Sneakeater

The sheep are always the LAST to know.

I'm confused. I thought I read somewhere that Alto had pretty much dropped the "Tyrolean" cooking conceit and was serving more straight Italian food. But the venison dish, if nothing else (well, also the squab), seems very Alto Adige-influenced. Were those reports just wrong? Or is it more like they've de-emphasized rather than eliminated?

Hey you forgot to highlight the revelation that the famous mutton chop isn't really mutton. I suspected as much (it didn't TASTE like mutton). Is this something everybody knew but me?

Oops. Confused it with shirako. "Never mind . . . ."

Ummmm, it isn't exactly cod roe, is it?

Sorry, I missed this. This is a great point, and you're absolutely right. I had my meal at Bistro du Vent as a walk-in. I would not think it worth having to reserve far in advance. I never thought to mention it, but my high opinion of my meal took in account the ease of securing it.

BACK TO TOPIC! But of course, the real difference between Bux and me with respect to this restaurant is probably that I was lucky enough to select an appetizer that turned out to be good, whereas he had that terrible pasta.

Finally, let's compare the reception afforded Bistro du Vent to the reception afforded Ici. What people usually say about Ici is, "How nice for that neighborhood to have someplace so good. And I can eat there when I go to BAM." Why is it so different for Bistro du Vent (a clearly superior restaurant, IMO)? One reason, I think, is that people still tend to be patronizing toward places in Brooklyn (as opposed to West Midtown). But probably the main reason is one that Bux adverted to: people seeing Laurent Gras's name might expect a "destination" restaurant, and then downgrade Bistro du Vent when it turns out to be a very good neighborhood place. I think my response to that is, are such expectations really justified? The responses here to Gras's affiliation with this restaurant seemed to be more like, "Why is Laurent Gras wasting his time on a bistro?" Over the past several years, all those nouvelle bistros (or whatever they're called) opened in Paris, run as side-lines by famous chefs. Does anyone expect them to feature anything approaching haute cuisine? Or do they expect (and get) exactly what Bux described the food at Bistro du Vent as being: "what you might expect if a haute cuisine chef were to design a menu attempting to capture the simplicity of bistro cooking in a modern style"?

One other point this discussion brings up is a problem I've always had with the Times's "$25 and Under" column, which I now see I'm subject to as well. It's very hard to moderate praise. When I talk about liking the food at a place like Bistro du Vent, I'm not saying I like it in the same way as I like the food at, say, Le Bernadin -- or even, say, Oceana. Yet, it's hard to come up with a different vocabulary for discussing a place like Bistro du Vent. The result is that when you read favorable "$25 and Under" columns -- or, I suppose, my Bistro du Vent review -- it sort of sounds like the reviewer is saying the food is as good as at a really top place. When what he's really trying to say is that it's very good for what it is. This is problematical, as the descriptions as understood by the reader raise expectations that the food can't meet. But I think the most obvious alternative -- which is being sort of dismissive of the good-but-not-great places the way Bux pretty much was of Bistro du Vent -- ends up undervaluing the lesser places (or at least making them seem much less attractive than they are). I wish there were a way to praise places that are at less than the highest level of excellence that makes all this clear.

On a self-indulgent personal note, of course Bux's point about the impact of lifestyles is correct. On an individual level, as a recently widowed middle-aged male without children, I must be the biggest godsend there is for the New York restaurant industry. Maybe my disinclination to eat alone in my apartment (and to cook for myself) has given me a new appreciation for very-good-but-not-great mid-level places. Bux's point that people might do better to concentrate on a few great meals out rather than a lot of so-called mediocre ones isn't really to the point in cases like mine (which I don't think are that unusual in a city like this).

If this is considered getting off-topic, I apologize to the moderator. You frequently see people saying that they eat in the bottom end and the top end, but avoid the middle, because value is lacking in that segment. I used to say it a lot myself. But I think now that the real truth isn't that value is lacking in the mid-range as a rule, but rather that you have to be especially careful there. Let's do a Frank Bruni-style comparison of two restaurants that are next door to each other. Bistro du Vent and the place next door to it (I think it's called the West Side Cafe). I've actually eaten in the West Side Cafe (if that's what it's called) several times. Solely for reasons of locational convenience. It's a prototypical restaurant that I don't think it's worth it to pay to eat in. The food isn't bad. It isn't even close to bad. But it's so ordinary that there's no way that it's worth paying for (except for the fact that someone other than you cooks it and then cleans the dishes). You do just as well at home. Bistro du Vent is obviously much better than that. It's also more expensive -- but by New York standards not so much so. I think that it's actively exciting to have a mid-range restaurant of that quality in some neighborhood. If you think that West Side Cafe (if that's what it's called) is too easy a target, let's compare Bistro du Vent to some other mid-range restaurants in that area. To name two that I actually like very much, Chimmichurri Grill and Chez Josephine. As much as I like those two places, there's no question at least in my mind that the current Bistro du Vent is significantly better than either of them. I think the point I'm trying to make is that it isn't so easy to find very good mid-range restaurants. So if you find one, it's almost more exciting, in a way (at least to me), than finding a great top-level blow-out place. (I sort of feel the same way about wine. I wouldn't say I enjoy good mid-level bottles better than indisputably great wines. But I certainly am more excited about finding them. Finding a great "grande cru" bottle is easy. Finding an excellent mid-level bottle is hard.)

