Sneakeater

There appears to have been a backlash lately, but to me it's clearly Devi (18th St. near 5th Ave.). The food is contemporary Indian -- meaning it's "contemporary" from within the Indian culinary tradition, rather than being an attempt at fusion like Tabla. The ingredients are good, and many dishes are excellent. I personally have never had Indian food this good anywhere else in the United States. (No, I've never been to India -- my invidious comparison is Great Britain.)

I haven't eaten at Jean Claude in years, but this absolutely perfectly encapsulates my feelings about the place. Great post. Thanks.

Porchetta is a very good, welcome addition to the Smith Street strip in Brooklyn. I would probably not recommend that anyone take any long subway rides to eat there -- but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone looking for something in the neighborhood. The big news about Porchetta, obviously, is that its chef is Jason Neroni, who very ably replaced Wylie Dufresne at 71 Clinton Fresh Food. For some reason, the fact that Neroni replaced a chef who's since gone "molecular" at a restaurant at which neither of them cooked anything in the slightest bit "molecular" has caused some to hype Porchetta as "'molecular' comes to Brooklyn." It's not that at all. If anything, Porchetta is sort of like Lupa (but less primitivist) or maybe a more downscale A Voce. In other words, it's an Italian restaurant with nothing "hypermodern" about it in the least bit. Having gotten that out of the way, the food here is very good. Probably exceeding what you'd expect of neighborhood Italian. A Voce is actually not such a bad reference point. The food at Porchetta is not overly complicated, but it's not simple in the hearty gutsy manner of a Lupa. It's a refined simplicity. And if, at the reasonable prices charged here, Neroni can't avail himself of the kinds of ingredients Andrew Carmellini uses, almost everything we had at Porchetta was exceptionally well-prepared. We've been talking in the BLT Burger thread about whether that place is a waste of Laurent Tourondel's talents. Porchetta illustrates what I think is missing at BLT Burger: here's a very talented chef cooking food that doesn't seem to stretch him -- but it's all so well done (both in terms of technique and the intelligence behind the dishes) that you very much appreciate the difference he makes. We started out with some flatbread (which oddly wasn't flat), with grilled tallegio and duck prosciutto. It was good, albeit soggy -- maybe a few more seconds on the grill would have been in order. Pastas were very good. My date seemed to love her spaghetti with clams and guanciale (this is the kind of place that puts pork into as many dishes as possible), and it looked very good from across the table. I enjoyed my orrechiette with sausage and a well-seasoned but slightly gloppy gorganzola sauce (what was in that sauce that made it orangeish, BTW?). The star dish appeared to be my date's segundo, two fried red mullets (they weren't really red mullets, actually, but something similar with a name I've never heard before). They were fried lightly and greaslessly, and were well nigh perfect. They came with a very large side portion of componata/tomatos/other unidentifiable stuff. Jerking my knee, I reflexively ordered the pork belly with mostarda (or, as my date called it, "a plate of fat"). We're all getting a little sick of pork belly, I'm sure (although at least some of us seem incapable of declining to order it), but this was a really well-prepared version. You know how pork belly can tend to be mushy? This wasn't. Service on this Sunday night was stressed. They were clearly understaffed. On the other hand, the owner -- who couldn't have been nicer -- came over and personally apologized to us for the glitches -- and then comped us our bottle of wine, a gesture so out of proportion to any slight inconvenience we experienced that I can hardly comprehend it, although I certainly appreciated it. (The wine list, by the way, features reasonably-priced bottles -- perfect for a restaurant of this level.) Jason Neroni is a very good cook, and this is a very good, solid restaurant. I think that anyone would be happy to eat there. If you need a dining option in this area, this is now near the top.

