The 10 Best New Restaurants of 2008 By FRANK BRUNI

The 10 Best New Restaurants of 2008 By FRANK BRUNI

1. MOMOFUKU KO David Chang’s intimate 12-seat, sushi-counter-style restaurant heads this list not only because its best dishes and moments are so memorable, but because it’s a paradigm-busting experiment that, like so much of what Mr. Chang has done, heeds and adjusts for what a new generation of discerning diners cares most about — and what fuss and frippery they can do without.

2. CORTON This blissful collaboration of the restaurateur Drew Nieporent and the chef Paul Liebrandt presents luxury of a more classic sort, at an admirably moment-reflecting price of $76 for a three-course prix fixe with a flurry of amuse-bouches and petit fours. And it finds Mr. Liebrandt at the sweet spot between runaway imagination and good sense.

3. (TIE) SCARPETTA To what heights can a simple dish of spaghetti al pomodoro rise? Scarpetta provided the answer — the sky’s the limit — and a host of other delights, its sometimes agitated setting in the meatpacking district not among them. At Scarpetta the chef Scott Conant reconnected with his early glory days at L’Impero.

3. (TIE) CONVIVIO The post-Conant L’Impero, meanwhile, became this warmer, redder, more convivial restaurant. The chef Michael White’s improved menu here pegged him as one of the city’s top pasta whizzes, and he showed a Batali-esque enthusiasm for organ meat.

5. DOVETAIL The chef John Fraser abandoned Compass but not the Upper West Side, reemerging in this somewhat plain but entirely comfortable and charming restaurant, which surpassed just about everyone’s expectations, becoming more than just a neighborhood favorite.

6. MATSUGEN In the TriBeCa space where he had tried to make a lasting success of 66, Jean-Georges Vongerichten decided to treat Japanese cooking in a more straightforward and respectful vein than 66 had treated Chinese. He left the menu and cooking to a team from Tokyo, who rewarded him with underexposed, compelling dishes and excellent soba.

7. ADOUR ALAIN DUCASSE Mr. Ducasse ratcheted down the opulence of his previous fancy Manhattan restaurant in the Essex House with this successor in the St. Regis, notable for Sandro Micheli’s exceptional desserts and for a blockbuster (and pricey) wine list. I’d rank this higher if a first-year change in executive chef and Mr. Ducasse’s distant involvement didn’t raise questions about consistency.

8. BAR BOULUD This relatively casual effort from Daniel Boulud doesn’t get everything right, but for its outstanding charcuterie, an exemplary wine list and scattered other delights, it deserves big applause.

9. ALLEGRETTI Alain Allegretti, a French chef who worked under Mr. Ducasse, struck out on his own, choosing an odd block and a risky moment for saucy cooking that was, at its best, a heady ticket straight to Provence.

10. MIA DONA The chef Michael Psilakis, perhaps more prescient about the economy than some peers, responded to the kudos for his haute Greek restaurant Anthos with this Italian restaurant of big flavors and big portions at accessible prices.



December 31, 2008
Critic’s Notebook
Same Table Next Year? Not So Fast By FRANK BRUNI

IN a humble East Village space with dimensions better suited to a take-out pizza parlor, a restaurant as significant as any in the last few years bloomed. And though it charges an unyielding $100 for food alone at dinner — and an unbending $160 at lunch — admission is nearly as competitive as at certain elite preschools. What many food enthusiasts have wanted more than anything else in 2008 is one of the 12 stools at Momofuku Ko.

Where Montrachet withered, what took root was something more refined, more ambitious and arguably more French. In fact Corton, its replacement, may be the most quietly, classically serious restaurant in the restaurateur Drew Nieporent’s large portfolio and long career.

Financial crisis? Economic meltdown? In the pace and quality of restaurant openings this year, the recession was hardly reflected. In fact, 2008 was probably the best year for new restaurants in this city since 2004, when New York welcomed two four-star restaurants, Per Se and Masa, in one month. There hasn’t been a new four-star restaurant since.

This was the year of three stars. I gave that rating to seven debuts, all on my list of the year’s 10 best new restaurants. By comparison, there were no three-star debuts in 2007, and my top 10 list was headed by a place I awarded only two stars. As stocks tumbled, the city’s chefs and restaurateurs seemed to rally, staging what could turn out to be a last blast — for a while at least — of nearly unsullied optimism and unbound dreams.

