Today's review roundup includes: Donguri, Uminoie, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, Bar Masa, Trippie's.
NYTimes Restaurants Frank Bruni gives Donguri two stars (309 East 83rd Street; 212-737-5656):
Donguri is an antihip Japanese restaurant, matter-of-fact and brightly lighted, with servers who briskly and almost wordlessly ferry dishes to and from the kitchen, their banter minimal as they strive to make sure your tabletop is never, ever barren.
It feels like a Japanese trattoria or bistro, to borrow terms from other dining traditions. It serves what some of its many longtime fans call Japanese home cooking or Japanese comfort food: lightly fried fish in addition to sashimi, simply grilled chicken with ponzu sauce as well as tempura. You do not come here to sit and pose. You come here to eat well.
Donguri was opened in 1998 by Shuji Fujita, who runs the kitchen, and his wife, Michiko, who presides over the dining room. Since then it has evolved into a Manhattan-restaurant oxymoron: the successful secret. It is not even listed in the current Zagat Survey. The people who know about it tend not to talk it up, lest they find themselves unable to get a seat.
. . . . You build a meal at Donguri through a succession of small and medium-size plates, proceeding in general from cold to hot and from fish to meat, and you throw in some vegetable sides and perhaps a bowl of noodles along the way.
All of this makes for a pleasantly paced experience in which the grazing almost never stops. But it also translates into a bill that can be higher than the generally restrained prices of individual items and the plainness of the atmosphere lead you to believe it will be. You can easily spend $60 a person on food, and much more if you order some wine, from an extremely short but judicious list, or sake, a much broader selection of which is available.
RECOMMENDED DISHES Kumamoto oysters; chutoro and otoro sashimi; kanpachi sashimi; shrimp tempura; boiled spinach with sesame sauce; broiled Chilean sea bass; grilled chicken with ponzu sauce.
NYTimes $25 and Under reviews Uminoie (86 East Third Street; 646-654-1122):
Mutsumi Tanaka and Mika Okui opened this unassuming spot in January without a day of professional kitchen experience between them. The women, both in their 20's, cook, act as hostesses and wash dishes behind a five-seat bar — not unlike an island counter flanked by stools in a home kitchen — that is the focal point of the narrow, sparsely appointed space.
Uminoie serves an idiosyncratic blend of food cooked in the style of Goto Island, west of Nagasaki, where Ms. Tanaka grew up, and in the style of Ms. Okui's mother, who is from Tokyo. Goto's cuisine is distinguished by the use of ago-dashi, a broth made by briefly simmering dried flying fish, in lieu of ichiban-dashi, the dried bonito and kelp stock commonly used in Japanese cooking.
Portions are generally small, and the menu is not divided into courses. You are encouraged to linger, to drink and to order at a leisurely pace, as is the custom at an uminoie, a casual beachside restaurant and bar.
Dishes from Goto and nightly specials are the best bets. Goto udon ($8) showcases the sweet, delicate flavor of ago-dashi in a simple soup of hand-cut udon noodles made by Ms. Tanaka's father on Goto. The creamy curd of a rolled omelet infused with ago-dashi ($8) called to mind another fish and egg combo, slow-cooked eggs with caviar. Nikujyaga ($5), beef stewed in ago-dashi with onions, potatoes and carrots, has an elusive and alluring sweetness that hints at mirin or miso.
Prodded for its secrets, the kitchen coyly offered that the stew contained "other Japanese flavors" in the manner in which home cooks "accidentally" omit an ingredient when passing on recipes.
BEST DISHES Goto udon; dashimaki-tamago (rolled omelet); nikujyaga (beef stew); kakuni (pork belly); stuffed peppers; gyoza.
NY Mag reviews Alain Ducasse at the Essex House (155 West 58th Street; 212-265-7300):
. . . A few months ago, Ducasse had handed operational control of his kitchen to Christian Delouvrier, formerly of Lespinasse, one of the city’s many suddenly defunct fancy French restaurants. The reasons for this change are obscure. . . My wife listened to these theories, then politely pointed out that even without Ducasse in the kitchen, the prices at his restaurant were still insane. In fact, they’d been raised even before Delouvrier’s arrival. A three-course meal used to cost $145; now it costs $150. The price of a four-course meal has risen from $160 to $175, and $225 will buy you Delouvrier’s superior seven-course tasting menu, compared with a mere $165 for Ducasse’s five-course seasonal menu (although his famous fall truffle extravaganzas cost $300). This kind of gouging is common in Europe (by contrast, Thomas Keller charges $150 for the most extravagant tasting menu at Per Se), but to get away with it on foreign ground, it helps to convince your audience, as Ducasse seemed to do, that what they’re getting is unique. But Delouvrier is a master chef of a more familiar kind. His repertoire is elegantly straightforward in the classic French style, and gourmet New York has seen much of it before. So the question becomes: If it’s not so outrageously new, why pay outrageous money for it?
