CHEVALIER

'Tis the season to get fancy.  And Chevalier provides precisely this experience, housed in the glitzy Baccarat Hotel  and helmed with a truly followable chef, Shea Gallante.  He is our knight (the meaning of chevalier) but he wasn't in the kitchen on the evening of my visit, which I suppose I found a little surprising given the  fact that they earned only one star in the Times review.  It was a premature analysis, I'd say, but still, I guess I wonder if the quality couldn't be elevated were Chef Gallante attending more personally to the cuisine.   The food was excellent, but a place like this, it is hard not to hope for some dreamlike, culinary revelation in
 such high falutin' surrounding.  Cut crystal glitters in the soothing low lit room, soft greys and ivory a muted backdrop to focus your attention on the meal, but I wish some of the grandiosity of the decor migrated into the food.

That's not to say it didn't at time.  A lovely amuse of exquisite lump crab meat bedded in butternut squash puree was a minuscule delight. 
Dainty
savory petits-fours offered similar promise for the meal to come, a harbinger of excellence to which I'm not sure the rest of the meal lived up.   Certainly a salad of mixed chicories could've been improved: its leaves were tough, and their natural, gentle bitterness was barely countered at all by an almost undetectable hazelnut vinaigrette.   Small cubes of chilled pear offered the only respite, but not enough to save the dish.  A warm scallop appetizer was better, the plush seafood caramelized to a lovely bronze and a scatter of gem-like beet slices and deeply colored greens imparted a holiday-like decadence. 








The wine list, curated by Betony tranfer J. Taylor, is good enough to lessen some of the blow of its own sticker shock, but be forewarned: this is a Baccarat-caliber list.  Glasses averaged about $25, so one must approach Chevalier with a disregard to frugality, or else a strong sense of discipline.



Speaking of luxury, a mid-course of truffle-dusted gnocchi seemed precisely in keeping with the theme of Chevalier: even its muted color profile mimicked the shades of the dining room.  And when I say dusted, I mean a Dust Bowl caliber flurry
 of truffles.  They were piled atop the delicate pillowy gnocchi like Donald Trump's comb-over.    But at $105 a portion (added to any dish), you'll need his bank account to be able to afford them.  Even so, the gnocchi alone were stellar examples, truffled or un-.  A filet of sea bass was hardly so sumptuous, verging on sparsity rather
than decadence. Although the fish itself was fresh and expertly cooked, it benefitted immensely from  a mossy green slurry anointed tableside.  A cool salad of fennel and tomatoes seemed too summery and light for mid-December, but was pleasant enough.   So for a heartier option, the American Wagyu with a confit matsutake mushrooms had its allure, but it too seemed a little barren.  It lacked the signature butter-soft tenderness of Japanese Kobe, but it was intensely beefy and robust,  negating the need for much accoutrements anyways. Tiny grilled mushrooms and charred cauliflower sprigs adorned the meat, but I couldn't help wanting a bit more panache.   And while rare for a menu of this echelon, there are side dishes to choose from for (a whopping) $12 each.  Roasted
 brussels sprouts with bacon boasted 50/50 proportions of the components.... maybe even 60/40 bacon.  For the porcophilic, this might be an attractive ratio, but I was really disappointed by the paucity of sprouts.  The ones I could rustle up were nicely cooked and tasty, but there was proportionately
 far too much bacon- although perhaps that helped justify the price.  Couldn't help but wish I'd've gone with the fricasseed mushrooms instead: at least these were full-boar fungi.

We ended strong, with  a lusciously moist orb of sticky toffee pudding, playfully encased by a lacey halo of crisp almond-studded cookie.  A dollop of gingery ice cream and another of blood orange granita sat atop delicate wafers of meringue, connected by a squiggle of thick, syrupy caramel.  The best bite combines daubs of all the components, destroying the architectural loveliness of the plate- but it is well worth the demolition.   I wish that was all it took for the other dishes to succeed so effectively, because the service and ambiance of Chevalier is truly without par.  I wanted to prove Pete Wells emphatically wrong with his single star review, for while I could give the overall experience, bells and whistles included, as many as three stars, the food itself does really merit just one.

CHEVALIER  
28 West 53rd Street

(212)790-8869

Ten Best Edibles of 2015/Retail

1.  Sauteed Onions from Citarella   I can eat these out of the container, by the spoonful, hot or cold.  (Do I have an onion-related deficiency?)  Sometimes they're a little too salty and sometimes not quite enough, but that just proves they are being made in house.   Great umami-boosting ingredient or consider them like a sauce or compote with meats or vegetables.    www.citarella.com

2.  Corn AND wheat tortillas combine the best characteristics of both.  I've seen a few brands, but as good as any and endearingly inexpensive are Trader Joe's Corn & Wheat Tortillas di mi Abuela.  Chewy and corny, they don't crack like standard corn tortillas but have a lovely, earthy corn sweetness superior to plain flour tortillas. 


