The rustic suckling pig (left) is one of the city’s best, and the kale salad (right) might start a salad revolution.
With a lively atmosphere, Manzanilla may go far to fill Manhattan’s void of modern Spanish restaurants with its deep wine list, tasty small plates and a stylish roomy space. (
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New York is finally starting to “get” modern Spanish cuisine. Not that catching up with the civilized world came easily: For years, whenever a brave chef or owner launched a quixotic quest to bring the style here, they were tilting at windmills — and the windmills chewed them up.
New Manzanilla conquers a Park Avenue South party-time space where you’d expect another steakhouse. Good-looking, fun and usually full, it never pushed my decibel meter over the 90-level pain threshold. It might not yet be the best Spanish restaurant in Manhattan, but it’s the biggest (150 seats), most comfortable, good one by a mile.
It also boasts a strong, Spanish-heavy wine list, the city’s best and most numerous sherry offerings, and waiters who actually seem to enjoy waiting on you.
About time: Too much of our best Spanish food is served in cramped, noisy tapas traps where “service” means, “Everything comes out as it’s ready.” Too many tries at serving an ambitious menu in a grown-up way laid immediate eggs. Weird, astronomically priced Romera, which lasted less than a year, might have set the cause back for eons all by itself.
Into the killing ground boldly strides Manzanilla, owned by Boqueria founder Yann de Rochefort. His partner, executive chef Dani Garcia, also runs Calima — in the southern Spanish town of Marbella — which boasts two Michelin stars.
Be skeptical: New York’s best Spanish food is mainly inspired by northern styles, especially Basque and Catalan — not by a southern seacoast resort town. Nor is it reassuring that Garcia is back for the moment in Marbella, where he’s “currently reopening Calima for the season.”
But Manzanilla’s menu — call it modern-Andalusian light — works, even if some dishes strike you as modern-American adorned by the odd foam or padrón pepper. “My cod’s good, but what’s Spanish about it?” a friend mused. Maybe the name “bacalao.”
The brasserie-proportioned space sports a vague blush of Moorish-Andalusian style, graced by a 13-foot-high ceiling, herringbone-patterned tile floor, and glowing, back-lit latticework. Seating touches all the bases, from booths and banquettes to an endless communal table with lots more elbow room than most.
If not always revelatory, Manzanilla’s flavor constellations are persuasive enough. (At least at night: The kitchen’s not as sharp at lunch.) If you fear tuna cooked in liquid oxygen or eel ice cream, relax: “Modern” doesn’t mean “molecular.” Expect a spirited, more seasonally driven way with traditional strengths of the Spanish table.
Garcia and de Rochefort said they didn’t want a tapas joint. Yet, the few small plates ($8 to $12) are winners, especially crunchy squirty squid-ink-and-cuttlefish croquettes and lascivious pork belly sliders on steamed brioche buns lavished in coarse-grain mustard.
Strangely, full-blown appetizers (most $13 to $14) are weaker. Too-sweet “spicy” pimenton foam did no favors to spongy octopus. A rare stab at cutting-edge presentation — cured sliced scallops amid puddles of ajo blanco (white gazpacho) and fried serrano ham crisps — should come with instructions: what to taste first, and why?
But if you’ve had your fill of kale salad, Garcia’s might change your mind: everybody loved it every time. The pretty ambrosia’s as compelling as it looks. Runny, poached quail eggs offset the tang of Valdeón blue cheese; puffed wheat and almonds make a crackling counterpoint to the tender greens. Light black olive dressing pulls it all together.
Most entrees ($26 to $34) command high ground. Intense and moist, tarragon- and spinach-stuffed chicken roulade almost made up for predictably dry breast meat. Bomba rice blackened with squid ink is done risotto-style, unlike Luis Bollo’s paella version at Salinas. (In fact, there’s no paella on the menu at all.) I miss crunchy socarrat at the bottom, but sweet shrimp and pasta-like cuttlefish ribbons that melt on the tongue compensated.
Garcia and chef de cuisine Santiago Guerrero have their pork down. Suckling pig is one of the town’s best. Meat and skin are pressed into a terrine and served over butternut squash puree; the rugged, rustic flavor bleeds exuberantly through the crackling.
Among fun desserts ($10), our loyalties lay with lush vanilla rice pudding beneath a hat of raspberry-powdered cotton candy. Avoid the monotonous $19 cheese plate.
Too many restaurants close and are replaced by banks or stores. Reversing the trend, Manzanilla moved into a former Staples branch. The way it’s going, we won’t have to worry about another Duane Reade takeover for a long time to come.