I went to Andrew Carmellini’s new restaurant A Voce last night and I am sorry to say I did not like it at all. I don’t say this meaning that you won’t like it, you may, but as far as my experience last night goes, they managed to do enough things exactly the opposite of how I believe they should be done that I would suggest not going.
A Voce is a new place so it may be said, being new they have a stride to hit and that I may be throwing in the towel a little early. Usually I would consider this a fair assessment. In this case, however, I can say that the experience was smooth enough that I believe they are running exactly as they wish to be. The service was extremely professional and efficient, the room was moving at or near capacity without any of the mayhem that can happen when a staff hasn’t figured out how to control a space in the early running. A Voce is a tight ship if nothing else.
The most egregious and, to be honest, offensive path A Voce walks is its decisions insofar as the wine program. To begin with, the layout of its list makes little sense for an Italian restaurant or any restaurant, though it might make sense for a high-end stereo catalogue. It is set up as featured specialty items with sections running from least to ghastly and inappropriately expensive.
The list starts with sparkling wine, proceeds to half bottles, then large format. White wine comes next, starting with choices from the USA, followed by Italy, then France. Red follows white, putting the same American foot forward. The wines chosen have little to do with the food being served; this wine list could only make sense to a sales guy out with a client that thinks it is subtle to point to the expensive bottom of the list and say “let’s have one of those” depending that the client will understand he is valued by a person who knows absolutely nothing about wine enjoyment or value.
The pricing of this list borders on the criminal, I honestly hope they have a non-gouging, fake version made up in case Elliot Spitzer pops in to try the place or he may decide to drop chasing Richard Grasso and go after them. I was so astonished at some of the more glaringly bad examples I randomly documented the pages so I could do a reality check at home.
A Voce, an Italian restaurant offers 1990 Ornellaia for $1250. At D. Sokolkin, a famously expensive wine store in the New York wine loving comunity, it can be had for $299. Obviously it is not fair to compare retail (be it expensive retail or not) to restaurants so here’s a reality check: at Cru this bottle costs $412; at Charlie Trotter’s, considered one of the greatest restaurants in the world, it is $580; and although Babbo doesn’t have it, they expect to soon and when I asked them to guess where they would be pricing it and their ball-park was $500-$600.
This ridiculousness is not confined to Italy or to red. In the American white section, Helen Turley’s 1997 Marcassin Gauer Ranch Upper Barn that is currently bid on wine commune for $150 can be had at A Voce for $770. I will let this go here, but the list is rife with attempts to take advantage of people’s ignorance as far as fine wine is regarded. Forgetting that simple Italian food goes best with good Italian wine, nothing could be farther from the simple Italian ethos than famous name wine deviously priced with blatant and unconscionable contempt for the patron.
The room A Voce inhabits is on the street side of an avenue building, just one door past a fine china shop. The space looks like it was intended as a lighting or automobile showroom. Large, square, and hard, it is a sound nightmare. Interestingly 3 little alcoves that could probably accommodate a couple of tables or some large sound-damping construct hold hanging sculpture. Maybe these will move and tables will slide from the center, allowing a partition to break it up. This kind of thing happens at new restaurants, when Otto opened you couldn’t hear the person next to you; this can be worked out and may soon be so it’s not worth dwelling on. Otherwise it is a simple, boxy room with hard wood floors, interesting green hide-covered tables, and leather swivel chairs.
Andrew is discussed as one of the best chefs around and none of the food I ate is cause to refute that. Food is all about how a chef chooses to balance sweet, salty, bitter, and acidic. The choices here all favor sweet far more then I do. This does not make it in anyway bad; it does however put it way down the list of food I would like to pay for.
Three of us (Bubby, Wife and I) ate in two courses of four dishes:
First Course:
Seafood Salad Cranberry beans, chili. More a version of a cevice that would be served in a martini glass at a fusion place than an Italian cured seafood salad. It had fresh bell pepper, crunchy celery and a lightly sweet vinegar dressing.
Carne Cruda walnuts, celery, truffles. It was suggested to me when traveling in Piemonte that no matter what I should try carne cruda at every place I ate. The reason this is so interesting is it is never the same twice, recipes don’t vary regionally they vary at adjacent restaurants. The only thing it is safe to assume is that raw meat will be involved. Most often it is hand chopped, usually rough, sometimes fine, it can also be sliced very thinly like carpaccio, or ground. It is usually veal but I have also been served beef. It typically involves truffles; sometimes white sometimes black and sometimes shaved hard cheese on top takes the place of any tubers at all. Carne cruda is an awesome way to get an indicator of the type of restaurant you are in.
