Gray and Grizzled Food Fan

Lo bueno:

1) Warmth of service at the door: Maitre d’  projects relaxation and comfort.  He’s happy to see you, but not desperately so, even if, or especially if, you’re  not a regular.

2) Bar space up front: Bar stools and lounge seating are comfortable and sophisticated touches, especially in the gastro-desert around Asphalt Green. 

3) Abbreviated wine list: This is not Veritas, nor does it purport to be.  Ten reds and ten whites allow for a quick and easy selection, just what you want at a neighborhood non-destination dinner.  Of course, one would think the list  would be updated often enough that they wouldn’t be out of the Malbec on the menu. 

4) Easy reservation, full house:  No problem calling for  a table at the last minute, but feels full when you get there.  You’ll sense that you made a good choice.

5) Comforting cuisine: Easy, recognizable dishes generally well prepared. Menu leans towards chops and well sourced poultry.  Good hearty sides are perfect for a restaurant that lives and thrives on regular local business. 

Lo malo y lo feo:

1) Wine service: Bottles opened at room temperature, literally.  Reds are straight off the bar rack and could easily stand to drop 15 degrees.

2) Wine markup: Far better restaurants across Manhattan offer less expensive options and a lower markup.  If you’re going to serve Smoking Loon, Yellowtail with a different bird, then at least don’t mark it up 3 times, and serve it warm.  And if you don’t have my selection, please offer a better wine at the same price.  Better yet, reprint your wine list.  It can’t cost that much to keep it up to date. 

3) Unabbreviated specials list: Offering the same number of specials as regular menu items renders the term “special” meaningless and suggests an inability to make hard choices.  This is not a Tasting Room or Cookshop style market driven menu, so please edit the menu down.    

4) Waiter logorrhea: The servers spend way too much unprompted time explaining dishes.  Elio’s does a similar soliloquy, but at least the heavy accents make for a vague form of cultural tourism.  Here it’s a time warp to mid-50’s Continental restaurants.  And please don’t pronounce four out of five dishes your favorites.  It would be more efficient to tell me what you don’t like, which happened to be what I wanted to order.

5) Skirt steak isn’t your best chop:If it’s your house specialty (not to be confused with the house specials), it should taste special.  Mine was electro-broiled and accompanied by bland potatoes.   With flavorless cauliflower soup, this would have made for a perfect meal to grind up for an infant or infantile picky eater.   I felt like I was eating with a badly congested nose.

Conclusion:  Worth it for the neighborhood diners.  Beats Sharz for quality, but at a price.  Much that’s good, but too-high Zagat ratings reflect typical lowered standards applied to this area.  Restaurants don’t live up to overly glowing reviews.  They live down to them.   

This entry was posted on December 20, 2006 at 11:32 pm and is filed under Yorkville. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.