Benoit

It can be terrifying when someone decides to tinker with a place you know and love. Such was the case several years back in Paris when the Alain Ducasse group took over Benoit, a beloved institution in the local dining scene, and injected it with new blood in the kitchen and a face lift in the dining room. Purists in Paris quibble that it's a little too slick and international now, but at least it's still alive and serving excellent food, unlike so many other traditional bistros there.

So what would happen when the Ducasse group decided to airlift the Benoit concept over to the United States? It seemed like there was no way they couldn't mess it up in this town, which, due to the McNallification of the dining scene, equates "bistro" with loud music, subway tiles, and unisex bathrooms--several things that would never fly at a traditional bistro in Paris.

What a relief, then, to walk into Benoit in New York and find a little slice of authentic French food and dining culture. There is no music; there are no candles on the table. The lighting is not quite as bright as it is in Benoit Paris, but it's dully uniform, just as it is in bistros there. It's the idea of restaurant-as-stage-set, where your only choice is to pay attention to the food on your plate or the scene, and what a scene it is. Former patrons of La Côte Basque, mainly well-to-do Upper East Siders, have returned to the old location. On a recent night, an elderly lady done up in an exquisite black and white dress (Chanel?) and her elderly husband both sat on the banquette, facing the crowd. A large party of young, glamorous couples stopped in for a late dinner at 9:30; one woman walked down the aisle in a pencil skirt done up with bows above the high-cut slit in the back. Trés chic. As Florent Morellet has said, arrange your seating just so and you'll create a veritable catwalk, just like they do it in Paris.

The staff, which was polite and attentive, started us off with a round of gougeres that arrived at the table straight from the oven. These seemed to have the maximum cheese-to-non-cheese-ingredients ratio and were some of the best in the city. Marie Fromage, JP Morgan, and I started with the escargots, since there are very few places where you know you'll get them fresh, not out of a can, and Benoit is one of them. Have them fresh and it's like tasting real French fries after eating frozen Ore-Ida's - what a huge difference in quality. Benoit's escargots were just as buttery and garlicky as anyone could desire, and crusted on top with a thin crispy layer of breadcrumbs.

The lobster bisque was beautifully presented--a dollop of buttery, tender lobster meat and creme fraiche in the middle, which the waiter then surrounded with the bisque, poured from a pewter boat. The soup itself was a little too salty--the saltiness would be our main critique of the food here--but traditional French cuisine is generally much saltier than any nouvelle cuisine that has followed. Suck it up for tradition's sake?

Lamb chops had a wonderfully smoky char, and the meat was lean, clean, and tasted of spring herbs. Quenelles, breaded flaked fish patties dressed up with sauce, aren't something you often see on a menu--indeed, Marie Fromage remarked that she hadn't seen them since culinary school. These were fluffy and light but decadently rich in flavor. The Spanish version of this dish, thought to be introduced by the Romans, is brandada de hacalao, found at Boqueria.

At my place arrived the true test of authenticity: the cassoulet. Benoit in Paris had the best cassoulet I've ever tasted--could the New York version compare? The perfectly tender white beans floated in a broth that was a little more watery than expected, but in the end this turned out to be a blessing, because the flavor was so intensely meaty (and admittedly salty) that a denser texture would have been overwhelming. Beans concealed a spicy lamb sausage and--surprise--an entire duck leg. This was over-the-top delicious, definitely on par with the Parisian version and almost certainly the best cassoulet in New York.

Wine aficionados will find a lot to like on the wine menu, which, like the food menu, includes many reasonably-priced, high-quality options. We really enjoyed our $10 glass of Bourgogne, a V. Girardin Cuvee Saint Vincent--and couldn't believe it was just $10.



We managed to find about two cubic inches of stomach capacity left to tackle dessert, which we ordered because of its clever name, Mister Mystere. But there's no mystery about it: this iced hazelnut mousse was refreshing yet rich, dressed up in melted chocolate, the perfect "light" ending to an excellent meal.



Benoit
66 West 55th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues
New York, New York
646-943-7373

Not Quite Dead Yet

Sorry for the long absence. As you may have read in the Times, I had a heart attack. Just kidding! I've been writing for Shecky's, covering things like the trend of jewelry-made-of-natural-materials.

Click through to the article on natural jewelry to find out what's what. We also have some fashion coverage on ec0-friendly totes that aren't ugly, in case you've been wanting to rip that "feed" bag out of Lauren Bush's hands and stomp on it.

Bon appetit!

