FYI: Queens thread
Anyone been to Perrine at The Pierre?
Snack Taverna on Bedford Street: Medium good eats could’ve been very good eats, except for a few things, like the food and the service. Things started off very well, with a solidly made and reasonably priced bloody mary and a selection of six dips: tzatzkiki, skordalia, melitzanosalata, muhammara, hummus, taramosalata. All were very good, the taramosalata in particular (the hummus was over-lemoned). And then the trouble began.
The door was wide open, and as a result it was chilly in the restaurant, so my husband asked (probably) the owner if he could close the door. It’s 60 degrees out, says the owner. Yes, says my husband, but that’s still cool enough to require a jacket. The owner continued to push back, rudely, before finally closing the damn door.
We were a party of eight, but our server did not write anything down, and several of us had special requests - chicken but no peppers on the chopped salad, no onions on the side salad, no bacon with the egg & polenta, two medium lamb burgers and one medium well. All the burgers arrived well done. The chopped salad arrived with no chicken, and when a dish of chicken was brought out, it was very cold. I think it’s a little frozen in the center, said the chicken orderer, and our server said he very much doubted that, but he would nevertheless deign to heat it. My husband had ordered an omelet with the no-onion side salad, and instead he got a chopped salad, because the server hadn’t written anything down. His actual omelet took some time to arrive.
And my eggs over easy with polenta? Very nice, albeit extremely salty.
I might go back for the food, but the service - yeesh. No.
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why do you think the chicken was frozen? I’ve always found it alarming to shop at restaurant depot and see frozen meals I’ve ordered in restaurants (chicken parm, lasagna, mousaka).
My friend bit into it, and the inside was suspicious hard. It was just a plain chicken cutlet, sliced into strips.
I got a crabmeat stuffed haddock at a restaurant in Margaretville that I am 100% sure was a frozen entree.
I was there once a quarter for a business lunch/quarterly review but have never ordered from the Indian menu. When we started our firm, we changed that practice to reviews in the office with sandwiches from lennys 
I didn’t see an indian menu online – the folks who picked it wanted french, but liked that it’s in a Taj hotel.
click on “indian is the new French”:
Not much cooking going on these days in many restaurants! They can get by with prepared entrees. soups, salad dressing etc for all but simple items (i.e. burgers and sandwiches), cutting their labor costs and the need for skilled labor that just may not be there in their localities. I just went to a very nice restaurant in New Mexico with truly excellent meats (including smoked meats) and everyone liked their dishes but several of the items seemed a lot like they came from Costco (or probably one of the big wholesale food distributors)
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I can forgive bought soup and salad dressing in a diner. Less so in a restaurant. And unless it’s a gimmick (there was a restaurant in Manhattan years ago that served tv dinners), please do not present me with an entire entree - sides and all - that came out of a foil tray.
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Maybe I should change the name of this thread (and remove “good” 
)
Circling back on PERRINE at the Pierre.
@vinouspleasure was right of course, there was a separate Indian menu handed to us in addition to the main French menu. The Indian menu had the highest prices I’ve ever seen for Indian food in nyc. (Why an Indian menu at a French restaurant? The Pierre is now owned by the Taj Group, an Indian luxury hotel chain, and so a lot of Indian visitors who choose the Taj wherever they go stay there… and they may want some food from home, I guess, so there’s an Indian chef in the kitchen too).
We chose the regular French menu. Based on how full the room was, I was surprised at how mediocre the food was. The best thing at the table was a kids menu dish of chicken fingers and french fries – the fries especially were excellent, and made me wonder if I should have had the burger. My steak and eggs came with a badly overcooked and untrimmed steak, as well as a salad without dressing. All the omelettes at the table were overcooked. The french onion soup was okay and lukewarm. The French toast was good, but came without the whipped cream, which arrived 15 mins later. The lobster pasta was not good, and they swapped the pasta type without notice. Water refills took 3 reminders. They didn’t offer dessert menus but brought out a birthday dessert, so then we waited another 15 mins for everyone else to get their dessert. Sigh.