3.  Moroccan Lentil Soup from Pret   Now that there is a Pret in like four blocks walking distance from any other Pret, this is one easy-to-find cup-of-soup.  It's dense a meaty for a wholly vegetarian soup. and it's got nice chunks of tender carrots and turnips in there to keep it from getting leaden.  Super warming with a lovely balance of spices.     http://pretamanger.com/en-us/704-soups-moroccan-lentil-.aspx


4.  Seafood Sausage from Agata and Valentina    This reminds me of the seafood sausage at Elan, only easy to fix at home and a whole lot cheaper.  Great on the grill, grill pan or even cooked up in a regular old frying pan.  Don't forget the mustard!   http://store.agatavalentina.com/Homemade-Seafood-Sausage-P17730.aspx


5.  Healthy Choice Vanilla Bean Greek Frozen Yogurt    I know things like this have been said before, but this does NOT taste healthy at all.  It's potently vanilla-y, and really creamy.  The yogurt just adds a hint of tang but it's not sour at all- it almost tastes more like cheesecake.  Swoon.  It's only a pity it doesn't come in a larger container.

7.  Organic Mulberry Juice   from Smart Juice.  This super juice boasts a quarter of your daily iron requirement and reminds of pie.  It's got 100% of your Vitamin C, too, so aside from being crazy-delicious it's really good for you, too.       http://www.vitacost.com/smart-juice-100-juice-organic-black-mulberry-33-8-fl-oz  

8.  Coolhaus Balsamic Fig and  Mascarpone Ice Cream   Crazy dense and creamy, the mascarpone gives a rich, nuanced character to the ice cream, and the balsamic cuts the sweetness of the figs to perfectly balance the three elements.  It is simply drool-worthy.

9.  Joseph's Flax, Oat Bran and Whole Wheat Flour Tortillas   I'm not an Atkins proponent at all, but sometime a little more protein does a body good, and these are super tasty, pliant and flavorful.

10.  Iggy's Seven Grain Bread  from Whole Foods.  This bread is probably the best store-bought sliced loaf you can get, and even much better than a lot of the unsliced ones you can find.   Really moist but sturdy.  Organic whole wheat flour, filtered water, natural sourdough starter (wheat flour (wheat, malted barley flour) and filtered water), organic sesame seeds, organic sunflower seeds, organic flax seeds, wildflower honey, fresh yeast, sea salt. Topped with organic rolled oats.

LUPULO

George Mendes strikes again with a second location, not far from his wildly successful first venture, Aldea.  Lupulo is more casual- boisterous in fact, with an energetic bar scene... the name is Portuguese for "hops", after all.  And had I know that before ordering a clear, crisp Vinho Verde to accompany the small plates of the rustic, Portuguese comfort food, I would've opted for one of their
 cervesas, mostly like the Solid! American Wheat beer from my hometown, Portland, Oregon.  But the list is vast of both beer, wine and cocktails: Lupulo's food is meant to be drunk with.  Not to BE drunk with, although as long as that wasn't taken to the extreme, the restaurant is casual and lively enough that this probably wouldn't be entirely frowned upon.

The bar curves around the middle of the dining room, and serves as the focus of the menu and the space. Bartenders are busy taking orders and blending drinks- it might take a second to get your order in.  But no rush; the vibe is animated enough to make Lupulo feel a bit like a party.  

Befittingly, we started off with some wonderfully crisp salt croquettes with piri piri mayonnaise, which would've made for excellent party food.  They came from the Petisco section of the menu, but these  three voluptuous fritters were not so petisco, delicately cloaked in crunchy golden shells that broke to release the fragrant steam of pillowy tufts of chive-flecked bacalhau within.  Tiny daubs of the zippy piri piri mayo offered tang and spice, which were unfortunately two elements of the cuisine at Lupulo that were otherwise underutilized.
The menu is unreliably sized, but the prices are a pretty good indication, as a $15 plate of brussels (also a Petisco)  sprouts endured for the duration of the meal.  They were good, tossed with crisp bits of country ham and roasted apple for a touch of sweetness, and while I'm not sure where these fall along the scope of Portuguese authenticity, I'm not one to argue with a generous serving of brussels sprouts.   They could've also qualified for the section of Hortas, although perhaps these
 are all strictly vegetarian so the ham bumped
 them out.  From here, we chose a small plate of smoky roasted beets, blitzed with cilantro and a mild sluice of foamy coconut.  The intensity of the smoke was a brilliant counter to the natural sugars of the beet and the sweetness imparted by the coconut.  In fact, this may have the the most successful dish all night.

