With an ever-increasing treasure house of great restaurants in our immediate area, I restrict my reviews of New York City restaurants to just one or two year, the kind of one-off, one-of-a kind restaurants you can find, well, only in New York.
Such a one is the Central Park Boathouse, formerly known as the Loeb Boathouse, where the restaurant “proper” reopened earlier this month, looking fresh and spry after a two-year closure. (The less formal, 80-seat Boathouse Café, open all day and with a wide outdoor patio, reopened six months ago.) With its unrivalled setting beside the Lake in Central Park and thus ticking the “location, location, location” box in heavy black marker, the 70-year old boathouse conjures an all but bygone era, a ritzier, better-dressed, two-Martini lunch New York. I must say, it fairly stole my heart.
Arriving without a booking during a busy lunchtime service just three days after the reopening, I was nonetheless greeted graciously as if I were the most important person in the world and promptly shown to a table “in Siberia,” at the far end of the room, where sad singletons are sent for waiters to ignore.
Only I wasn’t ignored. Far from it. I’d barely had time to take in the handsome dining room, a vision of pale blue, a touch of New England, with its white columns along the water’s edge adding a Palladian grandeur, when Henry was at my side. Here was a portly, vested, utterly charming, smiling waiter whom I instinctively felt must have “seen it all” in his long career, but who treated me with all the kindness and easy enthusiasm as if it were his very first day in an exciting new job. Moments after the order was taken, a basket of warm Parker House rolls and a bowl of crudités sat on the crisp, white table cloth, and I was sipping on an ice-cold, classic dry martini made with Dorothy Parker gin and Carpano dry vermouth. You can’t get more New York than that.
Ah, those crudités – radicchio, Belgian endive and watermelon radish leaves, served with a buttermilk dip the taste of which, in Proustian rapture, took me straight back to the salad dressing on TWA, the first time I flew cross-country from New York to Los Angeles, many moons ago now, when smoking was the norm on planes and a proper lunch or dinner was still served in coach on domestic flights.
The new Boathouse menu, at least to my mind, is a thing of joy. A great raw bar, some un-self-consciously retro dishes, a few gentle new takes on old favorites and nothing too chichi. Just perfect.
Take the Manhattan clam chowder. I usually prefer a creamy New England clam chowder, but the tomato-based Manhattan chowder could easily have converted me. With potato and a touch of chili for late winter warmth, it could have doubled as a Tuscan ribollita, with meaty clams instead of torn bread.
A luxurious chicken liver pâté, meanwhile, which came in an earthenware pot with some well-dressed leaves and quality, toasted sourdough, was a tender throwback to a time when chicken liver pâté routinely featured on menus throughout the city. I’d forgotten how much I’d missed it.
Slivers of barely cooked garlic in the linguine I had to follow reminded me that linguine can be a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But what a wolf — al dente pasta; large, tender white clams (that I took to be quahogs); white wine; parsley; and pepper flakes. The road to heaven.
The prime rib eye au jus with horseradish and French fries, served at lunch, was indeed a single, very flavorful slice of beef, as suggested by the modest price, and it made a very satisfying third course. Greedy me – I know. As alternatives, a more substantial fillet of beef, with a retro five peppercorn sauce, and a prime rib with Yorkshire pudding appear on both the lunch and dinner menus, more appropriate perhaps if you are having only two courses. The French fries came standing up in a silver beaker, piping hot, crisp and golden.
Two dishes I didn’t try, and would return for, were ricotta ravioli with spring vegetables and sorrel (which looked a picture) and, that old favorite, jumbo lump crab cake with remoulade. Two waiters told me it was an ace, and I believed them.
Desserts like apple tarte Tatin with crème fraîche or chocolate lava cake with whipped cream, taken with a smooth expresso, can extend lunch into a languorous New York afternoon before the short walk back to 72nd Street, the closest cross street to the Boathouse. A golf-cart shuttle, not yet in service, is planned for inclement weather or to help those less able to walk.
Soon the boats will be out for hire again; the ducks will return; and it can only be days before the magnolias start to bloom. I was grateful to the Central Park Boathouse, not only for a lunch that will long stay in the memory but for resurrecting, if only for a couple of hours, that inimitable feeling of old New York – New York, that for all its flaws, is still the greatest city on earth. I’m not surprised they named it twice.
For more, visit centralparkboathouse.com.
