There is a menu in the Park Hyatt Lounge but it doesnt have Bevy’s excellent “Bar Bites.”

          Friends Karen and Andrew have posted raving tweets about Bevy. I email, “Let’s go with you.” We agree to meet in the lounge so we can start with drinks and snacks. They don’t mention that the place is hidden away inside a hotel. Dana and I follow a duo of babes dressed for the beach and almost wind up on the 7^th floor. 

 
Inside Bevy there’s a bar and two small dining rooms. Photo by Dana Stoddard.

          There was another restaurant in this space when the hotel opened in 2014. I never got to The Back Room.  The headline on Steve Cuozzo’s New York Post rant, “Park Hyatt New Resto Will Make Foodies Weep in Anguish,” kept me away.

 
Tonight there are two bouquets of flowers on our table for four

          But now…the four of us are scooped up from the cushiness of the lounge by the maître d’.  If we want drinks and snacks, our table inside is ready, he says.  The dining area, in upscale earth tones, is small and carpeted with wines in a glass cage, plush banquettes and fresh flowers on every table. Friends are always asking me where to eat that’s quiet. It could be that Bevy is that place, I decide, but maybe only when almost no one else is here.  

 
The house sends “sweet potato chips” with French onion dip and lavash with spicy green pea hummus.

          The house knows what bevy means. There are some modest scrawlings on the menu. Look closely. It’s a flight of birds in a delicate pale khaki calligraphy. Manager Debora Guadarrama tells me the light moving inside a crystal fixture over the bar reflects the birds.  No bird calls. Just taped music, not overwhelming.

 
Grilled emmer flour flatbread with burrata, kale pesto and spicy ‘Nduja is a $13 “Bar Bite.”

          Karen and Andrew devote a goodly amount of their precious time tonight to studying the cocktail list as waiters cover the table with the coveted snacks, “Bar Bites” on the menu.  Spicy pea green hummus rests next to tall sticks of lavash.  Little rounds of emmer flour flatbread are topped with burrata, kale pesto, and ‘Nduja.  As we fans and Twitter followers know, Karen and Andrew are vegetarians (click here for their website), so she asks to skip the ‘Nduja, a spicy pork spread.

 
We meet in the Lounge where the maître d’ finds us and leads us to our table in Bevy. That’s Dana

          There are housemade “sweet potato chips” too, with French onion dip. Yes, that dip, the first dip you ever mastered as a new bride in the ‘60s. Dehydrated onion soup folded into sour cream, as delicious now as it was then. 

 
The pull-apart caramelized onion bread comes with balls of boursin, retro pleasures.

          I’m attacking the warm pull-apart bread, Parker House rolls, indeed, with what might look like butter but is actually a cluster of caramelized onion-boursin cheese balls. Another of chef Chad Brauze’s retro revivals that I find amusing.

 
No need to be a vegetarian to relish the einkorn risotto with morel cream, mint, favas and asparagus.

          It could be that Karen and Andrew are less amused. They never do get their cocktails. Instead the waiter brings four tiki drinks in tall Trader Vic glasses (another resurrection), and I’m the only one sipping. But cleverness is not what counts to me. What matters is that dinner is very good. And that can make you overlook a gaffe or two. 

 
A generous side of favas comes with spring onion soubise.

The house sends out a $35 portion of white jumbo asparagus with poached egg dressing as a gift.

          Andrew’s $22 Einkorn “risotto”-- wheat berries with fava beans, asparagus and vin jaune -- is heady from the mingled scents of morels and mint. Midway through dinner, he trades with Karen to finish her generous $14 bowl of crispy oyster mushrooms and pickled ramps, a deftly seasoned toss.  There are many icons of spring for vegetarians tonight that will please veggie-leaning carnivores, too.

 
A whole bourbon-infused chicken with rye berries, carved in the kitchen, enough to serve four.

           Our waiter presents the $78 Green Circle chicken, whole and laced with Bourbon and rye berries, to Dana and me, then takes it away to be carved.  He sets the platter with its ruffles of dressed lettuces between us.  I take a thigh and he serves Dana a large chunk of juicy breast. The bird is clearly a dinner for four.  

