e a t e r y R O W

MCSORLEY'S OLD ALE HOUSE

• 15 East 7th Street

• New York, NY 10003

• (212) 473-9148 •

New York City, like most cities that have been around long enough, is peppered with cultural anchors that tie us to a history and root our collective identity to the greater whole. Even someone from far away can feel like like part of the group. As the city modernizes and changes at breakneck speed, these anchors are a security blanket keeping us from feeling swept away. McSorley's Old Ale House, like a folded slice of pizza or a huge pastrami sandwich is, to some, one such anchor; a reminder of an old New York that has miraculously never gone the way of FAO Schwarz and the Ziegfeld Theater.

This is only half true. McSorley's is like FAO Schwarz. See, in real life, the only people who shopped at FAO were tourists who wanted to go someplace quintessentially New York, like they were in a movie. And, if my trips to McSorley's are proof of anything, that's who goes here too. Sure, there were a few non-tourists. Me, for example. And the guy reading the paper in the corner with the cheese plate. We were in the minority.

See, McSorley's is a theme restaurant - pardon me. Theme bar. An old interior with old brass, old glass, sawdust, and a worn, disheveled bar that, elsewhere would be a sign of decrepitude. The walls of the rear dining room are wallpapered with newspaper articles and posters about the bar, dating back through time. The place is a showcase to it's age. Once you realize that it's all just a big show, it loses its appeal as a neighborhood haunt... to me. To the throngs of folks who jam their way inside here, the appeal is very apparent. Don't pay attention to these photos below. Two of the three times I went recently, the place was wall-to-wall people. Mostly tourists, you can tell, but them's the ones what pays the bills.

Anyway, this isn't a blog for Lonely Planet or Fodor's, so let's talk about the food. I went to McSorley's a little after lunchtime to avoid the crowds and met my dad, Dudeman, who was interested in seeing how much, if at all, the spot had changed since her was last here in the 1980s. We grabbed a seat just inside the rear dining area and waited for the waiter to notice or even care. He did not. The service at McSorley's is both atrocious and immediate. It took forever for anyone to pay attention to us, but after that, our glasses were never far from full.

There are two beers at McSorley's, an ale and a porter. There is no third choice. No tripels or IPAs or sours. When you order a pint, they give you two half pint glasses, each one-third filled with foam and half of it will spill on the table when they slam it down in front of you. Both are rather thin, extremely light, and almost nonalcoholic. We ordered three rounds and I could have driven home. Taste-wise, I give them a five out of ten. For lunch, Dudeman got the Corn Beef Sandwich, which he thought was pretty good and I was indifferent towards. I got the Cheeseburger with Fries. Their food menu is rather... limp. The fries were fine, although the burger was actually pretty good, but also totally laughable. As soon as it landed in front of me, I felt crushed. I wanted some kind of vintage burger. Something to take me back to 1875. Instead I got a clearly frozen meat patty with a slice of unmelted cheese on a store-bought bun. This is the hamburger you'd get at a cafeteria when the pizza sliced rotating in the carousel looked too old to bother with. At least it was cheap.

McSorley's is less a local bar run by stubborn Luddites refusing to bend to the will of time than it is a museum with beer. It's a place for tourists, like a restaurant in Colonial Williamsburg, but with fewer tri-corner hats. That's how it's survived. And with a lower overhead than FAO Schwarz, it seems likely to be here for another hundred years. Faux nostalgia, however, cannot substitute for the real thing, and there are plenty of places out there that are real, even if they aren't as old.

VAUCLUSE

• 100 East 63rd Street

• New York, NY 10065

• (646) 869-2300 • 

If being more or less single for well over a year does anything, it cuts dining out way, way down. This is especially the case for the fancy, white-shoe places typically frequented by the older, moneyed set that regularly gets profiled in the Times' Style section or the expense account people for whom the meal is basically free, only actually costing them time that could be spent with people they actually enjoy being with. As I fall into neither category, Emma's unexpected desire to eat out someplace swank was pounced on the way a hyena, having wandering the desert for days, would pounce on a succulent seared fois gras under a light but tart orange demi glace.

