The new NoMad Bar just might have the best “tavern food” ever by a four-star chef. Its chicken pot pie cheaply channels the essence of its parent eatery’s exalted, sinfully stuffed bird. True, there’s a different kind of price to pay for instantaneous fabulousness — but we’ll get to that.
The “bar” arrived with more blog-buzz than a single new place can stand. Owner Will Guidara and partner/ chef Daniel Humm — who run four-star Eleven Madison Park and three-star NoMad Restaurant around the corner — have spun a more affordable party fantasy that mimics, at a higher decibel level, NoMad’s contemporary-plush look and shtick.
Tapping into Manhattan’s metastasizing lounge culture, where eating, boozing and making out share equal billing, the two-level playpen is drenched in mahogany and a sexy, golden light.
In a house that supposedly seats only 76, on a recent Saturday night there seemed to be twice as many at the bar alone — a towering, back-mirrored affair crowned by bottles stacked so high, it’s a wonder bartenders can reach them.
The crush of slovenly dressed drinkers all but spilled into laps of only slightly-more-neatly clad diners in pleated leather booths. I was glad to sit in the more orderly area upstairs, where a friend offered me a taste of her rare Clase Azul Repo tequila.
It was dandy. It was also $32 a glass, which it would have been nice of the waitress to mention. But killer cocktails are a piddling $16 by comparison. Most dishes, many entree-size, are a mere $9 to $19.
Mischief has the run of the menu. Swiss-born Humm kicks off his molecular-cooking gravitas, the way T.S. Eliot took a break from metaphysics for “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats.”
“Scotch olives” wittily riff on the old Brit pub snack, Scotch eggs. The olives are stuffed with feta and wrapped in lamb sausage, then panko-breaded and fried. You’ll want more than one. A log-size, bacon-wrapped hot dog could bludgeon a pit bull into submission.
On a more civilized Monday — a good night to avoid the zoo — Humm popped by and declared Sbrinz cheese, a pride of central Switzerland, “the greatest in the world.” I won’t argue: The massive block, served on its own with beer-mustard dip, is aged four years, and possessed an elemental, nutty depth worthy of the biggest Barolo you can afford.
After so many pleasures, fried chicken was inexplicably clumsily battered and dry. But NoMad Bar’s overnight claim to fame is chicken pot pie, a plebeian $36 for two versus $84 for the parent joint’s whole, roasted number. Its payload of truffles, fresh morels and foie gras — the latter eased off a skewer through the crust — convey the original’s decadent spirit, if not its elegance.
Sadly, the abundant pleasures might be lost on Slob Scourge clientele in need of the owners’ iron fist.
On Saturday, a bachelor party guy suffering an “episode” hogged one of the few precious unisex loos. From within: “Oagghaaad!”
“Ibuprofen,” begged a wobbly babe waiting her turn. “I have coke and Xanax,” a stranger offered. I saw neither, but I cringed over gross items left in the toilet by giggling women. Had I stumbled into a sleazy downtown club by accident?
Desserts banished the sour taste. A dark chocolate “candy bar” resembles the old Sky Bar gone to heaven. Prized, Tuscan Amedei chocolate encased oozy caramel textured with fleur de sel. It comes in a foil wrapper.
“We get to wrap them ourselves,” smiled our waitress. “I feel like I’m in Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.”