April 20, 1981 |
Vintage Insatiable
Still More Confessions Of A Sensualist
Spring in New York has it's own heady texture. Daffodils and asparagus. Shad roe and soft-shell crabs. There are what look like dented brown squash balls in my market -- the camouflage of exotic fresh passion fruit, all the way from Kenya, only 69 cents. How wonderful to be alive. I leave you to weep over Mozart or Natassia Kinski. I celebrate the season's first great strawberry.
Alas, a restaurant critic's life is not all crackling tartes Tatin and ethereal beurres blancs. You might have guessed. But mostly I spare you the tragic decline and fall of my digestion. I prefer to save my page for cuisinary promise and triumph… to let mediocrity do itself in, unless it's found in a great institution gone slovenly or a highly touted oasis of pretension. New restaurants are budding all over town, and many will be winging along unevenly for months till they find true strength or fold. A critic's crusade is booby-trapped with dining-room comedy and gastronomic outrage; still, in my twelfth year on this delicious mission, I wake each morning with optimism untarnished. Last week I was in, near, or above ecstasy…over an onion, for heaven's sake. And a contrast of oysters. And a fat salmon trout. And a huddle of quail eggs in a sea-urchin nest.
"I'm taking you for the best ribs you've ever tasted," a savvy gentleman caller announced.
Well, the ribs were no match for the beauties at Sylvia's, on Lenox Avenue at 126th Street. I like my spareribs juicy and peppery hot. The ribs at Wylie's (819 First Avenue, at 50th Street, 761-0700) are dry, too charred for me, though it's obvious that droves of New Yorkers love ribs in this state of submission. But the fried chicken ($6.50) is a knockout -- spiffily crisp, awesomely moist. And though I've never lost my heart to an onion before, Wylie's are so ingratiating that I'd willingly suffer the torture of standing 45 minutes at the bar again (there are no reservations). Imagine a great block of fried onions, big as a loaf of bread ($2.25)… crisp sweet ribbons, meltingly soft cores, greasy but delicious.
As a bystander observes, "This is the only restaurant I know that treats you as if you're in an outpatient clinic." Caveat, onion lovers.
An editor calls. "I have a memo here from someone who ate dinner at Marylou's, in the Village (21 West 9th Street) and it was the best meal he ever had." Who wrote that memo? Marylou's son? Was it his first meal coming off a fast? Well, the fish is fresh. Marylou Baratta and her brother, Thomas, run the Sea Cliff Fish Market, at 51 University Place. So they have impeccable sources. And they've turned the old Penguin restaurant into wood-paneled coziness, with working fireplaces and graceful lighting and votive candles in opaque-shaded lamps. It's noisy. The crowd is rather wholesomely fashionable, with an astonishing pride of tall… very tall… women in jumpsuits. (Or is it merely that the ceiling's low?) Standees are three thick at the bar, a vast Sahara without a liquor license.
Complain about the traffic jam, Marylou, overwhelmed amateur, shrugs, not exactly gracious. "What can I do? Everyone is drinking coffee." The waiters seem reasonably professional. Three of them talk British. The chef is Thai and his food is straightforward, decently cooked… with no special identity or flair. Marylou's, opened just eleven weeks, may someday hit a surer stride. Now, when you can still bring your own wine, you will find the tab gentle. (Dinner entrées go from $6 for broiled fillet of bluefish to $14 for steak Madagascar.) Steer clear of the rubbery smoked trout, collapsed stuffed mushrooms, insipid shrimp Bangkok, neutered shrimp gumbo. The best choices are a fresh and subtle variation on New England clam chowder, cold mussel salad, and fish in its purist presentations. Bay scallops are tiny as pencil erasers and though they are carefully cooked, I find them boring. Still, they make a delicious accent to the seafood brochette. I ask for it rare (opaque but not flaking) and get it almost raw -- delicious, yes, for a sushi lover like me. But the ruffles of onion and bell pepper are almost raw too. The mixed fry -- scallops, one shrimp, some oysters and wonderfully plump clams -- is not exactly graced with lattice potato chips, half of them crisp, half of them soggy, and a crowding of vegetables resembling ratatouille. Red snapper in "papilotte" (as the menu spells it) is served not in paper but in a tomatoey shroud. Calf's liver with onions and apples is carefully sautéed. If you choose mousse (tart lemon or bitter chocolate) or creamy angel cloud (sweet creamy rice pudding studded with plumped white raisins in a swirl of raspberry sauce) you may exit on a high.
Few restaurants are ready for serious scrutiny in the first month's crucible. But when I learn that Alain Senderens, the scholarly chef of the Parisian three-star L'Archestrate, is coaching in the kitchen of the Parker Meridien Hotel (119 West 56th Street, 245-7788), which has been open just three weeks, self-control dissolves.
The handsome columned atrium is abustle with workmen. Coats get hung in a naked construction area. Up some bare concrete steps, in the Maurice restaurant, diners at makeshift, too small tables seem oblivious to the shrill of the drill.
Immediately, senses are disarmed, wooed, and won by gossamer lobster in a vanilla-champagne sauce, impeccably sautéed kidneys -- rare, as requested -- under melting rounds of red-wine butter, and a crisp, crackling apple tart, plus orange peel in thinnest chocolate veneer, and truffles. All this while Senderens himself lunches in the corner of the room. The kitchen is poised and ready as the dust flies, it seems, but the dining staff is still in Philadelphia. Some of the busboys speak neither English nor French.
