Sneakeater

It's a new article about what a hard time Varietal is going to have retooling even with Wayne Nish at the stove (except, as the article takes pains to emphasize, he won't be at the stove, as this is now his second restaurant). Here's a link that might or might not still be alive: http://www.nypost.com/seven/04042007/enter...teve_cuozzo.htm

I left out Daniel because, to me, Daniel feels as much like a party as a four-star restaurant. It's not the kind of party I like to go to frequently -- but it's not sitting there being cossetted, either. You certainly can't say it lacks energy. As for The Modern, I think that, to me, some of the energy from The Bar Room leaks into the dining room. Or, maybe it's just (as you said) that I like the design.

No, I'm talking about atmosphere, service, "feel", the whole shebang.

I know you're joking, but of course I hated that. To me, that was only uncomfortable. It wasn't energetic or cool.

I think a lot depends on whether you find the ambiance an encumbrance or an attraction. (Food, aside, I'd rather BE in that room than in the dining rooms of EMP or Coutnry.)

Just noting that Momofuku Ssam Bar is only open till 2 AM now. (Used to be 4.)

Without doing a full-bore review, what was impressive about my dinner here last night -- and what is so great about this place -- is that it ran the gamut. I started with the uni, which, to me as to others, is the kind of thing I'd be happy to get in a four-star restaurant. Then, the asparagus. This is a variation on a familiar dish (and a favorite of mine) (up till now, I've thought the version at Al Di La is the sublimest, at least locally). But it's better. The best. In other words, a familiar idea, twisted inventively and executed amazingly well. Finally, the veal-head terrine. This is a dish I've put off ordering all these months, for the paradoxical reason that it's too easy a choice for me: it's so much along the lines of what I usually get that it always has seemed too obvious a selection. (Does anyone else ever fall into this? It's also why I majored in History rather than English in college, I think.) Anyway, unlike the uni dish, this is rustic. But it's also fantastic. They serve it on a hot plate, so the terrine sort of melts as you're picking at it. And the terrine itself: what can I say? Better than the testa used to be at Lupa. Better than the tete de veau used to be at Pierre au Tunnel. Better, I think, than I ever thought this long-favorite dish could even be. So, at my whim, I mixed high and low, haute and bas -- but all of the highest possible quality. While sitting at a bar, not having to put up with any bullshit, surrounded by interesting people and listening to music I enjoy (unlike, say, The Music For Retrograde Boomers With No Taste that Mario B. pumps out) and that fits the mood of the place perfectly. I'm sorry. I love this place.

Well, if he dissed that here he'd be dissing his father.

The smoked fish place is Russ & Daughters, a couple of blocks west of Katz's.

I ate at Momo-Ssam tonight. First time I've been able to snag a seat since the Times review. Look, I understand how some people are disappointed with this place. But for myself, all I can say is that this is someplace I know I'll be talking about, with great nostalgia, twenty years from now. I can't believe I can get food like this -- when I can -- in what are to me comfortable settings, with no ceremony and no hassle. It's a pity. Chang will go on to other things, and things will inevitably fall off here. But for now, to me, this is sort of a Golden Age.

I have friends who really care about this, and I consider them totally neurotic. In fact, when the female one met the male one and they became serious, it was a source of amazement to all the rest of us that they both cared passionately about this. A match made . . . in heaven? in the psycho ward? Well, somewhere. (They're deleriously happy, BTW.)

If you just show up between 7 and 8 on a Thursday, you're cooked.

Mixing meat and dairy is NOT kosher.

I agree with you that it seems like a bad idea in general, but . . . . Blue Hill? Devi? Mediocre food that "real" foodies don't take seriously?

You win, V!

I WAS JOKING. (I will NOT use emoticons.)

I still don't get it. It would only make sense if "delicious" and "immensely fatty" didn't mean the exact same thing.

I am unable to understand what the word "though" means in the preceding post.

Sure. At lunchtime, it practicually IS the menu. But lunch business isn't this place's point anymore. I think at dinner there's some ssam on the menu.

The point about Ssam is that you don't really eat the ssam at Ssam. The restaurant has sort of evolved way beyond that. Ironically, when Ssam concentrated on ssam it was a failure.

