Now that Co. has reached the half-year mark, you might wonder how it and its fellow new-wave pie joints are doing. A little over a month ago, we were surprised to find Tonda nearly empty on a Friday night, during peak hours. Hey, all the easier to snag a sidewalk table — but we worried the crickets weren’t just because it was Memorial Day weekend. When we stopped by last Friday at 8 p.m., the scene was just as grim. For some perspective, we counted heads at half a dozen other recently opened pizzerias between the hours of 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Friday. Here are the results.

Tonda – 14 diners, approx. 86 seats available (based on estimated seating capacity)
San Marzano – 32 diners, 6 seats available
Veloce Pizzeria – 22 diners, approx. 28 seats available (based on estimated capacity)
Pizza Mezzaluna – 11 diners, 9 seats available
Spunto – 43 diners, 18 seats available
Kesté – 32 diners, 8 seats available
Co. – 50 diners, 4 seats available, 6 waiting

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Filed Under: co., keste, pizza, pizza mezzaluna, san marzano, spot check, spunto, tonda, veloce pizzeria

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No one bothers interfering when some kids go around “committing acts of blunt violence” in the East Village, except that when they enter Ray’s Candy Store and get lewd with the counterperson, 76-year-old Ray wakes from his nap and douses them in water. That’ll school ’em. [Neither More Nor Less]

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Filed Under: crowd control, east village, ray’s candy store, tompkins square park

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Two weeks after the management of 375 Hudson tried to run off the Wafels & Dinges truck because it looked “unprofessional,” it’s parked outside the building again this morning, according to a tweet and this photo sent in by a reader. Fight the power!

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Filed Under: 375 hudson, food trucks, truckin’, wafels & dinges

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• Denny’s is trying to rebrand itself as a late-night spot for young adults with menu items created by bands like Good Charlotte. [WSJ]

• You could be the next Audrina Patridge: Carl’s Jr. is looking for women to suggestively eat its burgers in new ads. [Videogum]

• Massive Italian supermarket Eataly, which will be operated by the Batali/Bastianich empire, has signed a lease at 200 Fifth Avenue. [Diner's Journal/NYT]

• Last night’s Law & Order: Criminal Intent featured a struggling chef as a suspect and a food-news blog called PotLuck. [Serious Eats]

• A new Clinton Hill bodega is named Obama Deli & Grocery, and its sign features a picture of the President. [ClintonHillBlog]

• Harlem is getting an Applebee’s and neighbors aren’t sure whether it’s “a continuation of the suburbanization of 125th Street or a needed service in the community.” [UPTOWNFlavor]

• Minneapolis’s swank Chambers Hotel has dumped Jean-Georges Vongerichten as its food provider in favor of local company D’Amico and Partners. [Eat/Pioneer Press]

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Filed Under: applebee’s, carl’s jr, denny’s, eataly, jean georges vongerichten, law and order criminal intent, mediavore, obama deli & grocery

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Yesterday we were highly entertained, though not exactly surprised, to see JoeDoe’s namesake chef-owner Joe Dobias lash out at Marc Shepherd for penning a review on his blog, NY Journal, that deemed the restaurant hard to take seriously: “Its quirky offerings often sound interesting, but when the plates arrive the payoff isn’t there.” In the comments, Dobias insisted the “malicious post” was revenge for the fact that Shepherd (whom Dobias went on to call “an angry little man” and a “hapless shameless little person,” even comparing him to George Costanza) hadn’t been allowed to take photos, and went on to share more opinions about “shithead bloggers” being “stuck up little kids” with “no training, no schooling, and probably as I always say no real life experience working in a restaurant.” Before JoeDoe opened his doors, we were probably the first outlet to get in touch with him, and have happily covered his experiments with Madoff menus, tongue-sandwich delivery, and of course its brunch battle with Prune; so we knew a little bit about his frustrations with PR and media coverage. So when his new PR intern e-mailed to tell us about a Fourth of July all-day rib roast (featuring specials such as pork ribs with pickled slaw, barbecue chicken with macaroni salad and summer greens, and crispy watermelon with Greek yogurt), we asked him for an on-the-record sit-down.

I think folks were a little surprised to see you blowing up on Eater yesterday.
I wasn’t surprised — I think that Eater is true to their intent in general, which is to be slanderous and mischievous. They’re always out for the bloodbath. Back in August, Amanda [Kludt, editor] had the audacity to fail to mention we were only open for two days when she wrote a really nasty post about my food and what I was doing.

