New York minutes/Mid-March 2008
The I-Gotta-Start-Planning-Better: Youzan, Alouette, Rosa Mexicano, Whym and Pio Maya: Whoever described going out to dinner as a 90-minute solution to a 30-minute problem was talking my week. Forget why that was, but we/I had one crappy experience after another just because my consort was stressed and I was both stressed and unwilling to pick up the sponge after one recipe-testing bout worse than the last. Youzan I thought would make Bob happy because he loves Asian food more than I do Mexican, but he instantly noticed how the space feels just like evil Gabriela’s with a Japanese menu. He got some grim sushi thing, I ordered a teriyaki salmon thing that reminded me why I have not wanted to eat Japanese in the 24 years since I last encountered that leathery fish. Alouette was pretty much a disaster on every level except the one for which I chose it: Nice, quiet, cheap wine, pleasant atmosphere. This was a Monday night, so the staff were happily talking among themselves, and to call the service offhand would have been overstating it. Bob’s scallops with spinach and mystery potato puree were fine, but my “duck confit salad” appetizer comprised shreds of geriatric meat on a little pile of frisee. I pushed the funky meat aside, tasted his entree and paid $75 for that little bit plus two glasses of wine each. As we left, not a word. Rosa? I have to remember never to agree to a table in the back room on 18th Street at Wednesday lunch when I go for my queso fundido fix. The bright sunlight showcases the grime on the glasses, the waitron is always distracted, I always and inevitably get so angry I would walk out except it ain’t that easy with a heavy bag from the market. QF was fine, though, and the waitress went into kowtowing overdrive once she realized she had bowed to another table of two broads who had arrived after me and wanted to babble on while I stewed.
Whym at least was the right refuge at the right time — we were six leaving the OSI photo opening around the corner, and at least we could all hear each other even if the air was a little on the fried side. Bob’s salad of salmon over greens was decent, but I was walking wounded next day after greens with cheesy dressing. The price was right, though. As for Pio Maya, shoot me, which I think is exactly what Mr. Sacha was ready to do after we wound up there after the Greenmarket on Saturday after finding Elettaria not open for brunch and before realizing he had to get to a Story Corps interview way downtown so fast. The funky little place I remembered has turned itself into more of a cafe, but shoving the steam table into the kitchen has clearly set it back big time. My chorizo torta was not great (stale roll, architect in absentia), but Bob’s chicken salad comprised a few strips of bizarrely orange protein on a tiny mound of romaine and chopped vegetables. I tasted the protein only out of curiosity and thought it could have been fish. Maybe dried. Possibly rehydrated. $12.98 total? Overpriced.
I really have to start keeping a notebook again. Surely things are not as bad everywhere as they tasted. . . .