Sant Ambroeus moves to the West Village.
So I wondered: What happens when an Upper East Side institution relocates to the West Village? Does the menu change? Do the regulars who harangued Fauchon's pastry chef for not making croissants "the old way" leave their Madison Ave. cocoons to eat Sant Ambroeus's sugar-brushed cornetti? And most pressing of all, will Sant Ambroeus fit in downtown?
We already know a few things about West Villagers. They cherish their cafes and don't mind dealing with a little bit of attitude for the privilege of patronizing them. The europhillic Tartine, for example, the little cafe only two blocks away from the new Sant Ambroeus, seems to be the neighborhood darling, even though every waitress I've ever had there can be described using the same five-letter word. Then there's Magnolia Bakery, which may seem the antithesis of Madison Ave. until you remind yourself that the former's hipper-than-thou aloofness and the latter's moneyed exclusivity are pretty much interchangeable.
The night that I visited Sant Ambroeus, I was meeting a friend for dinner. Stacey had spent a few years living on Perry St. before relocating to another West Village apartment, and I thought she would be a great candidate to judge the eatery's arrival. When I joined her, Stacey already seemed perfectly at home, chatting up a stranger and sipping a glass of prosecco while nibbling pannetone graciously provided by the bar.
All was promise. The corner that Sant Ambroeus occupies on West 4th St. has been beautifully transformed. The picture windows are half-frosted, just high enough to hide the diners from plain view and give the place a clubby feel. The loopy script that was Sant Ambroeus's trademark remains intact. (I'm still not 100 percent on how to pronounce the name, but I'm told you enunciate each vowel: Sant Ambr-oh-ay-oos.) Since the venue has shrunk considerably, the pastry, which is what lured me into the first Sant Ambroeus, is no longer visible from the street.
Though the place is small by most standards, the suaveness of the maitre d' momentarily distracted us from realizing how cramped it really was. The waitstaff reminded us. Nothing shakes the illusion of comfort (and isn't that what posh restaurants are really all about?) more than a flustered waiter. Watching servers' attempts at maneuvering in such a limited space was like witnessing a game of human pinball.
Normally the staff would have my sympathy, but with everything on the menu being so expensive (no entree under $24, no appetizer under $9.50), my usually forgiving nature morphed into a whip-cracking dowager's. With these prices, I expect a certain degree of expertise.
It never came.
There is little worse than a waiter at a pricey restaurant bluffing his way through a menu. When I asked for his recommendations, he replied: "The carpaccio is nice. The veal is?nice. The artichoke salad is?very nice." Under common circumstances, blatant ignorance is offensive. At these prices, it adds insult to injury.
At this stage, the best that Stacey and I hoped for was that the food would speak for itself. And it spoke. Thankfully, the two starters said "redemption." The insalata di carciofi ($12), thinly sliced artichoke salad with parmesan , and the carpaccio dijon ($14), beef carpaccio with mustard sauce, were deliciously clean and acidic. The artichoke was fresh and crunchy, with a nice foil in the crumbly, aromatic cheese. The carpaccio was a real delicacy?dainty but robust, slowly cooking itself in vinegar.
With the advent of the next course, papardelle with speck, radicchio and parmesan ($18), everything started to unravel. The ribbons of pasta were so oily that I couldn't enjoy them, and the bitterness of the radicchio overpowered every other flavor in the dish.
The rest of the meal devolved into a pageant of country club-style eats: rich, overpriced, stodgy and about 30 years behind the times. The first entree was veal Milanese, a fried breaded veal chop with the foil still on the bone, young carrots, broccolini and mashed potato florettes. At $32, the dish's flaws?mushy vegetables, an oily, fishy-tasting patty, and an overwhelmingly dull palate?was maddening. Likewise, the risotto with sweet sausages and chianti ($18) was almost inedible?it must have had two sticks of butter in it. I couldn't have eaten more than two bites of either entree without being sick. I wondered, is this what rich people want to eat?
As if on cue, a woman at the next table wearing an enormous diamond engagement ring and a diamond-encrusted wedding band leaned over. "What do you think of the service?" she asked.
Before we could answer, we learned that she found her waiter "stuck up." She "couldn't believe the prices they were charging." She "lives in the neighborhood" and "is a cook herself," and would never spend "this kind of money on food like this." All the while she was showing her friend across the table pictures from her wedding at the Plaza.
All this to say, no matter how hard one tries to peg the tastes of a certain neighborhood, only time can tell if the Sant Ambroeus switch will work.
At the tail end of our meal, arguably the West Village's most royal residents, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, were shown to a corner table. Everyone in the restaurant, including us, did a fine job of trying not to stare. We wrapped up our meal with a double espresso ($4) and an alluring mound of tiramisu with zabaglione mousse ($8.50) between glances at the celebrity couple. After we left, Stacey and I tried to catch a final glimpse from the sidewalk. Impossible?those frosted windows. And then it dawned on me?perhaps Sant Ambroeus has just found its West Village niche.