An intriguing sounding Acorda di Camarau was a sort of sophisticated pabulum of tomato and onion, but mild and a bit dull.  The potential for aggressive seasoning and bold, punchy flavors seems absent at Lupulo, whereas the setting and the philosophy of the restaurant seem to just be crying out for just that  The shrimp atop were fresh and briny, spoon-tender and fat, but there wasn't much to make them stand out from the porridge, or vice-versa.  Same goes for a main course of grilled octopus, which failed to achieve much char, although the chickpea and black eyed peas underneath made a zestier  contribution.  Tart turnips, assertively pickled stood out a little too blatantly, although the did their part to brighten the pumpkin seed romesco.   Maybe we would've been better off with another version of the eight-legged marvel that the Portguese usually do so well, a squid cooked a la plancha with clams, blood sausage and paella-esque squid ink rice.  And a side dish of mushrooms was equally ho-hum; a palatable dish of fungus, I guess, but if anything a bit damp and listless, serving more as filler than feature. 

Desserts are simple and starchy for the most part, tasty little sweetnesses to finish off with.  The honeyed cheesecake we chose was just that, deftly composed and but not exactly earthshaking.  This is basically my take on Lupulo as a whole... it's a very striking and happy place to be, but the surroundings are more memorable than the food.  Which maybe the opposite case of Aldea.  Which THEN makes me wonder, perhaps, if I shouldn't learn how to say "repeat visit" in Portuguese. 

 835 6th Ave

(212) 290-7600

 info@lupulonyc.com

REBELLE

They always say you can tell the best Chinese restaurants because they are full of Chinese people.  Why the same isn't applied to other nationalities I know not, but it certainly does for the French, here at Rebelle.  Deep in Bowery, next to its (commensurately excellent) sister restaurant Pearl & Ash, Rebelle is firing on all cylinders.  The initial draw was the chef, Daniel Eddy, who not only worked at Spring in Paris, which drew global appeal, but also alongside one of my absolute favorite chefs in the city, Michael Psilakis.  And while his tact at Rebelle diverges from both of these influences, the quality is easily on par.  They call it Rebelle because the say they are trying to do things a little differently, and while I didn't detect much rebellion,  there was much to relish.

The room is industrial, subdued greys of cement and muted brick, with little adornment but some minimalist dried flowers and glowy orbs suspended overhead.  The focused attention concentrates on the food, and it is pinpoint-precise.



 The price-points are white-tablecloth, but the vibe is not.  Perhaps the "R" (preserved from R Bar of yore) should stand for relaxed, because Rebelle is notably comfortable given the elegance of its cuisine.  Our server was attentive and amicable, and although his preferences on the menu might have steered us away from some of the dishes I prized the most.  The menu is formatted into four section, simply numbered, and it is recommended one choose a selection
 from each, a little like a set menu but with a little flexibility.  Veering away from raw meats (which are not my forte), we were left with two choices: Leek Vinaigrette and an eggplant composition.  The leeks were cool and fresh, steamed tender and tempered with
fluffy curds of soft boiled egg.  Incinerated shards of smoky leek showed a modern, Nordic influence, and a light dijon sauce retained the classic flavor profile.  The eggplant dish was  less colligated: a heavily fried, unidentifiable mass of the frittered nightshade tasted mostly of buttery breadcrumbs: not that there's much wrong with that, but it required the brightness of some pickled beets that accompanied to lessen the blow.  Similarly, a pungent quenelle of roasted eggplant jam recalled an intensified baba ghanoush, and it felt like the dish was lacking some simply grilled planks of the vegetable to justify its title, as well as round out the plate.

Moving onto SECOND base, things improved exponentially, even improving the dishes we already consumed retroactively.   Squash with treviso and espelette just sang of autumn: the roasted squash buttery and dense, its heady sweetness reverberating off
the spears of sharply bitter radicchio.  Lobster with cabbage and fine herbes recalled Michael White's butter-poached lobster at Ai Fiori.  Here it is less buttery, lighter and cleaner, with the low-brow contrast of humble cabbage ironically modernizing, and compellingly so.

 THIRDs comprise our entree-esque plates, none entering $30 territory.  The FIRSTs and SECONDs are what might add up, on the high end of appetizer prices and doubled-up, to boot.  But the halibut, a small ivory filet of ultimate tenderness floating in a delicate "ocean broth" is elegant in its simplicity, though nothing rebellious, and perhaps a bit plain.   The baby bok choy leaves aside made for an attractive contrast of color, but added nothing to this dish aside from roughage.  A vegetarian composition of carrots and mushrooms stole the show, though, the showy roots achieving the kind of mushy softness California cuisine had attempted to steal away, their caramelized edges  pepper-dusted to augment their sweetness.  Meaty chanterelles, shiitakes and black trumpets punked the carrots' natural sugars with umami, all shrouded in crisp pea shoots... I could've eaten this dish a thousand times.  So too a lusty pork with romesco, the "other white meat" not white at all.  In fact, its robust hue was almost shockingly rosy, its tender flesh, I'm sure cooked sous-vide, as startling tender so as to yield to the knife like a rich, soft cheese.   You could barely tell where the piperade ended and the romesco began, so befittingly did they colligate amongst a handful of tender white beans, a fanciful spear of charred leek lancing the ruddy color scheme.. 








