Suba--Manhattan

212.982.5714

So here is my problem with ultra chic, sparkling new, saccharine restaurants: they intimidate me. It’s not their polished sterility, nor their eclectic cuisine, or well thought out décor, I actually think that it’s the staff. They hold themselves with the air that they some how out interviewed thousands of other village-voice applicants on some Wednesday morning, and earned the right to be snooty. Now Suba, a new ultra-chic, sparkling new, restaurant on the Lower East Side, did not have particularly snooty staff, but it didn’t matter, it wanted to be place like those other places so that’s good enough for me.

In all honesty I wasn’t intimidated as usual because this restaurant’s image hinged on a gimmick, somehow making the vibe more palatable, in that you now pity the staff the same way you pity the teenage kid operating the kiddy rides at Six Flags. You know he wants to run the roller coasters that have a steady stream of cute high-school chics with their vato boyfriends, but alas he’s sequestered to the bird cage and swinging toddlers around at the pace of a brisk walk. The gimmick behind Suba, which I’m sure means something in some other language –you look it up—is that the main dining room sits on a pool. If it didn’t have that, I don’t know why they would charge such high prices. And as far as gimmicks go it isn’t bad, I mean, the lighting on the waves gives the restaurant a cool glowy effect. But like most gimmicks though, this one wasn’t thought all the way through as the first thing our host, waiter, and busboy said to us was watch your stuff. Cool gimmick, where the fuck are the hooks?

The staff was relatively knowledgeable, though the manager thought my tie didn’t look nice so how knowledgeable could he really be? The wine list was long and impressive, and our waiter was all over it, which is a big plus (refer to paragraph one). The tapas cuisine, however, was completely hit or miss. I could go into detail here, but it’s tapas. Tapas to me is like sushi. You’re going to order the same thing at every tapas place, so why go into detail about what I ordered, since my staple tapas order consists of dates and bacon, meatballs, and sautéed shrimp? If the food is good for my standby tapas order, then it is safe to presume it will be for yours. My meatballs were overcooked. I don’t think I had dates or shrimp. Another thing I don’t understand about tapas is the food intentionally delayed or is the chef just an asshole? I mean, is there ever a possibility that a tapas chef might actually get everything to the table at the exact same time? Or is it some sort of chef intuition, that she plans certain things to go with other certain things, and each particular order creates a different algorithm of timing? Or, is the chef a chef, in that she does whatever she pleases because she thinks her job is harder than anyone else’s? It doesn’t really matter, because aside from the scientific oddity of choice number two no answer is a good one. And that’s why the Spanish empire tumbled; they never knew what they were getting next.

So, I digress. Suba is an interesting place. It’s one of those bespectacled places in NYC that you’d take your easily impressed out of town friends to show off how cool a restaurant could look. And because your friends are so impressionable, they’d understand why things were overcooked, or the staff was snooty, or your hand bag fell into an over chlorinated Petri dish.

Tasting Room--Manhattan

212.358.7831

Okay, so who am I to write a review about a restaurant like this? I have mild aspirations to become a foodie, and loving criticizing what I think is wrong with less serious restaurants. I’m more of a restaurant bully, knowing that it takes very little to knock a server off kilter by making demands outside of the normal way they do things. It’s easy, in a way, to look at a place and pick out it’s flaws by gazing through the lens of what I would do with the place if it were mine. The Tasting Room, on the other hand, is in a league above what I know to be proper or right. I write to you now a humbled dilettante.

The dining room is simple and quaint, and though the bar is centered in such a way that you have to walk by it to get to your table it isn’t cumbersome. Immediately after sitting down you are attended to. Though I belabor this in all of my restaurant writings, nothing compliments good food better than good service and this seems to be a cornerstone of Tasting Room, and though the dining is not formal, the service does not take casual dining casually. To give you a visual of what I am talking about, take the appearance of the waiter. He had a beard and ponytail, two things frowned upon in the world of formal service, yet his knowledge of the food, wine, and the respect with which he held himself told me he took the job seriously. The timing of the meal was impeccable and our water glass was never left empty.

We started with the pumpkin salad, the crab and lobster consommé’ and pork and hen terrine. All of them were utterly delicious, the pumpkin salad in particular. Once our first courses were finished, they did the service of clearing and replacing our silver, even if we hadn’t used it. Again, a seemingly “formal” service aspect, though I think it really makes a difference. Why would anyone want to use the same fork and knife over and over? You put it on your table and then there’s olive oil on the table, and then that olive oil gets on your French cuff and then you’re pissed off the rest of the night as everyone in your party tries homeopathic remedies to remove oil. The next thing you know you’ve got salt and soda water and hairspray on your wrist and you’re miserable for the rest of the night because some Ecuadorian bus boy couldn’t be bothered to replace your salad fork and knife. Fuck a bitch if I haven’t had this exact thing happen to me three different times.

For the entrée I had the Pork rib, while my companions both tried fish: Bass and Skate. The sides were again perfectly complimentary, from the carrots to the French leaks, and though the portions were exactly hearty, we were quite full by the end of the meal. The server again sensed us about to finish and came and offered dessert right away instead of coming by on afterthought. It was though he considered dessert to be part of the meal. We all split the Apple Short cake, again divine, polished off some excellent dessert wine, Torbeck if I’m not mistaken, and went our merry way. The night was excellent; the food was excellent, the service, finally—thank God almighty-- was excellent.