At A Voce, the meat is rough chopped and formed into a canelle. The role of truffle I have to assume is largely played by truffle oil because the whole dish has an overwhelming slickness that pushes whatever flavor the meat was bringing to the party to the back.
Grilled Octopus peperonata, lemon, chorizo. The octopus had a nice soft texture and seemed from the black bitts on the edges to have been well grilled. However it’s taste was totally blown out by the peperonata (a true version of the accompaniment in that the roasted peppers were agridolce, the sweetness of which added to the natural sweetness of the pepper to overwhelm any notes the octopus once had).
Duck Meatball Antipasto dried cherry mostarda. The meatballs themselves were ground very fine, a theme that would recur, but the sauce tasted as if the sweetness of the cherries had been fortified by something like confectioners sugar and butter.
Second Course:
Smoked Duck Sausage lentils, arugala, vin coto. The grind of the sausage filling was so fine it seemed more like a duck hot dog or brat than what was expected, which may have been interesting had the sweetness of the vin coto not so overpowered all the other components of this dish.
Roasted Veal Sweetbreads porcini, walnuts. The only dish with sweet in the name, this seemed a savory choice. There was a rather thick sauce on the sweetbreads I am guessing was largely Madeira, Sherry, or even Marsala, being an Italian place, but all it ended up being was sweet.
Spaghetti alla Chitarra lamb bolognese, mint, sheepsmilk ricotta. This they were out of, a totally understandable situation in a restaurant’s second week of existence, especially with fresh pasta, so we asked the waiter for a recommendation and he chose, Braised Veal Soffritto creamy polenta, gremolata, orange. Again sweet, as if the orange was Grand Marnier rather then zest. It is amazing when a chef brings the wonderful flavor of something like veal cheeks to the front of the basic stringy, fatty components of its nature. That being said, simply braising it so long it turns to mush and then losing it in a sweetened oso buco sauce is not what I look for in braised dishes. The polenta may have served to temper some of the sweetness but there would to have to have been far more than this scant portion to make it count.
My Grandmother’s Meat Ravioli tomato, parmigiano. Again the stuffing was ground so fine as to not resemble meat any longer, I am starting to suspect what was inherited from Grandma was a meat grinder with only the smallest die remaining. The sauce was simple, as was the stuffing and the pasta was very good. This dish was a high point.
Dessert:
Not needing any more sweetness, we decided to skip desert in favor of single espresso. I will simply say that the espresso was unacceptable, there was no crema, it was served in a glass cup guaranteeing it would cool before it hit the table, and it really was just strong coffee. Again a new place thing that will hopefully be worked out.
After telling our back waiter just the three coffees would do, he did the “you sure” thing and I bought the up sell in the form of three cheeses. When these hit the table about 45 seconds after the espressi Bubby almost flipped the table over. Once we talked him down and explained that we had already decided the coffees were not worth drinking anyway, we got to see that the gorgonzola cremefocata was actually gorgonzola dolce and that for some reason enough sweet preserved fig to accompany most of the aged manchego at Murray’s was offered as a pairing, we ate it all with the accompanying walnuts, waited 20 minutes for the check, and headed home.
Most of my criticisms of A Voce concern their choices. Carmellini of former Boulud and magazine award fame has decided to open a “beauty of the simplicity of Italian cuisine” place with appetizers priced in the $10-$18 range, pasta in the $17-$22 dollar range, and entrees priced from $23 to $30, putting himself squarely in the ranks of Lupa, Peasant, Beppe, I Trulli, Hearth and Gusto, just to name my favorite 6 in a pretty well represented market.
If there is an unfilled niche in NY’s Italian restaurant landscape it is those trying to elevate Italian-based food to the ethereal levels of haute cuisine, a job Mr. Carmellini would seem well suited to with a such a fine dining background. With 7 nights in a week, even if I was committed to Italian every night and was willing to forgo the American Italian at Angelo’s and Rao’s and the finer Italian at Alto and Del Posto, I still have 6 fantastic places to go to in the real Italian school and I have neither mentioned Babbo, nor opened Zagats. For A Voce to win a place in my heart it would either have to be an amazing value over its competition because of its rather awkward neighborhood, or the food would have to be at least a little better then any of the already wonderful places within 20 blocks of it, and it ain’t even close.
