Thursday, May 31, 2012.
Another Tour Of Magazine Street Brings Me To Johnny V's.
Today's show was rather lively, but don't ask me why.
My most urgent editorial goal at the moment is to reach two milestones with the website: to have 500 detailed, current restaurant reviews on line, and the 500 best dishes in town. I am up to 484 restaurants and 451 dishes. The dish project is just a matter of writing; embedded in my various reviews are thousands of candidates for top 500.
The reviews are harder to come by. They require two or three visits each. And the number of places with prior investigation done is dwindling. Except on the weekends--when I am at the mercy of the Marys and on the North Shore to boot--I limit myself these days to restaurants that will bring me one step closer to the 500-review mark.
That, I've decided, will be the limit. I will maintain the 500 for as long as I physically can. But I will allow attrition and the need to update to keep the review inventory at 500. Which is more thorough reviews than anybody else has ever accumulated.
Magazine Street is a good place to look for new additions to the review bank. My first attempt was Tracey's, where I've already been a couple of times. But after sitting there for a few minutes, I decided it wasn't where I wanted to be. Tracey's is more a bar than a restaurant. I think the sign telling me I had to clean up my own table after eating was what made me get up and go.
Next place: C'Est La Vie, the new French restaurant in the neighborhood of La Petit Grocery. I went around and around several blocks looking for a place to park and found nothing. I would have walked four or five blocks, but today has been a rainy day, and it looked like that wasn't finished.
Next: The Courtyard Café, a Middle Eastern restaurant I've heard good things about. Same parking problem. Onward.
Ah! A parking place across from Johnny V's. As in Vodanovich, former manager at Clancy's and owner of the Monkey Hill Bar next door. Nash Laurent--who ran the front door at Clancy's for years--is also part of the staff. So is Chef Ryan Hughes, who I remember from Café Degas.
If I had given this choice for dinner a little more investigation, I would have kept looking for dinner. Johnny V's hasn't been open long enough for me to be there with a review in mind. Just three or four months.
This showed in a number of ways, the most glaring of which is that the style of the kitchen is not well established. I read the three-page menu over and over, waiting for something to grab me. Only two things did: the mussels and frites, and a special involving tripletail, one of my favorite fish.
The centers of most of the dishes seemed good enough--if they have tripletail, then we know they're putting forth better than average effort in finding good ingredients. But the preparations didn't inspire me.
So I asked the waiter. He said that the salad of crab claws and greens was very good. It was, with a dipping sauce a lot like a ravigote, complete with capers. The greens were tender baby leaves with a tangy sauce.
The waiter--who reminded me that he has waited in me in numerous restaurant over many years--advised what he said was a harmonious plate of braised rabbit with gnocchi, and croquettes of rabbit belly. Rabbit belly?
All rabbit parts were tough. Not only did my poor teeth have to fight with it, but so did the knife. Rabbit should not be this way, but it is when it's either undercooked or overcooked. (My guess is the former.) As for the croquettes. . . well, cutting into one and exposing its interior did nothing for my appetite. Strange idea start to finish.
The dinner finished nicely with pithiviers, a little-seen French pastry. This version was on the dry side, but helped by a ball of honey-lavender ice cream.
I like the premises, whose design is an outside-in concept, with walls built to look like a row of Uptown houses. The black ceiling is studded with stars. The music--which I think may have been drifting over from the Monkey Hill Bar--was old Motown, which didn't seem quite right to me.
So now I have to forget all this, let some more months pass, and come back when the inevitable new-opening imbalances get worked out. The people running this place are longtime pros, and I expect that they'll pull it together when enough time passes. Even Mr. B's was terrible for over a year before it got great.
Johnny V's Bistro. Uptown: 6106 Magazine St . 504-899-4880.
It's over three years since a day was missed in the Dining Diary. To browse through all of the entries since 2008, go here.
