South Gate

154 Central Park S., near Seventh Ave.
(212-484-5120)

There’s something resolutely male about South Gate, the new restaurant at the Jumeirah Essex House, the historic Art Deco hotel across from Central Park. Designed by Tony Chi as part of a ninety-million-dollar renovation, it’s a bachelor pad writ large: walls of mirrors, divided into angled grids, like the peel of a disco ball; leather everywhere, even on the tabletops, in various shades of latte; and, flanked by half-stocked bookshelves, a minimalist gas fireplace in which a long ripple of flame seems to leap straight from stone. All that’s missing is a bearskin rug.

But if the goal here is sly seduction, the service is slightly off-kilter. When asked which dishes best showcased the chef’s style, a waiter proclaimed, “All of them. It is like nothing you have tasted before.” Further details were not forthcoming: a pavé cut was described with karate-chop hand gestures (it turned out to be a square); the word “Lillet” drew a blank; and any question about an entrée was answered with a rearrangement of the ingredients already listed on the menu. (Of the spice-roasted cod with mustard greens: “We take the cod. We roast it with spice. There are mustard greens.”)

The exaggeration does injustice to the chef, Kerry Heffernan, formerly of Eleven Madison Park. There are no pyrotechnics here: the food is straightforward (if highly refined) American, with a gracious nod to the season, and, for the most part, it’s quite good. Tender rings of flash-seared calamari in a lobster-coriander sauce are balanced against the delicate but unmistakable earthiness of a cauliflower custard; edamame-and-ricotta cannelloni, strewn with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, stand out as a rarity: a truly inventive vegetarian dish. Other offerings suffer slightly in execution. The wild-mushroom Martini, for instance, would be better if simply presented as a soup—its flavors are foresty and deep—rather than poured muddily into a glass, with a ghostly poached egg bobbing to the brown surface and a swampy mass of “spinach fondue” sunk below. Perhaps sensing something amiss, a waiter on a recent evening attempted to spark a conversation between two neighboring tables: “Look! Everyone is ordering the mushroom Martini!” The couples addressed looked over at each other, aghast, and then without a word turned back to their private whispers. (Open Mondays through Saturdays for lunch and dinner, and Sundays for brunch and dinner. Entrées $24-$39.)

(Photograph: Sarah Mangerson)

The New Yorker, May 5, 2008

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