Food@Big Fish in a Big Pond

Wonderland for the sushi set: Morimoto spreads high-concept design over 12,000 square feet.

By FRANK BRUNI

Published: March 22, 2006

AT the sushi bar, not far from our table, a handsome man takes a seat beside two attractive women, who expertly pivot in his direction, as if practiced at this kind of maneuver. He talks a lot. They laugh a lot. As the night moves along, both women hand him their cards. Their friendship had better be strong. It may soon face an awkward test.

One of the cast members of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" arrives, a pretty and chattering posse around him, and claims a prime piece of real estate in the main dining room. The designer David Rockwell passes the group as he leaves. He didn't contrive the cool, clean, white-on-white look of Morimoto (an architect named Tadao Ando did), but he probably feels compelled to check it out.

It's a stunning piece of work: a sparkly wonderland for glittery people, who always get the word and always hop onboard. They drink their bright cocktails, fiddle with their chopsticks, survey their compatriots and tap-tap into their cellphones and other devices, presumably checking on the whereabouts of less fortunate friends, perhaps informing them that the place to be is right here, right now. It's Morimoto's moment.

Stephen Starr's, too. He's a Philadelphia restaurateur in the midst of an ambitious Manhattan transfer. In late January he opened this 12,000-square-foot restaurant, which is named for, and modeled after, a sibling in the City of Brotherly Love. It was followed this month by Buddakan, another Philadelphia import, another visually bedazzling behemoth, just a few hundred feet away.

Both restaurants bet on a proven formula of Asian-inflected food, thoroughly tricked-out digs, theatrical presentations and pure buzz, although Morimoto has an additional ace up its sleeve. Masaharu Morimoto, a Nobu alumnus familiar to viewers of "Iron Chef," put together the menu, supervises the cooking and, at least for now, can be seen caroming around the open kitchen and into the dining rooms to greet guests.

He never stands still, and neither does his menu, which zooms across national and continental borders. It presents the culinary equivalent of a round-the-world ticket. It also sets up the possibility of gastronomic jet lag.

A vast selection of very fine sushi and sashimi roots the restaurant in Japan, which also asserts itself in preparations of Kobe-style beef, in tofu and noodle dishes, and in the recurrence of shiso, miso, wasabi and sudachi.

But other dishes and ingredients branch out to other parts of Asia, and even to Europe and Latin America. Among the best appetizers I tried was a "tuna pizza" with raw bluefin tuna, jalapeño, red onion, olives and an anchovy aioli atop a crisp, thin tortilla. I also liked silky slices of "lamb carpaccio," dressed with Japanese green onions, grated ginger and garlic oil. But I was confounded by a vegetable tempura that was clobbered by a Gorgonzola dip.

From Italy it was off to China and France, mingled in an entree called "duck, duck, duck." Why, why, why? Because it was a multifaceted fowl, roasted Peking style. The crisp-skinned, moist leg was served whole, while carved breast meat went into an unpleasantly soggy sandwich made with slices of cucumber and a foie gras-infused croissant. A gooey duck egg, placed between a patch of red miso sauce and a pool of port wine-flavored duck jus, completed the excessively busy composition.

The appeal of the dishes at Morimoto, like their ethnic associations, was all over the place, due in part to their frantic nature and in part to the kitchen's uneven performance.

Rock shrimp tempura, half of the shrimp bathed in a wasabi aioli, half in a Korean red pepper sauce, were light and sweet. Black cod with a ginger and soy reduction and a spicy half chicken with roasted red and green finger peppers had tender flesh, and a delicate touch had been applied to the poached lobster in a wonderful salad with yellow beets, cauliflower and a soy beurre blanc.

But a roasted lobster was overcooked, as was just about all of the shellfish, including shrimp and crab, in a Japanese bouillabaisse with a red miso broth that turned out, by default, to be the highlight of the dish. And limp ribbons of beef in a soy and mirin broth tasted as if they had been adrift in hot water three times longer than they should have been.

Even more troubling than the unevenness was the way high concept repeatedly supplanted sound judgment, resulting in dishes more amusing to behold than to ingest. The utensils provided for appetizers of toro and hamachi tartare were wood sticks not unlike tongue depressors in their feel and lingering taste. The tartare was accompanied by a beautiful but exasperating spectrum of colorful condiments and herbs (an avocado purée, crème fraîche, micro radish sprouts, wasabi and so on) arranged in contiguous bands so slender that it was nearly impossible to isolate any one from another.

The "Morimoto sashimi," terrine-like cubes made from layers of hamachi, smoked salmon, barbecued eel and seared toro, was luscious and hugely flavorful, but which of five colorful liquids in five gimmicky pipettes should be used to anoint it? There wasn't enough fish to make it possible to try all of the sauces and then circle back to a favorite one.

Although plenty expensive, Morimoto is an often undisciplined restaurant, prone to silliness and crammed with servers whose extraordinary friendliness didn't mask their mistakes.

One night I arrived just a few minutes after three companions. When I checked in with the host station, I wasn't told they had been seated, and I went to wait in the spare, sleek lounge downstairs. I kept asking servers if they had arrived, and my companions kept asking about me. For 35 minutes Morimoto never managed to connect us.

But it has its luxe pleasures, including a serious array of not only sake but also shochu. It has its courtesies, like tables with ample space between them and a noise level kept somewhat in check by translucent partitions and by wavy white sheets of canvas and fiberglass on the ceiling and along the walls.

And it has its amusements, some of them related to the paces apparently required of large-scale Japanese restaurants making a run at a fickle downtown crowd.

There must be a signature design element. Morimoto's is a two-story internal wall, which is made from water bottles and resembles a gargantuan sheet of illuminated Bubble Wrap. There should be arresting restrooms, and Morimoto's take automation beyond the function of mere flushing. Step into a stall and the lid on the toilet rises to greet you.

A sense of humor, a sense of style and definite sex appeal: Morimoto has all of these, along with the crowd they bring. If only more of the food lived up to the frisson.

Morimoto

*

88 10th Avenue (15th Street), Chelsea; (212) 989-8883.

@Source: http://events.nytimes.com/2006/03/22/dining/reviews/22rest.html