This is simply wrong, a grossly inflated stereotype. I am myself soemthing of a proto-yuppie -- though not of the excessively affluent variety -- and the vast majority of my friends and acquaintences fall under that demographic as well. I cannot think of a single one with that attitude; if anything it's the reverse, with people hypersensitive about their kids' behavior. I know that there are "not my precious little Madison"-type parents around, but they are a distinct minority. ← Not in Park Slope, Brooklyn, they're not.

You used to have to go that restaurant on 23rd St. and pay a premium for that kind of treatment.

Oh, I forgot: The amuses (although I suspect they have a different name in Greek) were seriously good. The prices were seriously high. If I remember right, some entrees breached the $40 line.

I was slightly disappointed by Anthos only because my hopes were so inflated. It's a very good restaurant. I've pretty much missed out on the recent haute Greek mini-trend. I eat in Molyvos all the time, because it's so close to Carnegie Hall and City Center. But I haven't been to Parea, I haven't been to Pylos -- and I was so bitter at missing out on the early-days offal tasting menu at Michael Psilakis's Onera that I pretty much refused to go after they ended it. But I was mighty impressed by Michael Psilakis's new Cheap Greek at Onera's locational successor, Kefi. So I was more than eager to try his new culinary successor to Onera, Anthos (in the old Acqua Pazza space on 52nd between 5th and 6th). You all know the backstory: how Psilakis opened the pan-Mediterranean Dona with restauranteur Donatella Arpaia last year; how it quickly had to close owing to real estate problems; how Psilakis then quickly shut down Omera and turned it into a cheap place, while moving his haute Greek operations to this new restaurant with Arpaia, Anthos, opened in the space occupied by an earlier (undistinguished) restaurant owned by Donatella or her family. So here it is. The room is lovely, in an antisceptic Midtown way. The staff is pleasant, if, at this early stage, unpolished. As for the food, I like the cheap Kefi so much that my expectations for its more exalted sibling were perhaps higher than a place can reasonably bear. I enjoyed my food (and what I stole from my dining companion) very much, but I wasn't transported. I tell you that not to dissuade you from going to this restaurant -- to the contrary, I recommend it very highly -- but rather to enable you to keep your expectations in line. This being 2007, they have a house cocktail list. I had the Ramp Gibson: a Gibson with a pickled ramp instead of a pickled onion. As I told the waitress, my first ramp of the season might as well come in gin. This was foolproof -- but also clever. (My companion had the house's eponymous cocktail, based on Metaxa. It was good.) I started with a dish consisiting of a single broad noodle (or maybe a pair of them laid end to end) topped with rabbit, snails, and truffles. I suspect many people will have trouble resisting this dish, and it doesn't disappoint. But I also have to say that I didn't like it that much more than the rabbit and pasta dish at Kefi (a current all-City favorite of mine). This was when I started worrying about inflated expectations. For my entree, I was unable to resist the pork chops with pork belly. This was probably a bad choice. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing particularly distinctive, either. My date, on the other hand, hit the target with her order of swordfish. It's really more a mixed grill: swordfish steak, octopus, and a meat sausage. The octopus was very good, if not quite up to the best I've had. The swordfish was perfect. The sausage was, well, sausage. This all featured the usual Greek spices that I can immediately recognize, but not identify. An excellent dish. Having to run off the make a curtain, we had no time for dessert. The kitchen had no trouble in getting us out on time, even though one of us was late and the other was VERY late. And they were all extremely gracious about it. All my praise here sounds tepid. But, as I keep saying, that's only because my expectations were so high that I was dissapointed with what was only very good, but not transcendant, food. The style of cooking here is not overcomplicated, which was a relief. But it's not hearty, either -- the idea seems to be to take fairly simple traditional recipes and to make them elegant. The execution could perhaps be a bit better -- but the place has only been open a week or two. I think that when they get running, they will probably be the best Greek in the City (a fairly meaningless comment, given my lack of experience with most of the direct competition). I'm sure I'll be back.

I know most people here disagree with me, but I think that if you make a reservation through a service that requires you to check in under an assumed name, you've got to be on notice that something might not be on the up-and-up between you and the restaurant.