Dan the Man

[robert wright for the times]Pete Wells has given one four-star review in his 15 months as critic for the New York Times. Reviews of this sort are few and far between, which is not surprising when you consider the shift in restaurant trends over the past few years. Casual and small has become the new fancy and grandiose. Loud is the new quiet, and downtown is definitely the new uptown.

There has been a handful of three-star reviews though. Ichimura at Brushstroke was the last recipient back in September. Before that is was Atera, before that The Nomad, Kyo Ya before that, and Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria was the first on February 14th. Today, Wells has another for the Dining Room at the Modern.

The eight-year-old Danny Meyer restaurant was reviewed by Frank Bruni shortly after it opened in 2005. He gave three stars to the restaurant's Bar Room and two to the Dining Room, where on a recent visit, Wells found, "the cooking has more focus and intensity than I remember from the early days." He writes, "Sweet apple-wood smoke made its way into every bite of a sturgeon and sauerkraut tart topped with a glittering vein of caviar. It was elegant and powerful, like the pairing of a luxuriously soft poached egg with squid-ink spaetzle, sea urchin, roasted salsify and fragments of black truffles."

Executive chef Gabriel Kreuther's food matches the artistry found throughout 9 West 53rd Street. "He is bold with color," writes Wells, "painting salmon crimson with a marinade of beet juice, or drawing a dark green stripe of powdered Kaffir lime down the center of a monkfish fillet resting in a gorgeous sauce of blood orange and mustard."

The review breaks a streak in covering newly opened restaurants. It's a breath of fresh air that proves it's OK to get dressed up for dinner, and that, after running restaurants in New York for 30 years, Mr. Hospitality's still got it. [NYTimes]

Salamat, Pete

[robert kaplin for the times]Pete Wells dropped a multi-restaurant review last week with barbecue as the common thread. This week's is done in the same vein, only the focus is Filipino food. It's a cuisine that is rarely at the center of the city's food dialogue, though it's certainly not from anyone's lack of trying. Dozens of Filipino restaurants have come and gone over the years, Pistahan, Cendrillon, Elvie's Turo-Turo, and Bayan Cafe among them. Suffice it to say, the city is not without its share of bagoong, bangus, balut, sisig, suman, and halo halo. Mainstays like Krystal's Cafe, Ihawan and Ihawan2 in Queens, Grill 21 and Kuma Inn in Manhattan, and Purple Yam in Brooklyn have been serving Filipino food for years.

The subjects of this week's review? Jeepney and Pig & Khao. "The two places have many things in common," Wells explains. "Open since last fall, they are small, casual, fun and often loud — Jeepney with American and Filipino party rock, Pig and Khao with slow-rolling Southern hip-hop. Neither stocks hard liquor, but each still manages to shake up very entertaining cocktails." So how will decide which to bring your friends to next time you're in the mood for the rich flavors of the Southeast Asian archipelago? Take Wells' advice, "For Pig and Khao I’d round up the ones who love Asian flavors, don’t have significant hearing loss yet, think it’s fun to get endless refills of beer from a keg in the back garden and won’t be heartbroken to learn that fertilized duck embryos are not an option." "The friends I’d take to Jeepney would be the explorers," he mentions later, "the ones who see every meal as a chance to learn something."

Part of a chef's job is to adapt custom and tradition to evolving food trends. As our food culture marches further down Artisan Road, our palates are becoming less and less captivated by generic, factory farmed ingredients. Innovative cuisine alone isn't always enough to bring in the crowds. But if there's a new story to be told, and the chef communicates through their food, people are likely to engage in conversation. The teams at Jeepney and Pig & Khao get this, and the two-star reviews show signs of a shifting dialogue. [NYTimes]

Mighty Mighty Quinn's Barbecue

hugh mangum [daniel krieger for the times]New York City got a slew of new barbecue restaurants at the end of last year. Fletcher's Brooklyn Barbecue setup shop on Third Ave in Gowanus, BrisketTown opened on Bedford in South Williamsburg, and Hugh Mangum brought Texalina Barbecue to Second Ave in Manhattan via Mighty Quinn's. Mangum's barbecue is a hybrid of sorts, inspired by the traditions of Texas and the Carolinas, and in today's Times, Pete Wells awards his efforts two stars.

