Under the radar alert: Grayz for lunch

[cimui]

I'm not sure when Grayz started serving lunch. To judge by the "summer prix fixe" menu still in effect as of Friday, it's been doing so for several months now -- and I'm a bit upset at myself for not having discovered it earlier. The food is impeccable, it's relatively inexpensive (a great value for a business lunch the area at $27), the service is excellent.

The prix fixe comes with either a mache salad with bacon or an heirloom tomatoes salad with goat cheese, basil, aged balsamic vinegar. I had the latter and it was the taste of summer incarnated. The presentation was beautiful: yellow, green, red, orange tomatoes, all perfectly ripe, and gracefully layered over very high quality, creamy goat cheese. There was just enough sweet and sour from the balsamic the highlight the natural flavor of tomato without overwhelming it. Simple and perfect.

I had the seared walleye pike entree with crusted shrimp, succotash, and corn foam (I know, I know... corn foam... but it was good!) The other option was grilled lamb kebab with okra stew and tzaziki. Again, the dish was nicely done, though the portions may be small for those with bigger appetites than mine. The ingredients were fresh, the crusted shrimp perfect, non-greasy (think it was a corn-meal crust rather than wheat flour crust). The corn foam added some nice flavor enhancing qualities. The fish was not overcooked in the least bit.

Dessert (black forest chocolate parfait, caramel cherries or crenshaw melon sorbet) was light, small and delicate. The cherries in my black forest parfait tasted more like they'd been cooked in sweet wine than caramelized, but either way, the slightly sour juiciness set off the smooth, rich mousse (served with a dallop of white cream over top) well.

Service was great in part because there were so few other diners in the restaurant at 12:30 when we went. (More parties filtered in as we were leaving.) It was always present, never hovery, they were fairly gracious about the uncertainty in my party size (anywhere from four to six).

I know that sometimes it's not good to review after only one try, but in this case, I've heard so little about the restaurant and thought it was so good (based on this one experience, of course) that i thought it worthwhile to put it out there. More of you should go!

[david sprague]

thanks for the review -- sounds excellent to me and i really adore walleye (a ubiquitous fish in my cleveland homeland, but not so easy to find here), so i will try to get there asap1

[cimui]

pike was a lot more common in my hometown in KY, as well. i know there, people think of it as a low brow, less desirable fish because it's so common and tends to take over habitat from other species -- but i have to say, it's tasty when fresh and well prepared! (and less guilt-inducing than eating chilean sea bass.) i liked the version at grayz because the mildness of the succotash and corn didn't overwhelm the mildness of the fish.

cheers!

[squid kun]

Thanks for this. Hadn't heard much about Grayz recently, so I poked around online a bit. Gee, it's been a pretty wild year there:

Gray Kunz seems to be out ... http://nymag.com/daily/food/2008/09/gray_kunz_confirmed_out_at_gra.html

The place changed its format and closed for a month for a renovation ... http://www.nysun.com/food-drink/kitchen-dish-grayz-oceana-and-more-broadway-east/80186/

And the new chef, who worked for Kunz at Cafe Gray, has tweaked the menu ... http://nymag.com/daily/food/2008/09/c...

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Grayz
13 W 54th St, New York, NY 10019

[squid kun]

Grayz is fading to black (as Crain's puts it) at year's end. ... http://www.crainsnewyork.com/apps/pbc...

[travelmad478]

Just had lunch at Grayz yesterday, and I can report that the staff (wait and kitchen) have already faded to black. While the food we had was quite good, I have literally never had such inept service at such a high-end place. Our group of six arrived about 15 minutes early for our 1 PM lunch reservation, and immediately noted to the waiter that one member of our group had to be out the door by 2 PM in order to catch a plane, so his meal could/should be delivered earlier than everyone else's. It then took the wait staff more than 30 minutes to TAKE OUR ORDER (lollygagging around with a water order and then delivery, a wine order and then delivery, and only then getting around to bringing the food menu for us to look at). One member of our group had her starter delivered only after the other five were delivered and completely eaten. Repeated mentions of the time constraint for our one diner were met with repeated assurances that his main course would come out "soon." Then one main course did come out ahead of the rest...BUT THE WRONG ONE. It was a fish dish that was then "kept warm," i.e. dried out by the time the rest of the entrees arrived. At ten minutes to 2 PM, our time-constrained diner requested that his main course be packed up for him to eat in the cab. At 2 PM, he left, with no food. At 2:05, all of the main courses appeared. This was one hour and twenty minutes after we arrived for lunch. In what universe is it acceptable for lunch service to take this long?

Both the kitchen and the dining room staff acquitted themselves appallingly. The restaurant was no more than half full at the time. We received no compensation whatsoever for the complete collapse of service (complimentary desserts? removing that main course from the bill? nope, nothing!) I'd complain to management, but seeing as the restaurant is closing anyway, it looks like others have done my job for me.

The sad part was that I thought the food was quite nice. I had the prix fixe with the mache salad, pike, and green apple soup, all of which I liked very much.

[cimui]

sorry to hear about your bad experience, travelmad. i think i would've caused a ruckus had i been ignored for 30 min. without a menu. i've had numerous lunches there at this point, and always felt very well taken care of--sometimes a bit stifled with attention, actually, i.e. when we had four or five staff members helping my table of two!

lunch can take a while, but that is not unusual for midtown restaurants, which often assume that business lunches drag on for a while. however, they were also very good about complying with a request to have us out within an hour and a half one one occasion. think my largest group there included five or six people and i don't remember service issues at all -- well, perhaps one, when the very nice waiter almost handed the check over to an older man at my table before remembering himself and giving it to me, instead.

every restaurant can have bad days, though. sounds like the kitchen really wasn't together for your visit.

[travelmad478]

I also felt that we were a bit stifled with attention also--there were at least four dining room staff covering our table, at times all at once. There was clearly one guy who was supposed to be taking the lead, but all that did was make every other staffer reluctant to actually do anything we asked for. It became ridiculous, actually--after we had been sitting staring at our empty plates for about ten minutes, several dining room staff wandered into the back room where we were sitting, looked at us, and walked out. Finally I asked one of them (a guy wearing an apron) to please clear the table, at which point he said, "oh, we'll do that," and then proceeded to leave the room! It felt like I was dealing with union work rules that didn't allow person A to do person B's job. Unreal.

[cimui]

yikes, that's really too bad! i just stopped by for a light dinner, tonight, and the food was excellent. (service was, if anything, too present, though i haven't any real complaints.) had kumamoto oysters with yuzu, grapefruit and pea shoots (a lively, bright combination that was wonderful to eat even in this cold weather); a perfectly constructed kampachi ceviche with avocado, lime and tomato; and fried okra. the okra was the only dish i wasn't all that crazy about. the batter needed salt and though it was nicely crispy, it ought to've been better drained after frying.

well made cocktails, as always.

thanks for the heads up, squid. i'll have to go back as much as possible before it closes. i really like this place.

[City Kid]

Thanks for the tip on Grayz. I had precisely this lunch during restaurant week and thought it was great; glad to know they are still doing it. My experience with the service the two times I was there (once for a fabulous dinner) was it was anything but inattentive. A very efficient business lunch.