The first words diners encounter at Danny Meyer’s new basement-level outpost at the Whitney Museum don’t appear on the menu; they’re painted on the wall, in a conceptual text piece by Lawrence Weiner. An excerpt: “Away from it all. Beneath it all.” Did the artist’s epigrammatic style subliminally influence Meyer and his executive chef, Chris Bradley (formerly of Gramercy Tavern)? Note the motto, printed on the paper placemats at their farm-to-table update of a traditional coffee shop: “Breakfast all day. Lunch all morning.”
Some call it brunch. No surprise then that the place is jam-packed on weekends, when art lovers, couples with toddlers and in-laws in tow, and tourists wait on benches for the first-come-first-served tables. (The lucky score one of the upholstered booths that bookend the space, but the airy room has no bad tables.) Service, while friendly, is less than impeccable. On one recent Sunday, a party of four was seated in just twenty minutes and drink orders were taken immediately, but an hour and a query later, a Bloody Mary had still not materialized. Happily, glasses of fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice and cups of Stumptown coffee arrived right away. Kudos went to an Americano with the ideal ratio of water to espresso. Not so for the chocolate egg cream, which one native New Yorker and self-proclaimed expert deemed long on syrup and short on seltzer. But other classic diner fare—a fluffy stack of huckleberry-topped buttermilk pancakes, a crisp and golden grilled cheese, a hamburger upgraded with beef from Pat LaFrieda and savory roasted tomato—hit the spot unimpeachably, as did a breakfast bowl of cheese grits under two perfectly poached eggs and chard-covered toast.
On weekend evenings, the restaurant forgoes its panoply of omelettes, Greek salads, and tuna melts and pares things down to a three-course prix-fixe dinner. The simple menu changes weekly. One mid-autumn night started strong with a robust Caesar salad that swapped kale for romaine, a fine match for the authentically anchovy-laced dressing. But it plummeted in one sip of a mushroom velouté so bland and watery that any self-respecting roux would disown it. Grilled brisket was succulent, but seared Nantucket Bay scallops on a bed of grits—renamed polenta for the after-dark set—were oversalted, if brightened by a scattering of pickled chanterelles. The dessert options were a trio of local cheeses and a forgettable pear upside-down cake. The latter was nearly redeemed by a scoop of Brooklyn’s Blue Marble vanilla ice cream, until a memory surfaced of the brownie sundae, root-beer float, and milkshake, all of which were contenders at breakfast. (Open Tuesdays through Thursdays for breakfast and lunch; Fridays for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and Saturdays and Sundays for brunch and dinner. Entrées $8-$15; prix-fixe dinner $46.) ♦
