Images by Danny Kim
These of you curious about learning the rise and fall of the various chaotic eating epochs which have rippled by means of the New York restaurant world over the previous 30 years ought to pay shut consideration to the profession of Alison Value Becker. She started within the eighties, answering telephones at Jams, the seminal Jonathan Waxman institution that launched the town to the seasonal wonders of California delicacies. She labored at Gotham Bar and Grill whereas Alfred Portale was inventing his a lot imitated vertical delicacies, and was the supervisor at a short-lived restaurant known as Rakel, which is infamous because the place the place a proficient younger prepare dinner named Thomas Keller first arrange store in New York. Within the late eighties, she opened Alison on Dominick, which was one of many authentic outlier eating locations to open approach downtown throughout the late eighties, and remains to be well-known, amongst aged carnivores, because the place the place the good Tom Valenti popularized that iconic delicacy of the early nose-to-tail period, the braised lamb shank.
Value Becker closed Alison on Dominick not lengthy after 9/11 after which, for a time, skipped city. However now she’s again, after a spell within the Hamptons, with a brand new big-city enterprise known as Alison Eighteen. The unique Alison restaurant was identified for its darkly baroque inside, however the brand new one has been modeled (by the designers of the unique restaurant) in a classically clear, if barely generic, neo-casual fashion. The house, on 18th Avenue within the Flatiron district, includes a commodious tavern space up entrance, which was crammed, after I dropped by, with dignified skilled {couples} sipping fruity Champagne cocktails on the bar. The eating room is adorned with preparations of forsythia blossoms and white wallpaper depicting Bemelmans-style New York avenue scenes. Lengthy purple banquettes line the partitions, and the waiters are dressed, like ghosts from a bygone fine-dining period, in traditional white topcoats and straight purple ties.
“I discover this curiously comforting,” mentioned Mrs. Platt, as we sipped our Harvey Wallbangers (you’ll discover the drink below the Classics part of the cocktail menu, for the non-classic value of $16) and tapped our toes to the dusty easy-listening hits (the Eagles, Springsteen’s “Glory Days”) looping softly over the sound system. The chef, Robert Gurvich, additionally ran the kitchen at Alison on Dominick, and although his easy New American bistro-style menu has been streamlined for as we speak’s less complicated, extra strong tastes, it incorporates conspicuous echoes of the previous. There’s a Rotisserie part (rooster, lamb), and the entrée record is split, in accordance with present trend, by ingredient group (Fish and Meat, together with the inevitable pork chop). However my bowl of chewy herb-steamed mussels tasted like a relic from the good mussels growth of the eighties, and the one factor that’s actually new in regards to the extravagantly priced foie gras ($28) is that it could have been known as “seared” as a substitute of “sautéed” a decade or so in the past.
The soups and salads have been higher acquired by the tasters at my desk. Mrs. Platt preferred the escarole scattered with hazelnuts and shavings of apple. The nourishing soups included a traditional rendition of Tuscan white bean threaded with kale, and an opulent oyster stew laced with puréed celery root and nuggets of smoked bacon. The pasta snobs on the desk weren’t happy with a “droopy and underwhelming” serving to of fettuccine topped with shell-on razor clams, though nobody had any main complaints about the usual, professionally cooked polenta appetizer, which is larded with butter and Parmesan and garnished with what the menu calls “foraged” mushrooms.
Many of the higher entrées at Alison Eighteen are likely to fall into the acquainted and comforting class, and even by as we speak’s requirements, a lot of them aren’t low cost. The black sea bass I sampled one night ($32, over a light Catalan stew of white beans, cockles, and chorizo) had a dry, faintly fishy high quality to it, and Mrs. Platt’s scallops (properly cooked for $34) may have finished with out the unusually rubbery garnish of what gave the impression to be mushroom stalks. The home steak ($45 with an old style Bordelaise sauce) is properly aged and correctly tender, however may have been extra generously lower for the worth. In order for you a full, carnivore meal, I counsel the braised veal shank ($34), or any of the spit-roasted dishes from the Rotisserie part of the menu (an honest nation rooster, tender crispy-edged slices of lamb shoulder), all of that are served with contemporary farm greens and a splash of their very own juices.
There’s nothing floorbreaking about any of this. However for those who’re pining for a neighborly place that provides the little touches that New Yorkers from one other eating period used to take with no consideration after they dropped $100 on dinner out and a pleasant bottle of wine (a spacious room; solidly skilled service; the blessed alternative, even on crowded evenings, to listen to your self suppose), you may do an terrible lot worse. Or so I believed to myself as I sipped my drink and nibbled on one of many traditional, French-style beignets, that are made contemporary within the kitchen and shot by means of with little deposits of passion-fruit cream. The opposite desserts embody a wierd chestnut pudding that tastes faintly like bathtub cleaning soap and a crumbly franzipan tart loaded with satisfying quantities of butter. If these choices sound barely too experimental, attempt the milk-chocolate mousse, which is formed, in that traditional twentieth-century approach, like a dome, and flecked on its high with gold leaf.
Alison Eighteen
15 W. 18th St., nr. Fifth Ave.; 212-366-1818
Hours: Dinner Monday by means of Thursday and Sunday 6 p.m. to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday to midnight. Lunch Monday by means of Friday midday to three p.m.
Costs: Appetizers $15 to $28; entrées $26 to $45.
Ultimate Meal: Oyster stew, spit-roasted
lamb, franzipan tart.
Observe: Lunch, being served for the primary time this week, will function a totally fashionable haute burger.
Scratchpad: Half a star for the neighborly, if barely typical, cooking, and one other half for the spacious, if barely typical, room.
Alison Eighteen
Photograph: Danny Kim
Alison Eighteen
Photograph: Danny Kim
Alison Eighteen
Photograph: Danny Kim
Alison Eighteen
Photograph: Danny Kim