Having eaten at Porter House, I can say I agree almost completely with Oakapple's review (meaning, I guess, that I was slightly disappointed). So I'll just add a few notes. As to whether Porter House falls into the "old school" or "chick-friendly" styles of steak houses, it's somewhere in between, but closer to "old school". As soon as we walked in, my date exclaimed (completely unbidden by me), "This room is so masculine!" OTOH, the place does seem less overladen with testosterone than, say, Wolfgang's (midtown -- never been to downtown), and it certainly isn't determinatively primitive like Luger's. As Oakapple said, while the menu had some "touches", and certainly more seafood than you'd expect, it was still more Old Steakhouse than New Steakhouse in composition. For the record, I started with the oyster pan roast (my date having forbade me to order the tongue salad). It was good, although it's not going to challenge the Oyster Bar's in the Great NYC Dishes category. The strip steak was mildly disappointing. It's served on the bone -- a good, and in my experience, unique thing. But . . . well, here's where words (and analytic skills) fail me. Remember how in Frank Bruni's review of Wolfgang's, when he got to the comparison of the Wolfgang's steak with the Luger's steak, his vocabulary sort of failed him and all he could say was that the Luger steak was better? Well, I have the same problem. I am simply unequipped to explain why this steak, while in no way bad, was not quite up to what I expect from top-level NYC steak houses. It tasted good, but it didn't have that overwhelming beefy fatty kick that only the very best steak gives you. I don't want to overstate this: it was very good. Just not tops. My date's monkfish "porterhouse" looked very good. Excellent really. I certainly had no room to taste it. Desserts seemed to hit just the right note: slightly-tweaked traditional, but extremely well done. Indeed, if the whole menu were as good, this place would be everything I'd hoped it would be. In any event, I liked my trio of puddings very much. Service was excellent: very friendly, no glitches. (OTOH, we went very late, when the room was becoming sparsely populated -- and the staff had every incentive to give us prompt service.) I'd recommend Porter House for what it is: a very good, but not great, steakhouse, that is nevertheless more pleasant a spot than the great NYC steakhouses tend to be.

Isn't Atelier Robuchon NY sort of similar to a restaurant in Las Vegas?

Just to be clear: 1. I don't want this to be anything other than a burger place. I mainly want LT to be doing what he's capable of, rather than ONLY stuff like this. 2. Having said that, though, I think that if someone like LT is going to operate and market a burger place, it ought to be better than this one. What's the point of having a leading chef run a burger joint if there's nothing special about it? (Compare the bistros that name chefs have opened in Paris -- or Bistro du Vent under Laurent Gras here in New York: they succeed, when they do, not because they're pretty good bistros, but because they're bistros where the food has been tweeked by a haute chef, and so isn't just ordinary bistro fare. What's the point of having a burger joint run by LT if all it is, is a pretty good burger joint?)

Yet.

It's not that expensive.

You can no longer get Daniel Humm's cooking in San Francisco (gloat gloat gloat gloat).

Intimidation might not be the right word, but the basic idea of coming in at a lower price point seems sensible. ← Having thought about this, I wonder whether I agree with it. Are you saying that it's a good idea to open with lower prices than you eventually plan to charge? That strikes me as a bit of a bait and switch. Remember how upset people here got when Country raised their prices after they got a highly favorable New York Times review? It's one thing to have lower "introductory prices" that are expressly so designated. But it strikes me as a bit of a sharp practice -- nothing very high on the insidiousness scale, but still a bit sharp -- to open with low "stealth" prices, knowing you'll soon raise them.

About that "mention": http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/?p=90

Not that it's such a big deal, but to clarify, I'm not offended by BLT Burger or anything. And I wish Laurent Tourondel all the success in the world. I just think that what he's doing now (in ALL his restaurants) is a waste of his talents. Here, for example, I don't think the food is bad, or a bad value, but from a chef like Tourondel you'd optimally want something more than "not bad or a bad value."

While I kind of agree with the thrust of your comments, I'm pretty sure BLT Burger is run by Toroundel's company, not a company he "sold" his name to. Really, the way I see it, that makes it worse.

This is all getting a little old. Anyone who's ever known anyone from Britain knows what "smart" means when applied to something like clothes. And while an explicit two-hour limit is certainly unhospitable, the resentment the posters on the Bruni blog display with respect to anything less than absolute customer-is-king attitudes at high-end restaurants is stupidly over-the-top, as if they're so underprivileged they have to overreact to any perceived slight. If you don't like it, don't go. But the endless how-dare-he and, more to the point, how-can-people-be-so-stupid-as-to-take-this-they-must-be-trendoid-sheep-anyone-who-ever-goes-to-expensive-restaurants-is-a-dupe stuff is just a bunch of narrowminded tiresome envious twaddle.