But it wasn’t an act of defiance. Restaurants are planned, and reach a point of no return, far in advance of their debuts. The bumper crop of 2008 was planted anywhere from 6 to 24 months before the challenges they would face became clear.

I shudder to think about this time in 2009 — about the kind of reflection on the New York restaurant scene that might be in order then.

The next 12 months promise to be a grueling survival test for all but the most intensely beloved or flat-out utilitarian restaurants. Although there will be newcomers to celebrate and congratulate, most of them, I suspect, will come along during the first months of the year, laggards that missed their projected fall openings. The second half of 2009 could be barren and grim.

Will there be anything like Matsugen, a bold wager that superior soba in a relatively straightforward setting could be enough of a draw to fill more than 100 seats? I hope so, but I doubt it.

Or anything like Adour Alain Ducasse, with its baronial splendor and its interactive touch-screen wine bar? I wouldn’t bet on it, and while we can certainly live without such pomp and pampering, isn’t it nicer to have them around, just in case?

I’m not confident, in fact, that all of the worthy restaurants among this year’s top 10 will be around next December. And that drives me to appreciate them and extol their virtues, along with all the many other positive restaurant developments in 2008, all the more.

It was a great year for pasta, thanks in large part to one entirely new restaurant (Scarpetta), one sort-of-new restaurant (Convivio) and the installation of a new chef, Simone Bonelli, at an existing restaurant (Perbacco) that can barely contain his creativity. Their combined force should, by all rights, relegate the no-carbohydrate regimen to the dustbin of dietary history.

In fact, Scarpetta’s spaghetti al pomodoro alone should. The only reason I haven’t listed it among the best new dishes of 2008 is that it hasn’t changed substantially since Scarpetta’s chef, Scott Conant, cooked it years ago at L’Impero. If he’s smart, he’ll still be cooking it years from now.

It was a great year (yet again!) for David Chang. While tinkering restlessly to make Momofuku Noodle Bar and Ssam Bar even better than before, he unveiled Ko, whose significance isn’t a function principally of the novelty and quality of its dishes, impressive as they are. What Ko did, like Ssam Bar before it, was tweak and reevaluate the usual atmospheric context for superior cooking, rejecting old models and reassessing what’s important.

As if that weren’t enough, Mr. Chang also unveiled Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar, where he showcases the pastry talents of Christina Tosi.

The continued emphasis on informality and the consistently growing respect for the contributions of spirits to an enjoyable meal made it a banner year for bars. I’m talking not about ales and highballs but about nomenclature.

New restaurants that misleadingly labeled themselves bars, wagering on the efficacy of that come-on, include Bar Milano, Bar Blanc, Bar Boulud, Bar Q, Bar Breton and Socarrat Paella Bar, which has the greatest justification, inasmuch as almost all of its seats are stools at a high, two-sided counter.

Speaking of libations and of bars nominal and actual, wine bars came into their own, not only multiplying in number but also serving food so appealing that lines were blurred and categories made less tidy.

Exhibit A is Terroir, whose best snacks and dishes are reason enough to wedge into a cramped East Village space and straddle a stool. Exhibit B is Gottino, where the chef Jody Williams turns out small plates that do full justice to the gifts she previously demonstrated with larger dishes at more conventional, full-fledged restaurants.

The trend toward outstanding food in incidental, unassuming and unusual formats was continued and amplified in 2008, and it was a banner period for the related phenomenon of limited-purpose, tightly focused restaurants.

Porchetta serves little more than, well, porchetta. Momofuku Bakery and Milk Bar devotes itself to breads and desserts. Socarrat revels in permutations of paella, while Obika mulls the possibilities in mozzarella.

Salumeria Rosi — much, much humbler than the prior enterprises of one of its owners, the chef Cesare Casella — invests its energies in imported Italian cured meats and cheeses. And the Cave des Fondus stakes its fortunes on fondue, along with wine and beer served in baby bottles, though the latter isn’t a trend. It’s just plain weird.

The year ushered in many opportunities for great eating at contained prices, though I suspect in this one sense 2009 may outpace 2008. It will have its work cut out for it, because in addition to Porchetta, Gottino and Terroir, there’s Cabrito, whose best dishes — including the carnitas with salsa verde and the roasted poblano peppers in cream — match those at just about any Mexican restaurant in New York.

