Charm Thai Rocks the House

Charm Thai on 95th and Amsterdam has to be one of the best restaurants I've eaten at in quite some time. It's an incredibly good deal for the quality of the food (at least based on the three dishes we tried). The decor's pleasantly kooky, with interesting inverted wok-looking lights, multicolored striped tile, various decorative plates hung on one wall, a random shield-looking thing imbedded in another. It's pleasant and comfortable, not glitzy.
Went tonight (Thursday night) at around 9:30 p.m. and the place was 75% full. We ordered the mixed appetizers for one ($6 or $7), which came with half a spring roll, fried wrapped shrimp, a curry puff, and I think one other thing that I'm forgetting. Everything was simple and delicious, crisp and non-greasy. The curry puff pastry was wonderfully flaky, without the slightest hint of sogginess. And all of the fillings were made with impeccably high quality ingredients. I usually don't like shrimp, but this one was so fresh, juicy and tender that even I enjoyed it. I know the same appetizers are available pretty much everywhere, but this is the best execution I've come across in Manhattan.
I had the tamarind duck for my main and my SO had the ped kee mao. My tamarind duck ($15) was flawless--genuinely *stunning*. The duck was perfectly juicy on the inside, with the outer skin roasted to a lovely crisp, served with strips of fried (but non-greasy) eggplant. All of this was topped with a perfectly balanced (not too sweet, not too sour) tamarind sauce. Ped kee mao ($8) came with a generous amount of fresh, high quality veggies, all highly flavorful, and nice chunks of chicken.
The restaurant hasn't gotten its liquor license, yet, but conveniently, there's a liquor store right across the street, manned by a very nice older gent. I bought a Chateau Ste. Michelle Reisling to go with our meal.
The food isn't blistering hot, but otherwise, the dishes we tried were authentic. I highly recommend it, Chowhounds. Go before it gets "discovered" and the chef/owner starts charging twice as much for the food!

May 03, 2007

Vinyl's Second Hit

My SO and I checked out the new Vinyl location on the UWS, tonight (Columbus between 84th and 85th, east side of the st.). It's an aesthetic space, cutely kitsch with lava lamps and Michael Jackson dolls, much larger than the location in Hell's Kitchen. We split the Asian chicken salad as an appetizer, I had the St. Louis style barbecued ribs, and he had the turkey meatloaf.

I wasn't a huge fan of the salad, since there wasn't much lettuce and there were, by my standards, too much chicken and crispy rice noodles. But I know many people who would've loved it--including my SO, who still has a rocky relationship with vegetables. I think he was thrilled to get off easy with the salad this time.

The ribs, however, were surprisingly good, tender and meaty--much to my surprise. It's hard to find good Southern style ribs in NYC; who knew they'd be lurking in a Thai/American diner? The barbecue sauce didn't stand out, but wow, the meat was slow-cooked to perfection. Fries that came with it were excellent: thin, perfectly crisp on the outside with soft innards (my fave style of fries), and perfectly salted. The side of cole slaw was forgettable.

My SO's turkey meatloaf was alright, considering that it was turkey meatloaf. It was sort of salisbury steak-ish, but the peppery gravy did a good job of distracting me from the freakish texture of the meat. The mashed potatoes that came with the meatloaf was brilliant. They were made from scratch, not from a powder, and were wonderfully buttery and creamy. The side of kale was undercooked--as in it hadn't been cooked for six hours.

My only real complaint was with our cocktails. They were expensive, small and bad, made with the lowest available grades of spirits and liqueurs. Next time, I'll go with something from the soda fountain.

May 13, 2007

August Report: Delicious, but...

Is it just me or is the "roasted" winter root salad actually raw, not really roasted, and the pot de creme actually just mousse in a ramekin?

Otherwise, though, August was very enjoyable. Service was gracious and friendly, without being intrusive (wee bit pushy on wine refills, but not so heavy-handed as to be obnoxious), and the ambience was romantic--just dim enough to see your date and your food + a perfect volume level for good conversation. The food--hearty, old-school European--was pretty well executed, though not brilliant. We had the raclette and the above-mentioned non-roasted winter root salad to start; the pasta with baccala and pork belly with kumquat with as our main courses; and finally, the chocolate pot de creme for dessert. This, with three glasses of wine (gruner, beaujolais, and a German red whose name I can't remember), came to be about $128, tax included. Not too shoddy.

