Pico: Too prole for wine (TGPWWO)
Aug 11 '01
The Bottom Line Pico has a very pretty, "downtown" room and has garnered substantial praise for its food; however, snooty, substandard service sink this one. Two stars out of five.
All right, it's been a while. A long while. I've had lots of ideas for reviews brewing all summer, but I've just been swamped with work. So sue me! (Actually, don't, because that just means more work for me). I've been taking lots of unsuspecting second-year law students out to lunch, all in the name of recruiting, and my wardrobe can't handle it anymore. The staff at Daniel is starting to recognize me. In two weeks, I'm going to have a lot more time on my hands, and I'm going to stop going out to nice lunches on someone else's tab, I'm going to start working out again, and I'm going to finish the 8 or so half-written reviews I have stored...
I was still coming down from the last high of the Spam Write-Off, mumbling "belchy fart of meaty pectin" to myself, my shoulder was getting dislocated because I'd spent so much time patting myself on the back, and I was just rolling up my sleeves to get back to Real Work when Sundogg99's email arrived, for the Great Proletarian Wine Write-Off.
Wine? I thought. I really cannot write about wine. I know what I like and what I don't like. What with having a notoriously LOW alcohol tolerance (being born with a genetic inability to process alcohol properly, I have been known to behave completely irrationally on about 1/2 a beer), a poor memory unless I write everything down, and a job that lets me out of work many hours after the nearest wine shop is closed, I am not exactly a great person to be writing about wine. To paraphrase former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart: Good wine is like obscenity. I know it when I taste it.
Hm. That analogy didn't work very well. Anyway, I sort of begged off TGPWWO because of work, but then I thought more about the reason for TGPWWO. I can tell the difference between a merlot and a zinfandel, a sauvignon blanc and a chardonnay-- why not? I can write about wine! I'll just give it a try.
So...
Off I went with a bunch of proletarian friends (with some unsuspecting law students in tow) to Pico, a trendy new Portuguese restaurant in Tribeca. We went on a weeknight from work. When we first arrived on a breezy summer evening, the French doors were thrown wide open to the street, and only a few diners were inside. The long dining room looked pleasant and inviting, with an exposed brick wall and glass and wrought-iron chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. The bar/entry area was staffed by one tall, lean, cool blonde woman who greeted us with a tight, barely-there smile. When I told her we had reservations, she took a minute to count us before figuring out that we had not arrived in a group. She offered to seat us immediately, or we could wait for the rest of our group at the bar, a cute, 4-seater that also acted as a semi-partition to the dining room.We decided to wait for our friends, while some of us sat at the bar and looked at the specialty drink list. Cool Blonde went back to her podium to await more diners, making busy with her (empty) reservations book.
In a few minutes, the rest of our group arrived, and we were ready to be seated. I wanted to try one of the specialty drinks, but a bartender was strangely absent. We turned to Cool Blonde, who was still studiously looking down at her (still) empty reservations book 5 feet away. “Um, excuse me, our party is here, we’d like to be seated.” Cool Blonde scrunched her eyebrows and looked at her reservations book, and made a few marks in her (still empty) reservations book. No one walked in. “Just a minute…” Cool Blonde said, trying her best to act as if the restaurant was at full capacity and she was trying to find a way to rearrange the tables to seat us.
After waiting around in the lounge area for another 10 minutes, Cool Blonde led us through the mostly empty dining room to a large table near the open French doors. There were three or four other occupied tables, and I saw several waitstaff gliding along. After being seated, a waiter came up and asked if we would like anything to drink. I asked to see the specialty drink menu, but I was told that since their bartender had not shown up for work, no one else could make any specialty drinks. They could make simple cocktails, “like a gin and tonic,” our waiter said, but nothing else.
Sigh. We asked to see the wine list. We asked to see menus.
Menus arrived within another five minutes, but the wine list took another ten. While most of us opted for the five-course tasting menu, two people in our group (let’s call them Duende and Eggs™, even though they’re not) needed to leave in about two hours, and they ordered a la carte. We ordered quickly, and the waiter urged Duende and Eggs to have the tasting menu as well- urged a little too hard, I thought, given that the menu did not “require” the entire table order the tasting menu. We then explained that Duende and Eggs had to leave earlier than the rest of us, and told the waiter to serve their food as soon as it was ready.
We then thought we were ready to order wine, but after much rummaging we realized that the waiter had taken away the wine list as he’d taken our food orders, and we never saw him take the wine list.
Unfortunately, we fell into a terrible cycle with the wine list – we would try to flag someone down three times. On the third time, a waiter would swing by our table and drop off the list, which had many Portuguese wines that looked interesting. We would narrow it down to a few wines, then put the list aside, continue our conversation, and flag down a waiter to order wine, only to find that the wine list had disappeared again (did they only have one wine list to go around?), snatched by a different waiter while we weren’t looking. Then it would take another ten minutes to find a wine list, it would be brought to our table, we’d narrow our choices, start talking about other things again (because we couldn’t find anyone to take our wine order), only to lose the wine list again. I felt like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
(One resourceful friend did manage to get a glass of wine – she hailed a waiter, and asked for a glass of white wine. When he asked, “What kind? Oh, let me get you a wine list…,” she shouted “Uh… house, whatever that is!” as he scurried away. When her wine arrived, no one even bothered to explain what the “house” wine was. And this was not the type of restaurant that would have a “house”, no-name brand of wine.) Our “tasting” consisted of:
“Gee, I wonder what this is?”
