V Steakhouse

[docsconz]

This sounds more like a three star review to me, but very different in tone and content to what I got from Bruni's journal report.

[Pan]

I agree, John. There's no mention of "parody" or "snickering" here.

It's also an excellent review and I feel like from having read it, I really have some idea of how I'd strategize my ordering if I went to the place. Nice going, Mr. Cutlets!

[oakapple]

In today's New York Post, Steve Cuozzo reviews V Steakhouse, awarding three stars:

MALL-PHOBIC types who have it in for the "Restaurant Collection" at the Time-Warner Center will hate hearing this, but Jean-Georges Vongerichten's V Steakhouse, the first real-world restaurant to open at Columbus Circle, is just plain fabulous.

"Real world" means you don't have to reserve two months ahead to sit through a solemn four-hour meal, as at Per Se. And "fabulous" does not mean perfect; V needs time and some tinkering to hit its stride.

But for all its meat-and-potatoes roots, this 200-seat extravaganza pulls off the best fusion a restaurant can: a vibrant, original menu in a diabolically sexy setting. Who ever expected Rice Krispies-breaded chicken in a mock-New Orleans bordello, with the Upper West Side skyline for a backdrop?

V is not exactly your standard steakhouse. Its fish is the equal of its meat. It offers amusingly tweaked appetizers, sides and condiments you won't find at the Palm.

What is the difference between "amusingly tweaked appetizers" and "the precipice of parody"? Time alone can tell.

Edited June 23, 2004 by oakapple (log)

[TrishCT]

Does anyone know if this is a dressy, dressy/casual, or casual place?

[oakapple]

Joe Dziemianowicz reviews V Steakhouse in today's New York Daily News, awarding 2 1/2 stars in an article titled "V approaches letter-perfection":

'Viva Las Vegas!" says a friend as we step into V Steakhouse, Jean-Georges Vongerichten's new restaurant in the Time Warner Center.

... ... ... ...

Not every move works. Deconstructed dishes don't add up. Froth is overused - it bubbles up around salad, soup, salmon and carrot cake. Some prices could make high-rollers wince. Still, many dishes do deliver, with A-1 ingredients and expert presentation. Factor in the fab Central Park South view and seamless service and it's a memorable experience. To V or not to V? You bet.

He thought the beef was great, but he complained about the same "deconstructed" dishes Frank Bruni lampooned a couple of weeks ago.

Edited July 2, 2004 by oakapple (log)

[Petban]

Mark my words, the way this is going, in the next Jean Georges restaurant we'll be paying $150 to get dragged into the kitchen to have the master show us how to cook the food OURSELVES!!!

i'd pay the $150 to cook with jg..

-j

I ate at V on June 28th. After being kept at the bar for 15 minutes past our reservation time of 8 PM, and being served a $17 less than half glass of mediocre Barolo, we were finally seated under a mettalic tree that could have come from any number of Vegas hotels.

As far as the food; The soft shelled crabs were ridiculously over battered and served with a cole slaw cocncoction that was redolent of ginger and cilantro. The waitstaff missed the " middle course " of romaine lettuce realizing their mistake only as they were serving the entree. When they tried to take it away, we aouldnt allow it. The Wagyu " Kobe " for $68 was nicely cooked and had great texture but lacked flavor. I suppose that is why they serve with it a whole battalion of dipping sauces.

They did try to make up for their mistakes by pouring 2 free glasses of wine and offering 2 free desserts which. unfortunately turned out to be the highlight of this meal. This was only my second disappointment with a JGV property, the other one being Dune on Paradise Island so it probably doesnt count. All in all I felt that V was more about show than food.

[Petban]

Does anyone know if this is a dressy, dressy/casual, or casual place?

Does anyone know if this is a dressy, dressy/casual, or casual place?

It is mainly dressy. The few tourisy looking people I noticed seemed to have been relegated to the left rear of the room.

[jeunefilleparis]

I forget to write before i left, but i had a drink at " V " last wed. I was really floored by the beauty of the space. It made me feel like a member of the bourgoisie. (sp?) I still cant believe its in a mall, but what a killer backdrop. Dont know how the food is, but they have some cute servers!

[emsny]

We had a very good dinner there last week. Miniature radishes among the crudités - a friend who ran into these in Paris referred to them as "foetal" radishes. Floored by the tomato/onion salad - vivid variation on Russian dressing; good sliced tomatoes; thin, crisp, lightly battered onion rings; micro-basil. That'd make a good meal on its own. Perfectly cooked Texas wagyu steak - 1.5mm blackened outside, but evenly red within (thanks, I am told, to a charcoal-fired grill/oven that gets up to 1000 degrees F). It was enormous (for a restaurant that serves tempting appetizers, anyway), and we fed four with the 2/3 of it that was taken home (as an appetizer "salad" with roasted beets and roasted onions). Wonderful, wonderful six-dollar sides - sweet creamed corn (billed as corn pudding) with a little hit of acidity; roasted beets; peas and asparagus with ginger; and batter-fried potato slices ("frips" on the menu) were standouts. Appealing and varied dipping/shmearing sauces - superfluous, but amusing to eat on their own. My wife ordered wild salmon, which was simply too big a portion to remain interesting - but that's steakhouse expectations for you.