To enlarge just a bit, I can't speak for others here, but I eat at places like Bistro du Vent a lot more than I eat at places like Gras's Peacock Alley. To me, how much more exciting is the prospect of someone like Gras improving a place like Bistro du Vent than someone opening another super-high-end place that I'll eat in maybe twice a year.

Actually, that encapsulates what I think of this restaurant right now better than I was able to say it. The only apparent difference between you and me is that, to me, that's a REALLY exciting prospect, which I am very glad to have access to. (Especially since it's in a neighborhood in which I frequently find myself.)

(OK OK I know L'Ami Louis and Balthazaar are brasseries . . . .)

Having eaten there last night, I think people should be getting a little more excited about this restaurant under Laurent Gras than they're doing. French bistro food is probably my single favorite type of food. So I was very optimistic when Batali/Bastianich opened a bistro. You'd figure that the team who recreated an earthy, soulful, meat-crazed Roman trattoria in Lupa would be able to come up with some kind of reasonable simulacrum of L'Ami Louis. But the initial Bistro du Vent was just . . . dull. I kept going back there, thinking that I had to like it more than I did, but I didn't. It's hard to put my finger on what was missing, but it wasn't deeply satisfying like Lupa (or like Balthazaar, or like the old Quatorze). It was (here it comes again) dull. I guess that, despite his many gifts, David Pasternak wasn't put on this earth to cook French bistro. The new iteration of Bistro du Vent, under Gras, isn't the earthy basic place you'd have initially expected, either. But the food is excellent. Maybe it's not simple and earthy, but it's simple-ish and even earthy-ish. You don't get the feeling the dishes are unnecessarily fancified. Rather, it seems like a very good chef cooking more simply than usual, but nevertheless at a high level for what the food is. I started with a white bean soup, with garlic, chorizo, and shrimp. If I were making it myself, I'd have put in more garlic -- but then I don't believe in a light hand with garlic. Other than that personal preference, it couldn't be criticized. The main was the really good part, though. A so-called "T-bone of lamb", crusted with parsley and bacon, over a puree of something-or-other. This dish shows what Gras is up to here. It isn't just a simply prepared hunk of meat (not that there's anything wrong with that). It's subtly tweaked. But it's not unduly complicated -- just improved. Easy to eat and like. So this is now a totally praiseworthy place. Not one of the best restaurants in New York, but an excellent upper-midlevel choice. With a menu (and, of course, a wine list) well worth exploring. (If memory serves, the excellent cocktail menu is new.) You might argue that Gras is meant for better things, and ultimately I'm sure he'll return to them. But there's a lot to be said for making this kind of restaurant this good. Rich will want to know that they were playing the Rolling Stones and James Brown in the background.

I'm not gonna say anything's "the best", but I had a really good meal at Centrico recently.

I don't want to turn this into a dumb foodfight, but I don't see how anyone could take a blurb that says, in essence, that the food is so good it overcomes the unattractive room (which he even implies they couldn't help) as being any kind of slam.

Hey, the infamous article specifically addressed that question!

Do you know when their last seating is? And do things tend to thin out around then?

It definitely got worse after Johannes Sanzin left the kitchen, but Bistro St. Marks (St. Marks corner of Flatbush) remains a good place to eat and a very fair value.

It's interesting that this restaurant is often referred to as a "response to the food press" or an attempt by Batali/Bastionich to secure four NYT stars. Cuz the kind of food they appear to be serving, and the kind of retrograde surroundings they appear to have come up with, seem to be the kind of uncreative deliberate throw-backs that neither the food press nor the Times reviewers particularly values. I mean, I'll happily go just about anywhere that has a bolito misto cart. But I wouldn't call the self-concious recreation of a favorite traditional dish like that four-star cooking.

