Lobster Soup

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
October 20, 2005

THE CAFÉ AT COUNTRY
90 Madison Ave
@ 29th St
New York, NY 10016
212-889-7100

Let me just start out by saying, completely unspectacular. I’m not sure that I was expecting much, but this is one of those cases in which I got to confirm my suspicions that this is one of those restaurants with a lot of hype, tries too hard, and doesn’t get it. Okay, am I being harsh?!

Country is the newly opened restaurant of chef-owner Geoffrey Zakarian whose Town is at the Chambers Hotel. While I don’t have much urge to return to Town for dinner, I do like to eat and drink at the bar. Country, on the other hand, is struggling with a lot. I ate at the café, as the restaurant is not yet open to the public.

This being a brand new restaurant, I understand that there would still be a lot of rough edges. But if you’re the manager and you’d like to correct your staff, please don’t do it in front of a customer. It is uncomfortable for me and degrading for the staff personnel.

I was actually curious about executive chef Doug Psaltis’ cooking, since he has recently entangled himself in a good deal of bad publicity with his new book, The Seasoning of a Chef, a memoir in which he bad-mouths high-profile former employers/mentors, including Alain Ducasse, Thomas Keller and Dan Barber. I thought he might have some tricks hidden up his sleeve to be bold enough to piss off a good portion of the industry, but if he does have tricks I certainly did not see or taste them.

Let me just give some quick examples. The Country Burger is supposed to come on an English muffin, but it came on a Portuguese muffin, which in my book is dramatically different. Need I emphasize the importance of the little pockets that absorb the juices of the meat in an English muffin (see The Bar @ Etats-Unis) and of which the Portuguese muffin is entirely bereft? If you are going to serve it on a Portuguese muffin then say so on the menu. In any case, the burger was… unspectacular. The shallot tempura that came with the burger as a fancy substitute for the usual accompaniment of fries is a novel idea, but great tempura takes tremendous skill to make; the deep fried batter needs to be crispy on the outside and not too greasy while maintaining the essence and tenderness of what is enveloped inside. The shallot tempura were mushy and too greasy.

The crisp market salad was not crisp and was pathetic in quality, arrangement and size. Salads seem easy to make but a good one is really hard to come by. If you can make a pretty decent salad then I trust that the other things on the menu will be quite good too. But I’m afraid neither was true. There are more bad examples to mention — but I’ll stop here. No need to harp on a bad experience anymore than I have to.

Was there an upside? The lobster soup I had was good. A dish with lobster salpicon — diced lobster “stuffing” — and fennel cream arrived first and then the waiter poured the soup into my dish from a teapot. All very fancy, but he spilled on my silverware. This is what I mean when I say they try too hard. The food, the service — its all trying too hard. There were three people standing around to serve us, but not one of them really got it right. I didn’t feel like they were at ease, and they certainly didn’t make me feel at ease.

Country has a lot to sort out, but I doubt I will give it another try. There’s just too much good food out there and I’d rather eat somewhere where they’re comfortable with who they are.

Also in American, Lobster, Madison Square, Soup