Desserts comprise the final FOURTH section, and are coincidentally four in number from which to choose.  The minimalist descriptions, as is the case with all the categories, might make it a little troublesome to make an informed selection, but our waiter was more effusive with more elaborate descriptions.  The grape clafoutis would have been my preference but it is a designated share, and really at that point only a single dessert between the two of us was feasible.
   Funny enough, the highlight of the one we choose didn't even intimate the best part of the dessert- a moist, rich and densely tender disc of buttery cake underneath cool, crisp pears cut into planks and orbs.  Naked and raw, the fruit sort of sat about the cake rather than complementing it, but a creamy sheep's milk sorbet helped the components coalesce: ice cream heals many woes.   Overall, I wonder if Eddy couldn't amp up the rebellious quotient a bit, but the pleasure factor is en pointe.

REBELLE 218 BOWERY 

 917 639 3880 

INFO@REBELLENYC.COM

CHALK POINT KITCHEN

It was a good decision to put the "kitchen" after Chalk Point, because the food here feels a lot like something the well-practiced, very capable home chef could come close to replicating, with a little elbow grease, in their own abode.  It's grubbable, satisfying food- more pleasingly voluminous
than elegantly nuanced.  The decor merges barnyard-chic with dive-bar kitsch: Handy Bar downstairs is strikingly more sophisticated in mood, even with its raucous patrons, than the dining room above.  The bar program, coincidentally, is strong,
so the food upstairs might cooperative better with their inventive cocktails or beer rather than wine, although their list is certainly drinkable.

We started off strong, so strong perhaps, that it was a bit of a false start.  A grilled romaine and beet salad featured crunchy lettuce, a nuttiness and inherent juiciness coaxed out by the char.  The accompanying beets were tender and dense, again benefiting from an aggressive roast, and sprinkled with a sprightly crumble of blue cheese and toasted walnuts.  I do wish there would've been more of
 those stellar beets nestled into the romaine, but it was otherwise a memorably exceptional salad.  I took my starter from the the Sides, a cauliflower steak artfully carved to resemble a T-Bone in
shape and girth alike.  If it was meat, it certainly would've qualified as double-cut, and if they're gonna charge $14, I suppose the heft is necessitated.  Easily shareable, it was generously slathered in an oily tahini dressing, with a few too many sweet golden raisins and shockingly hot tidbits of pickled chili.... but yummy all the same, in a gluttonously un-virtuous vegetable way. 



There were two special entrees in addition to the menu which changes every Friday: easier to keep track of the offerings on Facebook than on its own website, for the most up-to-date information.  Chalk Point (and its chef, Joe Isidori) is paying good attention to what is in the market and where its fundamentals are coming from.  One was a glazed filet of salmon, stretched languidly across a wide, white plate and bedecked with oyster mushrooms and salsify, along with shreds of kombo and vibrant tobiko.   It's flesh looked suspiciously pale on the outside, but a fork broke into its more robustly hued interior, moist and rare.   Catfish, which can be

suspciously muddy or metallic, was farmed but well-sourced, its sweet flaky flesh even more sweetly glazed in misoyaki, broiled to a blistered char over a mountain of long beans and bean sprouts.  This amounts to a distinctly Asian profile, like most (if not all) of the dishes, tend.  So while the name and the website imply farmy New American, the cuisine really touts a lot of Oriental attitude.  A side of brussels sprouts didn't, however, and it didn't have a tremendous amount of personality either.  The sprouts are
 simply sauteed, missing out on the opportunity to
 roast them to their finest state.  They toasted the garlic instead, which amounted in crusty little allium crunchies amongst nubs of chewy house-smoked bacon.  If I'd my druthers, I'd saute the garlic and toast the sprouts: that would make for a successful side. 

Dessert kind of toed that line, although we strayed from either of our server's recommendations, which may have been a better tact.  The vanilla panna cotta was smooth and pleasant, if a little bland.  But the toasted coconut aside helped immensely, and the blueberries were surprisingly good considering it is November.

For all the accolades I'd been hearing for Chalk Point, it fell short of the bar I had raised for it.  But it was a satisfying enough meal for what it was, especially considering the doggie bag of unfinished morsels came close to providing dinner the night after as well.

527 Broome Street (near Thompson)
212-390-0327