In retrospect, the Indian menu might have been a better bet food-wise.
Like I said, I don’t understand why the room was full – it wasn’t hotel guests, because most people left through the street entrance.
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NYC Restaurant Reports (the good, the bad, and the server was mean to me)
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my consulting partner was one of those TV/movie-style sales guys that I’m sure you’ve encountered, effortlessly good-looking, impeccably dressed, and exuding confidence. He never ordered anything more indulgent than a salad with dressing on the side, so I followed his example. I saw the burger and fries on a lot of tables, looked good, always wanted to order it but figured it would it be too messy.
I didn’t follow his example when it came to marriage: a new, younger wife after every equity event. He was working on number three when last I saw him
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Sorry to hear about your negative experience. We haven’t been there in years as we felt the food and service both went downhill. I just looked up Yelp reviews (which I don’t trust much, but can give some indication of quality) and many commented on the extremely rude service. Mediocre food was mentioned in a number of them too.
I would also point out that brunch, which we very rarely go out for, is almost always disappointing, even in some otherwise very good restaurants. Often the worst of the waitstaff serving, and food that may be yesterday’s leftovers.
Gonna push back on this (although it’s good to know that the rude service wasn’t directed only at our party). Brunch is my favorite meal, and I have had many more great brunches that bad ones. I know a lot of people feel that way you do - especially after Anthony Bourdain made it cool to hate on brunch - but the only things we had that could’ve been leftovers (other than the chicken) was the dips, and they were great.
One thing I am guilty of is ignoring restaurants that open near where I live, 'cause eh, I have time. But not always! If we don’t patronize them, they close!
Fairly recently, Fan Szechuan (the second location of a restaurant in Deer Park, LI) took up residence on Essex just north of Grand. H had a lunch meeting there today and liked it so much he suggested we have a post-theater drink/snack there tonight. We had a lovely time. The bartender/owner’s son chatted with us at length about his goal of bringing modern/upscale Szechuan food to the neighborhood (me: like August Gatherings? him: that’s far away! me: fair enough).
As anyone who’s spent 12 seconds with me knows, I appreciate a full bar. And I got one. Here is my very respectable Manhattan, and please note the bling napkin holder.
As it was late, I wanted something small and light and settled on steamed egg with truffle.
This is the Chinese version of chawanmushi, and it is awesome. I asked our server for its actual name, which is (@DaveCook correct me please if necessary) Hai Su Den Da.
I would be very up for a group dinner here - they seem to be taking things pretty seriously, and everyone is super nice.
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The basic version of steamed egg is commonly called 蒸水蛋, zhēng shuǐ dàn. It’s possible that the first word the server recited was 花, huā, or flower, which I believe alludes to the broken-up, chrysanthemum-like appearance of the steamed egg as you repeatedly dip in with a spoon. It’s the same character that appears in 豆花, dòuhuā, or bean flower, the sweet or savory silken tofu that we must have tried at least once on a Chinatown crawl.
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Ate at La Vara a couple of weeks ago. It was a celebratory dinner, and on the pricey side, but not crazy. Just a wonderful menu, and we ate a bunch of it: Ajo Blanco, Salchichon, the beef jowl, duck (maybe a special) , a squid special, an amazing salad (don’t see it on the menu today), the Sabao for dessert. And I drank two(!) Paved Paradise cocktails. Worth going out of your way for (my daughter lives nearby, so there’s that for me too!).
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I like it much more than Txikito, which I think hasn’t gotten back to its pre-closing self.
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I made my first foray to the long-awaited 6th Ave. Tashkent. It’s smaller than the Brighton Beach one, but I don’t think anyone will be disappointed. I can’t post my videos of the glorious food bar and the impressive blintz selection, but here are some stills:
I left with “picnic” feta (supposedly lower salt, definitely not low salt), pot cheese and pickles. I am now approximately 80% sodium.
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