In today's NY Times dining section, Sam Sifton reviews the re-opened Aureole now on 42nd Street in the new Bank of America tower, A Kiss to the United States of Burgers, Fries and Sugar. He gives it one star, "good".
Since Aureole used to be a classy affair tucked into an Upper East Side townhouse, it is very apt that Sifton calls the move south to 42nd Street "a Las Vegas event restaurant airlifted into Manhattan".
It has a glizty look and large scale much more in common with the Aureole in Las Vegas than the New York original.
Sifton warns us that the dining room is uneven, "...It is nice in that dining room, quiet, and if your order goes well with the kitchen, you can have a good meal. If it doesn't, you'll be staring down a listless Wiener schnitzel, pale and greasy beneath a thick lemon-caper sauce, with too-tart applesauce."
The bar area is raucous. The bar menu features "an extremely good" hamburger.
Other dishes Sifton recommends are: sea scallop sandwich, sliders, pan-roasted shrimp, lobster and anything pork-bellied.
He sums up the review: "The restaurant is a love letter to an America we see reflected back at us in unflattering light: relatively happy, unthinking, desirous mostly of sugar and fat. That's Vegas for you. It's not New York."
Eek, that's not very flattering...
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