The Odeon Visited 5/10/2013 3.5 Forks

Odeon 145 W Broadway (between Duane St & Thomas St), New York, NY 10013

The Odeon is the classic quintessential Tribeca restaurant.  It's trendy but not hipster and everyone is just a bit too cool for school in the downtown way.  I have been to The Odeon before but it's been years despite working 5 minutes away from it.  But I ended up there on a Friday night with Betsy and Cicily and it was kind of the perfect after work Friday night place to catch up on everything.  The food here is your classic bistro food ranging from mussels to burgers to hanger steak.  I was starving and craving a burger but decided to go a bit "healthy" and opted for the Tune burger ($22) instead.  Both Cicily and Betsy got the burger ($18 plus $2 for cheese and another $2 for bacon) and I also split the shrimp and grits appetizer ($14) with Cicily.

The shrimp and grits came out and it was shockingly small.  Cicily and I were both like "what? this was $14?".  I guess when you come from seafood cities like New Orleans and DC like Cicily and I, it's always surprising to order something with seafood for $14 to only get 4 pieces of shrimp.  But I will say at least the dish was pretty tasty.  The shrimp was cooked perfectly and the grits had a lot of flavor with bits of jalapeno, chorizo, scallion and bacon jus.  I just wish there was more than 4 bites of the dish.  Then came our main entrees.  My tuna burger was served with wasabi mayo and fries.  The burger here was the kind that was chopped up tuna and then formed into a patty.  I asked for it to be cooked rare and they did a good job of it.  While it was moist and a good burger, I still prefer my tuna burger to be more of a big piece of tuna steak such as the one at Sel de Mer because it has a bit more stability.  The chopped up patty version comes apart more easily but the burger here did have enough binding it in that it wasn't so messy.  My main gripe with my dish and it's not a major one were the fries.  Usually with something like a burger I like my fries to be the thicker steak cut fries but the ones here were the skinny versions.  It just didn't feel like I was eating a hearty side dish.  I had to dip into Betsy's fries to get full.  Since it was Friday and we wanted to treat ourselves (and frankly I was still hungry), we all split the sundae ($10) for dessert.  It was ok, nothing really special at all.  It was 3 scoops of vanilla ice cream, pralines, whipped cream (on the side) and both hot fudge and butterscotch (on the side as well).   It felt like a dessert I could have easily made at home my self and not worth the $10, but it did satisfy my sweet craving for the night.

All in all, I had a nice meal and it was the perfect place to catch up with some friends after work.  We had gotten there pretty early (around 7pm) that the restaurant was really hopping by the time we left at 9:30.  The place is casual enough that you don't have to feel too threatened by the downtown crowd but it's got enough character and trendiness to it that you still feel like you're out somewhere nice for the night.  Total bill: $71 with tax and tip

Photo Credit: Yelp