I walked in tonight wo reservation. Place was packed for Sunday night. Overall I thought food was very good if not remarkable. I live to eat not drink, but still thought it a bit odd that the restaurant did not have different glasses for white and red wine (strange given its pedigree). Wine selection also rather limited. Ordered butternut squash soup with fresh chives and black trumpet mushrooms. Pretty mediocre and bland, needed more salt and/or yoghurt or something to impart greater textual complexity. Second was fois gras with eggy waffle in drag & shredded/sauced apple with some sort of minor berry accent. This was superb. Sort of fois gras for breakfast, but very balanced, and FG was delicate and seared superbly. Jojos had the best FG I have had in NYC prior to renovation, and the legend in my mind continues. Finished with venison with small potatoes cooked with black pepper, hints of clover, pomegranate seeds and some other starchy offset composed of forgotten ingredients (should have scribbled this down, I suffer from poor ingredient memory). This was very good, in fact it was probably excellent, but I was so blown away by the venison at Café Boulud last month that all subsequent venison dishes inevitably fail for the short-dated future. My problem, I guess. But the dish had some flaws. The venison was cooked just right, but by itself too peppery. Similarly, the starchy offset was overcooked. Bizarrely, and this was true of the FG dish as well, the whole thing worked best when all ingredients, which had been somewhat consciously semi-isolated by the kitchen, were combined in the mouth. The kitchen's talent is definitely in the combos not in the things-in-themselves. Service was gracious, but often slightly late, and not deeply. I guess fawning but not informative would be the best way to put it. GT it is not. Worth going back to I guess, but I feel slightly spoiled. Café Boulud remains my causal French upper East side reference, and its not that much farther away.
