THE Upper West Side is tired of being picked on for not having enough good places to eat. On May 31, the neighborhood will take off the gloves, show off its kitchen moves, and pop the town’s lesser eating zones right in the kisser.
The day will see a first for Manhattan – a Hamptons-style star turn for the district’s top restaurants and chefs. The New Taste of the Upper West Side, meant to become an annual event, will assemble 30 local eateries under a big tent in the IS 44 schoolyard on Columbus Avenue between 76th and 77th streets.
Guests will pay $100 a head to browse the tables from 6 to 8:30 and sample fare from the likes of Jean Georges, Dovetail, eighty one, Telepan, Kefi, Nice Matin, ‘Cesca, Gabriel’s, Calle Ocho, Ruby Foo’s – and from places coming soon to the UWS, including Cesare Casella’s Salumeria and outposts of Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack and Zak Pelaccio’s Fatty Crab.
Two dozen vineyards will also show up; alas, as the UWS terroir does not yet lend itself to winemaking, the vintners all hail from Long Island. For $250, you can arrive early and mingle with the chefs before the crowds come; and a $1,000 ducat also buys a seat at Dovetail for a tasting dinner to be held there in the fall.
Take that, TriBeCa! Back in your hole, Union Square!
The tent-and-tables format sounds a lot like the James Beard Foundation-sponsored Chefs & Champagne gala held every summer in Sagaponack. New Tastes of the Upper West Side, however, is not affiliated with Beard, but was dreamed up by affable Dovetail and Compass partner Don Evans, and is sponsored by the Columbus Avenue Business Improvement District. (Proceeds benefit the BID’s streetscape beautification program.)
Evans was egged on by our “Upper Best Side” article last summer, which cited the arrival of chefs Daniel Boulud and Ed Brown as proof (wink, wink) that the UWS ruled.
“I made a presentation to the BID,” Evans said. “It was evident there’s an emerging restaurant scene on the Upper West Side. It’s always been a joke about our restaurants, but it’s not a joke anymore.
“I modeled the format on Chefs & Champagne. I called each restaurant personally. There’s no competition among them – I think they’re excited to be part of it,” said Evans, who hopes to sell up to 750 tickets. The BID, Community Board 7 and real estate bigs including Quinian Development Group, the Brodsky Organization and Related Cos. pitched in funding and logistical support.
The list of participating restaurants reads almost like a who’s-who of the burgeoning Upper West Side dining scene. Noticeably missing so far are Daniel Boulud’s new Bar Boulud and Tom Valenti’s Ouest – the brave establishment that first put the UWS on the dining map. But regardless of the final roster, there’ll be plenty to eat and drink. “We see this event as a Saturday night destination,” Columbus Avenue BID executive director Barbara Adler said.
“We want people to linger, not just stop by. We’re celebrating the Upper West Side dining renaissance, which ranges from places like Shake Shack and Magnolia Bakery to Dovetail and eighty one.”
It would be premature to proclaim the Upper West Side the city’s new culinary capital. It’s more a matter of showing up other parts of town whose glories lie mainly in the past.
Take TriBeCa. Despite its rep as a cutting-edge dining scene, the tiny triangle has not produced a major new “destination” restaurant in years. The names for which it’s most famed – Nobu, Bouley, Chanterelle – are 15 to 20 years old. Montrachet is gone. And if the food at new Ago in Robert De Niro’s Greenwich Hotel is as middlebrow as at the Los Angeles original, the district is in no immediate danger of getting its mojo back.
Detractors sniff that the UWS still has too many rent-controlled old-timers to support a strong dining scene, and that its affluent young families shun fine-dining spots for beaneries where tots are free to bawl and crawl.
In truth, there’s still too wide a quality gulf between the best and the rest of the area’s eateries. Yet it’s remarkable (and rarely noted) how many of the city’s and the nation’s most influential gourmands are themselves Upper West Siders. It’s hard to imagine they’d put up with it if things were really as bad as East Side- and downtown-centric types would have it.
Who lives on the Upper West Side? For starters, Zagat Survey publisher Tim Zagat, New York magazine critic and Citymeals-on-Wheels founder Gael Greene, and mega-restaurateur Stephen Hanson; all are “special honorees” at the New Taste event.
Also, New York Times critic Frank Bruni. And the editors-in-chief of all three leading national food magazines – Bon Appetit’s Barbara Fairchild, Gourmet’s Ruth Reichl and Food & Wine’s Dana Cowin, all of whom live full time on the UWS or make their New York homes there.
Try putting that bunch under the same tent!