[Pigging by Wilfrid: October 5, 2009]
Not so much a happy ending, as a happy beginning for the new San Domenico, recast as SD26 on the north side of Madison Square.
The reinvention of a restaurant is a fraught project. Inappropriate changes can dismay old friends yet still fail to recruit new devotees. We'll never know how Chanterelle would have survived the transition from a prix fixe fine dining establishment with widely spaced tables to a restaurant with a carte, bar dining and a bar menu: just last week brought the sad news that David and Karen Waltuck had decided to close their doors instead. Some of the grand old dames of New York French dining tried a nip and tuck here and there with no success. Le Cirque's experiment with a large, casual dining area and a wine lounge is still underway.
The lesson Tony and Marisa May are teaching at SD26 seems to be that, if you must change, change big. After twenty years overseeing the formal, peaceful dining room of San Domenico on Central Park South, Tony May admitted to the Times, “I cannot impose my will...” The reality, however one feels about it, is that in Manhattan 2009, expecting diners to dress elegantly, order three or more course meals and bottles of wine as a matter of course, and relax in a quiet, essentially grown-up environment, courts commercial disaster.
The challenge which SD26 is bravely facing is loosening its metaphorical collar while maintaining standards. I suppose you could just call it "hospitality."
The move downtown is literal as well as metaphorical - as far as 26th Street, at least. Danny Meyer territory. The new location is surprisingly large. A long bar with perhaps a dozen two-tops for bar dining gives way to a hall with more seated nooks and a display of sculptures. Beyond is the main dining room, a towering duplex space with overhead lighting dimmed at night to give the illusion of a starry sky.
On the left is an open kitchen - extraordinary in itself to see Odette Fada, for thirteen years head of Tony May's kitchen, and reclusive by modern chef standards - standing at the pass and surveying the tables. Beyond is a chef's table which can be reserved, and arrayed behind it baskets of bread and shelves of olives, oil and other ingredients. To the right, a separate bar (no seating) behind which cold meats and cheeses are cut. I received the courtesy of a tour downstairs - extensive, pristine preparation areas, and a wine room also equipped for private dining. The party rooms upstairs were still in construction when I was given the walk-around, but now finished.
Almost suffocating modernity in the affection of its embrace, SD26 also boasts not only a large enomatic wine system in the front bar (about twenty-five selections, I think, in one, three or five ounce pours), but also individual electronic wine-lists. These would have stopped hearts among veteran patrons of La Caravelle, and even here I suspect some diners beg for an old-fashioned print list. In fact, they're easy enough to use, allowing diners to sort wines by color, country and region. If anything, I should think they make life harder for the sommelier, who needs to click back and forth between displays to offer advice and suggestions.
A menu of cicchetti which I've not sampled is offered at the bar (the full menu is available at bar tables). Otherwise, the main change to the dinner menu the addition of separate lists of cured meats and sausages, salads and vegetable sides, and cheeses; it also makes explicit that pastas can be ordered in small or regular sizes (some of the fish and meat mains can also be diminished to order). The increased flexibility not only permits lighter eating, but - although there are still some pricey luxuries, like an $88 bistecca Fiorentina - the final tab here is certainly kinder than it was at Central Park South.
There's a new adventurousness to plating too. Chef Fada always served some of the most succulent pieces of grilled octopus in the city, but the meat is now fanned mosaic-like across the plate as a carpaccio with a light herb dressing and salad spilling from a crisp tuile.
A charcuterie selection can be served for one or two (or you can order meats individually).
I am weary of complaining that lobster tail even in the better New York restaurants can be woefully tough and chewy. Thank goodness, not here. Tender, and in fact lightly smoked, it's served with fresh orange and - I think - a porcini purée. A delicate dish, and in fact entrée portions here seem generally restrained, which encourages and allows the sampling of extra plates.
Next time the venison, as chef Fada also does wonders with game. But I was tempted by the breast of guinea-hen. Crisp-skinned, with a light reduction of the juices, and garnished with chestnut and chestnut purée.
If the savory courses met expectations, dessert exceeded them. I was accustomed to eating the panna cotta with strawberries and a balsamic sauce at the old place - must have ate it dozens of times. Here it's re-invented as a thrillingly plated goat cheese panna cotta, with delicious macerated raisins and berries.
My meals were taken within the first two and a half weeks of SD26's existence. Service is still being settled, revised and smoothed. It remains correct, of course, but the pink jackets and bow-ties have gone.
Lunch is a whole new world too. One of the wonderful lunch specials in the restaurant's former incarnation was rib-sticking braised tripe. Now, welcome il quadrifoglio, a bright and balanced four course lunch served as a sort of upscale Italian Bento box. My Italian is lousy, but as best I can tell, quadrifoglio refers to four leaves, and can bear the lucky connotations of a four-leaf clover.
The composition of the meal changes daily, but my good fortune brought me an octopus salad - tiny slices of tentacles balanced on small cubes of al dente potato; crunchy cauliflower; ravioli, I think, of chicken mousse; chicken breast stuffed with zucchini; and a rich strawberry mousse accented with passion fruit. The chicken and ravioli arrived suitably warm.
This is lunch for under thirty dollars, and the convenience of the manner of service means you can enjoy a glass of wine, these four contrasting plates, and an espresso in less than an hour without being remotely hurried.
And it makes a very pretty picture.
The website, which thus far discloses little, is here.