There’s also Rhong-Tiam, where the chef Andy Yang does better Thai food than at his misguided and more expensive follow-up, Kurve, proving anew that pricier isn’t necessarily better. There’s the Redhead, the East Village bar that evolved this year into a Southern-accented restaurant with two runners-up for the year’s list of best dishes: its bacon peanut brittle and its fried chicken with cornbread.

Artichoke Basille’s Pizza & Brewery opened in the same few square blocks of the East Village where Una Pizza Napoletana struts its stuff, competing for pie lovers’ loyalty and intensifying the happy, fattening debate over what’s right, wrong and best when it comes to thin, thick and blistered crusts.

All in all the year’s blessings go far beyond the list of top 10 restaurants here. I left out Tom: Tuesday Dinner, a noteworthy new experiment by the chef Tom Colicchio, because it operates for only one evening every other week and because Mr. Colicchio hasn’t committed to keeping it going for more than a year. It served its first meal in mid-October.

And there are restaurants that came along at the end of the year that might well turn out to have as much merit as anything on my top 10 list; they just haven’t been open long enough for me to review them.

There’s some excitement out there, for example, about the John Dory, a British seafood restaurant from the team behind the Spotted Pig, and about Shang, where the acclaimed Toronto chef Susur Lee is making his New York debut. For the purposes of my top 10 rankings, they belong to 2009, just as Dovetail, which opened at the very end of 2007, belongs to 2008.

There were of course bitter disappointments and puzzling setbacks along with the good news in 2008. The restaurant Florent closed, marking nothing less than the end of an era. The chef Gray Kunz, such a great talent and such a persistent underperformer of late, closed Cafe Gray and severed his ties with the half-cocktail-lounge, half-restaurant Grayz, meaning he is once again a man without a Manhattan restaurant kitchen.

And what to make of David Bouley and Marcus Samuelsson, two highly regarded chefs with highly visible duds this year?

Perhaps distracted by all the other activity in his mini-empire, including the relocation of Bouley, Mr. Bouley inflicted a mess of a brasserie named Secession on a TriBeCa neighborhood that expected better of him. And Mr. Samuelsson’s supposed great labor of love, Merkato 55, a pan-African restaurant in the meatpacking district, drew less attention from him than it sorely needed.

But 2008 will be remembered more sharply for its many great successes. And that would be the case even if 2009 wasn’t looking as ominous as it does.

The Best Meal of 2008

If there’s a New York restaurant with a confidence, diligence and steadiness that surpass those of Le Bernardin, I don’t know it. I stopped here just once in 2008, for a (relatively) low-key lunch. And it was hands down my best meal of the year.

Lunchtime flatters this restaurant. The muted natural light that filters through its windows makes up for the dining room’s cosmetic shortcomings, and the restrained portions, which can leave you wanting more at dinnertime, are ideal for midday, when you don’t want to be weighed down.

My companion and I didn’t linger, heading off to our busy afternoons no more than 90 minutes after we had sat down. But Le Bernardin didn’t need any more time than that to remind us of its magic: of the ways its artfulness always stops short of preciousness or flamboyance; of the precision with which every ingredient is prepared and plated.

Could langoustines be cooked more expertly than those in one of our appetizers? The tail meat in several discrete, beautifully curved arches on the plate was so delicate that my companion insisted it must really be some sort of mousse.

Our other appetizer layered rectangles of cucumber, smoked salmon, fresh salmon and apple in three colorful, identical four-tiered towers, the balance of flavors as careful and appealing as the architecture.

The entrees were even better. Baked mahi-mahi was surrounded by an earthy, faintly sweet and bracingly intense broth made with fresh bamboo shoots, dried oyster mushrooms, brandy and young ginger.

Poached fillets of halibut had impossibly creamy flesh, draped with brussels sprout leaves for some textural contrast and sauced with a purée of uni, clam juice and mustard oil for some briny, zingy wow.

Each dimension of every dish sang with the exact pitch and volume that the chef Eric Ripert had no doubt intended. He’s a maestro, and his kitchen a finely tuned orchestra, and I could happily lose myself in their music every day.

