11 Madison Park-Manhattan

212.889.0905

Firstly, allow me a brief stint of humility: I'm probably not qualified enough as a food authority to blog about 11 Madison Park accurately. And that's not a shameful thing, as I offer what I think is my own unique perspective about restaurants in New York City. Most of the time I come off as an asshole, and I rarely actually speak about the food unless I really really like it or really really dislike it. If you look at the places I've written about in the last several years you'll see that I am not one to appreciate reputation or buzz or awards or anything else that would merit an affinity for fine food and beverage.

So with that long winded caveat, I can honestly state, in my humble opinion, there is no fucking way this place is worth the money. Not even close. We went for our wedding anniversary dinner (with the real wife) and had a gift certificate that was generously given to us by a friend who has two infant children and woudn't have been able to use it. After seeing the sum on the gift card, we figured why not splurge a little and get the four course tasting and the wine pairing. That's the set up. Here's what you get for roughly $400 a head:

• A menu with the principle ingredients laid out. The food preperation is so good, you only need to know the protein. Food allergies be damned, the food preperation is so good you couldn't possibly be allergic to it.



• The wine pairings are sexist.
  


• Service ninja's, this happened at Spice Market too, what's with the service ninjas? They appear out of no where, deliver something bite-sized you didn't order, and then vanish after throwing sand in your eyes. Seriously, it kept fucking happening and it was jarring.



• While on service, the ones that weren't ninjas were robotic. Not unpleasant, but clearly trained to feel superior than the guest because they're fleecing you. I'd feel that way too if I'd bamboozled you into telling you what you're going to have for dinner.



• The food itself: interesting. I'd say it's interesting. I certainly didn't shit myself, and some of it wasn't that great.

And there in lies my problem: you don't know what you're getting so have none of the joy of anticipating what you're eating. And unless you sit there and ask the server about all 16 dishes, you're working with just one ingredient. To be honest I remember the chicken being nice. And the rest of the food was beautiful, to a degree artfully and skillfully prepared, but that's not why I go to a restaurant of this caliber. I go to a restaurant of this magnitude to have my socks blown completely off of my feet. To walk out of there so full and so drunk and so happy that I went that I become depressed at being such a plebian.

More to the point, my contention is the overall pretention. 11 Madison oozed a self-awareness of their quality. The amuse bouch scenario sums this perfectly. They kept throwing all sorts of appetizers at us, amuse bouche after amuse bouche, to the point that my bouche wasn't that amused. Firstly, I wasn't sure if this is what I ordered or not, because we only knew one ingredient. How was I not supposed to know that the pea soup wasn't actually spinach soup? The menu only said spinach. And because of the service ninjas, reciting the ingredients with their condescending manner, one that invokes the idea that we both know I'm going to enjoy this, that I'd better enjoy this, that since I'm paying so much money for this 2 oz portion of soup delivered in a cheap-ass oneida coffee creamer that if I don't enjoy this it is clearly my problem (a tonality, I must say, that take years upon years of pretentious training), and then swish away in a cloud of smoke. If you didn't catch their over-rehearsed retelling of the ingredients then too bad for you.

Look, if you're reading this, most likely you live in Brooklyn and aren't too concerned about what the uber-rich in Manhattan are doing to piss away their money. I just want to stress you're really not missing anything.

Vacation's Over

Even the most cynical of people need a little time off. Truth be told, I haven't gone anywhere in the last month to warrant a legit review anyhow. Except for these places...

Fatty-Cue:
718.599.3090
Ate here in their outside "garden." It was more like the alley next to it but it didn't matter. Their portions were out of control. I vaguely remember this place being a different restaurant, I want to say East River Bar, but I'm not quite sure. We had brunch. It was brunchy. I also remember that my wife gave the nod for me to have a beer as a hair of the dog. Not that I need the nod, but when you get the nod you feel a lot better knowing that you didn't make too much of a fool of yourself the night before.

