Eating Eighty One

[Pigging by Wilfrid: March 24, 2008]

As the weeks go by, consequences of Frank Bruni's three star review of the Upper West Side's Dovetail continue to become apparent.

As I mentioned in my recent review of that restaurant, the Times star rating threw something of a shadow over some interesting, cheerful dishes...

a deconstructed muffaletta, for example, which deserved to be enjoyed on its own merits rather than as an implausible representative of near-top-level Manhattan cuisine. 

Now we have 81 (or, more web-searchably, Eighty One), a long-planned opening by former Sea Grill tocque Ed Brown.  It's no more than a few minutes walk from Dovetail, and is entitled to bask smugly in the glow of the Bruni Dovetail review.  Just opened, it's already clearly a restaurant of such greater ambition and achievement than Dovetail, that the kitchen staff surely only need to turn up and not burn Frank's dinner to get a three star review.

But since Frank's the man who thinks the Bar Room at The Modern is a better restaurant than The Modern itself, maybe chef Brown shouldn't count his chickens before they're hatched.  Speaking of which, have you heard of eggs?  They are all the rage.

Eggs are the new ceviche.  Sorry, that dates me: how about the new pork belly?  From Craft by way of the two Blue Hills, high quality egg dishes are not what's for breakfast.  They are how you start dinner.  At least, after an amuse - in this case, little raw shrimp in an orangey citrus bath (not quite as perkily fresh as at the best sushi restaurants).

Eighty One offers nothing as crude as a chicken's egg.  Oh no, this is a hen's egg, although unlike Blue Hill's, it is not warranted laid the same morning.  But a nice egg it is, and the pairing with veal sweetbreads and little sticky nuggets of pork foot shows textural acuity.  The egg is poached and sits on a slice of toasted brioche.  The dish is finished with some vegetable shreds and mushrooms I'd guess were black trumpet.  But I am not a forager.  Very nice start.

Portion control slipped a little with another appetizer, which was the size of a generous amuse:  grilled baby shrimp from Montauk, grilled (or cooked, as the menu at Sea Grill liked to say, a la plancha).  The sauce imbued them with a warm chorizo flavor.  It's based on the condiment pimenton de La Vera, a smoky chili powder - not too spicy - which I insist should be sprinkled on the rice when I'm making paella.

It tasted good, but would have a hungry diner reaching for the bread basket.  (Coincidentally or not, this was a complaint of mine when I lunched at Sea Grill - I never dined there, I confess.  Nice, precise food, often in tiny amounts.)

The wine list is long, full of good stuff, and contains some bargains.  The 2004 Vieille Vignes Cornas by Alain Voge is a mountain of a wine, all bacon and smoke and burning leaves.  At $150, it barely reaches the usual 200% mark-up.  You can find it under $60, but not easily.  And there are old Riojas on the list which are being given away. 

Where one finds egg, chicken is never far behind.  Eighty One is an eminent representative of a school of cooking now so clearly defined that it deserves a name.  New American cuisine, back in the 1980s, meant grilled proteins, made garnishes - like salsas - rather than Gallic pan sauces.  We now have an American farm cuisine: "heirloom" meats from small-scale suppliers, seasonal vegetables and garnishes, braising and other forms of slow-cooking back in the portfolio of techniques.

Craft, the Blue Hills, the Tasting Room, Mas, Gramercy Tavern (now under Michael Anthony): a plethora of egg dishes, suckling pigs, high-end chickens, interesting mushrooms, and greenmarket seasonal favorites - ramps are due any day now.  Eighty One's chicken is no ordinary bird.  It boasts the Label Rouge.

Investigation reveals that the Label Rouge program derives from a French model of pasture-raised poulty, claimed to be better-tasting, but also avowedly more profitable because of the higher prices the birds command.  The Eighty One dish weighs in at $29, it being received wisdom (rightly or wrongly) that you can't charge $30 for a chicken dish in New York.  The breast, gently poached, is succulent; the roast thigh tasty enough but not, as the menu hopes, particularly crisp,

The supporting players are excellent, though: enough slices of black truffles for the fowl to quality as demi-deuil - half in mourning; farro steeped in the chicken juices, romanesco broccoli, cauliflower.

Both the chicken and the halibut dish below come from the section of the menu labelled uncontroversially "main courses".  I should mention, that in the cheerfully confusing way Manhattan restaurants now have, a section called "tasting collection" appears between the appetizers and the mains.

Small plates to add a course to the meal?  Not judging by the prices.  Plates for sharing, perhaps?  No; I'm told it showcases dishes of exceptional ingredients with exceptional savor.  Odd to separate them out as if the other gear is mediocre - which it isn't.
  

I am no fan of green sauces, especially lapping marble-white fish, but the halibut was good.  It was described as "pil pil" - which to me signals a spicy garlic sauce.  This seemed to be a parsley sauce, and wasn't spicy at all.  Little clams added a briny note.

This is a restaurant which not only succeeds, but knows why it succeeds.  Dinner continued with three cheeses, of exceptional quality: Mahon, Tomme de Crayeuse, and an Italian cheese I am embarrassingly unable to spell.  Not only were the cheeses perfectly ripe, they were also served at perfect temperature.  Too often, recently, I've been confronted with cheese I thought might be nice if only it was warm enough to taste. When I told the waiter I liked the cheese, his unprompted response: "Yes, we take it out of the refrigerator a few hours before serving it."  Yes, yes you do.  Well done. 

The meal faltered only with dessert, peanut fritters on wooden skewers with "toasted bread" ice cream.  The fritters resembled donuts, and didn't taste to me of peanuts at all.  The grape preserve was nice. At kind Upper West Side prices, about seventy dollars a head for food, Eighty One is an authentic entry in Manhattan's upper echelon of dining.  Chef Brown was in his whites, but there's depth in the kitchen too, with  Juan Cuevas of the Greenwich Village Blue Hill as Brown's chef de cuisine.

Only extraordinary complacency, of which there's no sign, can stand in their way.

Lick your lips at Eighty One, or 81, right here.