04.07.08
Review of Spitzer’s Corner, Saturday February 2008
101 Rivington & Ludlow, 212-228-0027
Great for: a large selection of beers, burgers, long conversations uninterrupted by the waitstaff
I haven’t had the time to wander around my new LES neighborhood as much as I’d like, but I did notice this place one night. The Boyfriend and I thought it looked busy and good; we were right on one count.
There are two dining rooms – the front one has long communal drinking tables, while the back one has smaller tables for diners. There aren’t that many of either so it was a good thing we’d made a reservation. In any case, we and our friend D had ample time to debate the merits of the very long beer list while waiting for the waitress to come over. Fortunately it only took her about 10 minutes to notice us and another 10 to bring our drinks. The really long wait was between then and ordering food, although the wait for the food ran it a close second, and trying to get the check was fruitless for so long we thought about walking out and just leaving a guesstimate amount of money on the table.
We shared the pint of shrimp appetizer, which was ok, with good, sweet white horseradish but the shrimp a bit too cooked. It came in a tall beer glass and was less shrimp than I’d expected. The cocktail sauce is quite vinegary. I can’t really recommend it or the subsequent grilled hanger steak with potato purée, green beans and roasted shallots in red wine. It was rather a small portion of tough meat, while the potatoes were a bit bland. The green beans, pretty good, were the best part of the dish.
The Boyfriend’s pork belly sandwich with slow-roasted pork and sweet 100 tomatoes on an asiago roll was the fattiest thing we’d ever seen that was supposed to be meat. I know that cut is fatty by definition, but this was ridiculous. There was about 30% meat. He ended up eating the sandwich and leaving the lard. After a few minutes of knife-work, I was able to try the meat part, which was only ok. Unfortunately it was just too gross to eat the sandwich as it came, not that it would have been worth the calories anyway.
The only exception to the mediocrity of our meal was D’s hickory short rib burger, covered in hickory sauce, BBQ onions, Bibb lettuce and Maytag blue cheese with fries on the side. He was happy with it; that and the beers were the only good things about our dinner. To be fair, I guess it was also a pretty cool vibe. We were just so disappointed in our food and the glacial service it didn’t matter. I was about to say we are definitely not going back, but a little research shows that Wayne Nish, Michelin-starred chef of March for almost 20 years, revamped the menu a couple weeks ago. So this is a review pending retry. I hope it will be a lot better next time.
Rating: 4 / 10 on the strength of the burger and before new chef in March 2008
Our cost: $100 for 3 ppl (1 cocktail, 2 beers)
Noise level: loud
Chance of walking in: not good, but you can console yourself with the many different beers.