March 11, 2007

WD-50 Review

It was with some trepidation that I dragged my SO to WD-50 last Saturday (St. Patrick's Day): Was he—the sort who finds fish heads in miso soup “weird” and frightening—going to run out the door screaming when confronted with Wylie Dufresne’s weirder than weird concoctions? Was he going to walk out of the two-hour meal haggard and seeking the first pizza counter he could find?
To be fair, the SO is not the most egregiously anti-adventurous eater who ever lived. (That honor would belong to his father.) But it tells you something about his palate that his two favorite childhood foods were plain macaroni and sliced, cold hot dogs straight out of the plastic package—which he still loves. Passionately. We don’t even bother with the “Vienna sausages” or “salchichones” euphemisms.

Luckily for both of us, the descriptions of the nine-course tasting menu gave little away. They were either coyly non-descriptive or contained words we didn’t understand and therefore couldn’t fear. For instance, the first course was a dish of Kokotyas, smoked cashews, celery, risotto broth. We had no idea what Kokotyas are, and still don’t, actually, though they appeared to be some sort of bivalve.

The food was thoughtful and sensory on so many different levels. The smoky, warm, liquid Kokotyas were a wonderful way to begin the meal, awakening every tastebud on the tongue and bringing them to sharp attention. The smokiness of the cashews, mellow celery broth and soft, warm goodness of the Kokotyas slid down in an effortless, friendly, non-threatening glide. It was strange only because we’d never had anything like it before, but it was also surprisingly welcoming. And anyway, it only lasted for one bite, so the risks were low. Between that and the accompanying cava (Cava Avinyo Brut NV Reserva), he began to relax.

The macaroons were not the sticky sweet, dense monstrosities commonly associated with the word at all. WD’s reinterpretation was light as air, more meringue than macaroon, but with the subtlest of coconut scents. Part Chinese / Thai shrimp crisp—the kind that expand from a disk to an airy crisp thing in hot oil—and part coconut air, the macaroons were enormously fun. They came three to a plate—two eyeballs and a mouth—in halved spheres with a daub of ever so slightly bitter tarragon sauce to hold the halves together, and another daub to keep the eyeballs from rolling around. The sensation of them melting on the tongue mirrored the bubbly wash of cava.

The foie gras in the round was actually one of the SO’s favorites in part because he couldn’t tell what parts were actually foie gras. It suggested cereal, a cocoa-pebble mixture of pale yellow foie gras, dark chocolate, an herbaceous bright green sauce, and a medium brown balsamic vinegar. The foie gras itself was bland and tasteless, without the buttery goodness that defines this ingredient. But it proved a nice foil to the chocolate and balsamic and worked especially well with the wine pairing (Riesling Kabinett ‘Saarburger Rausch’ Zilliken 1994 from Mosel, Germany).

The fourth dish, sweetbreads, cabbage-kaffir, and water chestnuts, was a great—even brilliant—play on texture. The sweetbreads (two pieces) were fried to a lovely golden crisp, but non-greasy, and delectably soft and juicy on the inside, served with tiny slivers of fried water chestnuts. The water chestnuts were an interesting play on crispiness, crisply fried on the outside, but still crisply vegetal on the inside. The cabbage kefir was a nice condiment whose mild green taste cut nicely through the fried items. This was served with Santorini Domaine Sigalas, a simple, flat, but easy-drinking Greek wine. The blandness of the wine actually offered a nice background to the fried, the crispy, and the green.

The corned duck, rye crisp, purple mustard and horseradish cream was probably the most traditional and recognizable of the plates, a nod to our St. Patrick’s Day dinner. Ingredients were very good, the duck perfectly tender, the mustard and horseradish a good jolt for tastebuds that were becoming somnolent. The Santorini was again the accompanying wine. I thought it worked less well, here, since the mustard actually brought out the slight, but present, sour and bitter elements of the wine in an unpleasant way.

The next course was miso soup with sesame noodles, which has been amply described elsewhere, since it is one of the most consistently available offerings on the menu. Verdict: interesting and—I’m still making up my mind about it, but I think—good. The broth was made from high quality ingredients, the sesame tofu “noodles,” a liquid you squeeze from a small bottle into the broth itself, where it hardens immediately, was an interesting tender/solid texture. The sesame was mute. This went with a Poulsard Stephane Tissot 2004, which I did not much like.