Vaucluse is not the most expensive of the chichi Upper East Side luxo-haunts of the wealthy, but that doesn't mean that you'll be doing your wallet any favors by choosing it over, say, a Denny's. There's no tasting menu, a trope that the shmancy spots love; the wine list averages between $100-200 per bottle and doesn't drop below $60, but it has almost nothing that I saw of the ridiculous $1000+ variety which, in real life, only exists so that certain living irritants out there can prove that they're able to multi-task by demonstrating how they can eat a meal while waving their dicks at the same time.

Vaucluse is big. There are two large dining rooms separated by a bar area complete with the kind of soft comfy chairs one would read a paper in while smoking a pipe and sipping a glass of port. Everyone on staff was friendly and smiling; there were no dirty looks when I started snapping pictures. If you don't count the hostess, Emma and I, both in our 30s, were the youngest people here. Maybe because it was a Friday night so the Millennials were debating craft IPAs in the Village and the GenXers were at a Vinegar Hill wine and cheese party. Here in the East 60s, it was us and the Me Generation, eating escargot.

Vaucluce is one of Michael White's restaurants, but unlike Marea and Ai Fiori, does not carry a Michelin star. Indeed, since its opening, the press has rather consistently called it inconsistent; the literary equivalent of pivoting your palm like a see-saw, thumb pinky, thumb pinky. I try not to read too much about a restaurant before I go to one and was unaware of this opinion at the time, but they weren't wrong. Allow me to explain. 

Below you will see the amuse bouche, which was a salmon pastry, and below that you will see the butter than came with our bread. The salmon was thoroughly pleasant and inoffensive and dull and I even forget if it even salmon. After the meal, another amuse bouche arrived, some kind of cube of tangerine gelatin that was also forgettable. Emma took a nibble and gave the rest to me with a somewhat upturned lip. The bread (I chose sourdough) was perfectly fine without being more than fine. But the butter was very cute.

Emma ordered the Tartare de Boeuf, beef tartar. Seasoned raw beef with capers, a little pickle, and some toast on the side. This was a different style that I was used to. Typically, the beef tartars I've ordered are sliced very thin, like wispy sheets of meat. This was more like a raw hamburger patty. I'm not lying when I write that the first thought that crossed my mind was "that thing needs a Weber". It even has the pickle. But humor aside, it was good. Not the best I've ever had, but don't tell that to the guy at the table next to us, who took it upon himself to let us know that he gets this dish all the time and it's the best he's ever had anywhere. Emma, to be fair, also swooned. I got to swoon with my appetizer, the Escargots a la Bourgulgnonne, snails in a veritable stew of red carmargue rice, feta cheese, and garlic parsley butter. It was far from the traditional escargot you might have in your head. The escargots, usually a conduit for garlic butter and pesto, were just one important part of an otherwise incredible whole. Creamy, tangy, and rich, this was unlike any other snail-based dish I've ever had, and was the standout winner of the evening. "Just close your eyes and think of England" I told Emma, holding a fork out. She who was wondering if she would like escargot wondered no more. 

Not wanting an entire entree, Emma was delighted to learn that Vaucluse offers its pasta dishes in appetizer or entree size. So for her entree, she ordered the appetizer version of the Epaulettes, a rabbit and cheese ravioli with a black truffle sauce. Amazing. We loved it. You should get this. I stuck with the rabbit theme and ordered the Lapin a la Moutarde, a roast rabbit leg with barley, bacon, and a dijon mustard sauce. This was all but impossible to eat. The rabbit leg was perfectly cooked. It was so tender and so juicy that it was almost like eating rabbit cream. But the dijon mustard sauce was so heavy, so present, so powerful, that it overwhelmed the entire dish. Here's how I can best describe it: imagine that you're at the supermarket and you see a bottle of Grey Poupon, the kind with the whole seeds. Now imagine eating a big spoonful straight out of the bottle. That's what this was like. But with rabbit and barley. I ate as much as I could, and finished the rabbit by and large, but the vast majority of the rest was left on the plate.

But then came dessert. You can't go to a fancy spot and not get at least one dessert. So we did. We ordered the Tarte au Citron, a lemon cream dessert in a brown sugar crust with a little bit of lemon sorbet on the side, random dollops of cream and meringue, and a candied slice of lemon. Everything about the dessert was fantastic. The candied lemon slice was perfect. The cream itself was neither too tart to too heavy. They crust was delicious. The sorbet was... well it was sorbet. We loved dessert.

