Lafayette From The Rear-View Mirror

[Pigging by Wilfrid:  August 19, 2013]

People say restaurants get reviewed too fast these days.  No sooner are the doors open, than hordes of bloggers and Yelpers, not to mention the Daily Candy crew, are posting about bum service and deflated soufflées--or herlading the restaurant as the final arrival of paradise on earth.

Critic Robert Sietsema reflected recently on the effect on professional reviewing: "In order to compete with the web-based and largely amateur product, critics shortened the lag time between when a restaurant appears and when they write about it."

I'd just like to say: the chance would be a fine thing.  Take Lafayette, for example.

One thing I can do at the Pink Pig is write about restaurants which are somewhat off the radar: Plan B, for example, or Prospect.  But it's fun, occasionally, to get to a hot new opening before anyone else does, and float at least some initial impressions.  I was in the vanguard a week or so back when The Elm opened.  But when the build-up to an opening is covered with the breathless detail that greeted every development at Lafayette--right down to the arrival of the table bases--getting through the door becomes a challenge.

I did try when Lafayette opened.  After all, I've been following Andrew Carmellini and Damon Wise through various kitchens for years--more than ten years, in the case of the former.  I sought reservations.  I even burst through the doors one evening and begged for a chair at a counter (but, "No, we're not serving there yet."  And so I bided my time.

With the result that the reviews are in, and I don't have much to add, except that service seems to have settled down.  The place was busy, sure, but tables are gettable right now in mid-August.  There were no bouncers on the door, and everyone I came across--from greeter to server to sommelier--was pleasant and well-informed (there is still a tendency to mill around the service stations).

It's pretty clear now what Lafayette strives to become, and that's a new Balthazar, nothing more or less.  And it's well on the way.  And despite some flourishes in the descriptions at Lafayette, the menus are remarkably similar.

I launched with a special, braised tripe with an egg on top, and barely cooked fennel fronds. 

The tripe, tender and sticky, was balanced by the fresh crispness of the fennel.  The egg kind of disappeared into the dark, winey reduction once broken.  It was a nice supper dish.

The duck au poivre?  Well, not very peppery, but generous: a real, thick magret served in two pink and juicy slices.

I liked the restrained apricot accent.  Beneath the duck lay mixed "organic grains"--there was some barley in there--and sliced radish.  Nothing to change your life, but well-executed and satisfying.

The cheese plate--your choice of three or five from a very short list--is reasonably priced ($12 for three), but I could hardly imagine a smaller piece of Tarentaise (left in the photo).

I did like the microscopic grapes, though, and there was a hearty, nutty bread on which to spread the Torus (a Murray's exclusive).

Best of the bunch, though, the Fourme d'Ambert, with its rich, tangy crust.

And so there we are--hardly a "review" as such, and I don't claim to have added anything to the sum of human knowledge about this place.  It's a relief to confirm that it isn't the oddly popular blend of good raw bar and catastrophic composed dishes I found at the Dutch.  It's a solid bistro, if what you need is a crowded, hard-to-book solid bistro in NoHo.  And plenty of people do.

Here's the website.