[Pigging by Wilfrid: September 21, 2009]
I try not to waste too much space here taking direct issue with published reviews of restaurants. But in the case of SHO: Shaun Hergatt, it's worth making an exception.
The Times's Pete Wells, filling in between the Scylla of Bruni and the Charibdyis of Sifton, did his readers a great disservice with the blinkered Dining Briefs dismissal published in the last week of August.
For Wells, SHO was a restaurant which feels "as if it could be almost anywhere in the world, which is to say, nowhere in particular." Truthfully, it doesn't feel much like a New York City restaurant, circa 2009. It feels nothing like a gastro-pub, it boasts tablecloths, it boasts formal service, it serves no pork belly, and reservations are accepted.
For all the assumed cosmopolitanism of his stance - "We are in Dubai,” a friend said..." - what the brief review actually emphasizes is the astonishing provincialism of Times restaurant criticism. Fine, we are all over Frank Bruni confusing Paul Liebrandt's homage to Gagnaire at Gilt with some kind of version of molecular cuisine. But Pete Wells needs to be told that the whole world doesn't expect dinner served à la David Chang (which is nothing against Chang), nor is the dining community beyond the boundaries of downtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side obsessed with local greenmarket produce, seasonality and pig roasts.
"The dining room is done up in the familiar, soaring, vaguely Asian fashion I’ve come to think of as Hotel Orientalism...[and] it’s hard to shake the feeling that a group of executives in some luxury hotel group’s headquarters dreamed up the whole enterprise." Well yes, The Setai New York, which I believe is a combination hotel and condominium, is indeed operated by the GHM Group - proprietors of hotels with an Asian design theme in such locations as Thailand, Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and Myanamar, where perhaps their "orientalism" causes less offense. Proprietors too, of course, of the grand Setai on South Beach, on which the fittings of the smaller scale New York location seem to be modelled. (The location is admittedly not great, among the scaffolding, construction and road-blocks of the Financial District.)
As for the internationalism of the menu, Shaun Hergatt hails from Australia, where the resolution of western and Asian influences on the plate is a long-accomplished fact. What may look like fusion - or confusion - to a New York Times food editor is the established cuisine of a city like Sydney. And to bring the tirade to a close, the word "seasonal" was not invented by the wonderful farmers of New York state, and not even by Dan Barber. Wells complains that "seasonal" produce was hard to spot on the menu, taking seasonal to mean, I assume, whatever you can find in Union Square on Saturday. SHO sources its produce from more remote destinations, which may or may not constitute a strain on the environment, but does not automatically mean bad eating. Worth reflecting too that the city's top sushi restaurants - Kuruma Zushi, Masa, Sushi Yasuda - do the same.
And so, after an elegant array of amuses, including good duck terrine...
...a second complimentary dish is offered - succulent, marinated hiramasa (yellowtail kingfish), and one couldn't help feeling that the fact that it comes from Australia rather than Long Island Sound was rather to its credit.
Service was formal, as I've said, but considerate - to the extent of several times replenishing the black truffle butter, which was eaten at my table all too gluttonously.
Dinner is a startling bargain: $69 for three courses, with many attendant complimentary plates - signifcantly less expensive than Bouley or Eleven Madison Park, which are themselves well-priced in comparison to the uptown four stars.
Luxury courses too. Witness the upended foie sandwich. The foie has the distinctive, biteable texture of liver either cooked in house or by a first-rate supplier - this is meat, not creamy paste.
The pain d'épices wafers were like delicately thin slices of gingerbread. Dabbed with a Banyuls reduction, this is one of the best renditions of foie I've eaten in a while - blessedly not swamped with over-sweet garnishes.
If anything, the crab appetizer was even better.
Wherever the peeky-toe is "hand-picked," as the menu tells us, it bursts with sweet freshness and flavor. The moulded crab is draped in a thin sheet of jelly made from the galangal plant, and the dish is finished with creamy Californian uni.
The only misstep of the evening, all too common even in good New York restaurants, was the toughness of the lobster. The plating was exquisite, reminding me of Guy Martin's work at Grand Véfour - high praise. Served with peas, topped with a verjus emulstion, the lobster tail itself was just hard work to chew. Of course, it was from Maine, which I suppose counts as local and seasonal.
I wouldn't have thought of ordering spring chicken if I hadn't read other more positive reviews of the restaurant (at New York Journal, for example). I am glad I did.
It comes in deux services - or two platefuls. Expertly crisped, juicy portions of poussin, marinated in yoghurt. What we should probably call an adzuki bean cassoulet too. This was the work of someone who can really cook.
The bird was spiced up with a grain mustard sauce and the Turkish pepper urfa isot - sufficiently obscure that a Google search brought me back to the SHO dish.
Les fromages: Brie, St-Maur, Ossau Iraty, Pont-l'Évêque, and a blue I forgot to write down. No suprises, but well kept and served at a proper temperature.
Room only for a fairly modest dessert, a sort of banana millefeuille.
Having praised the price of this first-rate food, I should warn you about the wine-list. It's a very good list, if part of your dinner plan is to buy vintages of Bordeaux and Burgundy at marked-up restaurant prices. They have some swanky ones. But it's also the kind of list where, if you think to yourself "I'll look at the Rhones instead," you are confronted with a vertical of Chateau Beaucastel. Expensive indeed. There are a few safe harbors among the half-bottles, and the sommelier is much more approachable than the list might lead you to anticipate.
In short, this is just evidently one of the most accomplished openings the city has seen this year - fine food, prettily executed - a fact brilliantly concealed from Times readers with a farrago of irrelevancies about Dubai and seasonality. And it is comparatively affordable. Three courses, champagne, modest wine, around $150 a head before tip and tax. Plus more extras...
Really good macarons.
A mound of chocolates.
And an opportunity to survey the unaffordable wine holdings. Go, before the prices rise.
The "orientalist" website is here.