The Best New Restaurant Dishes of 2008

MOMOFUKU KO’S FROZEN FOIE GRAS David Chang turned a classic torchon into flakes piled high, like an incongruously fatty and liver-y Sno-Kone, over a brittle of nuts and a sweet wine gelée.

PERBACCO’S ROLLED PASTA WITH TRUFFLED ZABAGLIONE This rich symphony of speck, buffalo milk mozzarella, béchamel and more was the most wickedly indulgent of the inventive pasta dishes on Simone Bonelli’s new menu.

TOM: TUESDAY DINNER’S CRISPY PORK TROTTER By frying the trotter and pairing it with a beet-stained, pickled quail egg, Tom Colicchio came up with something akin to a dinnertime bacon-and-eggs for the most jaded epicures.

GOTTINO’S WALNUT PESTO The best spread for toasted bread since crunchy peanut butter, it combines walnuts with olive oil, thyme, Parmesan and a dab of sun-dried tomato, which Jody Williams wisely rescues from disrepute.

TERROIR’S PORK BLADE STEAK Like many peers, Marco Canora smartly turned to the Virginia farmer Bev Eggleston for pork, then made the additionally sharp decisions to broil this thin shoulder cut and dump arugula and Parmesan onto it.

CONVIVIO’S PECORINO POTATOES The side dish of the year, a crazily addictive midpoint between roasted potatoes and French fries, given a salty charge and an extra dimension by the right cheese.

BAR BOULUD’S CROQUES-MONSIEUR AND -MADAME Two timeless sandwiches get the reverence they deserve and a richness beyond the norm.

CORTON’S CARAMEL BRIOCHE It’s a dessert (with banana and passion fruit in the mix), a cheese course (thanks to Stilton), a breakfast (in its mimicry of syrupy French toast) and altogether wonderful.

ADOUR ALAIN DUCASSE’S CONTEMPORARY VACHERIN. The terrific pastry chef Sandro Micheli stages a riveting tart-sweet drama with layers of mango marmalade, passion fruit sorbet and coconut meringue.


December 31, 2008
Resolution: Dine Well Without Breaking the Budget

Here are some of the best inexpensive places reviewed in the Dining section this year.

ABRAçO ESPRESSO 86 East Seventh Street, East Village; (212) 388-9731.

Espresso drinks are among the city's finest and drip coffee is even better. There's a small flavorful menu with a Spanish-style frittata of ethereal, custardy creaminess ($4) and warm French toast folded around sweet ricotta ($3).

THE BROOKLYN FLEA Starting in April at the playground of Bishop Loughlin Memorial High School, Lafayette Avenue between Clermont and Vanderbilt Avenues, Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Hours are available at brooklynflea.com. Winter location at 76 Front Street (Washington Street), Dumbo, Brooklyn, has limited food vending.

This market is full of craftspeople, designers and costly vintage items, as well as food vendors from the Red Hook ball fields and elsewhere. Among the notables are the Vaquero family's grilled corn with mayo, cheese and chili powder ($3); Salvatore Bklyn Ricotta cannoli ($3), filled to order with lightly sweetened ricotta spiked with lemon zest, Marsala, chopped chocolate and salt; tiny cupcakes from Kumquat Cupcakery ($1 apiece); bonbons ($20 for a dozen) from Nunu Chocolates; sandwiches ($6.50 to $7.25) at Choice Cafe and pizza from Pizza Moto.

CABRITO 50 Carmine Street (Bedford Street), West Village; (212) 929-5050.

Tacos ($4 to $6) and enchiladas ($14) are delicious and carefully made, wrapped in tortillas with the drape of linen and the tenderness of crepes.

GAZALA PLACE 709 Ninth Avenue (49th Street), Clinton; (212) 245-0709.

Perhaps New York's first outpost of Druse cooking. Gazala Halabi is an accomplished baker with a roster of breads ($4 to $5) topped with spices, cheese or meat, or some combination of the three. Burekas are as flaky and buttery as the best puff pastry, with a thick, rich filling of goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes. An ideal end to a meal is osh al-saraia ($3.50), an alliance of yogurt and spongecake soaked with rosewater and honey.

GOTTINO 52 Greenwich Avenue (Charles Street), Greenwich Village; (212) 633-2590.