So you banned Eater from the restaurant?
I told them basically that they were dead to us and that they were never welcome here, nor were their friends. Instead of helping the people they should be helping (like you guys do at New York Magazine), Eater just likes to take people down.

As a mom-and-pop (or rather husband-and-wife) operation, has it been frustrating trying to get the right attention for JoeDoe?
Yes and no. I think in general it’s who you know and who you blow, as they say — it’s like a big high school. All the kids on top who are popular don’t want anyone else to be popular. Even David Chang writes about how the first year no one had anything to do with him, but because he continued to say “fuck you” to everyone, he became cool and now no one wants to say anything bad about him. A lot of the bloggers don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about — they spend years in one career and one day they flip a light switch and decide they’re experts. I don’t go onto medical websites and tell people how to do surgeries better. I can never understand how restaurants went from being about eating to now being this whole circus.

Why did you decide to get a publicist after three or four months? Do you think the fact that you didn’t have one off the bat hurt you in terms of getting traditional reviews?
We were going through the recession like everybody else, and if you’re a survivor and you want to do something, you gotta do something to survive and give it everything you got. I don’t really understand the rhyme or reason as to how the Times or New York Magazine reviews people. They always bump the little guy in favor of the big guy who doesn’t really need the review. I know when DBGB opened, I said it’ll only be a month till they’re reviewed and we’ve already been here a year. I’m not saying I’m on their level, but if someone else opened up serving burgers, fries, and sausages, it wouldn’t be so much of a big deal. Plus, is Daniel Boulud really cooking for you over there? I worked for Ming Tsai and he didn’t do much cooking till I told him “you don’t really do much cooking, huh?” and he took offense; then he started cooking with us.

Why did you get rid of the PR firm?
I think that overall we got more press on our own than with PR. The PR person said you need to change all these things. I don’t know how they come off telling you how to run things. They’re not in operations. When, a month in, we told them no, we’re very happy with how it is, it became this rebuke, and they lost interest in us. The only thing they did was call Betsy Andrews and got her to come in, but they had nothing to do with why she came back and eventually gave us a Dining Brief.

So what did they tell you to change?
We were told that not having a wine list was ridiculous, but we can’t afford a wine list. And to put a bottle of wine on the table, serve sangria, all sorts of tired, hokey-pokey things. It was a circus mentality — watch this guy jump through flaming hoops but we’re not going to talk about what we’re actually doing here. We couldn’t just be who we were. And when we questioned why we weren’t getting people in despite all the press, we were told it wasn’t their fault.

How much was all this costing you, and affecting the bottom line?
It’s thousands a month, even for the smallest places. It’s almost $1,000 a week, which was maybe 25 to 30 percent of our gross.

Does cooking in such a small space every night, with such a close eye on your diners, spark a sort of Kenny Shopsin attitude, where you’re more controlling or temperamental than a chef who can’t see who’s eating his food?
Absolutely, the place is called JoeDoe because that’s my nickname even if people make fun of it. That’s why I find it hard to believe that someone would go and write that they’ve had a bad meal. I was standing right there and I cooked every morsel of food — if you have a problem, why not tell me you didn’t like the food, or something was overcooked … Instead you try to be snippy because you didn’t get the pictures you wanted. That’s just juvenile — you’re not entitled to do whatever you want in someone else’s place. At Cornell I was taught the customer is always right, but the customer is not always right.

Okay, so why are customers wrong for wanting to take photos?
I have a 26-seat restaurant the size of a studio apartment. Imagine if you dimmed the lights on your studio apartment and you had a flashbulb go off every twenty seconds. If I wanted my restaurant to be a discothèque, I would’ve opened a discothèque. If you want to take pictures I’ll always let you come back during non-service hours, but no one takes me up on that because they just want to come in for their 45-minute meal and write something really snippy if you’re not nice enough to them, or you do something they don’t like. If you really have a problem with what I do, don’t come here and tell me to be different — just don’t come here. But New York diners have a snobbish attitude — someone said recently that we’re a bunch of big kids. If I hear one more time that “my pork belly is too fatty,” I’m going to throw up.

You took offense to the review’s observation that no one else was in the restaurant. How is JoeDoe doing, anyway?
The thing that was ridiculous is that if the guy was here at 9:30 p.m. when most people in the East Village eat, he would’ve seen the place packed. Restaurants don’t need to make their money all day long — unfortunately there’s not a lot of diners out there, and unless you’ve been around for ten years à la Prune it’s very difficult during the week. I’m not going to say we’re packed Monday through Wednesday, but we do kick-ass business Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I have a ten-year lease and I’m not going anywhere.