Bobo

It's hard to be taken seriously with a name like "bobo." Wharton business major Carlos Suarez found he kept using the word, coined by David Brooks, when describing his plans for a new restaurant. Only a Wharton business major or Mary-Kate Olsen wouldn't pick up on the inherent insult in a word that means "half yuppie-bourgeois and half hippie-bohemian." No matter: Like Mary-Kate Olsen and many a business major, bobo succeeds anyway.

If you've been before and dismissed bobo because of the lackluster food, it's worth a revisit. Former chef Nicholas Cantrel left and has since been installed at Bagatelle. In his place are chefs Rick Jakobsen from Red Hook's 360 and Jared Stafford-Hill of Hearth. How convenient! All this time I've been to lazy to schlep out to the famously good 360, now tragically closed. One can only hope that the new incarnation of bobo can channel what was before out in Brooklyn's Red Hook.

If you can find this nearly-unmarked West Village townhouse, you'll walk into a beautiful, low-ceilinged, candlelit English basement level space with exposed beams, a long bar upholstered with a houndstooth pattern, and a black upright piano stacked with vintage LP records. They may be bobo touches all, but the records aren't just for show. We heard the Beatles and Led Zeppelin the night we were there, complete with a few pops and scratches and the uncompressed, rich sound of old vinyl records.

It's an appropriate soundtrack for a place that strives to keep it real, as much as a bourgeois bohemian can. Bobo is one of a growing number of restaurants that, for environmental reasons, does not offer bottled water. Instead, they make their own purified and seltzer water and serve it in carafes.

It was a lively gang that night, perhaps because Knucklehead, Menudo, and Annette had already spent several hours at Smith & Mills before heading uptown. High Maintenance ordered the winter squash soup with pear, cranberry, and smoked duck - hold the pear, cranberry, and smoked duck (don't ask). The spartan soup that remained held up well on its own, however, and it came served in pretty vintage bone china.

My tuna, white bean and arugula salad arrived as a salad alongside a massive hunk of tuna that must have been prepared in some high-tech way. Was it grilled then sous-vide'd? Grilled then preserved in a crystallized format somehow? Either way, the resulting tuna, though visually appealing, was oddly rubbery and bland. As Sara Jenkins pointed out, why do male chefs insist on treating the kitchen like a science lab? But the white beans were wonderfully toothsome and the arugula nice and peppery.

Menudo's winter vegetable salad was exactly as advertised and came with a delicately tangy lemon dressing. Raw scallops and grapefruit, beets, and fennel came together in Knucklehead's dish, the best of the appetizers. The scallops had a wonderfully clean, barely saline taste, delicious with the bitter sweet juicy crunch of the grapefruit. As we saw at Momofuku Ssam, scallops pair particularly well with fruit, and a sprinkling of fennel leaves gave Bobo's a tingling herbal taste.



Surprisingly for a place that's not even Italian, much less a serious pasta joint, Bobo has a ricotta ravioli that could contend with the best. Huge, plump, generously portioned ravioli were already decadent before getting dressed in butter, parmesan, and meltingly soft winter vegetables.

The chicken was just the sort of elevated comfort food we were craving on that rainy night. Crispy skin, tender meat, and a buttery flavor throughout. It had been seasoned just enough, but not too much to overwhelm the rich flavor. A mixture of polenta and black cabbage topped off the homeyness of the dish.

Supposedly there was a basic steak dish at the previous incarnation of Bobo, which I never visited. The current entree takes steak to the next level, topping it with oxtail soffrito and caramelized cippolini. Here again Bobo straddles the line between comforting and outright decadent and succeeds with flying colors.

Pot au feu gets a tweak with lamb substituted for beef as the starring meat. I can't imagine why I've never seen this dish before in a New York restaurant. Lamb makes the pot au feu so much more flavorful, and the vegetables were still al dente, done in the Dan Barber haute barnyard style.

There are so many iterations of Annette's Berkshire pork entree with cabbage, potatoes, and pinot gris in the city now that it was hard to set this one apart, but his had prettily carved baby potatoes in the French style.

As for the desserts, we wished the chocolat pot de creme had gelled a little bit more - it should be firm, not gloopy. But it was nice to see a good old-fashioned upside down cake, this time in pear, on an urban menu again. Definitely worth the post-prandial calories.







A trip to the restroom revealed a gorgeous second floor dining room on the townhouse's parlor floor. All the details have been well thought-out here, from the octagonal book nooks to the dramatic chandeliers to the Victorian wallpaper and brass swan fixtures in the powder room. Now, it seems, bobo's food is finally following suit. If liking Bobo makes one bobo, then consider me guilty as charged.


bobo
181 West 10th Street at Seventh Avenue South
New York, New York
212-488-2626