Penny Farthing:
212.387.7300
Another Brunch addition. I might add that this was the 4th of July. The delivered the bacon we ordered as a side as a first course. The runner must have fucked up, because the waitress came over like ten minutes later apologizing. I was totally cool with it because a) she was hot, but young enough to have to work the brunch shift on the 4th b) was with my two brothers who are both not from the city and have the table manners of cromagnum men and c)got another nod from the ol' wifey wife.

The Smith:
212.420.9800
I had to do a little research to make sure this place wasn't owned by Keith McNally as it as a seems like a rip off of other well established American-Bistro-Bridge-and-Tunnel-Scenester-Grub, but hey, at least they deliver. Food was fine, the service was prompt, and I was able to get my cromagnum family in and out without too much incident...

Paquitos--Manhattan

Yelp creates quite a dilemma. Generally speaking, it's a useful tool to find a restaurant when in an unfamiliar locale. In essence, this is a nice feature of any smart phone: "We need a quick easy restaurant with outdoor seating, margarita's, and quesadillas. Go find it!" The dilemma is all of the choices presented are reviewed by users who are clearly adept at posting things to Yelp, but may not be so adept at being taste-makers.

It's a demographic thing. Most people, I would think, that are posting things on Yelp are below the ages of 35. There may be a few people older than that, but statistically they're mute on the whole rating system algorithm. For the most part I'm convinced that no-one I know has parents that are posting on this. So the people who are essentially rating it, are rating it at with criteria that may or may not coincide with an older, more conservative person's attitude. Creating the conundrum of just how do you trust the ratings of a place when yelping? If you go with a higher rating, you may end up eating quesadillas at a glorified NYU bar: cheap, easy going, and totally fucking disgusting unless you have no money and are satisfied with junk food.

You could go by the low ratings, but somehow low ratings do not necessarily denote the inverse of the high ratings, that is, they are also sucky places. This has absolutely nothing to do with Paquitos by the way, which we found on Yelp while cruising through the East Village. Paquitos was, by no coincidence, a glorified bar, with awful service and canned guacamole (see patent pending guacamole rating system).

I suppose the solution is to start a new search engine, called snob. And only rate the restaurants that worth eating at to begin with. We'll see if that has any traction.

1 or 8--Brooklyn

718-384-2152

I feel like the next time I go to this place I should wear all white. I could blend in like a sushi ninja, swooping in to grab your roll when no one is looking. I'd eat for free and fulfill the childhood ambition of being an actual, honest to God, ninja. I love ninjas.

It's sushi place people. How am I supposed to comment on sushi? It was served cold. It tasted like a combination of fish, soy sauce, and wasabi. It had little Japanese women running around, with littler Japanese men behind some counter making the sushi. It tasted fine. Perhaps this establishment is more authentic than others, though I wouldn't know having never been to Japan. I did learn that Nigiri is another word for what I would call sushi, that is a piece of fish on a nugget of rice. So there's that.

I was more impressed with the whiteness of the whole affair. I mean, white booths, white walls, pale white hipsters. It was white, white, white!

Beco--Brooklyn

718.599.1645

This little Brazilian joint is on the back side of the Emerald City. When it first opened, at least two years ago, I was curious how such a tiny little electric kitchen with niche world food was going to survive. The owner escaped the film industry, and I was totally expecting to see his dream of a small Brazilian place shrivel and die like my hydrangeas that didn't come back. Boy was I wrong.

Firstly, there's the steak sandwich; a force to be reckoned with. I'm certain that at points in the restaurant's growth, 80% of its revenue was just steak sandwiches: Filet Mignon, cheese, and a baguette. Tough to beat that one.

Then came the nice open air windows in the summer and cold, cheap brazilian pilsner. Next came the soccer games projected on the far wall, the Federal cup when US almost shocked Brazil in the final (after shocking Spain) comes to mind as the place was standing room only. Then came the brunch. This is after all the no man's land of restaurants, with thousands of people in luxury condo's waiting in line at either Enid's or Five Leaves.

