Miscues at the Purple Fig are plenty — salmon with white bean casserole sometimes includes clams; on other trips, scallops make an unannounced substitution. (Astrid Stawiarz)
The Purple Fig (Astrid Stawiarz)
‘Would you like to see menus?” the sweet waitress at the Purple Fig asked 15 minutes after we’d ordered our meal. Welcome to the year’s eeriest new restaurant, a purple haze in need of an inventory manager.
The laughs came early and often at “celebrity chef” Conrad Gallagher’s discombobulated new bistro the other night. The fun began when a waitress dipped tongs into a basket to serve “bread” — three oversize crumbs, laboriously ladled onto my plate one at a time (see photo).
So I’m a rotten fig to trash a new place after a single visit. But a restaurant this ridiculous after six weeks begs for it in the kisser. What’s truly unfair is to send well-meaning employees into action without training, direction — or hope.
Waiters roamed the floor in varying states of trembling terror. One fellow, aware of our bread shortfall, returned with the basket to report sadly, “We only have an end left. Would you like that?”
Gallagher, a sort of cut-rate Gordon Ramsay, worked at several New York restaurants and earned a Michelin star in Ireland when he was just 26. He built a seven-restaurant empire in the UK — but soon lost it all to creditors.
In 2003, when he was running a bar on First Avenue, he was arrested for allegedly stealing artworks in New York, briefly jailed in Brooklyn and booted to Ireland, where he was acquitted of the charges. Today, he heads a Las Vegas-based “unique food and beverage consultancy group.”
Enter the Purple Fig. You’d never recognize it as the former, decades-long site of several cozy neighborhood taverns. (All-State Café, which closed in 2007, was the longest-lived.) Behind the bar squats a maroon smudge of flocked wallpaper and wine-dark carpet like those in prehistoric Italian joints — a look the hype machine characterizes as “romantic” and “elegant.”
The Purple Fig calls itself a “personal rendition of French bistro cuisine.” Personal, and how — whoever was in the kitchen Friday regarded fussy menu descriptions as mere nostalgia, to be discarded in favor of whatever happened to be lying around the house. (News flash: Gallagher is now called a “consulting chef” and one Sam Byrne, his protégé, is at the stove.)
Rich-flavored braised duck leg nearly redeemed “risotto” that was more accurately creamed rice. Mealy peas “replaced” asparagus. “Fricassee of enoki mushrooms and summer morels” with a miserly cut of swordfish ($29.95, if you must know) was 100 percent fricassee- and morel-free.
Between a waitress’ several determined attempts to pour tap water into our glasses of San Pellegrino — “I’m just making my water rounds, don’t worry about it” — a deep-fried soft egg salad arrived with yolk ice-cold and blood pudding congealed.
Promised clams were AWOL from a white bean casserole with salmon. The plate, however, took in a sea scallop that swam in from a different dish; it turned out, zanily enough, to be the night’s best-tasting item.
“Do I know you from Aquavit?” a manager butted in. “No? From Tocqueville? No? Do you live in the area?” Was I being spotted as a critic — or propositioned?
Vanilla panna cotta that failed to set arrived near-liquid. Espresso duck-egg creme brulee with raspberries was as grim as it sounded. It moreover lacked raspberries. “The ones that came in were very acidic, so our chef decided not to use them,” was the explanation.
“Our credit card machine is down,” the waiter apologized at the bitter end. “But there’s an ATM across the street.” I declined to feed the house piggy bank, signed the AmEx form they grudgingly produced and left a phone number as requested; they didn’t charge us for wine.
The TV had “The Three Stooges” on. Who said theme restaurants were over? Or can somebody tell me what the hell is going on here?