By this time, I’d begun to lose track of the dishes since, sadly, the wine was starting to go to my head, But I do remember that the next dish, langoustine, popcorn, hibiscus and endive was surprising and interesting for the popcorn. It came as a creamy, corny sauce. Delicious. Langoustine were slightly—by seconds—overcooked, but their flavor was still good and the ingredients fresh. Same wine as the previous course.

The final savory dish of the meal was squab breast, beets, sorrel, and coconut pebbles. By this point, I was pretty full already, so was very disappointed I couldn’t finish the dish. The squab was very tender and pleasantly dark, a nice, well-thought-out foil to the coconut pebbles, which looked like white truffles (of the chocolate sort, not the mushroom sort) and had the same, lovely, cream, and slightly crumbly consistency of truffles. This came with a slightly surprising choice of Shiraz, “Billi Billi” Mount Langi Ghiran 2003, a full bodied, fruity, and spicy Australian wine with—was I imagining this?—a dab of pineapple. I’ve never heard of pineapple scents in a red wine before, so hallucination or wine-impaired taste buds could be to blame.

Thankfully, they gave us a brief break before our four dessert courses: black currant parfait with green tea and elderflower; soft chocolate, avocado, licorice and lime; coffee cake, ricotta, maraschino and chicory ice cream; and finally, juniper marshmallow with lime sugar.

The second dessert course was my favorite, its strong but complementary flavors kick starting the tasting process all over again. To a lesser extent, the green tea from the first dessert course, in the form of matcha, served a similar function. Its mild astringency worked nicely with the sweetness of the elderberry and elderflower. The coffee cake I don’t remember well, since it was somewhat overshadowed by its proximate neighbors. The last course of juniper marshmallows was a final call to attention. They were a simple concoction of large marshmallows rolled in green sugar (another St. Patrick’s Day nod) and were not unlike Peeps.

I’ve always thought that sweet wine with sweet dessert was a bit of overkill, but the wines would have been wonderful on their own: Albana Passito “Frutto Proibito” Fattoria Paradiso 2003 with the chocolate and Commanderia St. John NV with the coffee cake.

Overall, WD-50 certainly makes one rethink one's own, comparatively paltry efforts at dinner. There isn’t much on that menu I could really attempt, much less attempt successfully, but for a while, at least, I’m inspired to play around in my own kitchen much more. It’s a profoundly thought provoking place to dine. Even my hot-dog and macaroni eating SO could appreciate it.

March 23, 2007

Spiga

Spiga is one of those mildly popular, but underrated restaurants hidden on a quiet, otherwise residential side street on the Upper West Side. Since I’ve never had trouble making last-minute reservations at any time I like and am nowhere close to being a VIP, it seems to me that Spiga is nowhere near as popular as it ought to be given the quality of the kitchen. Though the service can be somewhat flighty, the kitchen, without question, has its shit together, despite sometimes heavy-handed salt shaking.

Every course we had was deeply flavorful and made with high quality ingredients. We started with appetizers of creamy cow’s milk cheese with tomato tartar and spicy gelatin (burrata con tartara di pomodori e gelantina de peporoncino) and a half-portion of the pumpkin ravioli with parmesan cheese and basalmic vinegar sauce (ravioli di zucca con parmigiano reggiano e aceto balsamico) listed as a primi. The cheese was a lovely, tender, and mild-yet-flavorful cousin of the more commonplace mozzarella, so simply beautiful that it makes one wonder why the practice of serving it isn’t more widely replicated. There was no readily comprehensible evidence of spicy gelatin—which I found disappointing, having imagined a quivering, black pepper Jello cup—though the mound of orange stuff, which didn’t look or feel or taste at all gelatinous, had some heat, I think from red pepper. Either way, I’m not entirely sure the flavor combination worked with the cheese. There was too little acid and too much salt. The small spoonful of creamy, deep orange served with the dish, evidently the tomato tartar, was too sweet and a little reminiscent of ketchup. But both were easily avoidable. I focused my efforts on the already-perfect cheese, lightly drizzled with high quality olive oil.

Though the pasta part of the pasta pumpkin ravioli was a little too tough, either from overcooking or reheating, the innards were fragrant and well-flavored, with a nice hint of nutmeg. The dish had just the right amount of creamy, white sauce and, in contrast with the commonly committed sin of so many American Italian restaurants, was not drowned and overwhelmed by it. I was happy to note that the balsamic vinegar reduction, drizzled attractively overtop and adding color to an otherwise white dish, was an authentic sweet and full-bodied balsamic vinegar, not one of its ubiquitous poorer cousins frequently passed off in the US as being balsamic vinegar.

