Keep those strong, “farm-driven” American dishes rolling out of the kitchen. Lose “red velvet cake” made with beets — shoot me, but I prefer Red Dye No. 2 for dessert. And mostly, get those outdoor dining areas set and lit up ASAP.
That’s my advice to the good people at Tavern on the Green, which opened last week after a four-year dark age. “Reopened” is the wrong word, because you won’t recognize the new restaurant at all, so utterly has the old one been redesigned and reshaped.
The great news is that Tavern’s back with a first-rank chef, Katy Sparks, and in the loving hands of Emerald Green Group’s Jim Caiola and David Salama, who’ve worked their hearts out since they were tapped by the city to relaunch it two years ago.
Writing critically about their baby so early is premature, unfair and maybe irresponsible. But New Yorkers have waited long enough to reclaim the 19th-century sheepfold buildings — they don’t need to wait weeks or months more to hear about what’s going on in there.
Yet it’s hard to describe the new place even in broad terms, because the “place” is only half there. Although three indoor rooms have opened, three vast al fresco areas, which will double the number of seats from 300 to 600, are at least a month away.
And the open-air portions aren’t yet furnished, illuminated or landscaped. Until they are, Tavern is akin to the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree when it’s raised and decorated, but not yet lit. Guests in the dining rooms now peer through windows into a black hole, rather than at the festive scene presumably to come.
A first glance inside happily blows away all the site’s previous baggage — the city’s tormented campaign to choose a new operator after its first choice backed out over union agita, Emerald Green’s own financial hiccups and inevitable construction delays inside and out.
It’s a thrill just to be back inside the landmarked structures, which the city magnificently restored. “Cavern on the Green” was an aching abyss in the park’s heart and in the city’s social and celebratory fabric.
A sexy, front Bar Room is anchored by a huge oval mahogany bar and framed by a curved, high-backed red banquette on one side and cozy, booth-like configurations of sofas on the other. It gives onto a “Central Park Room,” which the staff calls “our mini-Crystal Room” after its giant, gaudy, demolished predecessor.
Handsomely furnished in earth tones and off-white, it’s easily the best dining zone, thanks to parallel banquettes and tables which give everyone a good view of the courtyard through a floor-to-ceiling glass wall and of the open kitchen where Sparks presides over her platoons.
Beyond it sprawls the South Wing, which might or might not be the old Chestnut Room (no one’s really sure). It’s pretty at first glance, under a timbered, peaked ceiling that’s an integral limb of the structure’s 150-year-old bones.
Green banquettes and trim fit in nicely with the park. Botanical-embossed mirrors resemble the interior of Salama’s and Caiola’s Crêperie Beau Monde in Philadelphia.
But a stroll through the narrow confines crammed with small tables can feel like trying to reach the bathroom in a 747 coach cabin. A curtain charmlessly divides the space in two when a private event is going on. Diners seated opposite the banquettes face only a wall.
Saturday night, the door attendant rescued a tourist couple wandering through the park in the cold and needing a cab: “Come in, warm up, and I’ll help you get one,” he said. Imagine that in the surly-staffed old days! But some of the crew might be too chatty: “Are you enjoying your breadsticks?”
The menu is “organized by the way we bring food to the fire,” our well-drilled waiter informed us. Main categories — “The Hearth,” “The Grill” and “La Plancha” — are each divided into small and large plates. It’s confusing only for 10 seconds, and once you’ve chosen, the pleasures of Sparks’ famed affinity for seasonal and market-driven composition quickly reveal themselves.
I once wrote that Sparks’ “free-associating” style (her words) suggests a giant greenmarket to be tapped “for whatever sweet, sour or piquant note” a dish needs. Roasted Maine bouchot mussels in a vivid broth dense with thyme breadcrumbs evoked a glorious dish I had at her old place, Quilty’s in Soho.
Crimini mushrooms with Cabrales cheese and red chili sparkled on the tongue. I also loved baked Atlantic hake with golden potato purée and saffron, but I merely liked braised lamb shank laden with pickled golden raisins, cauliflower and mint gremolata — a wintry dish on a spring night.
Marvelous ocean scallops were luxuriously bathed in citrus butter; but jus-deprived chicken emerged from the flames too dry for marjoram-cumin marinade to fully redeem.
Still, even the weakest dishes clobber the best I had at the old Tavern. But although tasting nothing like their wretched predecessors, their fussy appearance can suggest the bad old days.
Sparks’ flavors are powerful enough not to need over-embellishment, and I hope she clarifies the presentations. Despite claims to being a “neighborhood” restaurant, Tavern will continue to be a venue for celebration; customers whooping it up don’t need to puzzle over what they’re eating.
Alas, the festive mood turns punitive with desserts, which try too hard with savory elements to (as the waiter put it) “lightly enhance our main menu.” This isn’t Tribeca or Williamsburg: I want banana splits and sweet cakes and pies — not candied fennel on ricotta cheesecake or beet cake masquerading as red velvet.
After all its delays, Tavern shows signs of having rushed to open: The grounds outside remain strewn with Dumpsters, while some of Sparks’ kitchen troops seem barely mobile as they stand awaiting orders.
And of course, the great outdoors is yet to come. I can’t wait to return when the restaurant is whole — and when a grown-up Tavern may at last be the great institution for which New Yorkers have so patiently waited.