The Breslin

"But avoid the beef shin with polenta and black cabbage at all costs. It’s muddy in flavor, terribly dry", said Sam Sifton, the New York Times food reviewer. And yet that's the dish we enjoyed most on our visit to the Breslin a few weeks ago, an evocation of a Franco-Italian mother's sunday stew, neither muddy or dry. Did Sifton go on an off night? Does he dislike stew? Is his taste not a useful proxy for mine? I'm not yet sure.

To be honest, we were first drawn to The Breslin by the extraordinary coffee at Stumptown Coffee Roasters, which shares the first floor of the Ace Hotel with the Breslin. As an aside, I am now entirely unsure whether the best coffee in Manhattan belongs to Stumptown or to Zibetto, which fueled me twice daily during a 4 month trial in the Southern District of New York I recently completed. I have started to be converted to Stumptown - the staff there has mastered the art of micro-foam to a degree I had not realized possible.

In any case, with the inimitable April Bloomfield at the controls, and a 1 star review from the apparently hard-to-please Sifton, the buzz factor at The Breslin is high. And faux-speak easy decor aside, for once the buzz is well deserved. We snacked on an exquisite smoked salmon, smoked lightly in the kitchen (with lemon butter sauce), enjoyed a crisp brussel sprout and duck salad (with various smoked meats), and finished our meal with a joyful evocation of sticky toffee pudding, the greatest of the British boiled puddings, in my view (soaked, of course, in butterscotch and served with ice cream). As Mr. Sifton says, The Breslin is "10 colors of fat", and on that - unlike on the beef shin - we agree entirely.