Bar Boulud

Came here for Restaurant Week for Summer 2015. First, you can sit inside or outside. It was a chilly day so we opted for inside, but quickly regretted it. The inside of the dining room is one long passageway with the bar on one side and a row of small tables on the other. It is pretty casual, but not the most open, pleasing floor plan.
The best part of the meal was the chocolate dessert, everything else fell short of expectations. We started with a soup and a meat plate, both were okay at best. We then went to the skate wing and risotto/​pasta for our entrees. The risotto/​pasta was soggy and bland and not visually appealing at all. The skate wing was overcooked, and disjointed in the flavor palette. The chocolate dessert was pretty good but the other gelato dessert was too sweet.
Overall, pretty disappointed by the food. The ambiance is nice and service was good though!

the food was fine, and so was the service. Nothing outstanding as you would expect with the name Daniel behind the scene though.
The sommelier was the highlight of the night i have to say. He was so helpful and so knowledgable. It was not the head sommelier, and i forgot to ask his name, but his recommendation about the Jura wine was excellent.
the small plate of charcuterie was ok, but nothing memorable, the escargots were ok, but the persillade was dry. The coq au vin was a total miss, and the chef needs to read the reviews since all of us think the same. The oriechiette au lapin is seriously a joke. there are like 4 peices of small rabbit, and it is drowned with a flavorless sauce.
Daniel needs to spend time in this place and check shit out. at $ 350 for two people, the last thing you want to do is write a shitty review!

«When the check with the tip is approaching $ 500 for four people at a freaking French Bistro, it better be a f***in’ memorable meal.»
My friend’s quote that I’ve been trying to digest (pun completely intended) since the four of us had dinner at Bar Boulud on a very mild Saturday evening in February. And I still think I need some Alka Seltzer. This was not the review I was expecting to write — or ever wanted to write.
But it’s never too late for a little discipline and objectivity when it comes to these matters. I admittedly walked into Bar Boulud full of anticipation and — dare I say — a bit star struck. But my knowledge of Daniel Boulud, in reality, is purely second hand reviews, official biography, and television appearances depicting a seasoned chef who seems like a nice guy. And certainly a chef with undeniable skill and pedigree — someone who paid his dues, excelled beyond most others, and richly deserves to enjoy the fruits of his labors at this stage of his career and life.
So I stared at the online menu for weeks in advance — «what do I get, what do I get, what do I give up» — completely uncertain about a decision even as I was sitting down in a timely fashion for our reservation. And then I was handed the real menu — a shabby relic encased in crinkled and somewhat hazy plastic… the kind of plastic that your old Aunt used to cover her living room couch in back in the 1970s.
But — on to the offerings. No surprises. Everything online was on there. For the four of us, we order the escargot, tartare, and black/​white sausage sampler. A pretty good start. Escargot, flavor-​wise, was familiar and hard to mess up… garlicky, tender snails, but the little potato croquettes were remarkably bland in desperate need of salt. Tartare packed some flavor. Boudin sampler — just okay. Small portion for $ 30 (and I usually don’t take price into consideration); the noir not unlike some well-​sourced morcilla that I could warm up at home. The blanc was blanc.
Mains: My wife had the Frenchie burger for $ 23. Ordinary. I had the mussels — small portion and very ordinary (as were the frites). My one friend had the Coq au Vin, which she thoroughly enjoyed, though we all felt the lardons were a bit square and chunky and, given their chewy, greasy, fatty bite, could use additional rendering. I personally thought the dish needed more sauce on the plate, as well. And my other friend had the pasta with rabbit ragu. And we had a first: I have never been at a table where one of my dinner companions needed to send a pasta dish back because — wait for it – the pasta wasn’t cooked enough. And he was right — that stuff was crunchy. Even the most rigorous fan of al dente could not deny that those noodles were crunching like pretzels. They returned the dish a tad more cooked — but just barely. Most certainly a reheat (in contrast to the waiter confirming, «okay so you want the same dish prepared but the pasta should be cooked more.» Yes was the answer… but a new dish was not prepared… the old dish was repaired… sort of… not).
Desserts and coffee were subsequently ordered, and much to our regret. The sporadic service to this point just simply disappeared. We were all finished with our coffees long before a hint of anything sweet showed up. We were ready to cancel the order when the guy came out with plates in hand. And we accepted them. I think sometimes we are too nice.
Having enjoyed a great day in the city («Book of Mormon’ matinée — it’s funny as hell, but be prepared to take a joke no matter who or what you are or believe!) and incredible weather for February in NYC, we left saying good things to each other about the meal. But the benefit of a good night’s sleep and 20 – 20 hindsight brought some much needed and justified perspective.
It’s been a lot of years since Le Cirque for Chef Boulud. He commands an empire, not a kitchen, these days. And it pains me to say that what we experienced is not something he would be proud of. Said another way: Bar Boulud can and should do better. Much better.

