Highly focused and never extravagant, the food at Chambers is exemplary of how to cook the finest ingredients.
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If Chambers in TriBeCa seems familiar to you upon walking in, the feeling may well be enhanced by seeing the faces of staff who were here when the place was Racine’s, a charming eno-centric French restaurant that had a good seven-year run. The dining room, too, hasn’t been much modified, retaining the old brick wall, the open kitchen and long bar, but now the seating is more open, lighting is better and the sound level remarkable in a downtown restaurant where a din is so often considered a boon. Instead, the owners have made every effort to use sound-absorbing materials, and they work splendidly.
Formerly Racine, the premises of Chambers are cool and minimalist with great lighting and sound proofing.
Kate Previte
It is just as comforting to find Pascaline Lepeltier back as sommelier/partner, as effusive but genteel an adviser as one could wish for, and she’s raised the bar of a once excellent wine list to a finer tone with more international breadth. Her wide experience, including training at George V in Paris, has put her in good stead with small wine estates, and the current list has 2,500 labels (up from 800 at Racine’s).
Pascal Lepeltier oversees 2500 bottles of wine and prices them to be affordable.
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“For pricing, we are trying to stay as affordable as possible,” she told me, “with wines starting at $35 the bottle on the list, and $10 by the glass. In every category the idea is to find great wines at fair price, with the majority of our wines below $100.”
It was also good to see Racine’s general manager/partner, Jared David, here in action, and he’s always on the floor, never intrusive but always informative. Still, although there can be good reasons why food does not come out of the kitchen in a timely manner, it was bewildering and frustrating to be served only one course in two hours, this on a midweek night when Chambers did not appear to be packed.
Chef-partner Jonathan Karis, formerly at Gramercy Tavern, is committed to seasonality and the day’s provender.
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What is new here is Jonathan Karis, who spent six years at Gramercy Tavern as chef de cuisine, and there is the same easy-going style to his cooking, if somewhat lighter. His purveyors are largely listed on the menu.
Whatever else you order, get the bread, called pizza bianca, a crispy, ciabatta-like puff with olive oil and sourdough slices that justify their $5 tariff.
Puffy sesame pizza bianca bread is fresh out of the oven at Chambers.
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As part of a summer menu, we enjoyed a first course of sweet mixed sungold, datterini and oxheart tomatoes with ripe peaches and plums dressed with a dashi vinaigrette, purslane, kohlrabi and scallions. Plump agnolotti pasta was a spin on Mexican street corn, packed with white butter, corn, and mascarpone in a sauce of corn stock, fragrant cilantro oil and chile oil finished with cotija and pickled pearl onions. An alternate pasta of tagliatelle needed nothing more than shelling beans and romano cheese to epitomize the season’s flavors.
Sweetbreads are served with turnips and garlic chives.
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Tender Rhode Island squid rings came with sunchokes and Spanish gordal olives. Black bass was well and simply accompanied by cucumber and shiso,
It was so good to find a favorite of mine––well prepared sweetbreads on this short menu, served with Tokyo turnips and garlic chives.
Red snapper came with summer squash and yogurt spiked with hot harissa.
All these dishes manifested Karis’s light touch with big flavors based very convincingly on what’s freshest in the market at the moment.
An indication of heartier dishes to come this fall was a saddle of lamb, its succulent meat composed as a roulade in a heady reduction and served with Japanese eggplant and shishito peppers. But it was rather off-putting to find this showy dish cost $90––especially in a portion not conducive to sharing––which is $20 more than the three-course summer menu now in effect.
Mascarpone cream is sandwiched with puff pastry.
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Desserts carry the same straightforward, honest goodness, as in fragile phyllo dough encasing mascarpone with cinnamon caramel and lovely lemon pistachios. A Nutella-like dark chocolate comes with hazelnuts and coconut, while the simplest is the ginger ice cream with a pour of yellow Chartreuse.
The food at Chambers is an obvious expression of the chef’s own preferences, and his commitment to the finest ingredients he can source shows what a difference they make in taste and texture. Add to that a civilized ambience, well-priced wine list and you have one of New York’s best new restaurants at a time when so many chefs are straining to be flashy rather than impressive by refinement.
CHAMBERS
94 Chambers Street
212-580-3572
Open Mon.-Fri. for dinner.
Dining and Cooking