Lupa and the Frank Bruni effect
Lupa came up on my radar because Frank Bruni lunched there and found it to be a more pleasant experience. My friends and I hit it up on a Saturday afternoon around 2pm and the only seats they had were at the bar. Saturday! 2pm! It was nice outside. That totally displayed the power of Frank Bruni, but more on that later. Let us get on with the food porn.
They started us off with some really tasty bread and olive oil. I had no idea if the kitchen at Lupa made their own bread but it was soft and tasty. It had flavor by itself without the EVOO (Thanks Rachel Ray) which was phenomenal. We then had some prociutto because the bar keep told us that the food would take a while. Honestly, it tasted like high quality ham. Ok, that probably was not exactly the case since it was sliced razor thin and the texture was completely different than ham. The flavor was a bit like ham though.
They had daily specials and my friend got this Lamb Short Rib thing. It caught my attention on the menu but when the not-on-the-menu specials were recited to me, I went with the tagliatelle with duck ragu. Lupa actually had a special of the day for everyday of the week on the menu. The pasta actually tasted al-dente, something that I have never been able to achieve at home with boxed pastas (and that mostly can be attributed to my lack of reading comprehension skills). The ragu was hearty and flavorful and went well with the tagliatelle.
I also saw my friend work on the lamb short rib. That thing really did just fall off of the bone. The part that was weird was that they had this egg salad on top that was just off. It did not taste that great and it really had no business on top of the lamb short rib. Why did it not have a reason to be there? Because as my friend Pat said, "that lamb short rib was immaculate." I had some and it was pretty tasty. They finished it off with some sort of balsamic glaze and it was spot on the way it worked in conjunction with the meaty lamb. You hear that Lupa? No of course not, because chefs hate bloggers. Since we bloggers are all idiots. (I even scored an 840 on my SATs!)
And I will end this with a random note. Frank Bruni has been reviewing places on his blog as well as formal reviews. I cannot help but wonder what kind of positive effect this has had on the respective restaurants. Has Lupa always been packing it in on Saturday afternoons? This past week he made a formal review at Moim in Park Slope (Brooklyn). I went there with friends on a Tuesday night and it was PACKED. The entire dining room was stuffed (maybe 40 people total) and they had two servers. The food took forever and it was just mad house. I bet when Bruni went there, it was probably half full and the service was good and food came out at a normal clip. One review and BAM! (Thanks Emeril) This just goes to show how powerful Frank is and how crazy people get about restaurants in New York.
Lupa
170 Thompson St.
New York, NY 10012
212-982-5089
(I invite you to follow me on Twitter so you can get more of my non-sense in another medium.)
http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/poll-index.php
Web Blog Awards. . maybe next year.
Jonathan
November 2, 2007 3:26 pm
Maybe.. that would be very high reaching though.
Danny
November 2, 2007 3:55 pm