Chris H.'s Profile

As of April 26, my SPG statement tells me that I've spent 73 night in 2012 in a Sheraton, Westin, or W hotel.  3 of those night unfortunately were spent at the airport Sheraton.  My interaction with the staff would have been hilarious if not so frustrating.

(dials front desk) Me: "hi, my floor (I was staying on the SPG concierge level) doesn't have an ice machine..."
Front desk: "yeah its on the fifth floor"
Me: "well could you ask housekeeping to bring some up?"
Front desk: "we don't do that" ( hangs up)

The next night:
(dials room service) me: "hi, could I order the Greek salad?"
Room service: "it's not on the menu"
Me: "but it's on the menu in the lobby restaurant?"
Room service: "well then you have to order it down there" (hangs up)

Off I go to the lobby restaurant:
Me: "could I order the Greek salad to go?"
Bartender: "to go? Are you staying at the hotel?"
Me: "yes I am"
Bartender: "oh, you could have just order this through room service"
Derfffff

Normally I don't pay attention to my neighbors in hotels, but two doors down, there was a large lady who wore pink hot pants and a white tube top who had a habit of propping her door open, like a dorm room from freshman year.  I wanted to ask her how she made Starwood elite status but I was afraid she would charge me by the minute.

When I retire, I want to own a bar like Paradise Alley.  I figure I'll be jaded enough at that point to hate on the froo-froo speakeasies, hipster hang outs, and velvet rope affairs.  I want my pool table to be ratty and I want my top shelf liquor (incl Grey Goose!) to cost $6 for a generous pour like at Paradise Alley.

I want my bartender to be an old white biker dude, who graciously serves a clientele that's 95% Asian youngsters without batting an eye, and gives out free shots after he warms up to your group.  And I want to serve frozen pizza out of a clapped out toaster oven.  It'll be cash only like at Paradise Alley, and I want my back patio to be huge, and a perfect spot for an impromptu game of flip cup and beer pong during warmer days.

Someday I'll have a bar like Paradise Alley, and it'll be the greatest bar in New York.

The good folks at Low Country do a few things exceedingly well.  For starters, they're doing interesting and delicious things with the cocktail program, including one of my new favorite drinks, an invigorating ginger fizz ($12) spiked with jalapenos.  And whomever is manning the deep frier is certainly earning their keep, given the shatteringly crisp cornmeal crusted fried pickles ($7) and the unbelievably moist fried chicken ($23).  The friendly but sometimes forgetful staff add welcome notes of conviviality to the experience.

The menu encourages you to eat with your hands.  I found the deviled eggs to be perfectly cooked, firm enough to be picked up the hands, but delicate so that one risks dropping the yolky filling when doing so.  And fried chicken is a finger food if there ever was one.  I even spotted the lady at the table next to us, who was sporting a black dress and a pearl necklace, tearing into a plate of fried oysters with her hands (and drinking a PBR, no less).

But for all of good that the bartender and deep frier can do, none can make up for the lack of seasoning in almost all of the dishes.  She-crab soup was ($14) was a sad bowl of barely flavored dairy, and a side of cheddar grits ($8), while texturally brilliant, begged for salt.  Fried pickles, while a triumph of texture, tasted nothing of pickles, and even that beautiful fried chicken needed a bit of oomph (they thankfully included a side of ranch dressing for flavor).

We left thinking that the kitchen needs to season their food with more confidence.  A few tweaks, and this restaurant could be something great.  They're so close to that you can almost taste it.

Of all of the considerable culinary charms in the village, the neighborhood has non-red-sauce-moderately-spendy Italian joints in spades.  Consider the game changers Lupa and Barbuto, or the always solid L'Artisi and Dell'Anima, or the intriguing menu and wine list at Osteria Morini.  Recall Scarpetta, who's $24 plate of spaghetti launched a thousand gushing reviews.  And then there's ol' reliable Frankies, who's much beloved locations in LES and Brooklyn spurred them to expand to the West Village.

The menu oozes intrigue, the dining room thrums with happily chatting diners, the waitstaff are knowledgeable and pleasant, and the bartender mixes one hell of a Manhattan.  Frankies anti-pasto platter ($17) flops with a not-so-generous spread of meat and cheese, cold soggy vegetables, and oddly curated cheese.  On the other hand, a salad of beets and avocado ($10) was more than generous for the price, but monotonous in both flavor and texture.  

We loved the al dente of the pappardelle ($18), but we didn't love the bits of gristle and fat that striated the accompanying lamb shank ragu.  And the broiler had gotten the better of our dried out pork chop ($22), as butter overtook the accompanying polenta - excessive but unpleasant to a Paula Deen tenor.

