![]() ![]() There is a wonderfully tender and gentle rabbit sugo, tossed with bands of pappardelle. In the current phenotype, the trattoria genes are dominant. Union Square Cafe has always been the offspring of a mixed marriage between a trattoria and a bistro, with an American bar and grill somewhere in the family tree. That’s not happening at Union Square Cafe right now the cooks seem to have dialed right in on the qualities that made these dishes favorites in the first place. The risk in churning out old recipes like this is that the kitchen becomes bored, and the food boring. With maitake mushrooms and shiny green pesto, it’s so filling and likable that you could make a meal of it and walk away more content than if you’d had a 12-course tasting somewhere else. Do I even need to say this? It’s the most famous thing about Union Square Cafe: The servers are always happy to help.Ĭonsider me a fanboy when it comes to the ideally crunchy fritto misto, and the polenta, too, a $13 bowl of warm fluff that has absorbed its weight, and then some, in milk and creamy young cow’s milk cheese. The menu does not go so far as to point out all the old showstoppers - some from Michael Romano’s reign in the kitchen and others from that of the current chef, Carmen Quagliata - but the servers are happy to help. As Jason Wagner, the wine director, explained one night, those are the countries that were on the list when Union Square Cafe opened in 1985. ![]() The cellar stocks wines from Italy, France and the United States, and nowhere else. The art collection has come along for the ride, too, and one of the pleasures of the Rockwell layout is the way you seem to bump into a Frank Stella or a Claes Oldenburg or a Judy Rifka every time you turn around. The upstairs bar top where my cocktail rested was precisely the size of the old upstairs bar top because it was, in fact, the same piece of wood with a fresh coat of varnish. Rockwell swears that the new one is the same length: 27 feet 1 inch. I could swear the original downstairs bar was smaller, but that’s probably because I could almost never get a seat there. Some of this is done subliminally: Pendant lamps downstairs hang at the height of the 16th Street ceilings. The Rockwell Group, the architecture firm, was given the job of evoking the old address in a space that is much roomier, without the narrow passageways and sunken dining room. In the most recent appraisal, in 2009, Frank Bruni awarded it two. Over the years, reviews of Union Square Cafe in The Times have ranged from two to three stars. But then, fluctuation is normal in a long-running restaurant. I was never quite as amazed by the food as it seemed I was supposed to be. If you’re not part of the fan base, you might feel a bit like somebody who goes to see “Rogue One” without ever having seen “Star Wars.”Īt the old location, I was more an admirer than a fan. Almost everything about the new place caters to their memories of the original, fetishizing the restaurant’s own idiosyncrasies to an amazing degree. ![]() Other restaurants have customers Union Square Cafe has fans, and knows it. This is Union Square Cafe, though, a place that from the beginning has inspired attachments of a peculiar intensity. It does not bring to mind images of mob violence. It is a very nice salad, a model of good behavior. The item in question was a salad of red-tipped oakleaf and Bibb lettuces, with some fresh and springy croutons and whitecaps of grated Gruyère on top. “If we ever took it off the menu, we’d have a riot on our hands,” he said. The woman had been transferred, too a regular at the old location, she had some pointed questions about a certain item on the menu. In December, after a year out of operation, Danny Meyer’s first and most formative restaurant had been transferred from its original address on East 16th Street to the corner of Park Avenue South and East 19th. Vote for this project! Voting closes on 10 October.Sitting at the upstairs bar, one of the best places to eat in the new Union Square Cafe, I listened in on a conversation the woman next to me was having with the bartender. This project has been shortlisted in the large retail interiors category of Dezeen Awards 2022. In this way, picking up books in a manner akin to picking up fresh produce allows customers a means of enriching their spiritual basket. It mimics the grocery shopping experience with an outlaid merchandise display area, calling on inspiration in the form of shelving often seen in displays of fruit and vegetables.Īll books and clothing are set out as equal by means of display in this space, regardless of price range. The project is a second-hand books and clothes store on Anfu Road, in Shanghai. Offhand Practice has created an innovative space for a second-hand store in China. ![]()
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