You mentioned Prune, which you called out when you were first opening. What’s your relationship like now?
I don’t think we have a relationship. I have a lot of respect for [chef-owner Gabrielle Hamilton] even though she doesn’t have respect for me.

What makes you think that?
She’s never spoken one word to me — parks her car outside my restaurant and never says hello.

Have you tried to reach out to her?
Yes and no. We are sort of intimidated by her, honestly — it’s the big fish, small fish thing. She’s the big dog on the block. In my mind I’d hope she’d approach it more in a mentor type way.

What about your relationship with your wife, Jill — has operating the restaurant almost literally hand in hand with her put a strain on things?
My dream of dreams is that we’d be the next Waltuck couple — our relationship has actually gotten stronger. I slowly sucked Jill away from her intense passion for dance but now she’s here and gets to see what I do on a daily basis, and now she has entered the big realm of cocktails and put everyone on notice.

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Filed Under: amanda kludt, beef, bloggers, critics, david chang, east village, eater, food pr, gabrielle hamilton, joedoe, joseph dobias, marc shepherd, new york times, ny journal, pr, prune, public relations, restaurant reviews

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This past weekend we had brunch with my parents at Markt , and lovely (and somewhat trendy) Belgian spot in Chelsea…

Markt

676 Ave Of The Americas, New York

(212) 727-3314

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Tomorrow, Michael Psilakis reopens the former Kefi space under the name Gus & Gabriel Gastropub (Donatella Arpaia is not involved this time around, since she’s writing a book and focusing on other projects). Take your very first look at the menu and you’ll see it’s a veritable ne plus ultra of comfort food. Meatballs, hot dogs, meatloaf, fried chicken, grilled cheese, chili — add to all that a list of 70 whiskeys and 10 beers on tap, and you can be dead certain Guy Fieri is going to be throwing down here every time he’s in town. (That said, the dining room opens at 5 p.m. and closes relatively early for a gastropub — 10 p.m. from Sunday through Tuesday, 11 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, and midnight on Fridays and Saturdays — reservations and credit cards are not accepted.) Psilakis dreamed all this up by touring spots like T.G.I. Friday’s (that’s right, T.G.I. Friday’s) with his wife and by cooking at home with his four-year-old son Gabriel (Gus is Psilakis’s father). And there’s just a hint of T.G.I. Friday’s in the redesign of Kefi’s space, too — there’s a random coat of armor and some crisscrossed oars on the wall. Here now, the menu.

Beer Snacks
Hot Potato Chips 3.95
Sour Cream, caramelized onion, garlic & chive dip

Pretzel Nuggets 3.95
Honey mustard glaze

Spicy Pickled Fries 3.95
Mayonnaise

Onion Rings 3.95
BBQ sauce

BBQ Pork, Cheddar & Jalapeño “Tater Tots” 3.95
Spicy BBQ sauce

Appetizers
American Salad 7.95
Romaine, bacon, hard-boiled egg, carrot, red onion, crouton, cheddar, cherry tomato, red & green peppers
Choice of Dressing: garlic ranch ~ Italian ~
blue cheese ~ roasted tomato, onion & bacon

Chili 6.95
Aged cheddar, scallion, sour cream,
chipotle-scallion-jalapeño corn bread

Buttered Sweet Corn &
Jalapeño Soup 5.95
Crème fraîche, Pecorino Romano, chive

French Onion Soup 6.50
Sourdough crouton, gruyère

Black Bean Soup 5.95
Sour cream, cilantro, avocado

Glazed Pork “Riblets” 7.95
Sherry, honey, molasses

Nachos (for two) 9.95
Chili, refried beans, guacamole, sour cream, salsa

Crab & Fish Sticks 7.95
Tartar sauce

Mexi Mac & Cheese 7.50
Monterey Jack & cheddar, jalapeño béchamel, sour cream, salsa

Potato Skins 7.95
Chili, aged cheddar, Monterey jack, bacon, sour cream

Spicy BBQ Chicken Wings 8.95
Blue cheese, celery, carrot

Entrées
Burger 11.50
French fries

Bacon & Cheddar Burger 12.95
French fries

Smoked Tomato, Garlic Confit & Mozzarella Burger 12.95
French fries

Roasted Mushroom, Caramelized Onion & Gruyère Burger 12.95
French fries

Fried Egg, Bacon, Onion Rings & Gruyère Burger 13.95
French fries

Beef Brisket French Dip 11.95
Gruyère, caramelized onions, beef jus, French fries

