Pictures by Danny Kim
Within the previous, genteel world of eating places, possibly you employed just a few extra cooks while you hit the massive time, or, should you have been feeling rash, expanded into the area subsequent door after a 12 months or two. However within the higher echelons of immediately’s multimillion-dollar restaurant business, success is sort of extra difficult than failure. After a chef has his first massive triumph, he can be all however obligated by his enterprise companions and buyers to increase. However which among the many 1000’s of suitors begging you for franchise offers do you select? What number of cookbooks do you have to write (or have written for you)? Do you have to open a lavish department of your smash New York restaurant in Vegas or Macao, or capitalize in your newfound fame by lending your title to a string of worthwhile, although doubtlessly humiliating, burger bars in New Jersey? How, in brief, do you “monetize” your luck (i.e., make piles of money) in the best and tasteful means, with out ruining your model?
Many of those delicate calculations are on show at Daniel Humm’s posh, coolly impersonal new restaurant, NoMad, which opened lately off the foyer of the NoMad Resort on Broadway. NoMad has clearly been designed as a “informal” bookend to Eleven Madison Park, which Humm and his companions bought from Danny Meyer final 12 months after Humm helped flip it (within the estimation of this bilious critic) into the best restaurant within the metropolis. As an alternative of attempting to enchantment to a single new viewers, nevertheless, Humm (who was named James Beard Excellent Chef final week) and his companion, the restaurateur Will Guidara, have determined to jam a hodgepodge of types beneath one roof. There’s a glass-ceiling Atrium for the women who lunch and a clamorous, stand-up bar space for the cocktail crowd. When you want to sit together with your bespoke cocktails and French wines and decide at informal snacks, you are able to do that within the Library, and should you’re searching for one thing extra intimate, there’s the Parlour, which is appointed, like a Victorian sitting room, with burgundy-colored rugs and velvet chairs trimmed with gold.
Because of this eclectic, circus-tent association, the enjoyment of your meal at NoMad can differ drastically in keeping with your style, and the place you occurred to be seated (I preferred the Parlour the very best; Ms. Platt thought it felt “pretend”). The complete menu is obtainable within the Atrium and Parlour rooms (snacks solely within the Library and on the bar)—all of it fastidiously calibrated to go well with each style. The snacks embody salmon rillettes served in trendy mini–Mason jars, tiny boutique radishes coated in butter, and baskets of gourmand fried rooster with yogurt sauce on the aspect. There are fancy vegetable entrées for New Age vegivores (the carrot entrée prices $20), old school French classics for the traditionalists (foie gras torchons, bone-marrow gratinée), surf and turf dishes for the enterprise/resort crowd ($36 for the meat, $39 for the lobster), and a seven-course tasting menu for fancy gourmets ($125) comprising all the above.
The weakest a part of the menu are the snacks, particularly the radishes (too buttery) and the fried rooster (no spice). However after that, Humm’s cooking begins to click on into excessive gear, like a well-engineered European sedan. My pal the French Snob had nothing however variety issues to say in regards to the pleasingly clean torchon of foie gras ($24), with bits of delicately mashed tête de cochon at its heart, or the dainty, canoe-shaped marrow bones ($17), which the cooks soften, like some unique type of stuffing, with shallots, parsley, and a buttery gratinée of bread crumbs. When you really feel like grazing on one thing lighter and extra seasonal, I recommend the roasted beets (garnished with slivers of pear), or the flawlessly executed egg appetizer (poached over a mattress of quinoa and Parmesan), or, better of all, the crunchy chiffonade of snow peas, flavored with mint, Pecorino, and little hidden nuggets of pancetta.
With one or two exceptions, the primary programs at NoMad are equally completed, though none of them are low-cost. “I feel I may flip vegetarian for this,” stated the French Snob as she nibbled at a $24 serving to of spring asparagus, that are plated ingeniously with chunks of truffled bread salad and tiny honshimeji mushrooms floating in a dashi broth. The extravagantly priced cracked lobster ($39) tasted bland and soggy by comparability, so should you don’t thoughts paying $20 for these carrots (and a few at my desk did thoughts), I like to recommend you organize them with the duck ($32), or the crunchy-topped confit of suckling pig ($34, with a scattering of apricots). None of those grand, dear barnyard creations are fairly as satisfying, although, because the rooster for 2 ($78), which Humm’s military of cooks roast in a wood-burning oven and serve, as at Eleven Madison, pre-carved, with deposits of foie gras–wealthy brioche inserted beneath the crackly pores and skin.
This wonderful NoMad rooster lacks the ceremony and the grandeur of the Eleven Madison model, in fact. This can be a resort restaurant, in spite of everything (the proprietors of NoMad additionally personal the Ace Resort a couple of block away), which implies Humm’s staff is answerable for room service and a complete host of high-volume celebration occasions. In consequence, there’s a obscure assembly-line really feel to the proceedings that’s compounded by the costs. The French Snob was complimentary in regards to the wine listing however objected to paying $23 for a glass of Burgundy (David Duband ’09) that value $40 a bottle on the Brooklyn Wine Trade. I, in the meantime, objected to my apple dessert, which consisted of a cap of brioche piled over apple sorbet for $14. So attempt the densely wealthy chocolate tart as an alternative or one other Eleven Madison spinoff referred to as Milk & Honey ($13), which was a refined dessert intermezzo merchandise on the mom ship however is constructed at this populist restaurant like an ice-cream sundae, with spoonfuls of milk ice cream, dehydrated milk foam, and a drizzling of buckwheat honey.
NoMad
1170 Broadway, nr. twenty eighth St.; 347-472-5660
Hours: Dinner Sunday 5:30 to 10 p.m., Monday by means of Thursday 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday 5:30 to 11 p.m.
Lunch every day midday to 2 p.m. Breakfast every day
7 to 10 a.m.
Costs: Appetizers, $14 to
$24; entrées, $20 to $78.
Preferrred Meal: Snow peas, egg or bone marrow, asparagus, rooster for 2, Milk & Honey.
Notice: The flowery breakfast menu features a $24 model of eggs Benedict made
with hollandaise and freshly cracked crab.
Scratchpad: Three stars for the high-quality resort cooking, minus a star for the extravagant resort costs.
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim
NoMad
Picture: Danny Kim