So I guess it's no surprise at all. Beco is a sum of its parts, and it looks as though the owner is living the dream. Good for him. He's a pretty nice dude and Beco is a pretty nice place.

Las Vegas Nevada

Holy shit. I don't even know where to begin. Perhaps an appropriate preface to this debacle of debauchery would be that I was wifeless. I repeat, no wife on this one. Not to say she wouldn't have reveled in the ridiculousness that is Las Vegas, but that she generally is my last line of defense before doing something really, really stupid. It's a shame I don't let her read these posts before they're published.

Las Vegas is the most disgusting place on the planet. I could not think of a more contrived, base, and saccharin attempt at luxury if I tried. The old Vegas, the authentic rat pack Vegas, has been replaced with 21st century towers of glass and steel, up to date service, over thought cuisines, expensive cocktails and wine, and the dames, holy Christ the place is dripping with trim. But it's all a hoax. A faux lavish design to extort you by playing on the most primitive instinct in the human brain: greed.

I must say I had a total blast. I drank like I used to drink. I Was thrown out of two casino's for fighting, once with a pair of lesbians. I played 52 card pick up outside the Wynn. And the dames, good lord almighty there were women everywhere. Cheap, easy, looking-for-rich-men, women.

There are some things I would have done differently, that ferragamo tie was unnecessary, but over all here are some tips that would make a trip to Vegas Iconman:

Wear a suit. Dress nice. This goes for the ladies too. Most of the trash that visits Vegas considers dressing up throwing on one of those tube-top-esque dress that barely covers their flabby asses. The end up looking like low-rate hookers. Try to look like a top rate hooker.

Buy a bottle of liquor. Don't gamble for free drinks, as they never end up free. And don't go to the bar or you'll get stung for $10-$15 a cocktail. Since you can walk anywhere with a drink, I got a flask and took a rocks glass from the hotel where ever I went.

Assume authority, they'll respect it. Now that you're in a suit and sufficiently hydrated, walk up to the front of lines or sit down at reserved tables, the staff at Vegas are so ingrained to keep you happy so they can fleece you unsuspectingly, they'll allow you to do just about anything. The suit is key, it makes you seem richer than the regular shclock in a button down short sleeve and dockers.

Don't sleep. Sleep is completely irrelevant in Vegas. The longer you stay up the more enjoyable it becomes.

Don't stay on the strip the whole time. Down town is pretty cool, we hit a bar called the Griffin around 3am one night and it was not as bad as I don't remember.

If you gamble, don't expect to win.

Check out a cabaret. I don't know of any other town, with the exception of Paris, where you can see hot beautiful women dancing naked for one fixed price. No solicitations for a lap dance, no stripper stink all over your clothes, just clean, pretty women dancing around. Well worth the $60.

Okay so there's a brief list. I wish I could give you more details, but due to the only detail I can really mention with certainty (that I was wifeless) sort of clouds all of my other judgements.

Motorino--Brooklyn

718.589.8899

It's funny what buzz can do for a restaurant. I've been hearing about Motorino for years now, because the pizza is "soooooo good." I was expecting another forino's, but perhaps with a little bit friendlier staff. And I can't say I was disappointed, as the food was pretty good, but I think the buzz was more of a result of this placing being just off the Graham stop, in Italian Williamsburg where the dining options are improving but still pretty nill.

Wife and I went on a non-descript Wednesday night right before my departure for Las Vegas (next post dearest nine, and it will be a doosy) and we were served quickly and with a smile. The wood fired pizza oven crackled in the distance, and though the decor of this place leaves something to be desired, it was by no means offensive. The food was fine. It wasn't delectable, it wasn't atrocious, it was a quick and easy individual pizza.

I suppose if I lived in the neighborhood I would rave about this place. I mean, I could see a habit form with such a simple transaction for dinner. You can be in and out in no time, or you could bring friends from out of town and make a night of it. Sadly, there aren't enough places like this around.