at the sign of The Pink Pig: Betony: A Kind Of Fine Dining

[Pigging by Wilfrid: January 20, 2014]

I recently asked the hordes at Mouthfuls to name upscale (but not super-expensive) restaurant openings of the last three years or so, which weren't attributable to chef-machine Michael White. And to be honest, there were more than I'd thought.

Jungsik and Juni, The Elm and NoMad. It's not a packed field, but not barren either. Thing is, when I got to Betony, it didn't really strike as very upscale at all. Not that it isn't trying to be.

It's on wide, loud 57th Street, near Rizzoli's book store. It's a bi-level space, which makes for a soaring ceiling over the bar, but a low ceiling over the rear, ground-floor dining room where I sat. The walls, I guess, are supposed to look like carved panelling. The dominant colors, of decor, uniforms, and table-coverings: browns and grays.

Service is intended to be formal, but it comes across as tentative, earnest, and a little nervous. The run-up to the meal is stately. After being seated, I was immediately asked about allergies and other health problems (policy: everyone is), and then left with menu and tapwater for a long time. The first food arrived forty minutes after I did. Of course, everything then speeded up as the kitchen pounced on my ticket, and dishes flew out in quick succession.

Oh, I forgot the breadsticks. Skinny things, with some very mildly cheesy crackers too.

Betony has one of those extra column menus, and you're advised to pick a dish from each column too. This means no getting away with a starter and a main course. You must eat a "snack" before your appetizer, or appear cheap. What does impress here is the list of wines by the glass: some serious Rioja and Châteauneuf-du-Pape. A pity, then, that I allowed myself to be talked out of my initial selection: the Riesling I was offered to accompany the beef tongue was thin and insubstantial.

Ah, the beef tongue. The "snack" section of the menu provides, apparently, little bites. Foie gras bon-bons, a deconstructed tuna melt, that kind of thing. The beef tongue bites were microscopic.

Cute, I suppose, if you really got your nose down to plate level (there was no light over my table). The gossamer slices of tongue were wrapped around crisp rye...sticks, I suppose. Micro-greens were tweezered on top. Most diverting, the presence of the "smallest grain in the world" (I was told), teff.

The pin-head sized seeds were cupped in little green leaves (which tended to fall off the rye crisp when you picked it up). Fairy food, straight out of The Borrowers, or Epic. The flavor of the tongue was fleeting, to say the least. Or perhaps "ethereal."

Then an unadvertised course, a white foam delivered with a low mumble, but which I think featured hazelnut oil, and which was perfectly pleasant. "Ethereal" too, come to think of it.

Then the highlight and lowlight of the night. The highlight, I fear, was the white wine I did choose, the fabulous Lopez de Heredia,Viña Gravonia Crianza, with ten years on the bottle. All the vigor, structure, and power you'd expect, and still many years to go before reaching its peak. The lowlight: the monkfish with beets and beef. Not, in my opinion, a well-conceived dish.

The alternatives, in the appetizer column, were a couple of salads, foie gras, or the ever-present hen's egg: and I wanted to something to match the wine. What I received were some thin slices of poached monkfish (nothing wrong with them), challenged by rather stronger slices of beet, and surrounded by what looked like beet juice but tasted like beef stock.

Extaordinarily, the pieces of monk fish were topped with little, dry, stringy wafers of beef jerky. Why?

Maybe it was some fancy air-cured beef, but to me it was beefy jerky. Oh well, fire up the Domaine Faury and bring me the meat. Grilled short rib. Or rather, short rib which had undergone some sous-vidism before being grilled.

Now this is something Wylie Dufresne does at WD-50 quite superbly, transforming beef short ribs into something with the texture, and almost the flavor, of fine, tender ham. The Betony short ribs are kind of halfway there. Enjoyable enough. The tiny dab of potato purée seemed a bit of an afterthought: unlike the baby leek, stealing the show by pushing its hairy, inedible head into your face.

I chopped it off.

I'm sure you'd like to hear about dessert, but I just chose a piece of Vermont cheddar. You can elect to have your cheese plate "classic" or "composed," and nervous now of invisible grains, and beef jerky, and hairy leeks, I went for classic.

The kitchen did hide some honey under the spoon, and also sent out a little dish of sharply vinegared pears, which I didn't eat. And my goodness, here's some nice warm bread to...well, finish off with

And that was the end, really, because--despite being courteously comped a glass of Coteaux du Layon--I thought an additional charge for petits fours ($4) should not be encouraged. Dinner here, with appropriate wines, runs in the $200 direction, so I think the fancy candies should be included.