So much for Bread & Butter being the Phoenix rising from the ashes of its former incarnation Le Petit Marche. Already facing an uphill battle after last year’s missteps regarding several DOH violations and what appeared to be a cover-up, Bread and Butter needed to come strong to the hoop to regain neighborhood loyalty. While commenters on BHB have had mostly positive things to say about the “new” eatery, today’s New York Times review by Sam Sifton doesn’t help the cause:
New York Times: A seafood gumbo comes thick with lobster and crab, but not with roux; it’s comfort food lite, and totally inoffensive unless you care about such things ($19). Chicken wings owe nothing to Buffalo, but they’re meaty and firm, with sauce more sticky than flavorful ($9). Baked taleggio with croutons and lingonberry jam nods at the place’s European roots; it’s good ($5).
The fried chicken, though, wan and chewy, rather than crusted and rich, raises ire ($18). Served with roasted corn that tastes as if it’s been out in the silo since August, fair mashed potatoes and brown gravy the flavor of salt, it has barely a lead on what you’d find at a steam-table salad bar somewhere along Second Avenue late one winter night on your way home from work.
So this is a taste of the new economy: first-apartment food in a bedroom community one stop from Wall Street, comforting only in name. It’s depressing. You’d think rillettes and moules frites would have been more resilient.
