Pete Wells Takes Out Loan: Eats at Hakkasan

Abu Dhabi-based investment company, Times Square, and $48 Chilean sea bass are three in a list of many why Hakkasan probably won't make your restaurant radar any time soon.

In his review of Hakkasan, Pete Wells finds much to like in the dim sum on offer, but it seems to be the only saving grace in the 11,000 square foot room.

"The real problem is that its prices are too high for extremely restrained portions of food that is, in too many cases, about as interesting as a box of paper clips."

Pete sees a lot of potential in the cooks, who "have the focus of a cobra."  Someone just needs to "tell the cooks to make the food in their hearts instead of the lackluster recipes that somebody in the management company apparently believes non-Chinese people like."

Next time you're in Times Square and have $888 to spend on braised abalone with truffles, Hakkasan is your place.

Pete Files on Neta

Pete Wells awards two stars to Neta, the sushi spot a couple of Masa vets opened earlier this year on West 8th Street in G Village. 

Wells says of the decor, "The interior of Neta is defiantly plain," and that, "There are diners on Route 4 in New Jersey that give you more to look at."  It isn't until certain creations by Nick Kim and Jimmy Lau are placed in front of him that he forgets about his surroundings.  "In the presence of unusually well-made sushi, a kind of tunnel vision sets in. Anything else in the room might as well be invisible as the world narrows down to a gleam of fish on a finger of rice in a tight circle of light."

Allergic to fish?  No problem!  Neta has nearly a dozen different vegetable rolls available a la carte, a part of the menu Pete "might have read with as much attention as I give to sponsored posts on Twitter.  Curious, I tried grilled shiitake caps pressed around rice, a lotus root roll with minty shiso and another roll of asparagus tempura. They were some of the purest vegetable preparations I’ve tasted all spring."

Double Duty for Pete Wells This Week

Pete Wells files a double review this week on Peter Hoffman's Back Forty and Back Forty West.

Back Forty West comes to us as the replacement to Peter Hoffman's Greenmarket visionary Savoy, which operated in the same building, on the corner of Crosby and Prince, for over twenty years before closing last June.

The menus at the BF and BFW share "an overall philosophy," but are no means identical.  "Back Forty West isn’t a total clone. It’s more like a fraternal twin, sharing the logo and the look of the first place, along with a few menu items and an overall philosophy."

"Over the last month or so, I’ve had a string of extremely pleasant meals at second-generation Back Forty West, and a succession of sloppy, careless ones at the place it was modeled after. It’s as if Back Forty has gone into a long, jealous sulk, like a family cat that responds to the arrival of a new baby by hiding under the couch and scratching at anybody who gets too close."

His experiences at the restaurants leave Wells awarding zero stars to Back Forty, who gets pegged 'Fair', while Back Forty West receives a solid two stars.

Pete Wells Loves Le Bernardin, and the Yankees

revamped dining room at le bernardinLast year, towards the end of summer, Le Bernardin shut down for a month to get an overhaul from a team of architects and designers from Bentel & Bentel.  The restaurant reopened in mid September, and today, Pete Wells files a four-star review on his recent experience at the restaurant Eric Ripert has been the executive chef at for 18 years.

"People sometimes ask him (Ripert) if he gets tired of cooking fish. Clearly these people have never eaten at Le Bernardin. No other restaurant in the city makes the simple cooking of fish (and the fish at Le Bernardin is cooked simply, when it is cooked at all) seem so ripe with opportunities for excitement."

"Like nearly all the savory dishes, this one depends upon the kitchen’s expert sauciers, especially Vincent Robinson, who has been on the job since 1985. Standing over his stockpots, Mr. Robinson has the control of Mariano Rivera on the mound. (Get well soon, Mr. Rivera.)" 

You can almost taste the dishes as Wells points out combinations of flavors put together by Mr. Robinson, "When he blends bergamot with grapefruit and other citrus for lobster, or jalapeño with lime for fluke sashimi, the nip of acidity will touch down precisely on this spot of your tongue, and nowhere else."

Wells is happy to join the ranks of Times critics that have placed Le Bernardin at its most acclaimed, four stars.  "Why wait to say it: today I fall in line, happily, with my predecessors."

Pete Wells has Two More for Perla

Pete Wells gives two stars to Gabe Stulman's two-month old Perla in today's review.  Chef Toscano's savory part of the menu is right up Pete's alley.  He finds the veal in one of the anitpasti "thrillingly pink," while a tartare made from a Piedmontese breed of cow is "suave."

When it comes to desserts, it may be in chef Mr. Toscano's interest to hire a pastry chef, "Rustic desserts like chocolate crostata or date cheesecake looked as if they had been dropped on the floor, and fennel cookies showed up one night so underdone that they might have been made in an Easy-Bake oven."

Wells is none too pleased about some of the policies instilled at the restaurant, as he finds "Dining at Perla takes a significant commitment of time and money. The restaurant should make a reciprocal commitment, rather than force customers to stand around near the bar — not at the bar (stools are reserved for dining at peak hours), but near the bar."  "Better values would be welcome and so would reservations."

One Star for Midtown's La Silhouette

In today's Times, Pete Wells awards La Silhouette one star in a review that reads like Bruni's recent article about having gout.  Chef Matthew Tropeano's menu has more than one foie gras dish on it.  There is a foie gras sauce, truffled forcemeat, sweetbreads, duck pate, and butter poached lobster.  It's a rich menu and you may be better off walking to 362 West 53rd Street to taste its offerings than taking the subway.

As for all the goose liver, Mr. Tropeano "ought to know his way around a lobe of foie gras.  He spent eight years in the kitchen at La Grenouille, mastering old-guard French dishes that fewer and fewer chefs in New York know how to pronounce."

La Silhouette "is on the extremely short list of good French restaurants in walking distance of the Broadway theaters," despite the fact that it operates in a "dark space that is about as inviting a spot for a restaurant as the Holland Tunnel."

Two Stars for Midtown's Cafe China

Pete Wells awards two stars to Cafe China this week in a review that is just as playful as the heat and tingle experienced from the bounty of sichuan peppercorns that are in Cafe China's food.

"The chile heat and the Sichuan pepper tingle intensify each other until your mouth vibrates the way Wile E. Coyote does when he is hit on the head by an iron beam."

There is a bit of Sichuan 101 throughout the review as we learn "Sichuan cooks call the heat of chile peppers la. Ma is the word for the mouth-numbing zing of their region’s prized peppercorns. Stir them together and you have ma la."  We are directed to Land of Plenty, a cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop that notes "ma la is one of 23 distinct flavor combinations in Sichuan cooking."

Wells finds the use of sichuan peppers to be controlled and well executed in the robin's-egg-blue room at 13 East 37th Street.  "Even his spiciest recipes hold back from obliterating your palate, so you can taste the other dishes."

Two Stars for Empellon Cocina

Pete Wells makes it over to Alex Stupak's Empellon Cocina and awards it two solid stars.  There were a few "stammers" in a salad with avacado and toasted grains, and a "kind of queso fundido made with lobster and tetilla cheese was buttery and rich, but also so watery that eating it became a three-napkin job."

Wells stresses that tapas may not be the proper format to present the food, but decides "Mr. Stupak’s cooking at Empellón Cocina resembles the food of Mexico the way a dream resembles life."