In addition to the considerable yawns and all of the flaws, most damningly, we found ourselves wishing we'd gone to another village Italian restaurant.

Teleflora Haiku(s):

Ordered for V-Day
What? Flowers never arrived?!
In the doghouse now

Two hours calling
Customer service help line
They never picked up

No one to take calls
Since they spent all their money
On Ms. Lima ad

To dine at Daniel is the tale of two dinners.  If you are a VIP, and roughly 30-50% of the dining room are folks that come here on a regular basis and drop some major moolah, then life is good.  They receive better ingredients *, are treated to table side service, and they get a personal visit from Monsieur Boulud if he's in the restaurant.  They'll theatrically decant your wine and they'll give your limo driver a lavish steak dinner in a to-go box.  

If it's your first time here, they'll do none of the above.  They even won't offer to wheel over the cheese cart.   Why am I telling you this?  Because Daniel is an amazing experience for those that can afford it on a regular basis.  For those that can't, you may be better off dropping your $500 on dinner for two at Eleven Madison Park or Per Se - restaurants that always wow in big ways.

Daniel doesn't wow, although I may be jaded by one too many great dinners in NYC.  The dishes are immaculately plated and presented, the flavors are the definition of refinement, the service is impeccable, and the dining room is awe inspiring.  But why then, did I wish I were eating at another restaurant?

During an exquisite dish of duck terrine, lavished with foie gras (accompanied by Honeycrisp Apple Confit, Sauternes Glazed Date, Mâche Salad, Hazelnut-Cider Vinaigrette), the gf and I reminisced about the shaved foie gras dish at Momofoku Ko, a dish more exciting and far more memorable.  

In turn, a single plump diver sea scallop (with Celery Mousseline and Bottarga Vinaigrette) made me pine for the awesome scallops with gribenes at Tenpenny.  A dish of beautifully plated  veal over polenta (Poached Cheeks with Parsley Pasta, Crispy Sweetbreads with Hedgehog Mushroom and Crosnes) made me ache for the sweetbread at Apiary.  A similar story for the peekytoe crab salad (Hearts of Palm, Finger Lime, Pickled Chayote, Red Ribbon Sorrel), where which made me crave the peekytoe salads enjoyed at ABC Kitchen and Perilla.

For the 99%, it isn't possible to nurture a relationship with Daniel, and in my opinion, at this price point, a one-time special dinner here should be a fireworks display of amazement and delight.  Instead, this ceremony of dining is a restrained and overpriced emblem to haute cuisine - a highbrow reflection of the everyday restaurants that make New York City's dining scene so amazing.

* Seriously.  I was chatting with a former cook, who informed me that they have separate ingredient bins for VIPs and regular customers

For the longest time, I've never actually owned a pair of shoes worth repairing.   I've gotten by on stylish but disposable pairs of ALDO shoes, which look like gang busters, but are for the most part, uncomfortable and ridiculously perishable (4-6 month shelf life for the active New Yorker).

But as I've gotten older and wiser, I've come to embrace Forrest Gump's adage, "You could tell about a person by their shoes. Where they're going. Where they've been.", and I started to buy big-boy dress shoe that require a certain amount of pampering.

That means that said big-boy dress shoes deserve a fixer-upper, and Rostelle (helpfully recommended by you Yelpers) was close at hand.  I'll re-affirm other reviews - they're a blue collar bunch, but get the job done at a fair price and a reasonable time frame.  They replaced a broken pair of soles and heels ($50), buffed up the tips, and returned them in tip-top shape with a gruff smile.

Being one of the few shoe repair shops I've had to use, Rostelle did a bang up job - certainly worth a visit.

Love it or hate it, Whole Foods has brought high brow groceries to areas where there once was none.  Although they're a chain, they're never consistent.  Take for example, my local Whole Foods in Midtown Manhattan, located in the basement of the Time Warner center, it's a cramped cluster f*ck in every sense of the word.  And then take for example, the Whole Foods in Fairfax, VA, which is an airy paean shrine to hedonism.

There is fresh produce of course, all the product artfully arranged, perfectly unblemished,  pristine.  In an ode to the fish mongers of old, there's a display case of breathtakingly fresh whole fish, and Poseidon's chest of shellfish.  There's also a BBQ bar, because every grocery store has that, right?  Lest we not forget the vintage wine cellar and walls of craft beer, there's also a juice bar, a sushi bar, and a sports bar.  And last but not least, an oyster bar.