 
Olive oil whipped cream, rhubarb jam and almond sandie grace an especially good Pavlova. 

          But the crisp, fat paprika steak fries are the hit of the evening. At Karen and Andrew’s direction, we’re having two $10 orders.  “I’d come here just for these fries,” says Andrew. Ditto from me.

 
From top left eclairs, the Pavlova, apple tart with ice cream and carmel sauce, strawberries ‘n’ cream.

          We choose strawberries and cream and the sculptural Pavlova for dessert. They are flanked by the house’s gifts -- the $24 collection of five éclairs and the candied apple pie wrapped in a sugar cookie crust with a globe of vanilla ice cream coated in caramel. An instant favorite. The tiny crown on the peanut butter éclair evokes Elvis, the King.  

 
If I had to pick just one dessert, it would be this wonderful apple pie in sugar cookie crust.

          We leave carrying home the leftover chicken, Dana the white meat, me the dark, in stylish shopping bags. At the curb, the doorman chooses us to get a free ride home from the hotel car. I try to pass the treat along to Karen and Andrew. But they have decided to walk home. I get to be the sloth.

 
Crisp candied bacon strips are a must from the “Bar Bites” list.

          I’m shocked on returning a few days later to discover my guests parked in the bar by an inhospitable refusal to seat incomplete parties.  One of my least favorite rules in mostly uncivilized joints. I’m instantly grumpy. But now we’re all here so what can the door guardian do? These are friends who take turns at shared dinners putting me next to their good ear (they each have one).  I wait for them to appreciate the comparative serenity in the mostly empty room. 

 
I order Hudson Valley Harvest salad to counter the meaty dinner Alas. Too much vinegar make it inedible. 

          Now I discover a new reality. There are no free snacks. Even the warm onion bread must be bought. It’s $7. But $10 for the tall shards of lavash to drag through spicy green pea hummus seems reasonable so close to One57 with its $100 million penthouse. We divide five crisply candied slices of bacon touched with cayenne and cinnamon, an $11 bar bite that might have been insensitive to insist on last time.

 
Perfectly cooked lobster with buerre blanc and a collection of salt potatoes.

          Indeed, except for the rashly over-vinegared Hudson Harvest salad (thins of carrot, radish, beet and shaved mushrooms) and a rerun of the delightfully complex Einkorn risotto, we’re eating and sharing beasts of land and sea. Glasses of the Tensley Syrah are a fruity sip, the perfect red for what we’re eating.

 
The ribeye-cap is $48 for the half-pound, meaty and tough. Maybe we should have said medium rare not rare.

          The $48 rib eye cap ordered rare, paired with a whole roasted garlic bulb, is tough and chewy, but tasty. The chef has preserved the purity of a one-and-a-half pound lobster by grilling it just long enough, and smothering it with butter. Skin-on salted new potatoes alongside make me think of clam roasts on the beach.

 
I watch this smoked dome dance at the next table and decide I must the Mangalitsa pork collar too.

          I’d spied the Mangalitsa smoked pork collar under a glass cloche at the next table, and want one of my own. It arrives with the cloche fully clouded. A waiter lifts the glass, releasing the vapor, and even though I forgot to ask for it “rare,” I’m left with three large, amazingly juicy filets of luscious pig.  Too many bar bites? Maybe. I find I can eat only a third of the meat.

 
The smoke curls away leaving three large rounds of luscious pork with a few small turnips.

          My companions agree to share the apple pie (for my research), surrendering to its allure. We stare numbly at pastry chef Scott Cioe’s candy bar platter for two –- a jolt of peanut butter with salted malt sherbet.

 
At my 2nd dinner, Bevy sends a Candy Bar platter for 2 – milk chocolate, roasted peanuts, salted malt sherbet.

          A coatroom check retrieves my pork leftovers at the front desk. But there is no Cinderella’s coach at the curb. Just a lot of creeping traffic on West 57^th Street, and in short order, a taxi.  I’m free to report that even for civilians paying full freight, Bevy is worth a visit. Even two.

153 West 57^th Street. Third Floor Park Hyatt. 212 897 2188. Dinner Tuesday through Saturday 5:30 to last seating at 9:45 pm. Closed Sunday and Monday.

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