‘Good evening,” the reservations guy at Fressen answers the phone at 12:30 in the afternoon. Is he overworked – or is he daring me to correct him? This place has chutzpah.
“Fressen” means “indulge” or “pig out” in German and Yiddish. They must be kidding. Like the pencil-thin guys all over the joint, you won’t get fat on a menu that lists a mere six starters, three of them mostly leaves, and six entrees.
On a steamy July night, the meat-packing district is a foul-smelling warren of empty trucks and stagnant puddles. Intrepid uptowners cast funny glances at Hellfire Club on their way to Fressen, a loud, concrete-shelled playpen subdivided and softened by tall lattices of light boxes and Japanese screens. Inside the frosted glass doors it’s an eye feast of wall-to-wall, poly-sexual Gothamites in party mode.
A visit by Monica put Fressen on Page Six. Sandra Bernhard is a regular. There’s Interview’s Ingrid Sischy in a booth. Horny “Sex and the City” types brush black silk and bare skin at the bar, where gorgeous women pour and mix with Olympian grace.
“It feels like the hottest restaurant in New York,” my friend Alan says. So far it hasn’t gone to their heads. Reservations are honored. The staffers are friendly to all. Of two comfortable dining rooms, only one has round booths for power-mingling – but there’s no Siberia.
At Fressen, the attitude is on the plate. They’ve come up with a shtick to bamboozle easily-led trendies: “The menu is completely new every night,” our waiter states with pride. Well, holy cow. Most places have a fistful of daily specials – and manage to support a regular menu as well.
Chef Lynn McNeely’s skimpy lineup, like the “Kit Kat” menu at “Cabaret,” will beat the munchies while you take in the show. The wine list, on the other hand, seems designed to stump the experts.
“Could you bring us the ’94 Alberdi Rioja?” we ask when a listed ’97 Chianti turns out to be a ’96.
“Oh, shall I present that wine?” The $32 Spaniard is as good a buy as you’ll find on the list of mostly obscure bottles from the North Fork to the Outer Banks.
Starters for $12 and $13 mostly please, especially Nootka oysters on the half-shell. You’d think that with such a limited menu, they’d get the entrees, most of them $26, right, too.
But, “This fish looks unhappy,” Alan observes of woebegone whole orata. It is criminally overbaked and old-tasting, and you wouldn’t get it down me without a tongue depressor.
Ribeye steak, ordered rare, arrives medium-well. Its replacement is accurately cooked but half the size. Moist and ample chicken breast is hard to unearth beneath a thicket of greens and mystery croquettes.
It’s the floor show you fill up on. “I saw two guys lock themselves in the bathroom,” Alan laughs. And even with the glitches, our $340 for four seems well-spent.
If you doubt it’s the spectacle you’re paying for, come back a few nights later. This time the food is just fine – but Fressen, without its arty A-minus list on a summer Friday, falls flat. Women shriek like the kids fleeing the Blair Witch; the guy next to us grumbles, “Next time we’ll do Nobu. And Lot 61 Monday night – Oh. My. God.”
The words could apply to magnificent whole baby octopus, grilled to a golden crunchiness outside, tender inside. Chicken breast works fine with a simple accompaniment of dirty mashed potatos. Ocean scallops are swell if you steer them away from goopy tomato vinaigrette.
But when you go to the circus, you don’t care how good the snacks are when the elephants have taken the night off.
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Fressen 421 W. 13th St. (212) 645-7775