Forgive me if this is repetitive, but I'm still unclear about how easy it is to eat here. Do you have to go expecting that you might have to wait a long time and well might not be able to get a table? Is it, get there at six or else forget about it? (In other word, is this one of those places like the pre-expansion Spotted Pig or Freeman's where you really can't plan to eat at meal times?) Or am I exaggerating how hard it is?

So here are two things I learned about food during this trip. First, I think I learned something about developing a cuisine. Let's take El Naranjo, Izote, and Aguila y Sol as examples. El Naranjo is a development, you might say a refinement, of a particular regional cuisine, the result of the chef's heavy longtime involvement with that cuisine. Izote takes a bunch of regional dishes and tweaks them with "modern" ingredients and techniques. Obviously, the chef can't be "inside" all these cusines the way El Naranjo's chef is inside the particular regional cuisine cooked there. Aguila y Sol doesn't really look to the regions. Rather, it takes certain ingredients and techniques indigenous to the country and mixes them with "foreign" or "modern" ingredients and techniques from elsewhere. But few dishes really approximate any existing regional dishes. They're really trying to create something new. I realize now that I see the El Naranjo and Aguila y Sol approaches as valid, but question the Izote approach. You can't know enough about ALL those different cuisines to develop all of them. You can develop one (El Naranjo) or you can forget regionalism and try to forge what is in effect a new national cuisine (Aguila y Sol). (This is obviously something I'm just thinking through now, so I don't advance all this with total confidence yet. And I realize that things aren't as categorical as I'm stating, and that restaurants like Aguila y Sol don't renounce regional cooking to the extent I seem to be claiming. I still think the thrust of my comments is correct.) The second thing I realized has to do with my approach to eating (and, indeed, other things) while travelling. Previously, I would look for the most "characteristic" places possible. This always led me to visit old-school restaurants serving very traditional cuisine. But at least in thriving contemporary cities, that keeps me away from the places that locals of my approximate socioeconomic class actually ever go to. By my (former) lights, the first place I would eat as a tourist in New York City would be Peter Luger's, the second place would be Keene's Chophouse, and the third place would be the Grand Central Oyster Bar. All decent choices (OK, in PL's case much better than decent), but hardly exhaustive of what this City has to offer. Yet, I would never go to Babbo, Wallse, DB Bistro Moderne, Sumile, Honmura On, or any others of the places I (as a resident) actually frequent. I'd be so interested in having authentic characteristic experiences that I would completely miss out on the kind of experiences actual natives have. In Mexico City, that approach would have kept me from going to Tezka. Even though that's the best food I had in Mexico City (and certainly isn't anything I could have here in New York). But, as I said, I've rethought.

7. Tezka. Tezka is, as far as I know, the only restaurant operated by Juan Mari Arzak beside his legendary place in San Sebastian, Spain. My understanding, however, is that Arzak doesn't serve even as executive chef at Tezka, but rather leaves the kitchen in the hands of a young Basque protege whose name I don't know. So your first question is going to be, is eating at Tezka a mind-boggling experience the way eating at Arzak is? The answer to that is, no. That will lead to your second question, does eating at Tezka approximate the mind-boggling experience of eating at Arzak? The answer to that is, no. Which will lead to your third question, is Tezka an excellent restaurant that one would be eager to revisit? The answer to that is a resounding, yes. Arzak beats Tezka in audacity. Tezka features all sorts of unanticipated combinations of ingredients and technique, whereas Arzak is sort of unanticipated with a bullet. And the food at Tezka is excellent to Arzak's amazing. But here's what they have in common: unlike at (say) WD-50 in New York, the food doesn't seem experimental. Once you start eating, you stop thinking about how new and unique everything is and think only about good and satisfying it is. You don't get the feeling you're on some new frontier of cuisine; it's more like you're eating things that could be classics except that no one happened to think of them before. I have to make a confession now: I can't really remember a single thing I ate at Tezka. I'd like to joke and say that my mind just stopped operating after 10 days of vacation, but what I really think it is, is that everything was so unexpected and different that I have no mental referents (no dishes in my memory files to compare them to), so I have no cues for remembering them. Fish appetizer, venison main, what was dessert again? It was all superlative. (I do have to say that the venison, just as a piece of meat, was about the best I've had in years. How do they make venison moist and nearly fork tender, I wonder? Without in any compromising the flavor, either.) Is it some kind of shame that the best food I had in Mexico City wasn't Mexican? No, as I said above, Mexico City is a big cosmopolitan city. Why should the best food there be Mexican? Chances are that the best food you'd eat on vacation in New York wouldn't be American. (It's tough to get a table at Per Se.)

On the same block as Franny's on Flatbush is Conbit (sp?), a good Haitian restaurant.