So, can I recommend Vaucluse? Kinda. Some things were excellent. Bar none. Some things needed barring. For the price, this means that you could wind up walking away feeling like you just landed on the moon, or feeling like you got swindled. It's a crap shoot, but some people love to gamble. I personally have my doubts that I'd return, at least on my own dime. But if I do, I'm getting the escargot. Actually, I might return just for the escargot. I'll grab a seat in the bar with my pipe and my port and have them arrive in perpetuity.

Our meal consisted of three glasses of wine, two appetizers, one appetizer, one entree, and one dessert. Add tax and tip to that and we came in just shy of $200.

THE GARRETT

• 296 Bleeker Street

• New York, NY 10014

• (212) 675-6157 •

The modern speakeasy doesn't have a password, but it doesn't announce its presence either. With its website, recipe books, constant press, and completely public listing in the yellow pages right where any self respecting shamus could find it, Death & Company is hardly hidden. But the odds are that the first time you go, you'll miss it. The Garret does it one better. To get into The Garrett, you walk into a completely nondescript Five Guys Burgers & Fries, walk all the way to the back and turn up a stairwell. It's somewhat amusing to see people eating 1000 calorie greaseburgers looking on with some confusion as a stream of well-dressed folks wander inside, bypass the food line, and disappear in the back.

There are a precious few things that I take non-prurient pleasure in. Crisp fall air. Mystery novels. Thunderstorms with lots of thunder. Included on this list are cocktails and the bars that know how to serve them. The Garrett was supposed to be that kind of place, serving that kind of thing.

I took Bro to The Garrett because, as I said, I get a kick out of its kind of place. We arrived on a Saturday afternoon, figuring that we'd be able to avoid standing on a line if we arrived early in the day. The music was funky but chill, there were quite a few seats at the bar, and there was an eclectic group of people hanging out, chatting with friends. We ordered some drinks. Good ones. The bartender, who looked more like a skateboarder than a speakeasy drink slinger, knew his business and we didn't once feel ignored or forgotten. But, in short order, the atmosphere shifted. The crowd grew, the music got louder. Before we knew it, the Garrett stopped being a cocktail lounge.

Two of the lowest forms of city denizen are Finance Brah and Arm Candy Girl. They're locusts that swarm into an area and rape it of its charm. Finance Brah, with his wannabe GQ Brylcreem haircut doesn't order a Paper Plane (bourbon, amaro, Aperol, lemon juice), or a Beatles at Shea (black tea and peach infused bourbon, drambui, chipotle agave, ardberg, lemon and mint), he orders a beer. In a bottle. This enables Brah to clink said bottle with the bottles that the other brahs are holding while screaming "yeah brah!" Arm Candy Girl doesn't order a Black Alps (rye, pur blood orange, Cynar, orange oil), because OMG, like what are those things? Cray ingredients LOL! She'll take a vodka cran because, like, it's totes her drink.

There's no host, so there's no one to police the volume of patrons; no one to say, "sorry, guys, you'll have to wait downstairs until we get some free space." There no server, so there's no one to serve anyone not directly at the bar. Everyone standing waves credit cards around attempting to get the bartender's attention and everyone sitting at tables has to get up, wade through the crowd of brahs and candies and do the same. Arms will shoot past your face to pick up drinks. Someone will hit your chair. Someone else will hit your chair. A third person will... What's supposed to be a cute hidden lounge; a place where the chandeliers, cushioned chairs, copper ceiling, top shelf hooch, and skilled craftsmen create an oasis of refinement on Seventh Avenue instead turns out to be the pricier cousin of a Murray Hill Solo-Cup douchebar.

So... conclusion... You have to ask? Do you have any idea how badly I wanted to like this place? I mean, it hits all the marks, almost. In a sense, I guess I can't blame The Garrett for the quality of its customers, but then again, of course I can. They make up a huge part of the atmosphere. It's like saying that there's absolutely nothing wrong with staying a that particular hostel, except that the other residents will steal your bags while you're out sightseeing. There's absolutely nothing wrong with Corona Park, it's just the people who use it litter like it's their job. The McDonalds by the Port Authority is centrally located and recently renovated and you'll love it if you ignore the junkies who camp out there and the drug dealers in the bathroom.

By the way, that fourth cocktail is a custom one Bro asked for. Don't ask me what's in it, but it was a bastardization of something he had once upon a time at STK.