Just went there. The place is so loud. I don't understand why they would design it that way. Chairs are great but that's about it. The server was all about the upsell and service in general not there yet. They poured us red wine in those little glasses on the table. The sommelier fixed it. Prices are fine on menu except for $10 side of broccoli rabe. Wine list is hit or miss and champagne prices by the glass are outrageous.
Posted by: Charlie Cook | March 23, 2006 at 11:30 PM
We have to disagree with the review above. My husband and I had the pure pleasure of dining at a voce and have only the most wonderful words. Everything was perfect for us from the service to the atmosphere to the outstanding food. We lingered in this very upbeat NYC establishment for a few hours. Everything we ate was delicious and in some cases very unique. It was a delightful evening out, and we highly recommend a voce.
Posted by: Marie and Howard Stone | March 27, 2006 at 08:03 PM
I am very happy that you enjoyed your meal at A Voce, and thank you for
saying so. I am interested in what part of my observations you disagreed
with:
did you not:
1 find the food noticeably sweet?
2 find the prices of the wine egregious?
3 find the room loud?
4 Find the espresso sub-passable?
5 agree that coffee should not arrive at the table before the cheese course?
6 find the choice of wine offerings out of sync with the chef's menu?
As I say in the report I suspect people will like it, it takes all kinds of
restaurants to please all kinds of people. I agree in the blog that the
service was quite good or at least obviously capable of being so. Which is
why I am interested in why you chose the word disagree. If you have the time
to elaborate I would appreciate it.
Posted by: augieland | March 28, 2006 at 02:51 PM
ate there tonight:
1. i did not find the food noticeably sweet. one of the pasta sauces was sweet, but then i think a good tomato sauce, with the tomato flavors and its sugars concentrated, should be on the sweeter side.
2. i didn't look at the wine list closely, but i did notice some were strangely priced.
3. i didn't think the room was that loud, certainly not as loud as alot of other nyc restaurants. the ambient ding, though, was somehow harsher than it should be.
4. didn't have coffee, but then again i've given up on finding good espresso in north america.
5. i believe coffee should arrive at the very end of the meal, after dessert, by itself. but that's rarely observed in any restaurants.
6. again, didn't look at the list closely, can't comment.
still had a great time there. the food reminded me of italy, i'd say 80% there, which is really all i can hope for from an italian restaurant in new york.
Posted by: jason | April 01, 2006 at 12:24 AM
I suppose personal opinion is what makes the world go round, but I can't imagine we dined in the same restaurant. A Voce was one of the best dining experiences I've had in NYC and I believe others will agree. The strength of the food is it's fresh and simple preparation, never overindulgent and just the right amount. I did not experience too much sweetness in the dishes but the desserts (especially the tirimasu) was perfect. I cannot comment on the prices of the wine but I think you spent way too much time focused on that one aspect of the experience and allowed it to color too much of your opinion. The service was well executed and I like the energy of the room. Although not subdued, I had no problems hearing my dinner partner. I think your impressions will not be shared by the majority of patrons who dine at A Voce and I highly recommend it.
Posted by: Liz Schulman | April 08, 2006 at 07:53 AM
Thank you for that, Liz. I am glad you liked it. The good news is my focusing on the wine list seems to have been of some help, some friends of mine have been to A voce recently and reported that the bottle featured in my report is now $600. Still expensive but not expensive x 2.
As for the rest of my criticisms as a say in the report they can all easily shake out as the place matures but I am suspicious of the ethics of any place that would allow that list to begin with.
As far as the sweetness goes allow me to touch on a new theory I am developing on the two types of people: If you are a person that would rater drink: milk, beer, wine, black coffee, or water than soda, juice, cocktails, coffee with milk and sugar, or gatorade you may not love A Voce.
Posted by: augieland | April 08, 2006 at 10:23 AM
So much for your theory. I do drink mik, I love beer and wine and never drink soda, juice or gatorade. I suppose taste cannot be boiled down to the beverages one chooses.
Posted by: Liz Schulman | April 08, 2006 at 04:41 PM
Oh well either back to the drawing board, or more has changed since my posting than the prices on the wine list. Maybe I have to add A Voce next to Per Se on the list of places that some how managed to have an impossibly uncharacteristically bad night on my maiden voyage. If only there weren't so many places in this awesome town getting it right regularly, they would get a first chance at a second impression sooner.
Do me a favor Liz read another of my posts about a restaurant you love or hate and see if you always disagree with my thoughts. If so I guess we have to agree to disagree on taste, otherwise maybe you got lucky and I didn't this time.
