To be fabulous, a new restaurant doesn’t need to be edgy or even particularly adventurous. Take Clement on the Peninsula Hotel’s second floor, previously home to a succession of feeble attempts at culinary adequacy.
Clement belongs to a mostly discredited ilk — a “hotel restaurant” run in-house, with no Jean-Georges Vongerichten or Andrew Carmellini to impart buzz.
Expecting little better than a spiffed up version of its creaky, over-upholstered, underperforming predecessor The Fives, I avoided Clement after it opened in October. But since I finally took the plunge in April, I’ve had one memorably fine meal after another. Chef de cuisine’s Brandon Kida’s menu — seasonal, farm-driven, yada yada — recalls those of first-class modern-American Manhattan eateries such as Gotham Bar & Grill, Gramercy Tavern and Aureole.
Clement is one of those intimate, white linen-tablecloth boîtes sexy enough to make grown-ups, if not kids, crave a room upstairs. The warm floor crew revives the lost art of poised service that knows when not to butt in.
A bright, top-to-bottom redesign banishes every trace of The Fives. Design shop Yabu Pushelberg set up distinct dining areas with window views of tourist-trampled Fifth Avenue. Textured, crushed paper set into square wall boxes resembles book spines in a “library.” A “color room” in a single color, gold, is dominated by a mural, which — if you strain your eyes — depicts jungle vines engulfing the Manhattan skyline.
Few New Yorkers likely know Kida’s name. His menu shuns revolutionary, blogs-inflaming effects.
Built around premium raw materials, it merely tastes wonderful. (Dinner starters $23 to 28, most mains $26 to 42.) Call it conservative if you insist. But heirloom beet salad bested any I’ve had in a year, a multi-hued haystack of roots delicately dressed in lemon vinaigrette. Hazelnut vinaigrette adds sparkle, and burrata a certain creamy gravitas to “Taste of Spring,” a happy medley of snap, English and snow peas and asparagus and elderflower.
Prettily composed main dishes stop short of being fussy. I found nary a sauce or a seasoning out of register with a main element. Yuzu over-citricizes dishes all over town. But here, a judicious hint of it set a trio of buttery sea scallops dancing on the palate.
Waiters give many dishes the lush-pour treatment. Duck broth over pan-roasted black sea bass lent the fish unaccustomed depth without nullifying its flavor. White bean purée brought a magic touch to crackling-topped porcelet and octopus. Grits with a risotto-like texture sensuously partnered butter-poached Maine lobster.
The only real failure was tempura-style soft shell crab. Too much panko breading overwhelmed the crab — it “belongs on fried chicken,” my friend snarked.
Pastry chef Deden Putra’s savory-free desserts are complex but not precious. Don’t miss “Eton mess semifreddo,” an urbanized, vacherin-like take on an English school treat. Fresh-cut strawberries hum a merry tune with crushed lime meringue, lemon curd and Chantilly cream.
And in an age when floor-roving “beverage managers” can’t tell Chateau Petrus from Mateus, Clement has wonderful wine service to go with a strong list.
When I mentioned to sommelier Jared Fischer an awful Barolo I’d had at a certain new place that’s been punished enough, he offered us at meal’s end a taste of Cappellano Barolo Chinato — a complex, herbal and quinine-laced “digestif” that’s nothing like undrinkable Fernet Branca.
He wanted to surprise us with something unfamiliar but marvelous that we’d be excited to tell our friends about. And we’ve been doing just that.