The Standard Grill
The Standard Grill: High life on the High Line – at a reasonable price
- Cuisine: American
- Vibe: Bustling High Line haunt
- Occasion: Night on the town, date, group dinner
- Don’t Miss: Octopus with sweet potato & chilies, lamb chops, rainbow trout with currant and pine nut relish, shaved lime-mint ice
- Price: Appetizers, $9; entrees, $18; dessert, $7
- Reservations: Recommended
- Phone: 645-4646
- Location: 846 Washington St., at 13th St.
Hip usually comes at a cost. When a restaurant’s hip, you can’t get
a reservation or you can’t afford one. If you somehow manage to get a
table, it’s too noisy to hear yourself eat or too early to eat. The
Standard Grill’s different. It’s undeniably fashionable and entirely
affordable. The dining room’s filled with celebrities and everybodies.
The restaurant opened in the Meatpacking District, right underneath Andre Balazs’
Standard Hotel and the High Line Park. On warm nights, I like the
sidewalk seating or the breezy, bistro-style barroom with tile floors
and a white oak bar.
The best seats are definitely in the main
dining room — a beautifully appointed space with vaulted ceilings,
roomy maroon booths, bay windows and a shiny floor covered in 480,000
pennies.
It’s the little things — the checkered tablecloths,
brown-bagged bread, and bowls of baby radishes and chunks of Parmesan
waiting for you on the table — that make it feel warm and accessible,
even when Cameron Diaz and Cindy Crawford
are sitting at the next table. A side dish, “on the house,” brings
delights like crispy potatoes with paprika aioli, compliments of the
kitchen.
The chef, Dan Silverman,
ran the kitchen at Lever House, a place for power meals in the middle
of midtown. The Standard Grill is dressed-down food for a downtown
crowd. It’s an American grill menu with offerings like raw oysters, rib
eye, pork chops and a porterhouse. The lamb chops aren’t your average
chophouse chops. They’re smartly marinated in lots of lemon and spices,
flash-seared and served with polenta and a basil mint sauce. The burger
was good, not great, and the New York
strip was so unevenly cooked — cold in the middle and overcooked at the
edges — it had to make a round trip right back to the kitchen.
Seafood is really Silverman’s forte. He creates wonderfully light, subtle dishes with tons of texture and flavor.
There’s
a terrific starter of seared squid, stuffed with Merguez sausage,
brightened by a side salad of frisée, radish, fennel and tart bits of
grapefruit. Even simple dishes stand out — like grilled rainbow trout
perfectly paired with a currant and pine nut relish or corn-studded
potato bellinis drizzled in Béarnaise sauce. My favorite dish on the
menu is the charred octopus tossed with a vibrant mix of sweet potato,
onion, lime and chili.
I always get a kick out of dishes with
confident names. The Standard Grill’s got a “Million Dollar” roast
chicken and a dessert called the Deal-Closer. The chicken was good, but
for a million dollars, I would’ve liked the skin to be a lot crispier,
and moister meat. The Deal-Closer for two lived up to its name — a
decadent bowl of chocolate mousse with a layer of rich chocolate cake,
whipped cream and a salty, crunchy fleur de sel foil. It’s playfully
served with plastic spatulas, and it’s the kind of dessert you’d prefer
to enjoy in privacy. There’s also a first-rate sour cream cheesecake
with a blueberry compote and a jolting lime-mint ice.
I’m not
sure whether it’s the High Line Park or the Standard Grill, but there
seems to be a new way of looking at and eating in New York. You might
say the Standard Grill is the first great, culinary landmark in the new
High Line District.
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This restaurant has pretty bad food and is overpriced for the quality of the food you get. I would not recommend this restaurant.