Images by Danny Kim
For classically educated cooks of the old fashioned, discovering an acceptable culinary voice for this informal, post-gourmet period is a little bit like making an attempt on hats in a buffeting windstorm. You retain frantically grabbing at completely different sizes and types, till you discover one thing that sticks. Over the previous decade, the completed, barely star-crossed French prepare dinner Alain Allegretti has tried on extra hats than most. Throughout the course of his peripatetic profession, he has labored with luxury-minded luminaries like Alain Ducasse (at Louis XV in Monaco) and Sirio Maccioni (on the previous Le Cirque 2000 on Madison Avenue). He’s run the kitchen at a connoisseur restaurant on the Ritz (the doomed Atelier), opened his personal fussy eponymous French institution within the Flatiron district (the ill-fated Allegretti), and even achieved time working at a stylish, crowd-pleasing vacationer entice (La Petite Maison, in midtown).
At his polished new Chelsea bistro, La Promenade des Anglais, nevertheless, Allegretti lastly appears to have hit on a method (or a hat, if you’ll) for this new eating age. The modest-sized room, on the bottom flooring of the London Terrace flats on twenty third Road in Chelsea, options bistro-style mirrors and an extended, polished white marble bar. The waiters are wearing vests and jaunty navy sneakers, and the ceiling has been painted with palm timber and cobblestones to evoke the well-known promenade within the chef’s hometown of Good from which the restaurant takes its identify. There’s an honest haute burger at this cheerfully unfussy restaurant (lunchtimes solely, with brandied onions and melted Gruyère), together with a wide range of communal “for the desk” gadgets (scrumptious crostini piled with recent mussels and fennel, pots of whipped ricotta with wedges of toast), and even a sublime North African–model slider (on the bar menu), which the chef makes with crumbling bits of merguez sausage.
Allegretti divides his elevated brasserie menu right into a jumble of sections and subsections (I counted eight), and except for the curiously flat and heavy pastas, the most effective dishes are usually rooted in his Mediterranean background. The premier for-the-table dish, my tasters and I agreed, was the tempura-like zucchini-flower beignets, that are crunchy like little savory cookies and served with recent tomato sauce for dipping. The basic French onion soup at this posh little brasserie has an overthick, virtually stewlike high quality, so get the Provençal fish soup ($14) as a substitute, which has a deep, rusty coloration to it and is garnished, in classic Niçoise model, with a feathery house-made rouille. That previous Mediterranean staple octopus a la plancha ($16) is enlivened right here with fried chickpeas and chorizo, and the scrumptious frog’s legs Provençal is served over a layer of easy, gently dissolving garlic cream.
A lot of the seafood entrées at La Promenade (strive the grilled branzino with lemon olive oil) are executed with a equally gentle contact, and in case you’re within the temper for one thing heavier, the kitchen can do this too. The osso buco I ordered one night was tender sufficient to eat with a spoon, and the honey-glazed duck breast ($29) tastes like one thing you’d discover on the grand previous connoisseur institutions Allegretti used to hang-out uptown. You may complement these dishes with ten kinds of Champagne, and a slew of cocktails with un-Niçoise names just like the Kentucky Redhead and Pumpkin Divine. The desserts are equally trendy and up-to-date (strive the s’mores-like guanaja mousse), though none of them packs as a lot punch as that previous Ducasse favourite baba au rhum, which the kitchen attire with orange zest and decadent spoonfuls of whipped cream.
Mas (la grillade), which opened a number of months in the past in a barely ungainly two-tiered area on decrease Seventh Avenue, is the brainchild of one other proficient, classically educated chef trying to adapt his refined cooking model to the tastes of the more and more casual, rusticated eating world. Galen Zamarra educated underneath David Bouley, amongst others, and runs the superb haute-barnyard farm-to-table restaurant Mas (farmhouse), on Downing Road. His new place is designed, because the identify signifies, as a sort of informal bookend to the unique operation. The menu is held along with bits of twine, and options elemental dishes (“fire-popped” popcorn, “wood-fired” oysters, “spit-roasted” squab) cooked over an open flame. The tables within the restrained, well-appointed room are set with guttering candles, and the air is perfumed with the faint aroma of wooden smoke.
Sadly, a lot of the dishes I sampled have been devoid of that just-off-the-fire crackle and gusto that characterize the most effective sort of open-flame cooking. “That is like one thing you’d discover at a restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg,” mentioned one among my tasters as she sipped at a bowl of admirably rustic however curiously bland natural pecan soup. I loved my small-plate anchovy-and-ricotta tartine appetizer, though I can’t say the identical concerning the tepidly cooked, exorbitantly priced spit-roasted squab ($36) or the expertly organized however surprisingly denatured duck cassoulet ($36). The dear New York strip steak ($49) was the one factor I sampled at this well mannered however oddly unaffecting little restaurant that had a correct grilled chew to it. The haute-farm-style desserts are mercifully freed from wood-fired gadgets, though chances are you’ll detect a obscure trace of smoke within the upside-down cake, which is made with recent grilled pears, a scoop of honey ice cream, and a sublime huckleberry compote.
La Promenade des Anglais
461 W. twenty third St., nr. Tenth Ave.; 212-255-7400
Hours: Lunch each day 11:45 a.m. to three p.m. Brunch 11 a.m. to three p.m. Dinner Monday to Thursday 5:30 to 11 p.m., Friday and Saturday to midnight, Sunday to 10 p.m.
Costs: Appetizers, $12 to $18; entrées, $19 to $30.
Splendid Meal: Mussel crostini or zucchini-flower beignets, octopus a la plancha, duck breast, baba au rhum.
Observe: Late diners, beware. The restaurant’s bouncy, Euro-pop soundtrack grows louder and extra annoying because the night progresses.
Scratchpad: One star for the accessible full-service menu and one other for the elegant bistro cooking.
Mas (la grillade)
28 Seventh Ave. S., nr. Leroy St.; 212-255-1795
Hours: Lunch each day 11:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Dinner each day 6 to 11:30 p.m.
Costs: Appetizers, $9 to $18; entrées, $24 to $49.
Splendid Meal: Anchovy tartine, New York strip steak, pear upside-down cake.
Observe: The bar contains a subtle bourbon checklist, and a very good choice of cocktails by former Eleven Madison Park mixologist Shiraz Noor.
Scratchpad: One star for the nice room and one other for the drinks and desserts. Minus a star for the dear, surprisingly denatured cooking.
La Promenade des Anglais Photograph: Danny Kim
La Promenade des Anglais Photograph: Danny Kim
La Promenade des Anglais Photograph: Danny Kim
La Promenade des Anglais Photograph: Danny Kim
La Promenade des Anglais Photograph: Danny Kim