Posted by: augieland | April 08, 2006 at 07:10 PM
Augieland,
I just went to A Voce this weekend and had an amazing dining experience. Everything was perfect from the wine to the food (wonderful flavours)and let's not forget the service. (by the way are you a food critic?if you are - who do you write for?)By reading your critique, it seems to me that you are out to bash A Voce more than anything else. Why can you not say at least what you DID enjoy. they must do something right because for the last 4 weeks the place is packed with regulars and does not look like it's going to let up any time soon.
My husband is in the restaurant business and found the place, food, wine and service great with good clientele.
You might want to go back but this time without the Bubby and try to be more objective. If you don't want to $1200 or $600 bottle of wine then get one you can afford.
I don't understand people like you who write such nasty things about a place and don't stop to consider for one moment how difficult it is to start a restaurant and keep the clients coming every single night (A Voce is packed every night until late) so maybe the majority of the people are seeing what you cannot.
Posted by: Ilda | April 10, 2006 at 04:14 PM
Ilda,
I usually like to respond to people’s comments when they seem to have misconstrued the intention of my report, in your case I am not exactly sure you either read my post or read my blog. Do you really think my complaint with the wine list was that I can't afford it, and that I was nasty? Is it not clear I thought the service was a "tight ship?"
Sorry for any confusion you feel.
It may help you understand if you red Gael Greens positive blurb in Ny mag, http://nymag.com/restaurants/reviews/insatiable/16628/ what she calls "a hint of orange" I call "sweet, as if the orange was Grand Marnier rather then zest." I will neither discuss the perceptions of subtleties in my palate or hers, nor will I go into that in any instance a dish that has a hint can easily become too much and what makes a great place great is this not happening. I try to cover this in the first paragraph with “…You may like it”
The truth is were it not for the ridiculous wine list I may have gone back before posting but I disagree with a place taking advantage of peoples general ignorance of fine wine, and will not support a business model that takes advantage of it.
A Voce wants to be a simple Italian place, the most simple of Italian ideas is good wine with good food for all, doing their job would be encouraging this not raping the wallets of people that don’t know better and neither should you.
Posted by: augieland | April 12, 2006 at 09:25 AM
A voce was a wonderful experience; I went to dinner with my wife last week and I had terrific time. The food was amazing, although I expected that being Andrew Carmellini at the helm…The service team was professional, gracious and unobtrusive. The dining room and all the seating was well appointed, the art installation was very dramatic and well balanced for a elegant room. I cannot wait for my next visit to A Voce
Posted by: Abraham Merchant | April 12, 2006 at 09:30 AM
hello. this comment is in response to ilda's comment from the 10th.
just to be clear: we all went to a voce absolutely hoping to love it (i feel comfortable speaking for all three of us on this point) - it is more or less in our neighborhood, has a chef with a sterling reputation, and is in an up-and-coming restaurant area. certainly i was hoping it would be good so that it would attract people and shift some of the city's dining center of gravity towards the area to help out urena, which i believe is the best new restaurant in the city but may have trouble staying full.
unfortunately, we were sorely disappointed. this absolutely was not due to a predisposition to hate the place.
i will now address some of your more specific points.
paragraph 1, 1st point: are you saying that a bad review is inherently one where the reviewer is "out to bash [the restaurant] more than anything else"? or are you attacking the tone of the review? i can tell you that we were all very optimistic and then were all quite disappointed. do you believe that in such cases a review should not be written? i understand the desire we have in america to make everyone feel good by saying only positive things: in my high school we abolished the concept of a valedictorian so that everyone who was not the best student wouldn't feel bad (and no, it wasn't i who was the best). you seem to disagree, but i would argue that this coddling encourages mediocrity. i would implore you to think about whether or not that is really what you mean to imply.
paragraph 1, 2nd point: you assert that packed = good. i reject this. let me ask you this: does "packed with regulars with no sign of letting up" equal "good restaurant" or "good value"? i would say no. to take an admittedly extreme example with respect to the first, my local mcdonald's does a pretty brisk business in the neighborhood. that does NOT make it good. this example could easily be repeated on a sliding scale of price/quality in pretty much any neighborhood. concerning the second: it depends on what your definition of "value" is. i like to judge my restaurants on the food. some like to judge based on the food and the scene. we in new york sometimes unfortunately have a preoccupation with the cache that comes with a place: let's face it, how else would you ever explain the fact that one can't get a reservation at pastis? i mean, aside from the fries (which are frankly pretty good), everything else there is a poor representation of bistro food. that clearly does not stop people from going there to see and be seen. the same holds for many places, from felix to cafe des artistes, all of which unequivocally suck. it's your prerogative to like any restaurant you want, but to say that a packed restaurant equals a good one is a difficult point to defend.
