Going Public
Jean-Georges’ scene-y new spot turns out party fare for the downtown set
JEAN-GEORGES Vongerichten’s Public Kitchen at Ian Schrager’s teeming new Public Hotel on Chrystie Street promises “the best of ‘New York’ food” for “all tastes and diets” and “international flavors that make up the Lower East Side.”
But let’s cut through all the promotional hype and call it what it is: downtown, partytime cuisine that actually works.
Just 3 months old, hard-edged Public Kitchen is a “scene” with food better than it needs to be. It rounds all the millennial-pleasing bases needed to score the No. 1 spot on the Eater.com Manhattan “Heat Map” for September.
Some 150 seats, including deep, round booths, sprawl between walls of white-glazed tiles. A pleated gold banquette facing the open kitchen offers the only flash of color. (The al fresco garden pictured in promotional shots has yet to open.)
The austere décor suits the diners, 90 percent of whom wear the same old black. “Music” is a metronomic, five-beat thump. Lock up your ears on nights when the scene in an adjoining coffee shop cum luncheonette called Louis, also run by Vongerichten, reaches a rolling boil.
All dishes are “meant to be shared,” we’re told repeatedly. The sweet but under-schooled floor crew is also given to odd non sequiturs. Why doesn’t the cocktail list tell us that Monkey Shoulder, a spirit used in “Stroke of Luck,” is a type of scotch? The helpful answer: “Yes, absolutely!”
Executive chef Thomas McKenna’s kitchen runs better than it did in June, when corn-basil pot stickers seemed made of lead. But in a place like this, the small plates are better than the large ones. “Snacks,” appetizers, pizza and pasta (most $14-to-$19) blow away pricier and not easily shared main dishes of fish ($24-to-$38) and meat ($26-to-$39).
Asian, Italian and “garden” accents echo Vongerichten’s ABC Kitchen and vegetarian ABCV. They break no new ground. But most everything I tried on three recent visits was smartly turned out and fresh-tasting. The best included warm smoked salmon with crunchy potato latkes and trout roe; unctuous chopped chicken liver and hard-boiled egg; and crispy basil pancakes with avocado-lime dip. Farm-egg pizza from a wood-fired oven, drenched in gooey fontina and black truffles, was so good I’ll forgive the scent of truffle-free “truffle oil.”
I loved the al dente rigatoni in peperoncino-sparked, basil-pistachio pesto sauce with tenderly cooked green and wax beans. Another theoretically Italian dish, a “Murphy” chicken of boneless white and dark meat atop red and green peppers — said to be inspired by a dish Vongerichten once had in New Jersey — was satisfying if suggestive of Chinatown 101.
But seared black bass, slathered in lemon yogurt, lacked discernible flavor. Baby lamb ribs were tender and juicy but saddled with unsightly globs of fat.
A red-raspberry and vanilla sundae stood out among other fun, familiar desserts. South of Houston Street, desserts without weird elements are rare — but Public Kitchen knows how to keep the public happy.