I'm disappointed to have to write such a negative review of this place for a variety of reasons: my good friend kindly picked this place out for a belated birthday dinner, it's a Danny Meyer restaurant, and it's gotten some fairly good buzz. But it was a definite let down. It's located in the lobby of the brand new Whitney Museum (which is a fun place to check out if you are looking for something to do in the city) and it's quite sleek with its floor to ceiling windows and minimalist decor. While it reeks of a pretentious Meat Packing vibe, I was ready for it to surprise me, like Santina did.
The menu is seasonal but lacks any real theme or concept. I guess you can call it new American and I got the vibe that it was one of those places where the dishes were sparse and not very filling (picture a white plate with like 2 things on it). We started with the cherry tomatoes and chickpea small plate ($6) and the smashed cucumbers ($12) while Lav got the artichoke fettuccine ($25) and I got the tilefish ($26). The cherry tomato dish came out first and it was actually cut up cherry tomatoes and hummus served with fried wonton strips. While the dish was fine, there was absolutely nothing interesting about it at all. It seemed like something I could have made at home by cutting up fresh cherry tomatoes and served it with store bought hummus and drizzled with olive oil. The waiter came by and asked us how the dish was because it was a new item on the menu and he could tell that Lav and I were both lukewarm about it. It just didn't seem like a dish worthy of being served in a high end restaurant. Luckily the smashed cucumber dish was a bit better. It thinly sliced cucumber with scallion oil and soba noodles. I thought there was going to be more soba noodles to make it a heartier dish but it wasn't a very big dish to begin with and there were about 5 strands of soba noodles in there. But overall it was a clean taste and had it been a bigger dish, it would have been quite good. Then came our main dishes. My fish was served with corn, sweet peppers and curried squash. The broth base was actually quite good and tasty. I was told by the waiter that the fish was cooked medium rare, which is totally fine by me, but it came out seriously undercooked. To the point where, when I put my fork through it, it just stopped at some point because it wasn't cooked all the way through. A well cooked fish should be flakey and easy to cut through, even if medium rare. I didn't send it back but I really should have. Luckily, I survived and I'm fine but it was pretty shocking how poorly cooked the fish was. If it wasn't swimming in a curried broth, it probably would have looked quite clear as being too rare. Lav mentioned that she wasn't too impressed with her pasta either. It was supposed to come with crab in it but they were able to serve it to her without it but then it looked like a regular pasta with some swiss chard and tomato on it.
At this point, we were both pretty underwhelmed but hoped that dessert would bring everything up a notch. We ordered the peanut butter blueberry crunch cake ($10) and the chocolate hot fudge cake ($10) based on the recommendation of the waiter. The blueberry crunch cake was super bland and not sweet at all. The peanut butter frosting was a bit overwhelming but the cake part didn't have any flavor to it at all. The crunch part was a bunch of peanut brittle on top of it - which isn't really my thing. While the blueberry cake was boring, the chocolate cake was on the other extreme end and super super chocolate-ly. It was too intense for me, especially given that I don't like chocolate all that much.
Overall, this place was a total bummer. I expected more from Danny Meyer and while I'm glad I tried it out, if I am ever in the area, I would stick to Santina or some other place in the Meat Packing district than recommend this place. Total bill: very generous birthday treat
Photo Credit: Yelp
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