For main courses, we had the pan roasted breast of duck served over a turnip puree, with apples, dried fruit and chocolate sauce (petto d’anatra con mele, pure di rape, rutta secca e salsa di cioccolato) and the pan roasted pork loin with spicy honey sauce served with braised cabbage, fried cream, and crispy pancetta (filetto di maiale con salsa di miele e peperoncino, verze stufate, crème fritta e pancetta crocante). Both were delightful.

We had a small snafu when the servers brought out the wrong dish for me, but the correct dish for my SO. So as we waited for my order to come through, my SO and I shared his duck. I have to confess to being a sucker for the combination of dark, rich meat and lightly bitter turnip puree, hitting on the same theme often in my own cooking. The chocolate-infused sauce bedding the entire dish brought this classic combination to a new level, however, by highlighting, all at the same time, the dark, rich flavors in the duck and sweetness of the apples and pleasant earthiness of the turnip. The sauce, though understated, brought the entire plate together and united its disparate elements into a coherent message. Apples in the dish came in the form of two, petite, roasted halves, their translucent butter-yellow attractively contrasted against the pale turnip puree. The “dried fruits” in the dish were slivered dried apricots and a lovely topping of what I think were pine nuts and pistachios, again making for a nice color combination (pale green and gold). My sole complaint with this dish was that it was too salty. It’d been brined to achieve its soft-as-butter texture, but too much of a good thing had resulted in deeply-imbedded excess salinity, demoting an otherwise near-perfect nine to a seven-and-a-half or eight.

As tender buttery as it was, the duck was a “tough” act to follow. But to my great surprise, the pork was even better. The meat was cooked exactly to my specifications (medium) and again very tender, served over a large pile of humble, but oh-so-delicious braised cabbage. This was no wilting mush of a cabbage pile, here; it was pleasantly al dente, the natural light sweetness working with the honey sauce rather than being overwhelmed by it. The spice in the honey sauce derived from pepper—generous amounts of freshly ground, cracked black pepper. Its strong flavors did well against the cabbage and pork, and competed in a friendly way with the equally bold, crispy pancetta. The big unknown element of the plate was the fried cream, an unidentifiable round of something breaded, that oozed just slightly when cut, much like warm cream cheese. It was solid, not liquid, and more cheese than cream. It was delicious, but it perched to the side of the cabbage hill like a sideshow, neither here nor there in the flavor notes of the dish. Its primary function is probably to lure diners in search of adventure to an otherwise mundane-ish sounding dish, diners like me who are drawn in to the strange, the unusual, the gluttonous and most especially, the unusually gluttonous (cream? fried?). That is, it was a little gimmicky. Not entirely out of place, not entirely in place… The jury is still out on this one. Grade: 9.5.

For dessert, we had the pear strudel with gorgonzola ice cream and chocolate and rosemary sauce (strudel di pere con gelato al gorgonzola, salsa di cioccolato e rosomarino). As noted above, I like surprises, and the gorgonzola ice cream was certainly a surprise to me, ironically for how true to the original the flavors were. It was no dumbed down version of gorgonzola that resided in this innocuous-looking ball; it was the full monty: loud and pleasantly stinky. It perhaps didn’t work perfectly with the buttery-crusted pear strudel, stuffed generously with raisins and pecans—one thinks first to gentler cheeses like brie or camembert for gentle fruits like pear, even spiced as this one was with cloves and ginger—but it did work for me, if not for the SO.

We had two glasses of poorly matched wine with our meal—poorly matched by our own doing, not the restaurant’s. I thought that a Piedmont red and a spicy Nero D’Avola Chiaramonte Firriato would do well with our entrees, but really the food called for something fruitier and more Cabernet-y than what either wine had to offer. These two glasses and our food came to be a little over $100, excluding the dessert, which the waiter had been nice enough to comp, and tip.

Spiga is, in my book, a far better value than Cesca, the better known destination Italian in the nabe. And it is a cozier, friendlier space, to dine in, too. Food and service are not always perfect, but both are charming and there are enough home runs to keep me coming back for more.

Varietal Review

Varietal

No more mushroom caramel on the menu at Varietal, kids. The menu has been significantly revamped for spring—and it looks like the reviews it’s gotten in the past few months have nudged the restaurant in a slightly different direction. If you loved it the way it was before, you’ll think Varietal has been “dumbed down.” Certainly, the approach now seems more muted and conventional than its reputation would have implied.