The answer, we haltingly concluded as one course succeeded another, is maybe you shouldn’t.
. . . All of this food is perfectly good, and it’s sure to get livelier in the fall (the menu changes seasonally), when the two chefs begin throwing shaved truffles around like confetti. The wine selection is impressive, as always, though out of the grasp of anyone but the most well-heeled nineties-era tech barons and Arabian sheikhs. The desserts, which are generally exemplary and comfortingly French, include a crunchy praline soufflé, a big glass bowl of strawberry sorbet and vanilla ice cream with coconut meringue in the style of a Vacherin, laced with strawberry coulis, and a spongy almond tart containing a sweet clafouti of apricots and a disk of the most delectable amaretto-tinged ice cream. These dainties are consumed by groups of polished Europeans and well-heeled, slightly cowed-looking tourists, who eat in prim little bites and whisper among themselves like they’re sitting in church. Or perhaps they’re attending a theatrical production, one that’s long-running and famously august but has possibly outlived its time. So catch it while you can, if you wish, but don’t expect much in the way of dramatic culinary pyrotechnics. And whatever you do, don’t look at the check.
NYPost Steve Cuozzo gives Bar Masa two stars (Time Warner Center, Columbus Circle; 212-823-9800):
A lower-priced cousin to overhyped Masa (home of the $800 lunch) next door, Bar Masa feels like its bastard stepchild, supported more out of obligation than love.
The Time Warner building could use more restaurants like Bar Masa, a mellow, no-reservations joint where you can kick back in glam surroundings without busting your trust fund.
But do not think it has the same relationship to the real Masa as Nobu Next Door does to Nobu.
. . . Bar Masa is made for nibbling on snacks like juicy skewered chicken fingers ($8), popcorn shrimp ($15) that combine exquisite mouth feel with legitimate shrimp flavor, and sweet and crispy soft-shell crab ($15) — bar-food heaven that blows away the feeble efforts of most "grazing" places.
But beware sushi that's even pricier than it sounds: Such choices as $8 shimaagi and $12 toro seem to have been cut during a corporate downsizing drill.
A few larger dishes hint at what I'd hope to find at Masa (sultan-oriented prices make it more media novelty than real-world eating establishment), especially spicy tuna tataki ($26), a half-dozen strips of immaculate, velvety tuna under squiggles of garlic mayonnaise.
Shrimp tempura udon ($22) boasts richer-flavored broth and firmer noodles than in ordinary places, and the perfectly battered tempura, served on the side, might be a dish in itself.
But certain dishes are so lame, I'm amazed that Masa Takayama lends his name to them. Spicy tofu ($12) in a bright-red, tomato-based broth with chicken, scallions and shiitake mushrooms proved a one-note scorcher, like bad Szechwan dishes. Pristine freshwater eel (unagi, $26) barely transcended a bed of gummy rice pilaf.
Village Voice Robert Sietsema reviews Tripee's (887 Nostrand Avenue, Brooklyn; 718-778-8747):
The mix of Indian and African descendants makes the population [of Guyana] more like that of Trinidad than Venezuela and Brazil, and it's with Trinidad that Guyana most readily identifies itself. Yet despite culinary overlap, Guyanese chow has unique and endearing features of its own.
. . . The first entrée we grabbed was corned beef and cabbage ($5), well-oiled leaves ranging in color from pale yellow to deep emerald. With its pungent herby flavor, it beat the pants off the Irish American version. The dish reminded me that corned beef was once an oceangoing staple, and it reappears in the signature weekend feast of the islands, "cook-up" ($6). Typical of the colorful and gung ho names Guyanese confer on their victuals, this farrago of rice and miniature black-eyed peas can feature a host of additional ingredients. One day it was made with spinach; on another with chicken and smoked turkey parts. Either way, it's worth ordering.
. . . Like the Trinidadians, the Guyanese make rotis ($4.50) with a flatbread called "roti skin" or "doll puri." The bread is sometimes found in New York Bengali restaurants, giving us a clue to where Indian immigrants to Guyana might have originated. As opposed to the sandwich model favored in Trinidad, the Guyanese prefer a "bust-up shot," in which the bread is wadded and the curry poured inside. The term is dialectal for "busted-up shirt," meaning the roti resembles an old shirt too torn to be worn. The Guyanese maintain a loose definition of what can be thrown into a roti skin, and one day they deployed an oily oxtail stew. Good alone, it was rendered fabulous when roti-ized.
