The West Branch
Posted by bellastraniera - 02/11/09 at 11:11 am When an upscale chef embarks on a downscale restaurant, does the place get elevated or the chef get knocked down a notch? Tom Valenti is the latest of a number of respected New York chefs to go the casual route, opening the West Branch, a gastro pub to complement his successful Upper West Side restaurant Ouest a few blocks away.
The interior feels like a sophisticated sports bar, with a flat screen TV in the bar room and two separate dining rooms paneled in antiqued mirrors. The owners didn’t take too many risks on the décor, which is homey but sleek, with standard wooden chairs and simple drop lighting overhead. And the crowd that filled the bar that night was decidedly un-fratty, a big relief on the Upper West Side.
Unfortunately, the front of the house did not make as good an impression as the atmosphere. We made a reservation several days in advance via Open Table and specifically requested a table with a view of the TV, since the World Series would be on. But when we arrived, an irritated hostess told us that “several people already had the same idea.” She seated us in the far corner, at the only table in the bar area that did not have a view, pushing the tables together with a loud scrape.
Why, oh why, do restauranteurs mess up the front of the house? As Frank Bruni noted during his talk at the NYC Wine & Food Festival, it is the easiest thing to control. And yet restaurants all over the city seem not to care enough if they make a bad first impression, either at the door or on the phones.
The was some evidence of a more experienced restauranteur at work on the menu, because between the usual burgers and mussels there were more gourmet items like a frisee salad with lardons, gougeres, and duck confit. The only problem was, the “gastro” part of the equation seemed to be missing. Gougeres didn’t have the intensely cheesy bite that should elevate them over a regular cheese roll, and the country salad of frisee and lardons ($14) lacked the vinegary sharpness that usually balances out the creamy egg and fatty bacon cubes.
Both were bland and undersalted, which is hard to do with either of these dishes. These two French dishes served more as a nagging reminder of the food you would be eating at an actual gastro pub.
At least the marinated beets and goat cheese salad ($11) had a winning sweet-salty flavor, balanced out by the earthy crunch of toasted hazelnuts.
Surprisingly for a chef whose strength is usually offal meats and meatloaf, Valenti’s best dishes at this new restaurant were the seafood items. Oysters from British Columbia and New Brunswick were sparkling fresh and carefully shucked so that a layer of seawater added to the slurping.
The West Branch’s deep fried cod in the fish and chips ($21) is some of the best in the city. A crackling, lightly salted, deep fried batter exterior gives way to the soft, flaky, mild cod underneath. Doused in vinegar, the fish is amazing. The fries underneath could have fared better, however: they were cakey and suffered from more blandness.
A couple of the meats were dry, like the duck confit ($22) and the house-ground hamburger ($19). The burger did have a nice steak flavor, but they might need to add more fat to that house-ground mix to keep it from drying out on the grill. Duck confit was rather sad and depleted of flavor, though the homemade pork and fennel sausage alongside perked it up a little.
The only dish to veer into the American South, the grilled pork chop with braised collard greens ($25), was quite tasty and worth a try. The kitchen sourced a very tender, meaty cut of pork with a delicious nugget of a center, and the collard greens alongside were stewed nearly to falling apart in rich, porky broth.
One common misperception about the gastro pub seems to be that’s it’s a fast and easy way for a restauranteur to make money. Yet the devil is in the details at both the high and low levels of dining, and there’s nothing slapdash about enduring gastro pubs like the Spotted Pig. As Wikipedia defines it, “a gastro pub concentrates on quality food.” If the kitchen’s concentration is lacking, even if the atmosphere hits just the right note, it’s just going to be a pub like any one of a number of sports bars on the Upper West Side.
The West Branch
2178 Broadway at 77th Street
212-777-6764
thewestbranchnyc.com
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bellastraniera
a.k.a. Marcy Swingle - obsessed with food and fashion.
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