EVERY hotel these days wants a buzzing restaurant. Most owners know they don’t have a clue, so they turn the dining room over to a pro – a Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a Steve Hanson, a Jeffrey Chodorow.
Then there’s the new 70 Park Avenue Hotel, which had the brainstorm to launch an eatery on its own. The wildly off-center result, Silverleaf Tavern, boasts a respectable chef, Kevin Reilly, with a good track record at SoHo’s popular Zoe.
But it takes more than a decent chef to make a decent restaurant. Among other things, it requires a kitchen that can deliver a simple meal for two in less than 2 ½ hours, waiters who do not address women customers as “sir” and artwork that does not induce hysterical blindness.
Décor hyped as “17th-century whimsy blended with 21st-century design” means a prefab brick wall mounted with garish, appetite-squelching still lifes of fruit, cheese and charcuterie encased in baroque gold frames.
A totem pole of truck tires (or something like them) reaches the ceiling, which is traversed by a scary, snaking light fixture. One night, it brightened and dimmed at whim; another time, it went totally bonkers, flashing off and on like a disco strobe.
“We’re trying to fix it,” the waiter promised.
But there’s no fixing the service. My guests, who arrived minutes apart, were seated at different tables. When my wife spotted our friends and asked to be moved, the waiter replied, “Yes – is your evening good so far?”
The kitchen is only slightly less discombobulated. Reilly’s American menu makes a nod toward New York clichés like knishes, but it’s all over the map, often beyond the crew’s ability and hampered by second-rate raw materials.
The pride of the starters, inch-thick French toast made with chevre and ravished in wild mushrooms and black truffle sauce ($15), makes for winter brunch heaven, even at 10 p.m. It would be better if the waiter did not shout in your ear, “Your appetizer is fabulous,” just as you’re digging in.
The stacked tires must inspire rubberized fried squid ($11). Seared Hudson Valley foie gras ($17) was served with a burnt waffle and bourbon apple butter too cloyingly sweet even for dessert. The generic pepper-paste of salad bars embalms paprika lemon chicken ($17) served with watercress that looked a week old.
Two credible meat entrees – char-grilled hanger steak ($24) and smartly breaded pork schnitzel ($21) – raised hopes for more. A few nights later, Colorado lamb chops ($30) – juicy, pink and perfectly grilled – looked equally promising.
But in six years of reviewing, I have never encountered lamb so devoid of flavor it didn’t even taste like meat. What mad science are they up to in Colorado?
Among Silverleaf Tavern’s innovations is a wine list that lets you order “bottomless” quantities of certain vintages for $35, $48 or $83. The choices aren’t bad, but somehow the place makes me long for the old Beefsteak Charlie’s formula – all the cheap beer you can drink for free. How about it, guys?
—
SILVERLEAF TAVERN
[] (One star)
43 E. 38TH ST. (212) 973-2550