“Have no idea. At least it’s cold.”
“Well, they got the ‘white wine’ part of it right.”
“How is it?”
“It tastes like white wine.”
“Oh.”
“You wanna taste?”
“Ok. (sip) You’re right.”
“Oh well.”
The attitude of the waiters about the wine was so snooty that I was completely discouraged by the whole wine-ordering experience. I felt so completely disenfeanchised that I didn’t want to dissect the flavor of my friend's wine any more than “It tastes like white wine.” When the waiter brought it, he didn't even wait for us to taste it and find it acceptable, assuming (granted, probably rightly so) that our uncultured palates wouldn't know the difference. Besides, I had other things on my mind, like:
WHERE THE HECK IS OUR FOOD?!
I think I only said that exact sentence to a waiter once during our dinner, but it was running through my mind the entire time. About fifteen minutes after we ordered (I think our waiter was miffed that we didn’t all order the tasting menu), our first course of fresh sardine with a dollop of pureed potato arrived. Barely a mouthful, but very light and refreshing. I was looking forward to the rest of the dinner. Duende and Eggs began working on their mesclun salads, and finished them well before the next course of the tasting menu.
We sat and talked for about 45 minutes, as Duende and Eggs sneaked glances at their watches. We reminded the waiters that Duende and Eggs had to leave early, and to please bring their entrees as soon as possible. The waiters reminded us that good food takes time, but that they would go hurry the kitchen along nonetheless. The next course in the tasting menu, a seared foie gras with roasted quince and balsamic greens, arrived. Again, a slightly small portion, but nicely caramelized and rich, offset by the sweet-tart quince and greens. The foie gras was a little stringy in parts, but we were a little too hungry to care by then. Resourceful Girl, who had finished her wine long ago, had the bacalhau (salted cod), still described as “cakes” on the menu but arriving as a 3-inch flat disk – only one cake, not “cakes.” It tasted fairly starchy, more like a potato pancake with salty fish flavoring, than a fish cake. Lightly crisp on the outside, it was good, but not worth the raves it has gotten from other reviews of Pico that I’d read.
We waited and waited. We debated several issues about the death penalty. We wondered how people who called themselves loving Christians could nonetheless rejoice in the death of another person. We moved on to genetic engineering of vegetables. After exhausting both those topics, we talked about how seed companies stay in business (the kill gene prevents farmers from using the seeds from the produce) and how the industrialization of farming and the rise of the factory farm has reduced most people’s access to heirloom fruits and vegetables.
We flagged down several waiters to remind them that Duende and Eggs needed to eat.
We talked about the purpose of criminal punishment and the retributive nature of most if it. We gossiped about our coworkers. We went around the table and talked about how we met our significant others. We discussed lactose intolerance. We looked at the wine list a few times. We lost the wine list a few more times. I grabbed a waiter’s sleeve to ask for more water. We debated whether the colorful blown glass bulbs on the chandelier looked more like condoms or elongated breasts. We discussed whether we’d rather they be condoms or elongated breasts.
Duende and Eggs left hungry, telling the waiters not to bother with their entrees. They were going to the apartment of a friend who had severe food allergies, and could not bring any food into the apartment with them.
The rest of us carried on valiantly, summarizing and analyzing books we had recently read.
Nearly three hours after we arrived, our main dishes were here. The roast suckling pig in citrus and honey was a gigantic portion of tender, fatty boneless meat covered with a wafer of caramelized, glazed skin that crackled as I bit into it. Underneath the pork was a pile of sautéed spinach that was a bit too salty for my taste. The meat was rather gamy tasting and it was good-- it reminded me most of the Kailua pig that I’d had at many a luau in the past.
Finally, our desserts arrived. They were the best part of the meal – a sampler including a gooey chocolate soufflé/cake, chocolate sorbet, and “little dreams,” three perfectly round, hot from the fryer beignets that deflated when you bit them. Dusted with sugar and dipped in chocolate sauce or the chocolate sorbet, they were a delightful ending to an otherwise lackluster meal.
Final thoughts
Overall, the food was pretty good, but nothing to get excited about given that dinner without wine was over $70 per person. Once you factor in the excruciatingly slow service, the attitude of Cool Blonde, the lack of a proper bartender, and the magically disappearing wine list, the dinner does not seem worth the cost. We were at dinner for over 4 hours, though, so it was “only $17.50 an hour. At that rate, it does not seem as bad.
Ultimately, I would have given Pico another chance if the food were more reasonably priced. Right now, however, it seems to be puttering along thanks to some early hype and good reviews. But if service does not perk up-- and soon-- the pretty room and decent food will be for naught.
Pico
349 Greenwich Street (nr. Harrison)
New York, NY
(212) 343-0700
Subway:
1, 2, 3, 9, A, C, E to Chambers St.
1, 9 to Franklin St.
From either stop, walk west to Greenwich St.
(Best to take a cab, even though it's not very prole. 'Tis better to be an eating bourgeois than a hungry, lost prole.)
For easy links to my comrades in wine:
http://www.sundogg.com/TGPWWO.htm
Here's a sure to be incomplete list of my comarades:
mangiotto
prfstars
sarah_knipper
repulsemonkey
PALWalrus
Sloucho
Mr.Eyore
Fez_Monkey
jkkelley
ermitano
sundogg99
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
kboo
|
 - Top 1000 |
|
Location: New York, NY
Reviews written: 130
Trusted by: 283 members
About Me:
De-fezzed in two topics. Ask me if I care. Hey, what happened to my picture?
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.