You get the point - this Whole Foods is easily the most expansive, impressive and well stocked grocery store I've ever seen in my life.  Although such excess is impressive, they've skimped out on one key asset of any business - the employees.

We'd saddled up to the oyster bar and called for a dozen of Blue Points ($24) and a crab cake ($14).  A few WF employees fresh off of their shift were also dining there, and gabbing happily with their on-shift co-workers behind the bar to the point where we were outright ignored.  The oysters were fine, fresh and briny, but sloppily shucked, leaving shell fragments in at least a half of the dozen.  The novice shucker could be excused, for when asked for a side of mignonette, we got a blank stare.  

I shit you not - the dude that shucked our oysters had never heard of mignonette.  His off-duty co-workers helpfully pointed out that there was a bottle in the low-boy (annoying dining neighbors, but at least useful), and we were on our way.

I applaud WF for upholding the quality of their product.  On the other hand, their HR department is questionable at best.

One of my favorite on-screen moments of Catch's Chef, Hung Huynh, was the mise en place relay race during Top Chef, Season 3.  During this episode Mr. Huynh broke down a chicken at a ridiculous pace and made mincemeat out of his bewildered opponents.  During a recent dinner at Catch, we were similarly bewildered and disconcerted at the pace of what we hoped would be a leisurely dinner.  The wait staff was simultaneously pushy when present, and conveniently absent when we needed her service.  An army of bus boys patrolled the dining room with laser focus, snapping up both empty dinner plates and dinner plates that were still being picked at - we were cheated out of the last few morsels of Dungeness crab spaghetti ($22).

If you're not here for the scene, then you're here for the food, which is spendy and borderline gimmicky.  I suspect that Mr. Huynh had to concede most, if not all of his menu concept to his lords and masters at EMM Group (Abe and Arthur's, Tenjune, etc), given a menu that is crowd pleasing and safe.  Poor Mr. Huynh was also cajoled into serving faux sushi rolls, which conceptually are on par with your low-rent limp-dick fusion sushi rolls that you'd find at Sushi Samba or PF Changs.  

Not that the non-sushi items are much better - macaroni & lobster cream ($18) was watery and insipid, and a side of ratatouille ($9) was oily and similarly bland.   The hamachi tartar ($18) was under seasoned and spendy for the portion - the 1% clearly lead a flavor depraved life.  The aforementioned Dungeness crab spaghetti ($22), easily the best dish of the night, was well seasoned and well cooked, although the presentation (it was served inside a crab carapace) was a low brow touch, and not something I'd ever expect to see from a Chef that claims that he's all about fine dining (on the other hand, it would certainly wow diners at the Des Moines Red Lobster).

I might come off as harsh in this review - one must make concessions when dining around MePa.  But the Bridge & Tunnelers who make up the bulk to MePa's volume deserve a good meal here and there.  And Hung Huynh deserves better than this as well.

There are very few restauranteurs that I would like to be friends with, more than Cesare Casella of Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto.  He's decorated to the T's (just check out the bathroom at Salumeria Rosi for proof of his decorum), he champions real Italian food without dumbing it down to the American audience, he's a quirky fellow (he sports a garnish a rosemary in his chest pocket at all times), and if you're in his inner circle, he takes care of you like a doting Italian grandmother (upon observation of some of the VIP tables).

At Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto, meat, starch and oil abound, and even a starter of eggplant caponata ($8) arrived limp, and drenched in oil.  Better was a starter of their pontormo salad ($11), an eggy scramble of pancetta and wilted greens that was tasty, but certainly not your traditional refreshing green salad.

But one isn't here for the verduras, and the salume selection - try the 'selezione de salumiere' ($26) for the full monty - is a triumph of cured meats.  There was spicy chorizo and coppa, sweet prosciutto cotto, herbaceous finocchiona, and funky prosciutto de parma which had been aged for 36 months.  Fantastic.  To leave Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto without trying at least 3 or 4 of Mr. Casella's salume's would be criminal.

Meatballs composed of pork belly and shoulder were delicious, but dear at $12 for two tiny meatballs served over creamy polenta and marinara sauce.  And following that theme of excess, a small mound of house made tagliatelle ($14) with speck and radicchio was as delicious and decadent as it was diminutive.

Although the food is good, but nothing great, it would be self-defeating to nit pick at the price, which is in-line with most Italian restaurants.  However, given Salumeria Rosi Parmacotto's out-of-the-way location, cramped space, the reason to return is less than compelling.  That is, unless, you're a VIP of Mr. Casella's.