Two House~made Hot Dogs 11.50
French fries

Two Chili & Cheese Hot Dogs 13.95
French fries

Meatball “Parmigiano” Hero 13.95
Sautéed onion & bell pepper, provolone, mozzarella, tomato, spaghetti

Grilled Beef Ribs 14.95
Beef jus, mashed potatoes

Meatloaf 11.95
Roasted mushroom & onion, mashed potatoes

Pulled Pork Cuban 12.95
Monterey jack, pepperoncini, pickles, sauerkraut, mustard, French fries

Crispy Fried Chicken 13.95
Biscuits, giblet gravy, mashed potatoes

BBQ Roasted Pork Butt 13.95
Onion rings, coleslaw, mashed potatoes

Hot Turkey Sandwich 12.95
Gruyère, bacon, gravy, mashed potatoes

BLT Grilled Cheese 10.95
Bacon, cheddar, smoked tomato, romaine, mayo

Baked Ziti 11.95
Mozzarella, ricotta, tomato

Fish & Chips 12.95
French fries

Gus & Gabriel Gastropub, 222 West 79th St., nr. Broadway; 212-362-7470 or 212-362-7246 for delivery

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Filed Under: comfort food, donatella arpaia, gus & gabriel gastropub, michael psilakis, openings, upper west side

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Boston chef Michael Schlow, recently seen on Top Chef Masters, is considering opening a branch of his Italian restaurant Alta Strada in either New York or D.C. From what we hear about Schlow from MenuPages Boston, we think he ought to come here. [NRN via MenuPages Boston]

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Filed Under: alta strada, boston, imports, michael schlow

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Michael Psilakis’s Gus and Gabriel is poised to open tomorrow (more on that shortly), and Brooklyn is also getting a newcomer helmed by a first-generation Greek-American chef. When Aqualis opens later this week in Fort Greene (owner Gorian Papa, a higher-up at the Zanzibar group for over a decade, hopes to start dinner service by Thursday with brunch and lunch to follow), chef John Tsakinas (most recently the chef de cuisine at Kellari Taverna and before that the owner of Piggin’ Out and a cook at Petrossian, Windows on the World, and others) will show off what he says will be “very straightforward eclectic, traditional cooking” using the freshest possible ingredients. His “labor of love” will entail daily runs to the Hunts Point fish market for whole-fish entrées, as well as sourcing other ingredients from local purveyors. While the five-seat bar awaits its beer-and-wine license, it’s making sodas in-house. Take a look at the menu, and at the room furnished with finds from North Fork antique shops.

Spreads
Yogurt 4
Cucumber & dill

Eggplant 4
Lightly roasted

Feta 4
Spicy red pepper

Fava 4
Split pea puree

Appetizers
Veggie chips 8
Yogurt & cucumber dip

Octopus 10
Olive oil & red wine vinegar

Mussels 10
Steamed with ouzo, saffron, tomato & feta

Sardines 9
Lightly grilled with fresh herbs & olive oil

Fritto Misto 9
Fried calamari, shrimp & spicy tomato sauce

Grilled Calamari 10
Lemon saffron vinaigrette

Grilled Clams 11
Oregano

Cured Salmon 8
Ouzo, capers & dill

Salad
Shepherd’s Salad 7
Tomato, cucumber, red onion & Manouri cheese

Romaine Salad 8
Yogurt, dill & feta dressing

Whole Grilled Fish
Served with your choice of one side order

Mediterranean Sea Bass m/p

Red Snapper m/p

Porgy m/p

Entrées
Atlantic Salmon 16
Steamed wild greens

Cod Filet 18
Sautéed spinach

Pan Roasted Scallops 18
Cannellini beans

Sword Fish Kebob 19
Steamed wild greens & saffron vinaigrette

Grilled Shrimp 19
Orzo in light tomato sauce

Fried Whiting 15
Roasted beets

Lamb Chops 21
Hand cut fries

Roasted Half Chicken 16
Mashed potato

Sides
Hand Cut Fries 4

Steamed Wild Greens 4

Orzo 4

Beet Salad 4

Aqualis, 773 Fulton Street, nr. South Oxford St., Fort Greene, Brooklyn; 718-797-3494

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Filed Under: aqualis, fort greene, gorian papa, greek, gus and gabriel, john tsakinas, kellari taverna, michael psilakis, petrossian, piggin’ out, slideshow, windows on the world, zanzibar

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Now that it’s been out for a week, you may have read a bit from Michael Steinberger’s Au Revoir to All That: Food, Wine, and the End of France, which explores the decline of French cuisine. A passage reprinted on Slate (Steinberger is the site’s wine columnist) describes the Michelin guide’s loss of authority, and another details the rise of McDonald’s in a country formerly known to appreciate leisurely lunches. The book doesn’t really delve into New York dining much, but since so much in it reminds us of Stateside trends, we asked Steinberger for his thoughts.