We went at a little past eight on a Saturday night and were the only other party in the restaurant. By the time we left at around 10 p.m., the dining room was only half-filled. The front, lounge area had only one group in it, its space-aged ice cream scoop chairs standing sadly empty and turned every which way as though they didn’t know which direction to face. This made me a little sad because there are redeeming things about this restaurant, including the exceptional service (helpful, friendly, and very likeable, but never intrusive), a few good wines by the glass that one would not be able to find elsewhere, and a few high points on the menu. I’m of the school that it just needs a little more work and maybe a more communicable vision.

Appetizers and entrees were not as challenging as I’d hoped or expected. The appetizers were better than the entrees. The sea scallops ($14), a holdover from the old menu, were exceptional: meaty and tender, lightly crusted with hazelnuts, and served with a slightly sweet puree of roasted apple and teeny slices of baby turnips. The baby octopus ($13) were also very tasty, poached in olive oil according to the menu (though they were brown and glazed in something sweet a way that looked more barbecued) and served with sunchokes and something that was described as salsa verde, but tasted more to me like pureed bitter greens.

The less remarkable appetizers included the quail wrapped in prosciutto ($16), with black truffle grits, which come in the shape and size of small shumai dumplings. To my palate, they tasted take turkey meatballs wrapped in bacon. The only distinctive flavor was the prosciutto, but since it’d been taken through too many paces (a steamer? boiler?) with the quail, the prosciutto was soft and rubbery and texturally unpleasant. The quail stuffing was overcooked and tough, strongly reminiscent of deep frozen, microwaved shumai. I would love to see this dish come back roasted or broiled, with crisp prosciutto wrapping tender, lightly browned quail, with a stronger hint of truffles.

Wild arugula salad was unobjectionable, topped with good quality shaved parmesan and balsamic.

My dining companions and I ordered four entrees in all: the Tasmanian trout slow cooked with lentils and mustard seed; pork loin with fava beans, hedgehog mushrooms, and smoked belly; chicken pan roasted with fingerling potatoes, baby spinach and Meyer lemon; grilled strip steak with white beans, onion, and marrow butter.

The steak ($36) was my favorite though the dining companion who had ordered it was miffed that it hadn’t come out bleu (seared on the outside, bloody on the inside) as he’d requested, but medium well done. I was an unintended beneficiary since he gave me a generous chunk. It was still deeply tender, well-brined with just the right mixture of fat and lean, and a nice undercurrent of rosemary. I loved it.

My own entrée, the pork loin ($28), was unremarkable. It was also a little overcooked though perhaps this was my own fault since I wasn’t asked and didn’t ask for a level of doneness. It was also undersauced, the pork medallions not flavorful enough on their own to make the dish, even with the dry-sautéed mushrooms and flavorful fat pork belly. I could understand if this was an intentional move, designed to highlight the unadulterated flavors of each ingredient, but frankly, the pork just come out tasting plain and too dry. Perhaps they just forgot to sauce it on the way out of the kitchen. Fava beans were very fresh, but not enough vegetable to balance out the dish.

I had only a miniscule taste of the chicken ($24) since my SO was guarding it jealously. What I had of it tasted like everyday, weeknight chicken.

The Tasmanian trout ($27) was more pinkly salmon-like than your conventional trout, the mustard seed dressing popping entertainingly with every bite. Slow cooking is an interesting preparation for fish, and not in this case altogether successful. Though the results were still tender, I think some flavor is lost in the process.

We did, of course, save lots of room for dessert. Amongst us, we tackled the salted almond ice cream with brown butter financier, cherries and Pedro Ximenez; the chocolate marquis with red wine sorbet, crème fraiche and four spice; and the polenta cake with milk chocolate, cashew-bourbon praline, and buttermilk.

The chocolate marquis ($12) was brilliant, well matched with the lovely, tart, red-pink sorbet and four spice crème fraiche. It was aesthetically presented, a thick chocolate bar topped with an egg of sorbet on one end, plate drizzled with hot pink something.

My polenta cake ($12) was earthy and homey, evoking by design its humble farmhouse origins. The sweet corn cake remained both moist and pleasantly gritty, well matched to the rich cashews and generous dallop of yogurt-like buttermilk. The smooth milk chocolate was almost an afterthought, intended perhaps to add easy accessibility. It would have been nice on its own, but was sweeter and richer than the rest of the plate, here: a little overwhelming, and unnecessary.