A wine bar with a great chef, Jody Williams. The crostini with walnut pesto or with fava beans and sheep's milk ricotta ($5) trawl the confluence of Italian soul and finger food.

IPPUDO NY 65 Fourth Avenue (Ninth Street), East Village; (212) 388-0088.

The purest expression of tonkotsu ramen, the richest style of this noodle soup, made with pork. The akamaru modern ramen ($13) builds on the template to make a bowl of noodle soup about as good as any in the city. Every noodle in every bowl of soup is cooked perfectly al dente.

LA SUPERIOR 295 Berry Street (South Second Street), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 388-5988, lasuperiornyc.com.

Tacos (most $2.50) taste resoundingly good, especially those with rajas, strips of mild roasted poblanos swaddled in thick cream, and grilled pescado zarandeado, a very welcome addition to New York's fish-taco landscape. Quesadillas are big, deep-fried turnovers filled with sautéed mushrooms or a mash of potatoes and chorizo, then hidden under thick cream and fresh cheese ($3.50). Gorditas with requesón ($5 for two), and the torta ahogada ($7.50), a sandwich with crisp, juicy chunks of carnitas, covered with a red sauce of chiles de arból are worthy of passion.

NO. 7 7 Greene Avenue (Fulton Street), Fort Greene, Brooklyn; (718) 522-6370.

No. 7 offers sophisticated assemblages, like slices of rare tuna fanned out with crisp, almost sweet Asian pear ($10). Allow the server to talk you into the appetizer of "fried broccoli, dill, grapefruit, black beans" ($7). Shrimp cocktail ($12) gets a spicy, bracing update from chili peppers and sesame oil in the sauce. Expertly cooked hanger steak with spicy kimchi pirogis ($20) overachieves.

PORCHETTA 110 East Seventh Street (First Avenue), East Village; (212) 777-2151.

Pork loin, wrapped in pork belly with fennel pollen, garlic, sage, rosemary and fistfuls of salt and pepper, then roasted for five hours in a combi oven that has locked in its moisture, wants nothing but slicing onto Sullivan Street Bakery rolls ($9). Potatoes ($5) are crisped with leftover bits of the good stuff.

THE REDHEAD 349 East 13th Street (First Avenue), East Village; (212) 533-6212.

A soft pretzel with grilled Texas sausages ($8); pecan sandies with butterscotch pudding ($6); and salty, picnic-ready buttermilk fried chicken and biscuits ($17) that ought to be in the Biscuit Museum are the kind of cooking that should be getting more serious attention in New York.

ROBERTA'S 261 Moore Street (Bogart Street), Bushwick, Brooklyn; (718) 417-1118.

Heretically creative pies are the thing to get, although the menu goes beyond pizza. Roberta's take on a Hawaiian pie ($15) comes topped with paper-thin sheets of ripe pineapple, shreds of fine ham, sliced jalapeños and dabs of ricotta. Guanciale and egg ($12) is just that: a mozzarella pizza strewn with crisp-cooked pieces of housemade guanciale and an egg cooked to a slightly runny doneness.

SOBA TOTTO 211 East 43rd Street, Midtown; (212) 557-8200.

Buckwheat noodles ($10 to $20), made fresh every day, are the centerpiece of the menu. There is also a full complement of deftly prepared yakitori ($2.50 to $8 each).

SOCARRAT PAELLA BAR 259 West 19th Street, Chelsea; (212) 462-1000, socarratpaellabar.com.

Eight paellas ($21 to $23 a person) dispel many paella misconceptions. Paella Valenciana has pork ribs, rabbit and snails. There's an all-seafood paella, a vegetarian paella, and a house paella with seafood, chicken, beef and fava beans. One's made with squid ink, and a meat paella gets an earthy kick from a mushroom soffrito and a spicy kick from thick coins of chorizo. Fideua (fee-day-WAH) is made with thin, crisp strands of pasta.

TERROIR 413 East 12th Street (First Avenue), East Village; (646) 602-1300, wineisterroir.com.

Along with the pork blade steak ($17), bruschette with braised black cabbage and pork sausage ($7), and deep-fried lamb sausage wrapped in sage leaves ($7) rise far above the glorified sandwiches and snacks at many wine bars.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/31/dining/31cheap.html?ref=dining&pagewanted=print

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