So has French cuisine suffered in New York City as much as it has in France?
You certainly saw that when a trio of iconic French restaurants (La Caravelle, Lutèce, and La Côte Basque) all went under at around the same time. About a year ago, the Times said French food was making a comeback in New York. I don’t think it went as out of fashion as people say, but I don’t see signs there’s a renewed flowering of Francophilia going on.

Meanwhile, New Yorkers are going back to Italian food, some say because people seek heavy, familiar dishes during hard times. But given that so much of bistro food is heavy and familiar, why don’t we see a resurgence there?
Many years before the recession, there was a flowering interest in lighter, healthier Mediterranean cuisine. Italian is of course the great Mediterranean cuisine. Italian much better fit the sensibilities of eaters into the nineties and aughts then did stodgy old French cuisine. It could also be argued that Italian food is more stick-to-the-ribs, soulful, more generous — perhaps there’s a perception that Italian offers more bang for the buck.

You also discuss the fact that Spanish chefs are more highly lauded these days. Do you think that’s deserved, or is it just a media obsession with the quirkiness of chefs like Ferran Adrià?
It makes for a sexy story, how the French have been toppled, but I also think there’s much more creative cooking in Spain. In a place like San Sebastián there’s an energy that you just don’t find anywhere in France. At the top level there’s a spirit of experimentation that can be found in certain French restaurants but doesn’t seem to have caught on in a big way.

Are there any French chefs you’d like to see here? That are doing things you wouldn’t expect?
There certainly are young chefs in France, like Pascal Barbot, who are looking to escape the deadening weight of this incredibly rich gastronomic heritage. They’re staying true to French technique but also using ideas from all over the world. But I’d rather he not come to New York — I’d rather he stay in his kitchen. I’d prefer more of them stay at home at this point. The Spaniards stay in the kitchen. But one thing the French can yet teach us is how to do haute fare in times such as these — you do see the bistronomie movement in Paris, where Christian Constant and his many talented acolytes said “We’re not going for Michelin stars — we want to do haute fare in a bistro environment, at bistro prices.” They realized that two- and three-star restaurants were becoming increasingly dependent on foreign tourists, and people didn’t want to pay that money. These guys open their restaurants in marginal arrondissements because they can get cheaper space, and people really responded to getting two-star fare for 30 euros. There’s no guy in a penguin suit hovering over them, but people don’t want him hovering over them anyway. We’ve seen some of that in Brooklyn, for sure.

You delve into the idea of the world-traveling “chef manque” in the book, which is timely since Jean-Georges Vongerichten was recently criticized by Bruni for stretching himself too thin. Ducasse and Robuchon have received the same criticism.
This global economic downturn really calls into question this idea of empire-building among chefs. Very few of them can pull it off successfully without diluting their product and running into serious problems. If Ducasse had come ten years earlier and people had been told the most famous French chef in the world was coming, it would’ve generated a lot of excitement. By 2000 you look at how well the city was eating and the level of sophistication — when he made these noises like he was going to teach the natives how to eat, it really rubbed people the wrong way.

French chefs seem to have a habit of talking back to New York critics — do you think there was any validity to Ducasse’s claim, in response to Platt’s review, that Americans don’t understand bistro?
No, I don’t, because I don’t think there was ever any great mystery to bistro food that was waiting to be unraveled. You’re dealing with a pretty sophisticated restaurant scene — people who know in some cases more about what’s really good in Paris than some Parisians. Part of Ducasse’s problem in New York is that he’ll make statements like that. I have a chapter in the book where I attended a tasting at Adour. Ducasse seemed very nervous about the reception that awaited him, but then when I was asked him about his executive chef in Monte Carlo saying that Americans only want lobster and beef, he broke into mocking English and said something like, “I want my beef well done … ” I know he loves New York and considers it to be the equal of Paris, but once in a while that French chauvinism rears its head. It didn’t cut it in 2000 when he opened ADNY, and it certain doesn’t cut it now.