The dining companion who ordered his steak bleu was comped a salted almond ice cream ($9) for his earlier trouble, but unfortunately he did not like this, either. It was, as described, salted ice cream that was a little jarring on its own, but worked well with the buttery financier, denser than the more commonly found light tea cakes. I helpfully ate a good part of the ice cream for him. It reminded me pleasantly of the roasted nuts one can buy at stands all over Manhattan in the autumn and winter months: sweet, salty, and fragrant. I liked it even if no one else at the table did.

I reluctantly passed up a number of interesting wines on the list in favor of a better value wine, a 2005 northern California pinot noir (a little over $50). It was fruity and fragrant, but had a slight tinge of unpleasant bitterness to it. This was, I thought, a good leitmotif for the dinner as a whole: often delicious and highly enjoyable, but with an undeniable off element. I had to come at least once just to figure out what everyone else was talking about, and I think I’ll give it some time to iron out the kinds before I make a special trip back, again. But I do hope it stays around long enough for that.

Apr 01, 2007

Landmarc TWC Review: Welcome to the Nabe

Landmarc TWC is really one of the nicest restaurant-next-doors you could possibly meet. Truth be told, it’s not the most delicious of restaurants or the most posh of restaurants—though it is tasty and attractive enough. But the overall experience is so warm and welcoming (and the prices are so fair) that you will very likely be drawn back here far more frequently than you would, say, to a Per Se or a Masa. It’s a place where you’ll want to stop by for a half bottle of wine (there is a respectable selection) on your way home from work once a week or so—even if you don’t actually live right next door.

(If you’re thinking that by “you,” I really mean “me,” you’re probably right.)

My SO and I went to the Landmarc in the Time Warner Center on Saturday night at 9:30, on the new Landmarc location’s first weekend in the world. The restaurant has a policy of not taking reservations for parties of five or less, and the wait didn’t look promising at all. The entire northwest corner of the Time Warner Center’s third floor was mobbed with people who were apparently waiting to get into Landmarc. The hostess told us the next table wouldn’t be ready for another hour.

My SO and I looked at each other in dismay. We are not a hardy lot when it comes to camping out for a table, having expended all such energies on camping out for Harry Potter novels and concert tickets in our foolhardy youth (last year). But this time we decided to stick around, in part because we knew we’d be able to get happily likkered up on the excellent cocktails at Café Gray, on the same floor of the Time Warner Center. And it was a good thing we did, too, for not fifteen minutes later, when we were but a few sips into our cocktails, the hostess called to tell us our table was ready. We quaffed the rest of our cocktails and scurried back.

Inside, the décor is really lovely. The space is large and cavernous in the best of ways. The high ceilings, an interpretation of 90s-chic Tribeca exposed beans in evenly-cut svelt planks, were brought closer by the dark colors. But though it seats 300 according to Eaters, it didn’t feel like industrial sized dining. From our vantage point in a booth opposite the busy bar, the scale felt positively homey. (That said, I would hate to be the lone diner in such a large space. Long sightlines would make it impossible to hide from the waiters when one is not camouflaged amidst the other diners.)

We had a few moments alone with our menus before our red-cheeked waiter appeared, but once there, he was cheerful, slightly harried, and a perfect balance of friendly and efficient. He didn’t bat an eye when we ordered NY City tap. (Plus five.)

The menu is, I think, identical to Landmarc’s flagship location in Tribeca. To start, we had the foie gras terrine with pickled red onions and the smoked mozzarella and ricotta fritters with fried zucchini sticks and a “spicy red sauce” that looked and tasted like just plain ol’ marinara sauce. The foie gras was okay, probably from a tin, and served at too cold of a temperature to appreciate to full effect the fatty deliciousness that makes this dish, though the onions were lovely, something I could imagine someone’s French grandmother making. Toast was slightly burnt. The fritters were a stepped up version of fried mozzarella sticks and beautifully battered—not greasy at all. I thought they were much better without the strangely supermarkety red sauce.

For our main courses, we had the grilled pork chop with sautéed spinach, caramelized onions and roasted apples (me), and the spaghetti bolognaise (him). The grilled pork chops didn’t really taste or look grilled in the cooking over open flame sense of the word and it came medium done, rather than medium rare, as I’d requested. Even so, it was juicy, perfectly brined, and went very well with the Green Market quality fresh spinach and homey chunks of apples. The SO liked his bolognaise, though I was significantly less thrilled with it. The spaghetti was reconstituted from the dried, boxed stuff. The sauce itself was flavorful enough, nothing to write home about. (To be fair, pasta bolognaise isn’t really my favorite dish to begin with.)

