate it anyway. Sometimes you just gotta be decadent.

It's unfortunate that Cafe Gray has closed. There were talented cooks and dedicated people working there and I hope that they find a good next step in their careers.

Market Table

2/17/2008
West Village: 54 Carmine (and Bedford) - (212) 255-2100
Price: Mid-Range
Rating (1-10): 7

The quick and dirty:
Market Table offers a sophisticated yet comfy and unstuffy atmosphere with the food to match. The point of this place isn’t to hit you over the head with dazzlingly complicated cooking, décor, or service; instead Market Table makes small twists on the food here and there, but stays simple and refined – and the return is high quality. It’s not food to impress; it’s food done right, and that should impress.

The menu is small and the dishes are straightforward – a carefully selected handful of ingredients in each dish, cooked to maximize their own essence. This is a sophisticated and challenging kind of cooking that lets food be itself.

I had the seared halibut on a bed of home fries and rock shrimp (interesting combo – despite what I say in the paragraph above, I’m not sure yet how they tie) and caramelized onion. It tasted good - crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside - but as fish at restaurants often does, it left me feeling like I could have prepared the dish at home. There was no special sauce, no special spice, just good salt and pepper seasoning. The bed it sat on was oversalted and the peculiar rock shrimp/potato combo was in the end not much different from good home fries at brunch. But in retrospect, I blame my selection, not the restaurant. It’s just not what I wanted but it’s exactly what I ordered, save the extra salt. If I had to do it again, I’d get the blood orange salad appetizer and the burger, the strip steak or the braised lamb shank.

The service was fine and friendly, but nothing extraordinary. At the same time, this is meant to be a casual atmosphere, so as long as the plates are cleared, the cups are filled, the bread is there, and the server can answer some questions on the menu, I’m cool with that.


Full Review:
Market Table, a combo effort of chefs of the Mermaid Inn and the Little Owl, offers a sophisticated yet comfy and unstuffy atmosphere with the food to match. The place isn’t woefully original – the interior feels familiar, feels like it has been done before. The theme is a small grocery/deli connected to the restaurant, I suppose, so that you can see and buy what they use. Big deal. I think Blue Hill, in the same neighborhood, sourcing from a farm upstate is a much cooler concept.

But there’s something to be said of a place that doesn’t try too hard to be something it’s not, and likewise to make its food something it’s not. The point of this place isn’t to hit you over the head with dazzlingly complicated cooking, décor, or service; instead Market Table makes small twists on the food here and there, but stays simple and refined, close to the style of its owners – and the return is high quality. It’s not food to impress; it’s food done right, and that should impress.

The menu is small (7 entrees) and I had no problem with that – the last thing I want is a place that claims to do steak, sushi, burritos, and falafel. Besides, if the menu was any longer, it would only have made it more stressful to choose from all the delicious sounding plates.

The dishes are similar to the Little Owl’s in their simplicity – a carefully selected handful of ingredients in each dish, cooked to maximize their own essence. In my mind, this is the most sophisticated and challenging kind of cooking – the kind that lets food be itself. It shows discipline and a real understanding of taste. It’s often easier to mask the core ingredients of a dish with 12 additional vegetables, some bright yellow mango and 47 spicy spices – think Emeril Live. If you make the food sufficiently unrecognizable and the flavors sufficiently confusing, then you might get the benefit of the doubt that it’s actually good. Thankfully, Market Table does not lean on that crutch.

I had the seared halibut. Below it sat home fries and rock shrimp (interesting combo – despite what I say in the paragraph above, I’m not sure yet how they tie) and caramelized onion. It tasted good - crispy on the outside, tender and juicy on the inside - but as fish at restaurants often does, it left me feeling like I could have prepared the dish at home. There was no special sauce, no special spice, just good salt and pepper seasoning. The bed it sat on was oversalted and the peculiar rock shrimp/potato combo was in the end not much different from good home fries at brunch. But in retrospect, I blame my selection, not the restaurant. It’s just not what I wanted but it’s exactly what I ordered, save the extra salt.

I have no doubt that given another chance, I’d do a better job ordering something I really want and that Market Table would deliver a very nice meal. Based on my surveillance of other tables, I would get the blood orange salad appetizer and the burger, the strip steak or the braised lamb shank. Maybe I’ll just get all of them.

The service was fine and friendly, but nothing extraordinary. It’s a missed opportunity for a restaurant when its service doesn’t add a little character to the place. At the same time, this is meant to be a casual atmosphere, so as long as the plates are cleared, the cups are filled, the bread is there, and the server can answer some questions on the menu, well I’m cool with that.

The West Village has become riddled with a slew of regrettable, cheap restaurants and bars of the tourist-trap, Caliente Cab Co variety. Of course, there’s still a laundry list of great places, from low to high price. But it never hurts to see one more for the good guys.