THE packed house at Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecote is onto something — and it can’t be the much-hyped “mysterious” sauce slathered onto sliced sirloin that otherwise would have just slightly more character than at Tad’s Broiled Steaks.
The new restaurant at Lexington and 52nd, a franchise of a long-running spot from the 17th Arrondissement of Paris, has a luxurious aspect that has nothing to do with “French” sconces and maroon banquettes.
Nor is it the free-seconds policy that keeps Le Relais de V L’E so busy. (Although posing no threat to the power lunching at the Four Seasons a few doors away, it’s full of guys in suits who could afford a pricier meal even without expense accounts.) The salad and steak are caked in so much cream, I felt bloated enough halfway through to decline the waitress’ cheerful, repeated offers to bring more.
What sets the place apart is its menu. There is none. The $24 “prix-fixe” is the only thing available: a simple green salad with walnuts and steak with fries. You may order it “blue,” rare, medium or well — no fine-gradations in between, thank you.
Why is it heaven? Because this is the first new restaurant in a long time where I don’t feel like I’m working. No struggling to read a menu in dim light. No wasting time deciphering 22 categories the waitstaff can’t explain. No guessing which dishes would arrive when, subject to the kitchen’s whim.
Just bring us the food, people!
The ease of ordering at Le Relais de V L’E reminds you what a chore it’s become elsewhere. Menus are so barnacled with sub-categories and irksome little boxes within boxes, you risk eyestrain and agita trying to figure out what to order first, last and in between.
At important new restaurants like Marea and the newly relocated Oceana — places for serious diners, not the grazing crowd — dinner lineups are so complicated, you almost don’t know where to look first.
Restaurants are too determined to give customers choice. “Order the way you want,” is the mantra. But the menu sprawl — once common in Asian places and French-style brasseries, but now infecting ordinary American and Italian spots as well — as often as not bamboozles you into ordering something you don’t want.
Milestones in menu-category metastasis include Colina in 1999, which was so confusing customers joked about calling their lawyers. There was Craft in 2000, where the original “build your own meal” menu was so unstructured that waiters lost tips from fed-up diners; and Megu, the Japanese giant of TriBeCa that baffled customers in 2004 with a 12-page menu that still carries 19 categories of dishes.
Megu has 300 seats. A place serving so many people can almost justify so many options. But a restaurant literally one-tenth its size? New Joseph Leonard on Waverly Place is owned by a former co-owner of wildly popular Little Owl. But while Little Owl offers conventionally organized appetizers, entrees and side dishes, Joseph Leonard’s menu is in 10 categories. This in a joint with just 30 seats!
Of course there are drawbacks to menu sprawl that go beyond the challenge of making sense of it. Giant, multicategory menus give the house an excuse to send dishes out “as they’re ready” — meaning you have no idea what will come first or how much time will elapse between courses. This might make sense at Pan-Asian restaurants like Spice Market, where the idea is to reflect a “street food” experience. But it makes no sense almost anywhere else.
More fundamental is that kitchens often can’t do so many different kinds of dishes well. The profusion of “salt bar” and flatbread nibbles at Table 8, “counter” items at the Standard Grill and everything from charcuterie to “tete au pied” at DBGB — along with cold and hot appetizers, salads, burgers, sausages and main courses — begs the question of whether any kitchen can consistently acquit itself well in so many different styles.
Le Relais de Venise L’Entrecote doesn’t have to worry about too many choices. It does one thing well enough to suit its many fans. But if only that one thing was a real, New York-style porterhouse or T-bone!
scuozzo@nypost.com