Sneakeater

Absolutely!

I want to emphasize, though, that the level of cooking at Jovia -- the technical execution -- is very high. Everything is extremely well-prepared. As I said, it's only because I'm familiar with DeChellis's other work that I expected more.

As you all know, Jovia is a new Upper East Side Restaurant run by the people who run Zoe dowtown, with the kitchen under Josh DeChellis, who cooks at Sumile downtown. Sumile is one of my very favorite NYC restaurants. I've always wondered why it isn't a place that everybody always talks about and returns to. Its Japanese-French cuisine is by far my favorite fusion food ever -- the only modern fusion cuisine I've ever liked without reservation, in fact (unless Claude Troisgros's French-Brazilian fusion at CT counts). Every meal I've had there (and I've had many) has had at least one dish that astonished me, and virtually no dishes that I thought didn't work at all. So obviously I was curious to see what DeChellis would do with a more "normal" cuisine, like the Italian-inflected American he's cooking at Jovia. It's good, sometimes very good. But it's not a patch on the magical Sumile. The physical plant is very pleasing. The restaurant is in a townhouse. The first floor is a bar, backed by the open kitchen. The second floor has a front and a back dining room. Usually, in that set-up, the back dining room is sort of a forgotten step-sister, but this one looked very nice. (I was lucky enough to be seated by a second-floor window in the front, however.) The decor is posh without being overbearing. The cocktail menu was reportedly concocted with the aid of Dale DeGroff. There's no mention of him on it. My cocktail -- gin with tonic water, orange bitters, and other stuff -- was excellent. The food: it's hearty -- the last thing you could say about Sumile -- but it isn't simple. Everything is subtley tweaked. But unlike at Sumile (where the food is unsubtley tweaked), this doesn 't create combinations of ingredients, flavors, and techniques that you've never dreamed of before. Rather, it's sort of like food you've had before, but different. Except for the dessert, which was pretty ordinary, I didn't have anything I didn't like a lot. But I wondered whether all the obvious effort that went into each dish was worth it. It ws good, very good -- but was it that much better than the straightforward version would have been? My appetizer actually banished thoughts like that for a while. It was their famous terrine of duck and suckling pig, served with a pickly marmalade. This was simply delicious food, not vastly different from other similar things I've had, but not exactly like any of them, either -- and extremely good in itself. This is the kind of dish where the best thing to say about it is, if you like this sort of thing, you'll love this. My entree was a roast squab with a date glaze and served with a quail's egg. Note that this was NOT the layered squab and quail, cooked sou vide, that the restaurant was serving when it opened. The squab was excellently cooked, and the glaze suited it perfectly. But, good as this was, it wasn't materially better than any other good squab dish available around town. The chunk I grabbed of my companion's cod was lovely -- but not better than what you'd get at Oceana. Because portions are small, sides are a necessity (at least if you're a pig like me). We had the truffled polenta, which (let's face it) couldn't help but be great if it was competently cooked. And it was. We also had sunchokes sauteed (I guess) with onions (I think), which were fine. Dessert was a disappointment. I had the lemon pound cake with limoncello sabayon. It was just dull. (A dessert glass of late harvest viogner -- I didn't know there WAS such a thing -- was extraordinary, though. Something to search for for home.) If I didn't know DeChellis's work from Sumile, I'd probably think of Jovia as yet another very good UES restaurant. Since I do know his work, though, Jovia has to count as a slight disappointment. I'll be back, I have no doubt. But I'll be back to Sumile first.

Hey hey I'm working on it. Reviews take work.

Since my experience at Jovia tonight was pretty congruent with my expectations, I should set forth my expectations first, so you can discount my observations to the extent they were influenced by them. I would have expected a fairly high-end restaurant to be mildly adversely affected by the strike. Jovia is on East 64th St. between Park and Lexington. That means it's in an incredibly affluent residential neighborhood, convenient to a central business district. Jovia is laid out on two levels. The first floor is a bar. The second floor holds the dining rooms. At 7 PM on a Wednesday (much more the Wednesday before Christmas), you'd expect the bar to be packed, the way the bar is at the similarly located DavidBurke&Donatella. When I arrived at Jovia at 7 PM tonight, though, the bar was almost empty. I waited for my companion and we had our drinks. We stayed at the bar for about a half hour. The bar was still fairly empty when we went upstairs. When we arrived at our table at about 7:30 PM, the dining rooms were sparsely populated. Not empty, not even nearly empty, but sparse. By the time we left about two hours later, however, the dining rooms were pretty much full. So this wasn't the kind of jam-packed crowd you might expect on the Wednesday before Christmas. But it was hardly anything that could be called bad business, either. (Of course, I've never been to Jovia before. It's hard to know what impact Frank Bruni's lukewarm review in the Times has had on business there, irrespective of any transit problems.) I'd hazard a guess that restaurants in residential neighborhoods to which they are appropriate, like Jovia on the Upper East Side or the more modest restaurants near where I live, will do fine in the strike. I think that restaurants that either are not in residential neighborhoods, or are in residential neighborhoods to which they are not appropriate ("appropriate" isn't the best word, but I'm thinking of places like WD-50 or THOR on the Lower East Side, which I can't believe attract many locals), will be more at risk. I continue to think that the strike will have a mildly negative effect on restaurants as a whole. (Regrettably, I was sufficiently interested in my conversation with my companion that I neglected to eavesdrop on conversations at adjoining tables to try to ascertain whether our fellow diners came from the neighborhood or had travelled to eat there.) If anyone cares, I hung out at my friend's apartment for a while after dinner. I had no problem getting a cab from the Upper East Side to Brooklyn at about 11:30 PM.