Wells weighs in on each of the three newcomers in his review. He likes the sides at Fletcher's, "like the beans that lap up wood smoke as they bake in the pit next to the meats; the crisp house-made refrigerator pickles, put up in a jar; and the macaroni and cheese when it is topped with the great burnt-end chili." He's also a big fan of the brisket at BrisketTown, where Daniel Delaney "rubs the brisket generously with salt and cracked peppercorns and smokes it for many, many hours, until it is very, very tender." But it's the barbecue at Quinn's that has his heart. To make it easy for you, here's a list of the restaurant's barbecue with their prices and what Wells has to say about each:

Brisket ($8.50 single serving/$22 by the pound) - "The brisket is cooked patiently to render much of the fat from the top cap, moistening even the leaner lower muscle until it gleams."

Pulled Pork ($7.25 ss/$18.75 btp) - "The pulled pork is the only one in town that doesn’t make you embarrassed for New York. It is staggeringly good."

Smoked Sausage ($7 ss/$12 btp) - "While there is nothing wrong with a smoked hot sausage, the one here isn’t quite strong enough to build a meal around."

Spare Ribs ($8 ss/$23 per rack) - "Spare ribs are exceptional, too, meaty and juicy, with a smoky outer ring the color of cherry soda."

Brontosaurus Rib - ($23 ss) - "The beef rib is an instant conversation stopper, a long block of impressively tender meat clinging to a Jurassic curve of bone."

Half Chicken - ($8.50 ss) - "The only disappointment is the chicken, no better or worse than what a skilled weekend cook can produce with a kettle grill." [NYTimes]

The Sun Will Come Out The Marrow

After winning the first season of Top Chef, Harold Dieterle set his sights on New York, where he opened Perilla with Alicia Nosenzo in May 2007. The food there, according to the restaurant's website, is "seasonal American." Kin Shop came next, and for that menu Dieterle looked to Thailand. The team opened The Marrow in the last weeks of 2012, and this time, Dieterle let his roots inspire the cooking. In his review of Dieterle's third restaurant today, Pete Wells explains, "Half his menu is inspired by his father’s German roots. The other half draws from the Italian cuisine of his mother and her relatives."

Wells finds a riff "between dishes that are completely sure of their purpose and the ones so overembellished it’s unclear what the idea was meant to be." The restaurant's namesake dish, served with sea urchin, is "a pun on textures, a delicious joke that you got with your tongue. Some dishes, though," he continues, "made me wonder whether I’d missed the punch line."

Wells is enamered with Jill Roberts' wine list and pastry chef Ginger Fisher's desserts. The ginger stout cake, for example, "really is worth jumping up and down about." But, because of inconsistencies Wells finds throughout the menu, he awards The Marrow just one star. [NYTimes]

Tell Louro I Love Her

David Santos was the chef at 5 & Diamond and Hotel Griffou before he started hosting super clubs at his Roosevelt Island apartment. For a $75 donation, guests were treated to a seven-course, Portuguese-inspired meal with dishes like coriander cured snapper and sweet potato and duck tongue salad. About a year after the super club started, Santos opened Louro in the West Village, and today Pete Wells awards the restaurant one star.

At Louro, Santos continues the super club theme on Mondays, "when the restaurant puts away its à la carte menu and serves a fixed-price meal," writes Wells. It also goes the B.Y.O.B. route Mondays, "While some restaurants that offer tastings also push a wine pairing that can double the check, Louro let me carry in beer I’d picked up at the supermarket."

Santos takes a worldy approach in the kitchen, where "His cooking ranges avidly through flavors from around the globe, but what it expresses most clearly is the sheer pleasure of being set loose in the kitchen." The small plates and eggs & grains dishes at Louro are the most exceptional, compared to "the larger meat or fish dishes, which tended to be forgettable." While Wells is clearly taken by the passion in Santos' cooking, he writes, "My praise for Louro would be louder, though, if the more substantial dishes were as satisfying." [NYTimes]

Aska, Aska, Read All About It!

[daniel krieger for the new york times]Nordic cuisine was undeniably one of 2012's hottest trends. The year's biggest contributions came via Frej opening in Williamsburg, Acme opening on Bond Street, and Tribeca welcoming Atera, Matthew Lightner's chef's counter Pete Wells awarded three stars in July. The trend continued to ripple at year's end, when Aska opened in the former Frej space. Today, Wells keeps the Nordic torch lit with his two-star review of the restaurant.