I'm the lucky one this time.

This place seems to be a winner. I've never had indigenous barbecue, so I'm not qualified to judge. But I know what I like. The pulled pork was good. (It seemed odd to me that they didn't serve me a slice of bread with it.) But while I was waiting for my order, they gave me a couple of ribs to munch on. The ribs were (in my worthless uneducated opinion) just great. Tasty dry rub, tangy sauce, meat tender but not mushy (I like it with a tiny bit of snap to it). I can't wait to have more. Also, the brisket looked really good. Fun beer selection. Decent cole slaw, good (but not, I think, great) beans. Really nice people. Except for the desserts (always Biscuit's strong point), better than Biscuit ever was.

Either way.

Aaah. I've been there twice since the renovation. Once in the dining room, once at the bar. I have to say that, physically, the renovations made the dining room seem no less stuffy -- in fact, no different -- than before. OTOH, the new bar menu has substantially improved the eating-at-the-bar scene, which formerly was moribund and now is rather lively. The bar menu looks fairly enticing, but the main menu (also available at the bar) is so good that I can't see taking recourse to the bar menu. I don't see the menu as being quite as rejuvenated as Frank Bruni does. But that's probably because I liked my last pre-renovation meal there a lot more than he appeared to. (The review is upthread.) I would say that the food there now is marginally (as opposed to vastly) better than before (probably because Terrance Brennan is paying more attention -- he was in the house during both my recent visits). But I thought it was fine before. I continue to strongly recommend Picholine as an oft-overlooked gem (I hate the word "gem" when applied to things that aren't actually stones). Although I guess it may not be so overlooked any more.

I may be wrong, but I think this is not the second, but the third, three-star review they've received from the Times.

Completely deserved, IMO.

I've been to Picholine since the renovation and it's if anything even more excellent. But it's more expensive than I get the idea the thread initiator wanted.

Don't you mean it bogs you?

One possibly big difference is that Karuma is MATERIALLY more expensive. I don't know how much that matters to you.

You're right, FG, it's certainly not my goal. Expect my presence over in the NY forum shortly...!! Maybe the point I was trying to make is not so relevant in NY. I was really thinking of Raji's post, above, and about what Michelin is trying to be. The comment "It will undoubtedly be a guide that caters to Euro-laden tourists in foreign-friendly areas rather than the adventurous types with adventurous palates" got me thinking. To my mind this, in many ways, is not really a criticism. Like it or not, Michelin *is* a guide for tourists eating in a strange land with, potentially, very different palates and expectations to the locals. I'm not sure that Michelin is or should be catering for the limited few with adventurous palates. The concept of "good food" may be reasonably well-defined when you stay in one tradition, but when attempting to cross cultures things get much more difficult. I don't want to drag this any further off-topic, but should the best dog-meat restaurant in Vietnam get 3 stars? Katz deli in NY is a good example of a restaurant that I will certainly visit, but that I may not enjoy. Personally, I find sandwiches full to bursting to be somewhat stomach-churning. Is this a European thing? Possibly. To push this argument to it's (il?)logical limit, if I then, as a European with different expectations of a sandwich, find the Katz version objectionable, then maybe a guidebook for a European palate should echo my views, not the views of the locals. I'm in murky territory here, and saying things I don't necessarily believe. I think I'll stop. Si ← Without wanting to lead this thread too far off-topic, the discussion that developed in the below-linked thread from the South America board seems pertinent to the above exchange between Si and Fat Guy: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=92012

And it's not just the R.W. Apple article, either. I don't think I've seen a single U.S. article or other publication about eating in BA in the last four or five years that didn't single out Cabana Las Lilas as being currently the best steakhouse. (I hope by now it's clear that I'm not saying this to prove that U.S. opinions are "right", but just to show you how misguided people here may be about this.) (And I use the term "misguided" advisably -- U.S. visitors are being sent to Las Lilas, and by sources that are usually considered reliable.) (I think this shows how, if you don't live somewhere, you really can't judge the restaurants there reliably.) I've got to get back to BA.