[Pigging by Wilfrid: April 29, 2014]
As I've said before, sometimes you just have to write about what you happened to eat. It certainly wasn't thoughtful planning which saw me grabbing a quick bite in the West Village last week, or casting about for a post-concert supper in midtown.
But the two meals I ate gave me a chance to reflect on opposite extremes of Manhattand dining--embodied in two restaurants which strive mightily to promote their European appeal.
Wallflower is part of a burgeoning French wine bar trend in the city (add Ocabanon, Racines, La Compagnie des Vins Surnaturels, The Simone, Chicane, and probably some I've forgotten). Being in the Village, Wallflower is very, very small. It may even be smaller than Buvette. The front bar is the size of a closet. To my relief, there turned out to be a narrow corridor alongside which is set with tables as a dining room. The staff do a graceful and immensely affable job of navigating the space, the diners, and the furniture.
The bar is really the center of attention, a mix-space for Xavier Herit, formerly of Daniel (the John Doe was very good: Rittenhour rye, Manzanilla, Chartreuse, Cynar, orange bitters). The French maitre d' will steer you past it to your table, and present a very French wine list. An expensive list too, once you page past the three whites and three reds available by the glass and launch yourself into the stratosphere of Burgundies. Not that the mark-ups are greedy at all. A Sociando-Mallet 2001 leapt from the page at $110 (it's around $80 retail).
But what would you eat while chugging through a vintage bottle or two? Much of the menu is given over to...snacks, I guess. As well as oysters and a couple of tartares, there are meats and cheeses to be ordered individually or by the plate, and some fancy sandwiches. I'd like to have ranged through the charcuterie selection, but at $48 I thought it might be a gluttonous choice.
It probably isn't. The rabbit and cep terrine I chose was very good. It actually had rabbit flavor, it was garnished with a neatly dressed salad. And it was maybe a couple of ounces of meat. I dipped into the bread.
Yes, it was too dark for photos.
From what I assumed to be entrées (priced in the upper twenties) I went for what looked like a hearty choice: roast pork belly, with peas and lettuce in the French style. The peas and lettuce were fresh, classic, superb. The cube of pork belly was two or three bites. A small plate by any other name.
And it's not so much the price that bothers me--I just wonder what I'd have done if I'd wanted the food to accompany one of those bottles of wine. Ordered another couple of courses? I was in an out in about half an hour--and indeed they could have sold me more wines by the glass if I'd had something to eat in front of me.
Nothing here is bad. It's just that I found some light grazing where I expected to find a meal.
Maria's Mont Blanc
At Mont Blanc, conversely, I could scarcely stand up after a couple of courses.
The full name is Maria's Mont Blanc, and although I'm not absolutely sure which of the European women supervising the place was Maria, I could place a shrewd bet. Anyway, they're in charge of this very old-school dining room on a quiet cross-street of the Theater District. This is not, I assure you, one of those brash, touristy boîtes proposing soup of the day and steak frites to confused tourists.
Although billed as European, its heart is in Switzerland, and the tone recalls René Pujol, one of the statelier veterans of the neighborhood (closed 2005, I believe). The bar is long, spacious, welcoming to regulars. The dining room is deep, warm, comfortable. Where Wallflower pressed you close to your neighbor, you could throw bread rolls here without hitting anyone.
The wine list is terse, vague as to vintage, but marked up hardly at all. St George St Emilion is an inexpensive claret in a wine store, and on Mont Blanc's list. I had some.
The menu is long, but not crazy long. The prices are pitched predictably lower than Wallflower (low twenties for mains). There are incongruous crowd-pleasers like pasta and flatbread sandwiches (and even a cup of chili at the bar). The kitchen's core skill, however, lies in traditional preparations of veal: cutlets or dumplings, schnitzel or cordon bleu, liver or kidneys, with a Masala sauce or ground and dunked in cream--émincé de veau à la Zurichoise.
Curiosity directed me to order the $8 pâté de foie. This turned out to be a double event: a medallion of foie mi cuit which, though quite evidently not house-made could hardly have been marked up in price, but also a slice of pâté, together with not only the kind of salad leaves you might expect, but also an oniony potato salad, and a celeriac slaw.
I don't see kidneys on menus often enough, so I ordered the veal kidneys in Marsala with mushrooms. My server told me that it would come with potato and a vegetable. And boy, did it.
I hadn't thought this was a portion for four people, nor had the price--$22--raised any suspicions. I was presented with a mammoth casserole from which richly gravied kidneys were ladeled. An inch-thick rösti filled it own dinner plate. And there were some beans.
I did my best. It was worth going back to the casserole for second and third helpings, because the gravy became well-seasoned and more flavorful the deeper I dug (the first taste had suggested blandness). But I never made it to the bottom, nor to the dessert menu. No Amaretto log for me.
So there you have it. Two utterly different ways of eating French-European food in New York today, and the Mont Blancs are losing--indeed, have lost--the argument. The food and wine at Wallflower is certainly finer. Mont Blanc is more comfortable, more generous. Imagine a restaurant which took the best of both (and yes, there are some, I know).
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