Very happy with desserts, fun and delicious. I'd read that the "lemon meringue pie" was a deconstructed version, but this went even further than I'd imagined: even the meringue was divvied up into little piles, some soft, some crunchy, some raw. The crackling cherry tart sounded like rice krispies when it came to the table(snap, crackle . . .) and caused little harmless explosions in the mouth due to an ingredient they won't tell you about til afterward and the surprise of which I won't spoil here for the few e-gullet readers who don't already know. But the point for me is that it was a GOOD cherry tart, with an extraordinarily subtle almond ice cream on the side. And it introduced me to the Secret Ingredient, which I've surreptitiously begun snacking on.

The menu is full of imagination and, on the basis of one meal, even the things that sound over the top are cannily devised.

I'd certainly go back next time I felt like a restaurant steak.

I can understand why some would find the decor Vegas-y, by the way, but not once the sun has set and the atmospheric blue up-lights set the ceiling aglow.

[slkinsey]

Thanks for the write up. Yours is the first description that really puts me in mind of a "Vongerichten-ified Luger."

Oh... one thing: whatever you do, don't drink a coke while you're eating the crackling cherry tart.

[phaelon56]

vivid variation on Russian dressing;

Can you elaborate? I've always though that the contrasting flavors of the basic componenets have potential together but I've never been fortunate enough to have a good Russian Dressing.

[emsny]

I wish I could be more specific about the Russian dressing, Phaelon56. It was creamy and vinegary and, my wife recalls, had finely diced cornichons in it.

[bpearis]

Bruni reviews V. Amanda Hesser, he is not:

LIKE most other adult mammals I know, I usually manage to ingest food without the benefit of coaching, but then I do not usually eat in restaurants as assiduously convoluted as V Steakhouse, where servers are tutors and we diners their captive pupils.

Edited July 13, 2004 by bpearis (log)

[tsiverson]

So I was just interested what people thought about the NY Times review of V steakhouse. I have not eating their but I have heard good tings I am curious idoes it deserve such a low rating or this some politics involved here with the NY Times and JG after this whole spice market review.

[Fat Guy]

If the complaint is that the food only tastes good enough to merit one star, fine. If there is a demotion because the personal preference of the reviewer is that he doesn't like intellectual food experiences, I don't consider that an appropriate objection. By that standard he'd have to give El Bulli negative thirty-five stars.

[Pan]

It may be the case that Bruni doesn't like "intellectual food experiences," as you put it, but I didn't get that from that Diner's Journal article. Instead, I got the feeling that he found the place too clever by half - i.e., he found the "deconstruction" he experienced there to be arch and not as good as the conventional execution of the dishes he described. Whether he'd react the same way to a restaurant he didn't find to be "on the precipice of parody...winking at diners or snickering at itself," I don't think I know. It may be that he'd find El Bulli to be revelatory because he'd find that their execution of their concepts was wholehearted and superb, but since El Bulli is not in New York, we may never know one way or the other.

Personally, though, I have to tell you that I walked on Clinton St. recently and looked at the menus of various places including WD-50 and 71 Clinton Fresh Food. The menu at WD-50 looked bizarre to me - I might love it, I might hate it, but it's too expensive for me to gamble on. The menu at 71 Clinton Fresh Food looked more normative to me, and seemed to portend a delicious meal. I'd sooner consider a splurge at the now less-heralded 71 Clinton than WD-50. But if someone wants to treat...

[Ahem! Excuse me!] Getting back to the subject, it is possible that part of the issue is that a steakhouse is a traditional, conservative paradigm, so that some people (perhaps including Mr. Bruni) might have a particularly great tendency to find food deconstructions or other major forms of "unorthodoxy" to be objectionably subversive in that context? I'm almost tempted to bring in concepts of the mythic macho male identity of steak. I suppose we'd better not go too far in that direction, but you get my drift...

[Edit: I just read the one-star review in the Wednesday, July 14 Times, and I actually think if anything, it strengthens my argument about what Bruni's getting at. When something "works" to him - like the carrot cake and 14-layer chocolate cake - he praises it. When he asks the question "Does a lemon meringue `composition' that comes in a half-dozen unhinged pieces represent a bold culinary advance or merely a brash intellectual diversion," he is denigrating intellectual diversions for their own sake, not intellectual food that would constitute a "bold culinary advance" to him. I wonder whether he would have liked the dinner mascarpone and I had at Union Pacific, which we delighted in analysing because its combination of tastes was so interesting!]

