La Vara and Cobble Hill Get Two More Stars from Wells

Cobble Hill and Pete Wells are becoming great friends. Andy Ricker opened Pok Pok NY on Columbia Street in the western reaches of the neighborhood earlier this year and Wells gave it two stars in June.  This week, Wells goes back to Cobble Hill, to La Vara, and gives it the same two-star treatment.

La Vara opened on Clinton Street back in May.  It's the newest project from Alex Raij and her husband/co-chef Eder Montero.  Here, the married couple are bringing a unique twist to the Spanish cuisine that can be found at their other restaurants in Chelsea: Txikito and El Quinto Pino.  At La Vara, there's a focus on "the vast legacy of the Jews and Muslims who shared the Iberian Peninsula with Christians for centuries.  This three-way marriage, known as la convivencia, did wonderful things for the country’s kitchens."

"La Vara serves most things as small tapas-size dishes.  Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t."  In a Diner's Journal article published today, Wells asks the reader, "Do you like small plates restaurants? Do you like lots of little tastes, or do you want more?"  The result is an ongoing dialogue on Twitter (read the highlights here) that includes the likes of Bloomberg restaurant critic Ryan Sutton and David Chang.

Wells clearly enjoyed a few dishes at La Vara, namely the griddled red shrimp and a pasta called gurullos, which he found to be "as fluffy as an Italian grandmother’s prizewinning gnocchi."  The review is as much a dissecction of La Vara's efforts as it is a thorough lesson on the history of religion in Spain.  "La Vara, by the way, was the name of a Jewish newspaper published in New York until it ceased in 1948."

The Williamsburg Fox Gets a Star

Reynard is a name for a fox that was used in medieval tales.  In the Wythe Hotel, a fox earned itself a star from Pete Wells this week.  Reynards is the latest edition to Andrew Tarlow's Williamsburg empire, which includes Marlow & Sons and Diner, both a bit further south.  At Reynards, "nearly everything that comes out of the kitchen is chosen by hand and cooked with firewood." 

Sean Rembold is in charge of the cooking.  He started out with Tarlow as the sous chef at Marlow & Sons and his affinity for smokey, fire cooked food can now be found on Wythe Avenue between North 11th and North 12th Streets.  "Reynard’s hoods must be powered by jet engines because you don’t smell smoke at your table until you get close to your food. Then you can’t miss it."

The restaurant is open from 7am - midnight; serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  "The menu changes too often for recommendations," but the assortment of dishes may be accompanied with wine from "a cellar of offbeat and affordable French wines" Lee Campbell put together at Hip Town's newest hotel eatery.

"Danny Bowien Was In Swim Trunks"

In his review this week, Wells gives Mission Chinese Food two stars and proves to like Danny Bowien's San Fran import a little more than Adam Platt did. 

Wells hints at the waits you're liable to experience, which happen in any decent restaurant here in the city, especially when its only 30 or so seats.  "Outside on Orchard Street, they were waiting, all right..." "Unseen others were sitting in bars nearby, wondering whether they would order a third round before the phone rang."

Led Zepplin was playing during some of Wells' meal.  "Mr. Bowien does to Chinese food what Led Zeppelin did to the blues. His cooking both pays respectful homage to its inspiration and takes wild, flagrant liberties with it. He grabs hold of tradition and runs at it with abandon, hitting the accents hard, going heavy on the funk and causing all kinds of delicious havoc."

What Danny Bowien is trying to do at 154 Orchard Street is a healthy fusion he himself has dubbed "Americanized Oriental Food."  But, there's more to it than that.  He draws influences from his past.  Bowien is Korean born, adopted and raised in Oklahoma.  He's a generous guy.  Nothing on the menu is more than $15 and 75 cents from every dish goes to the Food Bank for New York. 

The two stars should be as much a representation of the food/experience at Mission Chinese as they are an honor bestowed on Bowien for his undeniably unique approach and his one-of-a-kind perspective on a cuisine and business model he has made entirely his own.

The Foraging Pays Off; Three Stars for Atera

Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria and Kyo Ya have a new member in their three-star club.  Michael Lightner's Tribeca hotspot Atera is the third restaurant to earn three stars from Pete Wells.  The restaurant opened this year in March and added fuel to an already blazing fire ignited by chefs who had passed through Rene Redzepi's kitchen at Noma in Copenhagen.  Lightner cooked there, at Mugaritz in Spain, and at Castagna in Portland, Oregan before landing in the Triangle Beneath Canal.

Dubbed "snack time" by Wells, the initial bites that start a meal at Atera are nothing to write home about.  "There was a bitter and stringy clump of fried garlic roots, about as rewarding as eating a broom. A facsimile peanut made with foie gras and peanut butter wasn’t as good as an actual peanut, and a facsimile egg shaped from aioli wasn’t as good as an actual egg."

