A ‘cept too crazy
I’d have loved to be a fly on the wall when developer Jeff O’Brien and Anthony Miceli of the Uniq Lifestyle Group were blueskying the Roosevelt Room. This new supper club in the city’s dmz aka entertainment ghetto started out as a lavish tribute to Hollywood in the twenties, and the art deco style of Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel,with food inspired by the first Oscar dinner which was given at the hotel in 1927.
This is such a cockamamie idea that I can’t believe there wasn’t someone on the team who didn’t cry “push the reset button”. First, the name. When I heard it I thought what’s a glitzy joint being named after Franklin D of depression fame. Was this to be a Hooverville serving shantytown food?
Now if the owners had filched the name Stork it would have been different . The Stork Club of the forties was the paradigm of the genre – “the New Yorkiest of all New York restaurants” wrote Walter Winchell, café society scribe. Its owner Sherman Billingsley had his own room for glitterati, dubbed the Cub room or the snub room depending on your status. In the movie All About Eve, a scene was shot in the Cub room and Bette Davis, playing a great Broadway star, immortalized it with her line “Where the elite meet.”
I’ve have certainly shouted reset at the idea of twenties’ food. Prohibition had killed fine dining. The Oscar dinner featured fillet of sole or chicken on toast. There was no booze of course. But I expect everyone was pretty liquored up with bootleg Scotch.
“We’re not going to eat fruit cocktails with marshmallows are we?” said the Bon Vivant anxiously as we arrive. Before confronting the menu however, we have to confront the pushme pullyou space, about half an acre which can be reconfigured to suit and which holds the humongous total of 450 people. The Design Agency has done a remarkable job making the place coherent with dazzling strips of lighting and chunky furniture. Even so, the Roosevelt room has a transient air as if it could be struck like a tent at a moment’s notice.
We arrive around 7.30 because we’ve been told to eat early before the live music arrives and the dining spaces are turned into dance floors and the booths into bottle tables. We enter through the bar, now being propped up by a few habitués, and are then led past a curtained dining area which looks like an adhoc room in a tourist hotel, to a more elegant area with zippier lighting.
There we dine in state – and entirely alone. We love it.
Champagne juleps seem in order $12.18. Now to the menu. Someone did apparently push back because executive chef Trevor Wilkinson, who has his own eponymous restaurant, has put together a familiar luxe menu designed for those with bounceproof plastic.
As we order, we ask our friendly waiter how long the place has been open. His reply deserves the Distinguished Service Order. The Roosevelt Room has been open atleast two months, it’s taken a bit of a pasting in the press and on the blogs, but he says straightfaced that it’s now having a soft opening with a big party planned for March.
I have the torchon of foie gras $17.95 with toasted brioche and it’s just fine. Bon Vivant is not so lucky with the braised rabbit and pancetta tagliatelle $15.95 with white truffle oil and shaved reggiano – “Not enough truffle, not enough butter, not rich enough”.
And the lobster thermidor $35.95, an ultra luxe food, where chopped lobster in Mornay sauce is served in the lobster shell, is merely a dish of a few lobster chunks with bitter greens in sauce. No drama, too little lobster.
I do better with USDA prime filet $31.95 cooked rare, served with roasted roots. We look for something flambéed and find Baked Alaska $14.95 a crown of blue flames over cascading meringue jacketing ice cream with a berry heart. The blood orange tart was rather an anticlimax $8.95.
As we leave, we catch the silent flick on the screen. Someone called Marie appears to be shouting for help. Reset, we want to cry – with the unedited single shot of Fred Astaire and Eleanor Powell tapdancing…
*The Roosevelt Room 2 Drummond Place, 416-599 9000. Wheelchair Access. Dinner for Two: food plus tax $148
I was shocked to see your comment on The Roosevelt Room’s rabbit and pancetta tagliatelle. I haven’t tried many dishes at this place, but this is one I’ve had there a few times and have always found it rich, buttery and satisfying.