Communication is primitive. This is an adventure -- with prix fixe lunch at $19.50, dinner entrées, à la carte, running from $14 for sweetbreads to $24 for lobster with spinach. The theme is nouvelle with masterly restraint -- pigeon-and-cabbage salad, lobster salad with mangoes and basil, sweetbread-and-mushroom salad, lukewarm oysters with a tangle of leek whites, salmon played against a cream of bell pepper, bass in a beurre blanc with vegetable julienne, calf's liver touched with honey vinegar, filets of Charolais beef with a tartelette of pale livers -- Senderens' alchemy in an American context. Call it potluck in previews. Senderens has gone home now. Will the Maurice honor his challenge?
We duck into Grand Central Terminal's Oyster Bar latish. Nine oysters are listed on the counter bill. We start slowly… three each. No rude red cocktail sauce for us. No mignonette. No lemon. Just pure, cold, wet beastlings. Wellfleets, the briniest. And Cotuits. (Both from Massachusetts.) Complex, coquettish Belons from Maine. Great sighs. Sounds similar to those you hear through paper-thin walls of roadside motels. We share a cherrystone pan roast ($6.75) -- a dozen plump, perfect clams divided between us -- in a paprika cream. The countermen are refreshingly benign… amused by our groans of joy. The biscuits are warm. The crackers are crisp. The wine list salutes the American grape. Isn't it grand to find a favorite haunt that refuses to fade?
Next day, we duck into Oyster Bar again. Starting bolder now; seven oysters each. I've got mine arranged alphabetically, to be scientific. The box from Long Island ($1) is the Goliath of oysters. Oh, my. A mouthful of sea. Want to share a cherrystone pan roast? Oh dear. I think I'm addicted.
Two weeks ago I got a memo from the man at the top of this masthead asking if I could take some of the gush out of my review of the River Café. Can't imagine how he's going to swallow this. I'm feeling positively rococo over the latest inspired miscegenation at the Palace restaurant (420 East 59th Street, lunch, prix fixe, $25). Sea urchin and quail eggs. A rapturous notion. Chef Michel Fitoussi nestles half a dozen pungent urchins into one Fauvist-tinted shell, ladles hot beurre blanc on top to warm them, then tucks five perfectly poached quail eggs into the nest… surrounded by a splash of sauce sprinkled with chive and a scattering of pistachios. There is also salmon trout from an icy Canadian lake -- fresh, sweet, voluptuous… perfection in a sea-urchin boa. Fitoussi knows. Too much of a good thing is never enough.
The hazards that menace a restaurant critic are vile: gout, crise de foie as the liver fades, gall-bladder arrest, buttons that strain, victims who sue, but, most devastating, the temptation to open a restaurant. Veterans fight the siren lure. But Jon Simon was a food-world scribe only briefly; he scarcely had time to develop immunity. So here he is at 25, retired free-lance critic, with 23-year-old Neil Kleinberg, of Simons (75 West 68th Street, 496-7477). Hercules had it easy by comparison.
Simon wants to be hip, romantic, clubby, gastronomically easy, and serious all at once. And it is, already in its tenth week, a chip of each. The theme is good: nouvelle cuisine plus nice short-order things to eat. There's nothing like this place in my West Side neighborhood, with its pox of mostly pedestrian feeding stations. Simons has promise. But now, struggling to control frayed discipline in the kitchen, still lacking grace in the dining room, it has been too quickly discovered. Friends said farewell to Walter Cronkite here. And reports of such celebrated lurkers as Jane Fonda, Mick Jagger, Deborah Harry, and Beverly Sills have provoked a buzz of chic. So Simons is busy.
The swordfish is impeccably cooked (though the fennel with it is underdone); ditto sausage in pastry and gently breaded sweetbreads with string beans in salad. Pasta with a pale scent of pesto in pignoli dressing is pleasant enough. Breast of chicken arrives moist and flavorful in a zesty sauce with whole green peppercorns. One evening's special was stuffed grilled coho salmon, tasty and tender. And the banana sorbet is a smooth intensity of banana.
The catch: What is wonderful today might be a disaster tomorrow. A very reliable source was high on the crawfish bisque. Mine was weird -- unlike any bisque I've ever seen. Duck soup proves to be a masterfully intense consommé. And that day, as a special, it was served with a ruffle of buttery duck-liver mousse on a toasted crouton. Red shrimp and lotte swim in a pool of beurre blanc with an exquisite mousseline of red pepper, but both shrimp and lotte are too cooked. Some sorbets work. Some don't. Tough little cream puffs filled with a whole frozen strawberry are disastrous profiteroles; one day at brunch, though, thawed profiteroles were delicious. The palmier cookies range from burned to mediocre to raw.
Still, the fare is appealing. Simon and Kleinberg are smart to keep the changing menu short (lunch entrées are $4 to $6.50; brunch entrées are $5.50 to $9; dinner entrées go from $12 to $18). The graveyard menu (from 11:30 P.M. on) artfully caters to after-theater whims with baked potato skins. fritto misto, pasta, a smoked-chicken-and-Brie sandwich melt served with heavenly honey mustard, bouillabaisse, and bread and chocolate (chunks of white chocolate in a hollowed-out baguette), if you're adventurous enough to order it. There is an oyster menu too -- oysters of New Orleans on giant Villeroy and Boch plates, 80 cents each or $1 to $2.50 each if you want oyster topped with grated radish, tomato and wasabi (fabulous though overwhelming), pickled ginger, or caviar.
There are other problems. The space is cramped. Coat hooks are clumsy. Time stretches between courses. The staff is raggedy too. How could anyone serve oysters after soup and artichoke? The waitress says it was a misunderstanding. Salad with cheese before the entrée is a misunderstanding too.
Still, there's a spiffy maître d' (he was in a cutaway firs time I saw him). And candlelight. An electric piano plays sedately at dinner, heartily at brunch. Get someone to call you… the staff will plug a red telephone in at your table. I love all that Simons is up to. I hope someday, given time and dedication, they'll do it to perfection.
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