Bar Boulud has that classy feel. The restaurant is seemingly glazed by an eternal sepia filter, its walls lined with Georgia O’Keefe-ian wine residue «paintings» and a circular table circumscribing a tree planted in the back. The prices of the items scream «fancy» as well, with burgers costing $ 23 and a sausage plate running over $ 30.
But you expect those things when coming to a Boulud restaurant. You come for the service, the tastes, and the ambiance. Unfortunately, the service was one area that they could work on. We arrived close to on time for our reservation, but had to wait 20 minutes before they took our order. The server filling our water was super attentive, but the guy taking the order was nowhere to be seen. When we did finally get to order, we had the cold meat plate to share (small size) and ordered our respective entrees.
For the four of us, the small meat plate was perfect, perhaps because we were filling ourselves silly with the free bread, ranging from dark, wild grains to a cheesy swirl bread (I’m not 100% sure they call it that…). The Frenchie burger I had was great — the cheese was melted straight onto the patty and the bacon pieces were great. I loved the perfectly cooked French fries as well. The Escargot I tried was okay, but maybe I just don’t like that dish in general. The black and white combination sausage dish that my friend got was plated beautifully, but looked pretty small.
We had originally gone to check out their Restaurant Week menu, but changed our minds when the options seemed pretty limited and restrictive. It was an okay meal, but not sure I’d be back.

We booked a table at Café Boulud because that eatery is under another Michelin establishment, and the café is conveniently located across Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
We ordered Scottish Salmon and Bouf «Bourgiognon» for the mains, the taste was really so so, nothing to write home about.
Also a busboy kept on interrupting us, requesting pick items from our table, which was extremely annoy!
For the dinner that got me an heart burn, and the average cooking quality can be found anywhere in a café in France, for the excessive table service, it was really worth 38 dollar dinner place.

Bar Boulud was good, but the food was not as good as at Boulud Sud, its sister restaurant around the corner. We ordered from the restaurant week menu. The cauliflower soup was the best thing in my three course meal. It had pine nuts and raisins in it, which made it dramatically more fantastic than any regular soup — delicious! I could’ve eaten a big bowl of it. The cod was good, but it was almost cold (like it wasn’t hot as if it had just come off the stove or out of an oven) and it was just a tad bit undercooked. I should’ve ordered the duck or steak instead. I tasted my friend’s gnocchi and it was actually amazing! I am usually not a fan of gnocchi, in fact, it would be the last thing I would order, but this was the best gnocchi I’ve ever tasted, it was served with brown butter and whole hazelnuts — really good, I’d highly recommend it.
Dessert was a miss for me. The chocolate cake had too many weird and competing flavors. The passion fruit in the cake tasted out of place, the hazelnut was overpowering and the cocoa ice cream was a bit bitter. Not a sweet dessert, just a weird combination of flavors. Shame to mess up a simple chocolate cake. Service was decent, but the server totally forgot our coffee order. Wine by the glass selections were limited. The restaurant is a long, narrow submarine-​like space. Tables are very close together. Make reservations — the place is packed at all times because it’s right across from Lincoln Center.

I love Daniel Boulud, so of course I’m going to love Bar Boulud. But, I would recommend not eating dinner here. Sorry, my chicken was not moist and my friend’s halibut didn’t taste super mouth-​watering delicious. When you become a foodie like myself, your palate becomes really well-​refined. You can taste when something is not seasoned correctly, or needs more salt, overcooked, undercooked, and when you eat at fine establishments regularly, you expect more than your local bodega.
Perhaps, I ate on an ‘off-​night’ or maybe the chef was sick, either way, I wanted more flavor, more perfection!
But the dessert was amazing! We shared this chocolate dish. I could have licked my plate clean, fine, I actually did.
I recommend coming here for drinks and desserts.
Don’t hate me Daniel, I still love you! Kisses.

Odiei! Achei nada de demais! Porção pequena, pedi uma truta com quinoa! Estava insosso, sem graça e sem tempero! Nunca comi algo tão sem graça e caro! Sério mesmo, mais sem graça que uma salada de chuchu! Não vale a pena e não voltaria! Não recomendo.

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Really enjoyed our Restaurant Week dinner at Bar Boulud. We tried the cauliflower soup, which was amazing, and then ordered the steak frites, and chocolate dessert. We also had a bottle of Merlot. The only reservation I could get on a Sunday was at 5pm — YES at 5pm — I felt like an old-​timer and her crew eating an early bird special. But at 6pm, the place was packed. Service was outstanding. I am going to try some of the other restaurants in Boulud’s empire and would come back here if I were in the area.