(s)LOW standards?: The Standard Grill

RER 3.29.13

We chose the Standard Grill this time. It was a nice day and time to try a different restaurant. The wait for a table was not very long (despite… you’ll see). We hung right in from the second door, waiting for the trendy hostesses to check their books and such. The light in this first room was beautiful. It felt like a southern closed-in porch; white, bright, with black and white tiles lining the floor.  And there was something about the odd shape of the room and the closeness of the tables that felt like we were somewhere else. There was another area with more of a dinning room feel, heavier, more refined, discerned from sneaking peeks. But we sat in the light room in the front, perfect for a late lunch.

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Once we were seated, we were basically sitting on the lap of our French neighbors. And confusion set in early as we talked with different servers within our first few moments. A harbinger for what was to come.

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The lunch menu is short and sweet, both high and low brow, ranging from soup and Waldorf salad appetizers, to the classic Standard burger and fried fish sandwiches, to fancy mains featuring mussels or tuna or heavy salads, and even fishes off the grill. There is something for everyone, easy dishes with flourishes and elevated elements. The simple American fare is alluring like disguised comfort food.

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 The food turned out to be nice, not extremely memorable, but definitely pleasing to the eye. The white bean soup, drizzled with oily lamb merguez and topped with a few leaves of crispy kale, served as a substantial appetizer. The soup was thick and hot, almost like a dense puree, and the fat of the lamb was welcomed to tame the heaviness, and the fried kale served to break the bland texture. The flavors played well together, but in the end it was too heavy to be really enjoyable.

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Many glasses of still and sparkling water later, watering mouths and lingering eyes, our mains arrived, aesthetic to the eye but lacking a certain spark. The diver scallops were plump and well cooked, soft, crusted in crunchy sesame seeds, accompanied by acidic lightly stewed tomatoes and a light herbaceous avocado remoulade. The textures were lovely, the sweet meaty scallops countered their crispy crust. And the tart tomatoes burst with each bite, balancing the sweetness of the scallop and fattiness of the almost superfluous avocado. The scallops definitely shown, subtle and delicious, making the rest of the plate feel obsolete.

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The duck confit on a bed of lentils and dubbed aromatic vegetables (which felt like almost crunchy carrots, onions, and zucchini) was lacking a kind of punch and some brightness. Duck is rich and fatty, so it wants to be paired with something to lighten it and give it a spark. The lentils and the other almost soft vegetables were buttery and salty, making everything blend together and heavier. The delicious duck and melt in your mouth crispy fat deserved something to make it resonate, not monotonous, maybe like a cranberry sauce or some lightly sautéed green apples and onions.

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However, the wait for said food was almost intolerable. I should add that I was extremely hungry, and sometimes that makes time move slower, we all know that feeling. But the pair sitting next to us had the same wandering eyes, and uneasy expressions of impatience and frustration that we had. We ate our soup and what seemed like hours later we asked about the status of our food. One of the plaid clad servers let us know that the kitchen was a little backed up, that many of the orders were put in at the same time. Both my friend and I, basically eaters by profession, were shocked and alarmed by her response. In fact, we felt there was no excuse for such a grueling wait. My friend said, “This can’t be their first lunch service…” and he was correct, because the Standard Grill by the trendy High Line is not extremely new. But neither is this problem of the waiting, reviews in nymag.com’s profile for the restaurant highlights the wait times as a trouble spot for the restaurant, and yelpers tend to have found the service to be ok and slow at times.  

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The dessert, unlike our mains, came out with the blink of an eye. I had already been nostalgic for London when the banoffee pie sent my mouth reminiscing. It was overly sweet, just like I remember the Tesco brand take-away pies, but sweet, rich and diversely textured. I was not fond of the whipped cream on the top of the pie, as it was unsweetened, but it was added for balance. The center of the little tiny individual pie oozed super syrupy toffee melding with the custardy banana middle. A quick end to a slow lunch.

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In some respects I felt that the experience was spotty on the whole, both food and service, like the restaurateur had not thought of everything, all the contingencies that exist. I know this is not possible, but some things should be better planned out; from the “too cool” nature of the hostesses which ends up cold and unwelcoming, to the hard to catch servers and blurring plaid, to the monotony of flavor profiles and reliance on name and area to maintain. That isn’t to say that the quality of food was not good, there is just a lapse in innovation and execution. And that isn’t to say that the servers were not nice, because some were, but getting their attention was severely difficult. And that isn’t to say that it was a fun lunch, because it was; lovely company, lovely sun, just (s)low standards.

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3.31.13

RER 3.29.13