Rich Mintz

Last night I said I thought Henrietta’s Table in Cambridge, Massachusetts was my favorite restaurant in America, because I couldn’t think of another restaurant I’d gladly eat in four times a week for the rest of my life. And I still can’t. (I’ve already eaten there again since I wrote that, and I’m having breakfast there in the morning.) But I do want to call out one other place that I like, on its best days, for some of the same reasons: Fairway Cafe and Steakhouse, upstairs from the flabbergastingly superb Fairway supermarket at 74th and Broadway in New York City.

This isn’t really the time or place to talk about Fairway the supermarket, other than to say that this small local supermarket chain — the chain is small, not the stores — carries the best combination I know of fresh produce and meat and cheese and baked goods, affordably priced and creatively sourced gourmet and specialty products, and ordinary groceries. I think after a particularly difficult case of weekend shopping exhaustion I once described the Red Hook Fairway (the Brooklyn outpost, full of Park Slope stroller families in their Zipcars on “big weekend shop” excursions) as “imagine that Trader Joe’s had a baby with Ikea,” but that isn’t quite sufficient, because the raison d’être of Fairway is its produce and meat and cheese, which are truly spectacular.

But I digress. Today’s topic is Fairway’s upstairs restaurant, which (like Henrietta’s) aspires to a cuisine that might be called “fresh and honest,” although with the look-how-fresh-and-honest-I-am brassiness of a New York place. And I have to say I’ve consumed plenty of excellence at Fairway Cafe, which shares some of the traits I like about Henrietta’s (starting with the open kitchen, which I neglected to mention about Henrietta’s last night). It makes a steak that is very good indeed, along with great cafe dishes like chicken schnitzel; traditional sandwiches (like egg salad on black bread) are exceptionally sharp and good; the by-the-glass wine list is extensive; the desserts are classics, and much less snooty than the ones at Henrietta’s. Salads are well composed; vegetables are always fresh. It won’t do for everything Henrietta’s will do for (I wouldn’t take a client there, for instance), but it’s the sort of place that I want to want to eat in four times a week.

The food itself, in other words, is steady, in the best sense. The sourcing is not as fastidious as Henrietta’s, but it’s quite good (hello! it’s inside of Fairway — there is no better retail source for consistent fresh food in New York City). And the prices are reasonable.

The problem with Fairway Cafe is that the service is irregular. The staff have their friendly and competent moments, and everyone means well, but there are times when it takes forever to get someone’s attention and another forever to get what you wanted. (At Henrietta’s, all I have to do is look in the general direction of “up” and someone is at my side asking what I need.) Plating at Fairway can be slapdash; I’ve had orders go in a little wrong; and generally the experience just doesn’t feel tight.

I am endlessly giving Fairway Cafe second chances, because when it is good it is very good indeed, and I like the setting (looking out on Broadway from a big second-floor window, left alone to read a good book while I eat a delicious and reasonably priced meal). I keep bringing friends there in the hope that they’ll have a one-of-its-best-days experience and see the magic that I see. They rarely do. Maybe with a little pressure from my millions of readers they’ll tighten up the ship just a bit and it will become the place it deserves to be.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, June 3rd, 2010 at 10:24 pm and is filed under New York, Travel, food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.