Nathan

That's funny - I went on Wednesday and it was eggs. guess they changed it. ← I was there on Wednesday! and it even says grits on the menu....

confit was served with Anson Mills grits. no egg. no sriracha bottle at my table.

yeah, it is a bit more formal. prices and the culinary style are similar...I'd say that it's more the FOH that's different.

that smoked duck breast dish is amazing. really the epitome of a Momofuku dish. it just works. the smoked whitefish was blah. I love baby bok choy and I love bacon. there's a dish combining both, plus ricecakes...what could be the problem? unbelievably, it was boring. the broth needed kick...maybe even just a healthy dose of sriracha. duck confit with grits was very good. hearty and simple. not a fan of grits but these were well-seasoned. off-menu special of foie over bitter greens with lychee was an excellent dish. simple in conception, well executed. good ingredients.

the menu nods more toward Italy though. same very reasonable prices. same competent, simple cooking with well-thought-out dishes. if it was in my hood I'd eat here all the time. it's not and it's not quite ambitious enough to warrant the trip.

I agree that the neighborhood curve is more about bringing one-stars to two. this review was for real. he really likes the place. so does everyone else who's been. I've been highly skeptical of the idea of a really good restaurant on the UWS...but we might actually have one.

decent to good. Brunch is pretty fun. the Monday Room is better.

actually, Saturday night in a Manhattan restaurant is often one of the least likely times for a chef to be in the house...but nevertheless, it's still no excuse for the inconsistency...

actually, that differentiates Bar Boulud rather well from Adour....Bar Boulud does....

neither Bryant's nor At Random (with decor so cheesy it was cool) (both of which were excellent closer places) were anything like a good cocktail bar.

practically every NY restaurant (from the medium-end and up) has a bar and serves wine....

CraftBar has that kind of space and might be cheap enough. I can't think of anything else (maybe somewhere in Chinatown? maybe Becco?) with that kind of space that would come even close to accomodating that pricepoint.

every car service i've ever called wants an address, not a cross street, which is bad for me because i rarely know what address i'm at, and there are fewer and fewer matchbooks on the bar these days to help you sort it out. ← hmm...that's different. I'd imagine they're using a navigation system and that's why... I have the same problem with finding things on google maps on my iPhone.

fwiw, no one uses addresses in NY....always give the cross-streets. edit for clarification: you provide the cross streets to the cab driver (or to anyone you're guiding to a location) and then use the address only to find the specific building on the block)

I thought I heard that Vintage had opened an actual wine bar with food ("WineBar"), maybe next door to the store, a couple of years ago. ← oh...no clue then...

Vintage is just a tasting room for Long Island wines...

I don't recall much about the Craftbar list. good call on I Trulli's Enoteca. not a fan of Flute.

well, it's certainly possible to dispute whether either of Adour or Bar Boulud are wine bars...(I'm not taking a side...yet). places like Centro Vinoteca (if you're sitting downstairs and ordering piccolini) or Otto. and Monday Room has much more adventurous food than traditional wine bars. traditional wine bars of note: Ino, Inoteca, the unnamed wine bar below Peasant, Gottino, Bar Jamon, the Blue Ribbon Wine Bar, 8th Street Cellar, Noble Wine Bar, Wined Up, The Room/Another Room/The Other Room (they don't serve food though). then there's a variety of neigborhood favorites which are charming but don't have very good lists...places like Epistrophy or Turks & Frogs.

I assume you have been told that servers are charged money to serve you? (the IRS assumes that they are tipped and will dock them for presumed underreporting)...its kind of like not tipping strippers....they actually pay to perform for you. the next time someone complains about Florida and NY restaurants adding gratuity on to the bill for European customers (which some do)...I'll merely point them to this thread. one defense of the tipping system is simply in comparing the service between midrange restaurants in the U.S. and Europe. on average, it's significantly better in the U.S. than in Western Europe...(Eastern Europe is, of course, another ball game). obviously, this doesn't apply to restaurants with Michelin star type aspirations.

the razor clams added nothing. the mayo with the pork belly was basically just more of the same. pork belly needs contrast to that unctuous fat. (I think it would work better when split among several people. as the third dish of a meal for one...it was just way too much)

that mushroom salad is just great. the pork belly ssam isn't.

I've never heard or seen of an Il Laboratorio gelateria in Rome. the NY place by that name was founded by a guy who used to work at Ciao Bella (a lesser NY gelateria). in Rome the most highly regarded places are usually San Crispino or Giolitti. never heard of one named Il Laboratorio. anyway, if you want gelato, the best in NY is at Otto.

The bottled kind that you squeeze and white stuff comes out of. Er, Japanese mayo. Too sweet for me. regards, trillium ← no, what I meant was...which menu items were using it? ← a lot of the non-local momofuku/chang press discusses his use of kewpie mayo.. ← right...in a couple dishes...most of which aren't even on the menu anymore.

The bottled kind that you squeeze and white stuff comes out of. Er, Japanese mayo. Too sweet for me. regards, trillium ← no, what I meant was...which menu items were using it?

its all explained right here: http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/archives/013509.html on second thoughts, I want to party with them...