When I finally got around to ordering Lafayette’s bouillabaisse royale, an argument-starter since Andrew Carmellini’s endlessly awaited “grand cafe” opened in mid-April, they’d dropped it: “Too hot for it now,” the waitress explained to my chagrin.
But the way Lafayette’s not-entirely French menu relentlessly bends to seasonal and market whims is its charm. Even with kinks to work out, the enthralling work in progress has gelled enough in two months to join the ranks of great, newish Manhattan restaurants like Boulud Sud, the Nomad and ABC Kitchen.
It marks Carmellini’s return to French cooking since his star turn years ago at Cafe Boulud. But the 170-seat brasserie he’s launched on a throbbing Noho corner with partners Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard belongs to an arrondissement decidedly not Paris: giant windows on two sides reveal a zone of big-spending bar-hoppers en route to their next coma.
The first month, the house wobbled like the sidewalk boozers. House-pride chicken for two, churned out before our eyes on a giant rotisserie, was a flavor-devoid, moisture-free calamity. Sommeliers poured wine by the glass up to $22 without offering a taste. The green crew set a record of sorts one night by completely rearranging all of our silver, china and glassware twice in three minutes.
The duck au poivre at Andrew Carmellini’s Lafayette. (Anne Wermiel/NY Post)
Things have matured since then, as befits a room designed more for grown-ups than Carmellini’s cramped Locanda Verde and ear-splitting the Dutch. (Service seven days from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m., smaller items $5 to $18, pasta $18 to $24, most entrees $28 to $36). Beyond an eye-catching retail bakery near the door, tiled columns, a long zinc bar and caramel banquettes under a 16-foot high ceiling announce a post-Balthazar downtown brasserie drawings all walks, from Naomi Watts with Liev Schreiber to over-lipo’d cougar types loudly dissecting their romances.
But the decibel level’s bearable. Booths big enough for 10 arrayed in “intimate quadrants” have elbow room between them. The nighttime glow from sconces in festive arcs atop the bare, arched windows soften the room’s prefab touches; by day, those same windows sharpen the edges of a parking garage across the street.
Nominally pan-regional French, much of the menu comes across as French-influenced modern-American. What’s emerging from chef de cuisine Damon Wise’s kitchen by any description is mostly grand. The chicken (at $38 for two, the cheapest entree), although much improved, isn’t the reason to go. Nor are charcuterie, pate maison or duck mousse tartine, all good but available at 100 “Le’s” and “La’s” around town.
More original pleasures start with magnificent, farm-driven salads which Carmellini mastered years before the style’s apotheosis at ABC Kitchen — notably right now, a palate-tingler of Migliori farm snap peas and ricotta salata in assertively minty, herbal sauce verte.
No one who loves oyster sliders at The Dutch should miss “oysters sargent,” succulent Maine Blue Points served not on buns but baked in their shells, garnished with seaweed butter breadcrumbs; they slide down just as easily.
Carmellini calls the style “measurably lighter” than traditional French. That we’ve heard it before makes it no less compelling in one prettily composed dish after another.
A gigantic soft-shell crab, as sweet as the batter was crackling, drew uninhibited moans of bliss. Steamed red snapper appeared to float atop basil sauce that gently complexioned the supple fish. Wood-grilled local trout, originally served with lentils and beans, now comes with haricot veloute, yellow wax beans, sunflower sprouts and creamy sauce Veronique; it’s splendid either way, the skin near-black, the flesh pristine.
I miss suavely cosmopolitanized rabbit casserole from an early visit, but duck “au poivre” happily remains — sliced, peppered breast meat aligned like dominos amidst organic quinoa and couscous, and daikon radishes, all brought to a ravishing rich turn by bacon-port glaze; Darjeeling-poached kumquats on top lend a sweet, giggling note.
Strangely, while Carmellini’s pasta was inspired at A Voce and his current other restaurants, Lafayette’s seem fussy, like “spaghetti nicoise” with tuna randomly cooked from barely seared to well-done. They were redeemed by adorable, sunflower-shaped fleur de soleil with peas, crackling snap peas and mint, a primavera worthy of an overworked name they wisely don’t use.
They just dropped my favorite of pastry chef Jen Yee’s desserts: burnt honey vacherin, which folded nougatine brittle with nuts into a dome of honey ice cream crowned with cardamom meringue. Bring it back! Until then, I’ll settle for black forest flambe set momentarily ablaze — a kind of cherry baked Alaska with chocolate. Avoid at all costs pickled (yes, pickled) blueberry sorbet.
For birthdays, they wheel out a “macaron tower” that spews a sparkler-like flame. But the true fireworks are in the kitchen, borne of Carmellini’s protean talent that’s worthy of his grand ambition.