No wonder the “Brooklyn Rules” restaurant crowd is so full of itself — Manhattan has seen enough dining-scene disasters in the past few months to make it the culinary world’s Island of the Damned.
There are good and bad restaurant seasons anywhere. Then there’s summer of 2012 in the land of Boulud & Batali. Flops and fiascoes rule, and post-Labor Day relief in the form of promising openings seems as far off as the prospect of trains running under Second Avenue.
Has Manhattan dining ever seen such a miserable few months? Winter and spring were grand, having brought us Atera, Cafe China and The NoMad, among other illustrious and semi-illustrious launches.
But the cavalcade of duds since then makes you miss the nights when it was too cold to eat out. The Grim Reaper set to work around Memorial Day, when Stephen Hanson pulled the plug on his Japanese robata-grill jumbo, Kibo, after just eight months. When did a BR Guest place go down so quickly?
The great French chef Joel Robuchon was a consultant at Kibo, but its collapse preceded much worse news — the unexpected (and still mysterious) shuttering of his precious but marvelous L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon at the Four Seasons Hotel.
That was just days after the shutdown of one of the city’s greatest steakhouses, Ben Benson’s, which was felled by a lease expiration after 30 golden years. Mickey Mantle’s wasn’t exactly in the same league, but its closing left a yet-to-be-filled gaping hole on Central Park South.
Soon after came the exit of the brilliant chef Shaun Hergatt from his namesake SHO Shaun Hergatt, the best restaurant in the Wall Street area since Indians taught the Dutch to grow corn; what remains of the place is now called “The Exchange.” Then, Cornelius Gallagher, who once piloted Oceana, gave up on his promising Southeast Asian Dragonfly on the Upper East Side after just two months.
Pray it doesn’t get worse: Eater.com reported yesterday that Terrance Brennan’s splendid but stuffy Picholine could be evicted if it doesn’t pay $188,000 allegedly owed in back rent by Aug. 29.
Big Manhattan openings — you know, the ones backed by big names and big money? More reason for dancing in the streets of Brooklyn. Overpriced, under-performing “Modern-Cantonese” Hakkasan, airlifted from London to West 43rd Street by way of Miami, opened to hideous reviews, mine among them; Opentable.com can usually find you seats at any hour.
The doughy pizza at Nicoletta, from reigning Italian god Michael White (Marea, Morini), was condemned by every critic who reviewed it. I’d likely have done the same had my mediocre meal not convinced me it wasn’t entertainingly awful enough to waste ink on.
It says something that the most buzzed-over recent Manhattan openings were laugh riots — namely, Kardashian baby-daddy Scott Disick’s phony Japanese joint Ryu in the Meatpacking District, and somebody’s (it isn’t clear whose) Purple Fig on the Upper West Side. The latter, you’ll recall, is where we were served crumbs pretending to be bread.
There’s no particular trend at work — some times things are hot, some times not, and one summer is too short a time to draw conclusions.
But Bon Appetit this month listed two Brooklyn joints among the nation’s best new restaurants, compared with zero for Manhattan. I never took Brooklyn as a serious threat to my home borough, and a few noisy food writers who happen to live in Williamsburg won’t change my mind.
But I hope Manhattan owners and chefs get with the program after Labor Day. This is war, guys. Keep it up, and you’ll find me spending Saturday nights on Broadway — the one under the J train.