paragraph 2: it's nice that your husband is in the restaurant business. i'm not. i certainly eat a lot, though, and i have been privileged enough to have had the opportunity to try some of the best places in the city and elsewhere. i am not sure that makes either of us better placed than the other to judge the quality of a restaurant. if you think it does, i'd love to hear why. (if anything, i would lean towards arguing that people in the restaurant industry are often "taken care of" in good restaurants, so someone in the industry is somewhat more likely to have a biased opinion and therefore is a less capable critic. i'm not saying you and your husband received better service than anyone else for that reason, but that's the only difference i can think of.)
paragraph 3, 1st point: "You might want to go back but this time without the Bubby and try to be more objective." is this wit? i'm not sure i get it. for clarity i am very objective. moreover, if my mere presence is enough to distract someone from the food, then the food's not that great. and it's "bubby", not "the bubby".
paragraph 3, more serious point: you say "if you don't want the $1,200 or $600 bottle of wine then get one you can afford". i would encourage you to go back and read what was written, because you have totally missed the point. this was not a discussion of "affordability". it was a discussion of "value". there is a big difference, and it's more than just nuance. they're two very different concepts. whether or not any of us could afford the $1,200 bottle of wine is absolutely beside the point. the point made, for which this one particular bottle of wine was used AS AN EXAMPLE, was that the wine list is absurdly overpriced. or at least it was, since i understand that at least some of the prices have been lowered since my visit. for a place that supposedly caters to food lovers, and especially for a place that goes out of its way to say its cuisine is "simple italian food", i find it inexcusable that the wine list should have such hefty markups. certainly bottles shouldn't cost two and three times what they cost at other fine restaurants. your comment really doesn't address this point and completely misses the mark.
paragraph 4, 1st point: i very much appreciate the difficult task of opening a restaurant and keeping people coming. mounting any business is hard, especially when it's in a highly competitive environment selling to fickle people who have a lot of choice. but should that mean that we have to love any restaurant, or any business, simply because it's been launched? or because it's packed? that's silly. please see my prior comments.
this is a sub-point: what do you mean by "such nasty things"? please note that augie's review did not say that anything was *bad* with the exception of the wine list and the espresso). certainly i didn't think the food was bad. frankly, i personally thought that the duck meatballs were great (though augie and "wife" didn't really love them). the bottom line is that we had one great dish, a few good dishes, a terrible espresso served at the wrong time and were not impressed with the wine list, for $90/per. please - please - tell me why saying that we'd rather choose another place where we can get more utility out of our $90 is a nasty thing to say. because i really don't know what you mean.
paragraph 4, 3rd point: perhaps the majority of people are seeing what we "cannot". you never know. i will remember that point the next time i criticize president bush. after all, a majority of the country's voters elected him. so they must be right.
Posted by: bub | April 12, 2006 at 09:49 AM
I dined at A Voce for the first time last Thursday night based on the high recommendation of my hometown friends Frank & Pardis Stitt (James Beard award winning chef/author), and my food and overall dining experience was nothing short of excellent. I've been fortunate to travel the U.S. and Europe for years to experience the mid to highest of fine food/wine and meet the chefs behind that food and I will say that after briefly meeting him Andrew Carmellini seems to me to be a winner personally and has an absolute winner with A Voce. I've dined at virtually every noted restaurant xx times in NYC from Balthazar/Craft style metro casual to high French style Ducasse/Daniel and everything between, and in its cuisine space, the food presentation and taste at A Voce was superb, the wine list was well suited for the cuisine offered and not over-priced by NYC fine dining standards, and the wait staff was excellent and very cordial. I'm always amused about people who pan prices on a menu or wine list of a first rate restaurant I have an answer for them....if you want a superior evening food/wine experience and don't want to or can't really afford to pay for it....go to the chain restaurants, which is what I'm sure most of these folks are use to, and as far as the noise, if you were dining with someone interesting and that you were in to, you wouldn't hear the noise anyway! Congrats to Carmellini and A Voce, I be back again very soon.
Posted by: william harlan | April 22, 2006 at 10:15 AM
I appreciate your comments, Mr. Harlan. Rather than spend time complimenting your ability to afford wine, you should re-read the example and realize that the wines I referrence are selling at a 50+% discount on the menu you read thanks to my post, so your are welcome.
Posted by: augieland | April 23, 2006 at 01:22 PM