[Pigging by Wilfrid: May 9, 2011]
Lamazou, lovely Lamazou, the small but serious cheese shop which I haunted weekly when I lived on East 22nd Street. Can that really be ten years ago?
I've been back since, of course, for the European cheeses ripened in the cave at the back of the story, for jambon de Paris, for conversation with Aziz and wife Nancy. And now a restaurant...
Just a couple of blocks downtown from the store, on Third Avenue, and therefore part of a busy and relentlessly midscale dining strip - Turkish, Vietnamese, Afghanistan; they're all there, punctuated by countless mock-Irish pubs showing soccer games. It was a much more peaceful neighborhood ten years ago I swear.
I miss Lamazou, the store. Hard to make it a destination once you've relocated and it's as easy to go to Whole Foods or Murray's or Saxelby's. But Lamazou is on the human scale, unlike the first two mentioned; it's a neighborhood gem is the best way. I had expected Bistro Lamazou to be similarly unassuming, cozy even, but no - they have sunk some money into this place and it's certainly dramatic.
Very high ceilings, swirling splashes of red and black, plush banquettes, huge windows, a big sense of space. About two-thirds of tables were occupied when I visited and I don't know what it would take for the room to feel crowded. Aziz looked remarkably formal pacing the room in suit and tie (he wears a white cheesemonger jacket at the store). Nancy, coordinating front-of-house, was dressed for a special occasion too. If the setting is ambitious, so is the menu; in fact it over-reaches slightly.
We should be talking about menus in the plural. There's the food menu - a fold-up plastic specimen which is not as smart as the restaurant deserves - and a wine menu; and then there's a cheese and charcuterie menu, one double-sided, closely printed sheet. My eyebrows headed north as I sipped a pink cava. Some fifty cheeses, not to mention twenty cold-cut choices. No way.
Indeed no, but my server pointed out that the available cheeses - and there were plenty - were shown in red. Or black. One way or the other. The distinction hadn't been applied to the charcuterie, so there was some back and forth with the server until Nancy came over and explained what was actually available. Rosette de Lyon had been my first choice and they had it - fragrant, herbacious, a sweet start and salty finish, very thinly sliced.
And there was a lot of it. You can choose a sampler plate which leaves it to the kitchen, but I was insisting on picking from the carte. Nancy suggested the house-made chicken liver mousse, and I concurred, so there was an igloo of that too - smoothly satisfactory. Pickles, tiny toasts, bread. It was no surprise that a lot of what Bistro Lamazou does is source ingredients from the store and plate them for you. But hey, they do that in Spain - and it would actually be pricier to do it at home.
Individual charcuterie choices, by the way, are priced around $7 to $9.
The wine list for once leans away from high-end clarets and offers plenty of casual options, just right for this kind of food. I decided to try a few by the glass, and the glass turned out to be a 25cl pot at very reasonable prices. Aziz is from Tunisia, and I lost my Tunisian red virginity with a very smooth-drinking specimen.
Although the menu reflects Tunisian and Lebanese (that's Nancy) influences - billed accessibly as "Moroccan," the chef is French. I met him on the way in as he was hanging by the host desk. Necessary, therefore, to challenge his cassoulet. (You can go in a completely different direction with dinner - the brik looked great.)
And a mighty cassoulet it was, served in a tureen the size of a bucket. It could serve four, especially with a couple of sides. Excellent beans, which is the sine qua non of the dish; imported from France and thoroughly cooked without being mushy. Extra points for the breadcrumbs on top. Duck, okay; then some international sausages. A fennelly sweet Italian sausage. Then a sweet pink sausage I couldn't recognize. I meant to ask about it but my lips were glued together.
I decided to consider it a New York cassoulet and just enjoy it.
Truly a cassoulet of champions. Compare with wine glass to get some idea of the size. I am finishing it for lunch today. Third round with it. $29 on the menu, and absolutely a dish to share.
My belt was getting a little tight at this stage, but cheese was inevitable. A firm-ish Dutch cheese called Beemster - mild and nutty - was new to me. The blue was Cambazola, a French-Italian triple-cream. I am sure it said German on the menu. Epoisses, because I trusted Aziz not to stock a dried-out stale one. The only sample I didn't much enjoy was a French cheese with a kind of tooth-coating quality to it - and I have erased its name from my memory.
Aziz has always been suspicious of American cheese, a stance more justifiable ten years ago than today, but he says he's working with some small producers and might add more (currently there's one) to his list.
If you sense a theme of generosity here, you're right. Prices are at a glance reasonable, but when you see the size of the portions and judge the extent to which dishes are shareable, they're insane. With multiple charcuterie choices, a main dish which was far to much for me, then a cheese sampler and many pots of wine, I managed to nose the check towards $100. You could dine and wine copiously here for much less. It's rarely I recommend a restaurant fine tune its prices upwards, but I hope for their sakes they've pitched this right.
Is it time to say "a nice addition to the neighborhood"?
Information here.
Disclosures
Here we go again. Nancy and Aziz recognized me during the evening. Aziz and I had a long chat afterwards and he bought me a drink. They know me from long before the Pink Pig started and have no idea that I write about restaurants. I thank you.
Comments