Fredrik Berselius runs the kitchen at Aska. He was also the chef at Frej, Kinfolk Studios short-lived pop-up restaurant. Where Frej only offered a five-course tasting for $45, Aska serves a six-course option Sunday through Thursday for $65, and a la carte options seven days a week. Eamon Rockey, former General Manager at Atera, signed on and curated a beverage program that parallels Berselius' New Nordic approach.

At Aska, "A common ingredient is made unfamiliar," writes Wells, "a transformation the kitchen pulls off again and again." Berselius proves to be a culinary shapeshifter of sorts, and "What looks like a whole fish is in fact the fried head and tail of a herring, with the rich, soft cured fillet connecting the two crunchy ends. (Granted, fresh herring may not qualify as common. “It’s one of my favorite ingredients, but I’ve only been able to get it twice in the seven years I’ve been cooking,” Mr. Berselius said.)"

"Mr. Berselius knows how to turn up the flavors when he wants to. The flavors he draws out of vegetables, meat and seafood can stop your breath. He found exceptional sweetness in the purple carrots he served with pike and whipped anchovy cream, and extracted a broth from monkfish bones that had something like the depth of veal stock when it was spooned around a fillet of the fish and a slice of its sautéed liver."

Aksa's $65 six-course tasting is easily one of the city's finest fine dining experiences, and one that turns a cold shoulder to the constantly rising price tags on prix-fixe menus around town. [NYTimes]

The Stars Shine Bright in Maysville

[rebecca greenfield for the times]Pete Wells files on the newly opened Maysville on West 26th Street today. The American-inspired restaurant is the shared vision of Sean Josephs (owner of Char No. 4 in Brooklyn) and chef Kyle Knall, "whose understated American style," Wells wrtes, "is a winning blend of the refined and the unpretentious." This approach to cooking was honed at Gramercy Tavern, where Knall worked before signing on to open Maysville.

"Encountered as words on the menu, some of his food may have a been-there, done-that feeling. But if you have done this before, it feels different this time." Wells notes the frequent use of hay in kitchens around town these days, writing, "I’ve had more hay set in front of me in the past year than a thoroughbred training for the Kentucky Derby, but never was it used to as good effect as it is at Maysville, where its smoke infuses warm oysters." "True, some things I ate erred on the side of subtlety," Wells writes of Knall's food, but concludes, "More often, he nailed the nuances."

Maysville takes it name from the city in Kentucky where Kentucky bourbon was born, and the restaurant boasts a list of 150+ American whiskeys. Domestic products also get their due in "a deep wine list that does well by the United States. Wells finds the list, "is surprisingly extensive even if its large number of three-digit prices feels out of place."

Maybe Wells will hit Char No. 4 sometime this year. For now, he awards two stars to Maysville, a restaurant in his eyes that's "a confident restatement of the American tavern."

Governor Will Not Reopen

The owners of Colonie, Gran Electrica, and Governor announced over the weekend that, due to damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, they will not be reopening Governor.

"In the aftermath of this dreadful storm, we assessed the destruction at Governor caused by five feet of water, and we were determined to rebuild our fledgling restaurant.  But despite our commitment and the subsequent and remarkable outpouring of support in all forms--from individuals, the restaurant industry and the community, we have, regrettably, been forced to accept that the scope and scale of repairing the damage to our restaurant is beyond our means financially.

It is with a very heavy heart that we must humbly face up to this fact."

We had the good fortune of eating at Governor shortly after the restaurant opened, but the unfortunate news serves as a reminder of the storms severity. We're sad to see the restaurant close, as it had quickly received city-wide acclaim, neighborhood praise, and two stars from Pete Wells in the mere four months it was open. Benefits held and donations made since Sandy have raised over $50,000 for the restaurant, but Tamer Hamawi, one of three owners, "estimated the damage at $300,000 to $350,000," writes Wells in an article for Diner's Journal. The owners are offering to return all the donations.

Along with Hamawi, Elise Rosenberg and Emelie Kihlstrom will continue to pour their efforts into their other two projects, "We will continue to operate Colonie and Gran Electrica and refocus our efforts on making these businesses viable in their Brooklyn neighborhoods for the long term." The statement also reveals that Brad McDonald, who served as the executive chef for the restaurant group, will be moving on "to spend time with his wife and two young children." [StongBuzz] [Diner'sJournal]