Edited July 14, 2004 by Pan (log)

[DutchMuse]

The review, which I enjoyed and thought was fair, certainly demonstrates that the sycophant-type fawning over JG of Amanda Hessser is long gone. The review seemed fair to me.

[oakapple]

From the review:

The beef for most of the steaks comes from Niman Ranch, a justly celebrated source.

What exactly does Niman Ranch do that makes their beef superior to other sources?

[marcus]

From the review:

The beef for most of the steaks comes from Niman Ranch, a justly celebrated source.

What exactly does Niman Ranch do that makes their beef superior to other sources?

Niman ranch is actually a brand name, it's not any one place. It's an association that adheres to certain best practices.

[juuceman]

If the complaint is that the food only tastes good enough to merit one star, fine. If there is a demotion because the personal preference of the reviewer is that he doesn't like intellectual food experiences, I don't consider that an appropriate objection. By that standard he'd have to give El Bulli negative thirty-five stars.

I have some issues with the review..

I ate at V Saturday night.. the food was great.. sure, some of the things, the onion soup everyone loves to hate on, the lemon pie, the shrimp cocktail, are weird or different, but so what?? shrimp cocktail is rarely a stellar item anywhere.. by now, ordering most of the deconstructed dishes, you know what you're getting into and order it for the novelty of it, and the ablilty to bitch about how weird it was to your friends..

the meat is great.. i prefer a bit more char on my beef, but it was all good.. the sides are numerous, and were all great.. there's not a question in my mind that the food was as good or better in all areas than anything at Sparks, Lugers, et all, with the exception of the char issue that i have..

the room is beautiful.. the service is great, i'd say on par with that at per se, except that it's more unobtrusive than per se's, which i found to be overly theatrical and contrived..

you can bring people here and have a thoroughly comfortable, enjoyable meal, without it feeling like a boy's night out..

i think people walk in here with a lot of expectations.. many of which are met, some of which might not be.. that said, i don't think it deserves a single star..

[SobaAddict70]

Having said that, do you think it deserves two stars?

Fwiw, I can't see a steakhouse -- ANY steakhouse getting a three star review.

The genre is inherently self-limiting in my opinion, but that's probably food for thought for another thread.

Soba

[juuceman]

Having said that, do you think it deserves two stars?

Fwiw, I can't see a steakhouse -- ANY steakhouse getting a three star review.

The genre is inherently self-limiting in my opinion, but that's probably food for thought for another thread.

Soba

i think it deserves two stars without a second thought..

unless Bruni is going to rehab the entire star system, removing, say, Blue Fin's two stars and Fiamma's three stars for food that's fine, but far from special..

i forgot to mention the wine list.. it's large.. a lot of time and effort was put into this place.. i'm really disappointed in the slap that the one star is in it's face..

[Fat Guy]

Fwiw, I can't see a steakhouse -- ANY steakhouse getting a three star review. The genre is inherently self-limiting in my opinion . . .

Certainly, however, the plan all along with V was to create a three-star steakhouse by breaking out of the genre's self-imposed limitations and adopting something along the lines of a Vongerichten deconstructed minimalist haute cuisine approach, a fine-dining setting, first-class service, etc. There's no question that everybody on the V team was working towards three stars and that they're not a bunch of clueless idiots with a meaningless three-star fantasy but, rather, industry veterans who know exactly what the stars should mean.

Perhaps I'll go to V and come back saying "man that place was a disappointment and all the deconstructed dishes were nonsensical; I agree with the one-star review." But it seems to me that, as we've discussed before, the framework for the star analysis has already been established by the restaurant's business plan: this is a restaurant that, if it accomplishes what it set out to accomplish, should get three stars by all historical measures of such things; that, if it falls short, should get two stars; and that should only get one star if it is a pretty complete failure in fulfilling its ambitions. Subject to revision upon dining there, that's the context as I see it.

When his appointment was announced, the Times higher-ups commented, "Frank understands that it is not enough to be smart about food; it is important to digress from the dishes at hand and explore wider thoughts on eating out in New York." I wish that in his first review of a restaurant in the Time Warner Center -- perhaps the most important assemblage of culinary talent in US culinary history -- Frank Bruni had provided a bit more context and set things up for a unified approach to that enterprise.

[docsconz]

I don't think anyplace deserves stars just because it is supposed to get them or is designed to get them. either it performs to a certain level or it doesn't.

[Fat Guy]

But the "certain level" is three stars -- that's what the reasonable critic should be measuring V against, because V is a reflection of that genre. Of course V may fall short, and therefore not perform at that level, and therefore not deserve three stars.