True to its reputation, the new Landmarc continues the tradition of well-priced wines. We had a half bottle of a palatable, though not stellar, gruner veltliner for a very good price (around $15). We would have had more had we not had to quaff our pre-dinner cocktails.

For dessert, we tried the “one of each,” a sampler that comes with a small wedge of lemon tart, rather (over) generously sized ramekin of chocolate mousse and berry cobbler, each, a chocolate éclair, and a crème brulee. I though the crème brulee was the most brilliantly made, in part because it best survived having sat around for a while. Ingredients in all desserts were clearly high quality, but some desserts suffered more than others from the time spent between oven and table. The cobbler topping was, in places, a bit too soggy, and came at room temperature. Similarly, though the ingredients in the lemon tart were fantastic, the crust nicely buttery and the lemon fragrant, the crust was slightly mushy from having been made, probably, the night before, or even the night before that. And the éclair was also a little wet, more fitting for profiterols than for straight-up consumption. Mousse was nice and thick the way I like it, but too sweet of a dark chocolate to really pull off being a Serious Mousse.

Without tip, the total came to just over a hundred for two. It was, in my book, a pretty sweet deal, especially with the generous handful of homemade caramels that came with the check. Food is a little bit more like an accompaniment to the wine than the other way around. But it’s a perfectly fine place to come to unwind after-work, as friendly as your neighborhood put, with a lot better food and nicer décor.

April 22, 2007

Centrico Review: Beauty is Only Skin Deep

Prowling around for good Mexican in the city has become something of a personal crusade full of hope, disappointment, love lost, love found. Whatever it is, Centrico is not a love found.

It is an attractive space, very Tribeca, all wide glass windows, shiny copper topped tables. (If we ate only with our eyes, we’d be in good shape.) Unfortunately, the food itself was mediocre and the service was downright bad.

First off, the food: We had Ancas De Rana (frog legs with cilantro oil and calabacitas con queso) and sopes for appetizers. The calabacitas, sautéed zucchini and tomatoes, was well made, but the frog legs served with them were absolutely bland, tasteless, and devoid of spice, salt, sauce. Sopes lacked that nice toasted crust and were doughy and tough. They also came without what are, to me, two crucial ingredients: tomatoes and onions (did the kitchen run out??). Guacamole and cheese, alone, do not a good sopes make.

Main courses fared better. My braised short ribs in jalisco-style ancho chile broth (Birria En Estilo Jalisco) were properly tender, but the dish was unidimensional in flavor. The meat came in a thinnish broth / sauce—no ancho that I could detect—that could’ve really benefited from being reduced by 1/3. There were two tiny pieces of carrot served with the dish, a half-hearted attempt at vegetable matter. The dish came with what could have at one point been delicious homemade tortillas, but they had been reheated one too many times (previous diners’ leftovers?!) and came to me leathery, hard, and absolutely inedible. I couldn’t flag the waiter down to get another basket.

My SO’s roasted duck breast with spicy red fruit sauce and asparagus (Pato En Manchamanteles) was better. It came medium rare without the waiter having asked his preference (good for me, but he prefers medium). There was no heat whatsoever to the dish, but the fruit sauce was nicely spiced, a good combination of sweet and sour. There were jarred sour cherries in them. Though the four or five small slivers of asparagus were pretty token, they were delicious—probably in part because I was starved for vegetable matter at this point.

Had the food been brilliant, I would have minded the poor service less. As it was, there was little mitigation. Though the restaurant was 1/3 empty at 8 p.m. on a Sunday night and we had reservations, we were told to wait at the bar for almost ten minutes because the host was chatting with a table. Then, when we were finally seated, it took near twenty minutes for someone to take our order. There were lots of staff scampering around, but they seemed to be immersed in their own, comi-tragic water drills, filling water glasses that did not need to be refilled and studiously avoiding anyone’s gaze. The surrounding tables also had difficulty getting attention.

The verdict: food was originally good in concept, but deeply lackluster and indifferent in the execution. It’s not destination dining and not even somewhere I’d come for a fun few drinks (overpriced, small, sugary ones) if I lived in the nabe – because after a while, the slow, indifferent service really just wears you down.