A few small bites later, "when snack time was over and the core of the menu began, something remarkable happened."  That's not to say the ensuing meal was perfect.  Wells goes on to mention a few dissatisfactions, but ultimately feels a meal at Atera is one of the more unique the city has to offer.  "It doesn’t all come together yet, but it comes close enough that a night at Atera is now one of the most fascinating experiences you can have in a New York City restaurant."

Remember the Almayass

This weeks review from Pete Wells reveals a family affair in Flatiron.  Almayass opened earlier this year on 21st Street and is operated largely in part by an Armenian family.  "In fact, family values set the tone for the whole experience of eating at Almayass. At times that is refreshing; occasionally, like one’s own family, it can drive you slightly bananas."  "One waiter, for instance, played the overbearing uncle."  "Another reminded us of the kind of shiftless cousin who never stays focused."

The original Almayass opened in Beirut in 1997.  Fast forward a decade and a half and the restaurant is operating in Kuwait, Abu Dhabi, New York City, and opening soon in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.  Here in New York, the cooking could use an upgrade, "Meats and seafood at Almayass tended to be overcooked; grilled prawns one night were so tough that I sliced them with effort and swallowed them with regret."

The food and the service weren't worthy of more than one star, but Wells is happy to have an Armenian restaurant to help answer his question, "Where have all the Armenian restaurants gone? A fixture of the city’s dining scene 50 years ago, they had all but vanished by the end of the last century."

Pete Wells Admires Hill Country

In celebrating America's independence, Pete Wells files a two star review on Hill Country Barbecue.  "The restaurant is a state-of-the-art Manhattan homage to the preindustrial craft of Texas barbecue."  He's a big fan of the "moist brisket," the "greasy paper," and the beef and pork ribs, which he makes sound remarkably similar to a Butterfinger with their "similarly peppery, crunchy top layer."

Despite the 1,500 pounds of oak shipped from Texas that Hill Country burns through a week, "it doesn't produce that kind of deeply smoky barbecue" that Lockhart, Texas is known for.  It's a fact that doesn't keep Wells from dropping two stars on Hill Country.

Wells points out Peter Meehan's opinion of Hill Country from shortly after it opened in 2007, when Meehan said, "No other barbecue place that has opened in New York in recent years has gotten it so right, right out of the gate."  Wells feels the same way five years later, "Hill Country may not be the real thing. But it plays the part better than anybody else in town."

Two Two Stars Stars for for Pok Pok

Pete Wells gets some use out of his GPS and heads to Pok Pok Ny in Cobble Hill for this week's review.  

James Beard Award winning chef Andy Ricker opened Pok Pok Ny on April 18th.  He introduced New York to his crazy pantry a few months earlier when he opened Pok Pok Wing in the East Village.   Pok Pok Ny is the Portland based chef's first sit down establishment on the East Coast and it's been on the media's radar ever since.  A garden opened in the back a few weeks ago and helps to soften some pretty lengthy wait times.

Wells welcomes the restaurant to the list of the city's Thai mainstays with its unique, regional menu.  "The first way Pok Pok Ny shifts your perspective is by offering the food of northern Thailand, which has been largely missing from New York."  "So yes," he goes on, "by all means go to Ayada and Sripraphai. Everybody should. But don’t tell yourself that you’ll be getting the same stuff, because it isn’t true."

Wells' two stars drives home the fact that the trip to 127 Columbia Street in Cobble Hill is worth it.  "Altered perceptions come free with the price of dinner at Pok Pok Ny."

Three Stars for the Wandering Nomad

Pete Wells awards three stars to The Nomad.  The restaurant is "loose, alive, genuine, deliberate."  This is intentional.  "Daniel Humm and Will Guidara talk about modeling the restaurant on the Rolling Stones.  They went through a branding exercise, writing down words that defined the band."

Perhaps that's why the atmospher is "Fancily if impersonally decorated, like a Riviera home rented out to a rock band."

Wells finds the signature chicken for two as "the uncontested prima donna.  If served at a dark no-reservations tavern in the Village, it would be enough to put the place on the map."

"When things can go so right, you notice when they go even a little wrong."  This was sometimes the case with certain dishes, the flaws of which are "minor demerits for a kitchen that takes on as much as the NoMad's."  In addition to the 120 seats in The Nomad, the kitchen is responsible for room service and the five-course tasting menu that launched last week on The Nomad Rooftop, the hotel's alfresco sibling.

A hotel is not complete without a bar and The Nomad does an excellent job in this department. "The selection of cocktails, an entire fleet, is surely one of the best in the city."  The Turf Cocktail is "an absinthe-fortified martini that could easily become a habit, but it's probably not the kind described in “Sister Morphine.”"

The Nomad came up just shy of four stars.  "But while the NoMad seeks its tone, there are so many reasons for patience."