On the other hand, Daniel Boulud is still very much loved. What do you think of him pitching his latest restaurant as downscale?
By now, Boulud is considered a New York chef. He has had a great sense of timing, with Bar Boulud and what it offered — these aren’t cheap meals, but they’re certainly restaurants for the times. He offers a variety of choices for diners, and I don’t think there’s any questioning the quality — it’s a really encouraging development.

New Yorkers were also highly cynical of the Michelin guide. In one of the book’s more interesting passages, you call into question its objectivity when you investigate the suicide of Bernard Loiseau, the esteemed chef-owner of La Cote d’Or.
When Bernard Loiseau committed suicide, Michelin strenuously denied it had ever warned him that his third star was in jeopardy. But Pascal Rémy, the former inspector who wrote the tell-all book about the guide, told me that actually they did indeed warn him in the fall of 2002, when they said they had serious concerns. Madame Loiseau then sent a letter thanking them and telling them the “warning” (and she underlined that word) had been heard. The letter was contained in the chef’s dossier that mysteriously disappeared the day after he died. Since the book is being printed in England, I couldn’t print his comments without independently verifying the existence of these documents or I’d be leaving myself open to a lawsuit. Sure enough, the minutes of this meeting described that he was “visibly shocked” about what he heard from Michelin, and the letter from Madame Loiseau did indeed have the word “warning” underlined. We now know Loiseau had bipolar disorder, so there was an underlying issue, but it was also clear that rumors over this third star being in jeopardy set him on the downward spiral, and this indicated that Michelin was much less innocent in his death than they insisted.

Your book also discusses the harm that French bureaucracy and overregulation did to restaurants there. New York’s restaurateurs seem to have many of the same frustrations — do you think our restaurants will suffer as much as theirs have?
With France the bigger culprit has been the 19.6 percent value added tax, which is changing July 1. They finally responded to decades of pleading and even riots among chefs, and they’re reducing it from 19.6 to the 5.5 that McDonald’s and other fast-food restaurants charge. The 35-hour work week was also the most onerous regulation, and the sheer amount of paperwork and bureaucracy and the inability to fire people once you hire them. We’re seeing some similar trends (like the city council in Chicago banning foie gras), but I think we’re a long way from finding ourselves in a straitjacket of regulation.

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Filed Under: alain ducasse, and the end of france, au revoir to all that: food, bistro, bistronomie, bookshelf, caravelle, christian constant, daniel boulud, drink, ferran adria, french, joel robuchon, lutece and la cote basque, michael steinberger, pascal barbo, slate, spanish

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It’s 4 p.m., and that means it’s time to play Two for Eight. We just asked ten restaurants the best time they can squeeze a couple in for dinner; you need only make your chosen reservation. (As always, we make the calls but don’t guarantee the results.) Today: Refined Meathead.

BLT Prime (Menu)
212-995-8500
Two for eight? No
Best available: 8:15 p.m.

Centro Vinoteca (Menu)
212-367-7470
Two for eight? Yes

Craftsteak (Menu)
212-400-6699
Two for eight? No
Best available: 8:30 p.m.

Gyu-Kaku (Menu)
212-475-2989
Two for eight? Yes

The Harrison (Menu)
212-274-9310
Two for eight? Yes

Ouest (Menu)
212-580-8700
Two for eight? No
Best available: 8:30 p.m.

Pera Mediterranean Brasserie (Menu)
212-878-6301
Two for eight? Yes

Quality Meats (Menu)
212-371-7777
Two for eight? Yes

The Red Cat (Menu)
212-242-1122
Two for eight? No
Best available: 9 p.m.

Trestle on Tenth (Menu)
212-645-5659
Two for eight? Yes

Filed Under: blt prime, centro vinoteca, craftsteak, gyu-kaku, harrison, ouest, pera, quality meats, the red cat, trestle on tenth, two for eight

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Blue Hill, Blue Hill at Stone Barns, Eleven Madison Park, Gramercy Tavern, and Per Se are the local reps on OpenTable’s “Top 50 American Restaurants” list. The list, which refers to American cuisine, is “based on 2.5 million reviews of more than 9,000 restaurants.” [OpenTable Blog]

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Filed Under: american cuisine, blue hill, blue hill at stone barns, eleven madison park, gramercy tavern, lists, per se

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