“Upstairs has a completely different menu,” the cheerful hostess told us the other night at down-bound Greenwich Project.
In fact, it doesn’t. But how would she know? The discombobulated bistro’s romantic second floor, a “haven for those who desire a more formal dining experience,” was closed on all three of my recent visits.
Some restaurants are out of touch with customers. New, modern-American Greenwich Project is out of touch with itself. When you’re open seven days a week, customers expect the whole place, not just the ground-floor “lounge” that feels like an annex.
It’s convivial enough, but cramming everyone in there takes its toll. One night, cocktails didn’t arrive for nearly 20 minutes — after we’d finished bread and the amuse-bouche. Waiters brought the wrong check (not in our favor) two nights in a row. One blamed the computer; the other apologized, “I was just frazzled.”
Greenwich Project has a talented if over-reaching chef, Carmine Di Giovanni. It also boasts the best-looking crowd of any West Eighth Street eatery between Fifth and Sixth avenues, a stretch once famed for bookstores and shoe stores, but now infamous for empty stores.
The warmly-lit two-level townhouse setting beckons through the gloom. The well-polished ground floor gleams in red brick and white tile, burnt-orange banquettes and timbered ceiling.
A white staircase beckons you to the forbidden upstairs with gray banquettes, pressed-tin ceiling and tall mullioned windows over the street.
One June evening when the house was full, eager for a distraction from one baffling, over-complicated dish after another, we watched through the window as a male and female cop scurried mysteriously between their parked car below and points unknown.
The antics on the plate needed some law and order, too — from peekytoe crab ruined by peppers and tart grapefruit to peach-asparagus salad lost to mystery foam and supermarket jar-tasting trout roe.
Was there something pickled going on as well? “Yeah, the menu should say that,” the waiter agreed.
The kitchen’s too busy applying “twists” (and tons of herbs, fruits and nuts) to almost everything; four months later, it has yet to tame its over-complicating ways. Sweet potato soup tasted mainly of marshmallows over which it was poured. “Odd Couple” — sweetbread, snails and bacon in roast garlic, proving they can’t count any better than their computer — is scrunched into a tiny round bowl.
Even on Sunday night, Coho salmon should not have bones and an inch-long piece of cartilage. At no time should it be served with dry and bitter grains the server called “farro greens” — actually farro tinted with Thai-basil pistou and cilantro.
At least tuna tartare miraculously retained its sea quality despite a baroque mash-up of ponzu, sesame oil, jalapenos, scallions, grapefruit and kumquat, stacked on citrus-tapioca crackers and soy vinaigrette.
Heritage Farm double-cut pork chop — one of a rotating lineup of roasts-for-two — and Colorado rack of lamb were among the deepest-flavored cuts I’ve had in ages. They show what Di Giovanni can do when he keeps things simple.
Then, desserts turned the ball back over, like “bake-less” cheesecake wanting a graham cracker crust beneath it, not watery graham cracker ice cream on the side.
When we asked what had become of the Central Coast Pinot Noir we’d asked for by the glass, they apologized, “We’re trying to track down that bottle.”
Forget wine — Greenwich Project needs to find itself. Eighth Street doesn’t need another empty storefront.