As I said, that restaurant was no more or less crowded than on most other Tuesdays I've eaten there. I know that's still anecdotal -- only one restaurant -- but at least it's based on firsthand experience rather than guesswork about what might happen. Of course, now that I've said that, Jovia will probably be empty tonight. As I promised, I'll give you a report. (PS -- I know we're not supposed to be arguing about this, but I think you disprove your own point when you talk about people being without power and water. THAT'S a disaster. This inconvenience is simply incomparable to that, and I think it does the victims of real disasters a disservice to suggest it is comparable. Nobody's going without any essentials here. Nobody's supermarket is unstocked, for example -- nor will they be. That just isn't what this experience is like. Did NYC request disaster relief from the federal government after either of the last two transit strikes? Wouldn't it have been considered laughable if it did?)

I guess I should say this, though. The reason I had dinner at Tulcinga del Valle last night is that it immediately became apparent to me, when I left work at about 7, that it would be much easier to find a cab home to Brooklyn later on in the night -- at 7 p.m., it didn't look like any cabs were going to be willing to leave the island. And, in fact, it was easier later on; I had no trouble getting home after dinner. So at least one NYC restaurant gained business last night on account of the strike. Of course, I realize that it was dependent on someone's not freaking out and getting hysterical about how disasterous his situation was.

FWIW, I had no trouble finding a cab after dinner last night. (I went to Tulcinga del Valle, which was no more or less crowded than usual on a Tuesday night.) Maybe I was just lucky, who knows? I'll find out after dinner tonight.

Most of this discussion is nuts. It's speculation. Tell you what. I'm going to Jovia tonight. I'll tell you later what it looked like inside there at dinnertime. (Of course, since I've never been there before, I have no basis for comparison.)

For $29 they probably play WQXR instead of a rock station while they're driving your car around the block.

http://villagevoice.com/nyclife/0552,lalli,71240,15.html

That cocktail with gin & lavender at Employees Only (still thinking)

A rye & quince cocktail at WD-50. (still thinking)

FWIW, I've been bugging Gilt for cancellations, and they've been (nicely: they've changed the phone staff from Le Cirque) telling me there's still nothing available. (Although, Gilt aside, I've gotta believe the strike is hurting high-end restaurants.)

Unfortunately, there may not be a difference.

I like Reserva de la Familia A LOT. I don't know where either your girlfriend or you live, but I've found it easy to find in Mexico City, and not hard to find in New York City.

Landmarc

Maybe I'm just exceptionally lucky, but I've never had a problem getting a reservation there even a few days in advance.

They have that at the bar, too. It's a pretty good experience.

Yes.

Yeah. "Del Valle" (there's actually a first word in the name, before "Del Valle", which begins with "T" and which I can't tell you) is a really good place. It serves Pueblan/Oaxacan (or maybe it's just Pueblan -- I don't know enough to know) cuisine, based on moles that are made fresh every morning. The moles are incredibly good. I'd give this place a high recommendation. Before you call a restaurant like this "amazing", however, you have to put it in context. The prices are very low (the good part) and, as a consequence, the quality of the meats they use is very low (the bad part). Of course, the low quality of the meats is masked, to an extent, by the fabulous moles. Nevertheless, while I'd say "'T' del Valle" serves non pareil cheap food, you shouldn't go in there expecting anything more than that.

At least she didn't refer to the chef solely as "Paul".

Note that that article was written by reporter Florence Fabricant, NOT by principal reviewer Frank Bruni.

It's good. But when I finally went there earlier this year to try it (after intending to for something like 25 years but never getting around to it), I got so hung up on how it didn't taste like mutton that I didn't get full enjoyment from it. Sorta shows why it's better to tell the truth than not to.

Oh, I get it: http://www.nypost.com/food/58454.htm Anyone able to compare the old and new menus?