Fornino's--Brooklyn

718.384.6004

So we used to live right next door to the L Cafe and remember saying goodbye to the ineptitude that it fostered, reveling when a small business with a semi-corporate panache called Fornino’s took place. Imagine our excitement when this gourmet place opened up, complete with a competent staff and a stellar classica Margherita pizza. Within a few months Fornino was the staple Sunday night dinner, we had it down to such a science that we could budget the exact dollar amount and run down in our bathrobes in the dead of winter. Yes, it was the best of times, and looking back I now know that we took Fornino for granted by calling it our local pizza restaurant.

Unfortunately, the vagaries associated from living across from Spike Hill and Greenpoint Tavern forced us to part ways with the comfort we’d so depended upon. We moved two stops away on the L, to Italian Williamsburg. Now this area is much more quiet and subdued, and though it is resplendent with Italian restaurants and pizza parlors, nothing could compare to Fornino’s delectability. I now no longer eat at Fornino’s, and this is indirectly related with moving.
It is heart wrenching to develop a relationship with a restaurant that is owned by a devoted chef, a person who’s very soul is served up daily on wood fired dough, and then seeing this restaurant run by a bunch of stupid, inconsiderate, bungling nincompoops. After a few weeks of withdrawal we opted to try a delivery. We called Fornino’s unfamiliar with the delivery zones due to our recent proximity and the girl who answered the phone admitted she wasn’t sure about delivery, but that they weren’t open for another hour and we should call back. When we called back an hour later (starving) she said that the driver was happy to trek out to East Williamsburg to deliver to devoted ex-neighbors and took our order. We were elated, not only were they going to deliver, but we had also been promoted to quasi regular-status. An hour passed, and were now two hours from our initial call (famished). We waited. Another twenty minutes passed and my wife called back. The girl said that the driver had refused to deliver once he realized where we lived. We asked why she couldn’t have called us, why she had to torture us with the anticipation of a Fornino’s pie, why she couldn’t have practiced a little human decency and at least given us the courtesy of a phone call? She replied that she was busy, and unapologetically hung up the phone.

After a few minutes our anger bubbled up. Who was this woman to torment us so? Some twenty-something artist, unconcerned with customer service that is so beneath her, and mostly likely uninspired by the very art she served no doubt. We called back demanding the manager. Imagine our surprise when a few minutes later the bus boy gets on the phone! Delivery he asks in a thick south American accent, no we say, manager. I manager he responds, delivery? No! Where’s the manager?!? Click. We call back. No answer, the restaurant caller id reveals our number. That sniveling little turd not only was discourteous to us, but is willing to stake the reputation of sublime pizza on her snide demeanor. Fuck her, fuck Fornino’s, eat there if you want but I am man of principle. I would rather eat stale Italian-Williamsburg pizza than potentially support a smug little cunt like that.

Pere Pinard--Manhattan

212.777.4917

There’s nothing worse than a relatively good restaurant going to shit. Experiencing this deplorable truth inevitable happens the last night you attend the restaurant, when you succumb to the fact that despite your fond memories and security in knowing a solid place in a foreign neighborhood, the meal that sits in front of you is shit. Overpriced, overcooked, underserved, shit.

The establishment in question that conjured this recent sentiment is none other than the Lower East Side French Embassy: Pere Pinard. I had the misfortune of dining with some true pros, as a celebratory dinner for the changing of the guard at the East Village staple 26 Seats -- It should be noted that 26 Seats has also allegedly befallen the same fate due to said change in ownership.

The evening was to thank the owners for six years of employment and delectable authentic French cuisine. For many French imports Pere Pernard is familiar fare, and we figured that it was as good as any place in the neighborhood. I’d been there quite a few times and remember the steak frites being the perfect pre Ludlow Street bender food. I’d taken friends there from overseas. I’d gotten really drunk in the bar. It was always a reliable place to eat decent, albeit not outstanding, French food and check out some authentic Franco-trim. But as I was about to learn, those days are over.

Let’s start with the fact that they ran out of house wine. Not after serving the fourth or fifth bottle to a large party over the course of a diner, but at 7:00 at night after serving just a glass. The bartender ran out of house wine. Now, I know I’m kind of a stickler but if a guy comes in to your restaurant the first of a large party, assume he’s going to be drinking for a while. Don’t offer him something you only have two servings of. Just don’t. That rookie mistake should have warned me of the potential disaster, but I chalked it up cost cutting mischief and ordered a different bottle. By that time, everyone had arrived and we sat for dinner.

Now the food, Christ the food. No cuisine is affected more by stale, old, or poor quality ingredients than French. And since you’re preparing it in front of the guests, this rule of thumb especially applies to steak tar tar. I had the Salmon, which was disgusting in its own, overcooked way, and the lettuce on my first course, a mixed green salad, was wilted. Luckily for them, the rest of our guests were either too drunk or too young to notice. Fifi, the staple manager was nowhere to be found, and the service, though marginal, strutted around as though they weren’t serving last week’s leftovers.

Though not as bad as losing the quality of food and drink, there is almost nothing worse than an established restaurant relying upon its Lower East Side attitude for business. I appreciate restaurant mavericks pioneering into pre-gentrified and often dangerous neighborhoods. Though I don’t agree, I begrudgingly accept that if you work at a cool establishment you have the right to take the whole service/hospitality thing a little lighter. You have the right to charge a little more for the food, considering a price of admission of sorts. But to do this, you have to have the food to back it up. Pere Pernard, if it keeps this trend going, is going to become a well known bar that serves suspect bar food.