October 17, 1988 |
Vintage Insatiable
Huberts: Brain Food
This is a belated greeting to Huberts in its newest, grand incarnation. I’ve been brooding for months, trying to decide why I am the only critic in town who’s not in love with chef Len Allison’s intellectual cuisine—his Oriental, Cajun, Mexican, Polish borrowings. Even intellectually, I’m not all that amused.
My fingers yearn for chopsticks as I contemplate the house’s offering tonight -- soy-and-sesame-scented cabbage. The fluttering of shiso leaves, the trail of miso and wasabi, the strings of daikon -- all distract more often than they enhance. The celebrated mole of the beloved rabbit sausages seems a sandy mash to me. And the red-eyed rabbit carved from a green apple, with its teeny turned carrot, is a cutesy conceit I liked better in the small tearoom Huberts abandoned downtown for these uppity digs.
But the card-carrying arbiters of taste are positively gaga about the place, stars tumbling from their forks, three and four at a time. Mine is the minority carp.
There has never been a better moment for genius and innovation in the American kitchen. True, New Yorkers are a bit snarly about high prices. (And the dinner prix fixe is $60 here, plus an automatic 18 percent service charge; $37.50 and $47.50 at lunch.) But still we come, loaded with plastic, more sophisticated than ever, elevating gifted chefs to celebrity Valhalla. And it’s exciting to watch home talent grow, to chart the trek of Karen Hubert and her chef-husband from Brooklyn to Gramercy Park to this plush, shimmering Japanese temple on Park.
Perhaps these mixed metaphors seemed less like babel in a cozier, more modest setting. Now they sit on a pedestal, showcased in Adam Tihany’s exquisite backdrop of gold-stippled walls, curving arches in Australian ash and ebonized wood, and the pale luminescence of light -- green through frosted glass, or silk-filtered peach.
Take a recent dinner ($376 for our four). The captain, in his gray wing-collared shirt and bow tie (a nice hedge between tux and informality), impresses. Asked to choose the best red wine under $30, he comes up with a winner, a wonderful Groth Cabernet.
A salad of mirugai, the giant sea clam, and a rainbow of peppers is sprightly and delicious. Roquefort soufflé can be celestial -- mild and creamy. And a gravlax terrine has a nice complexity of tastes and textures. But the shards of ice in the Russian ice-house soup with salmon roe are a jarring note. Pallid shrimp on smashed cucumber tastes of sesame and nothing else. Is it possible this humble crabmeat pierogi is the lumpling that won so many raves? Pan-blackened salmon and grilled red snapper, both with Japanese accents, are good but not exceptional, and the stuffed quail is overcooked. Even the “country captain chicken” has a primitive quality I don’t recall in the version that thrilled me downtown.
At lunch, in a room that is serene and near-empty, splendid herbed muffins lead to supernal tuna sashimi with a thick tahini-and-sherry sauce. The darling of chili-pepper pasta with diamonds of crisp seaweed and briny sea urchin pleases. But the saffron butter napping perfectly cooked scallops is bland. And veal wrapped in a clever lattice of potato has no savor at all.
Luscious desserts—haunting raspberry-and-rhubarb tart, a warm melt of chocolate cake, a homey and wonderful blueberry-crumb confection, ambrosial prune fool in a pastry cone, elegant lemon soufflé in a puff-pastry crust—can leave one feeling blissfully indulged. Tonight’s lingonberry cheesecake is ethereal, and a peach tart with raspberry-spiked crème fraîche is so irresistible, you could easily overlook pastry chef John Dudek’s final note: fragile pecan dreams and peppery chocolate snaps. Don’t be silly.
575 Park Avenue, at 63rd Street.