Picture: Gus Aronson
When Eel Bar opened final summer time, the burden of expectation was heavy. For a sure form of New Yorker — I’m one — Eel Bar’s sister eating places (Hart’s, Cervo’s, the Fly) signify a halcyon best of “our” locations: cozy, boozy, tasty, and, for a half a minute or so, semi-secret. Not so at Eel Bar; it was jammed from the bounce. Aaron Crowder, Cervo’s longtime chef and a companion at each eating places, did double obligation between the 2, and the menus overlapped. You can get an excellent half-chicken at both with good fries. Mussels escabeche at Cervo’s — spicy, coral coloured, simply barely cured in preserved lemon — turned fried mussels, stained paprika orange, at Eel Bar. If you happen to can popcorn a shrimp, why not a mussel?
Eel Bar felt nice. Its room was attractive, all textured glass and chrome steel. Reasonably than one lengthy galley, the bar right here regarded out over the eating room, and the eating room regarded again over the bar — you possibly can make eyes throughout the room, if the temper struck. Eel Bar was an ideal vibes restaurant within the complimentary sense, like all of the group’s institutions. Founding chef Nick Perkins reduce his tooth, to not point out met a number of of his companions, at Diner in Williamsburg. Diner, Andrew Tarlow’s first enterprise, was a earlier era’s vibes restaurant, the place the cooking was high quality however the atmosphere was by no means taken as a right.
Like Tarlow and his crew earlier than them, Perkins and his companions — Nialls Fallon and Perkins’s spouse, Leah Campbell; and, later, Taylor Ward amongst others — understood that meals alone wasn’t sufficient. The sunshine needed to be proper, the soundtrack needed to be good, the interiors needed to be simply so, just like the condominium build-out you’d have achieved for your self if you happen to had simply sufficient money however no more. The meals was all the time good however not showy, recalling the coastal cuisines of Spain, Portugal, and Italy with out ever touchdown on one particular reference level. You bought the sensation that these had been cooks cooking for themselves and their neighbors, not for stars, turning up the dials in ballsy, cost-conscious, approachable methods. Roe, not caviar. Horseradish, uncooked onions, and anchovies in all places as amplifiers. The burgers, too: lamb with anchovies at Hart’s and Cervo’s, beef with anchovies and ripe Roquefort at Eel Bar. Additional on additional. Sport on!
When Hart’s opened in 2016, in an unprepossessing shoe-box house subsequent to the elevated Franklin Avenue C prepare, I lived a ten-minute stroll away and wandered in uninvited in the course of the friends-and-family pre-opening. I used to be neither pal nor household, till I used to be. It was straightforward to turn out to be an everyday there, the way in which I’d all the time hoped it could be someplace. Cervo’s adopted, in 2017, then the Fly, a extra informal hen spot with an island-taverna vitality.
Briefly order, every of the group’s eating places went from if-you-know-you-know to everybody-knows. Reservations for a relatively tiny variety of tables and bar seats turned scarce. Michelin took discover of Hart’s after which Cervo’s, a spot the place solely the luckiest diners get a seat again. (Servers navigate the slender passage between bar seats and one row of tables within the entrance room like flight attendants.) What was once these eating places’ peculiarities — a really Spanish appreciation for vermouth, bitter greens, all that mayonnaise — turned the norm.
However one thing at Eel Bar didn’t fairly work. The meals wasn’t as polished because it was at Cervo’s. The potato salad, snowed over with roe, was form of gloopy. Rooster-and-pork meatballs had been good, and so had been the fries, however serving them collectively diminished each, weirdly. Eel Bar was sizzling, there was no query. Nevertheless it wasn’t nice. And Cervo’s, which hovered over the place like a grandstanding huge brother, was because it had been, solely three blocks away.
It’s an unlucky actuality for eating places that warmth tends to collect on the outset, when all the things is least examined. That’s not all the time the perfect time to go to. Eel Bar wanted to stretch its legs, set up its rhythm. Seven months in, the restaurant has gotten its footing. Throughout a couple of revisits this month, I discovered it markedly improved since my meals there final 12 months.
The menu hasn’t modified dramatically, however the confidence and ambition have. Like Cervo’s, Eel Bar feels extra like a bar that serves meals than a restaurant that serves drinks, and if that’s the case, these are fortunate drinks. You’ll, no query, depart redolent of anchovy, whether or not you begin with a pickled-cucumber Gilda or not, and I wouldn’t counsel carrying something you’ll fear would possibly get stained with oil. There are nonetheless a couple of dishes which are easy to the purpose of silliness — that potato salad, onion petals with shavings of cheese — however Eel Bar’s hen al ajillo, with its blackened pores and skin and scattering of braised beans and Basque peppers, is nearly as good as chickens I’ve paid twice or extra to eat at fancier eating places. A rabbit for 2 is even higher: half a bunny braised in cider with huge hunks of carrot and mushroom, the love little one of a pot roast and hen soup, served with a couple of naked salt-boiled potatoes. Pair it with a pointy, inky salad of tardivo with feathery slices of Garrotxa, a semi-firm Spanish goat cheese that cuts via all of it properly.
If you happen to examine Eel Bar with Cervo’s, as I did, you’ll nonetheless discover overlaps. The kitchens are clearly splitting deliveries of seafood and citrus. Typically the win goes to at least one, typically to the opposite. Cervo’s mussels escabeche, often a terrific dish, was rubbery once I had it lately; Eel Bar’s fried interpretation was higher. Each eating places are doing a soupy bomba rice, not fairly risotto: Cervo’s, with spinach and razor clams, bought over on Eel Bar’s, with chorizo and just-seared scallops, which wished just a little extra acid.
Collectively, they really feel like two halves of the identical complete. Crowder is Crowder, wherever he cooks. But he has pulled Eel Bar to the place Cervo’s was, so now the selection between the 2 can safely be made on temper. The place Eel Bar is New Wave attractive (“It appears like creative sushi rolls could possibly be served right here,” a pal mentioned), Cervo’s appeal is hotter and extra Previous World, all wooden paneling and sherry-colored gentle. The soundtrack is smoother, the seating extra cheek-by-jowl. Is tonight incandescent or neon? Now that the warmth has cooled, the selection is yours.
Eel Bar
The place’s the…?
No, there isn’t any eel served at Eel Bar. Sure, the servers have heard the joke already, and no, they don’t need to speak about it.
When Moist Ain’t It
The bar’s “filthy martini” is a greater soiled than most, with simply sufficient brine and a splash of sherry.
Haute to Go
This group additionally runs Minnow, a tinned-seafood concern with sardines, mussels, cod liver, or landlubbing snails you’ll be able to take house.
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