New York Daily News
Tribeca Grill: A Stellar Affair
Owners go from silver screen to silverware with a blockbuster menu
by Arthur Schwartz
July 13, 1990
So she said, "I guess this would be a good place to take out-of-towners."
So he said, "I guess so. They brought Nelson Mandela here, didn't they?"
But even before Nelson Mandela's $2,500-a-person fund-raiser, the Tribeca Grill was the hottest restaurant in town. With a roster of owner names that includes Robert De Niro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Christopher Walken, it was the hottest restaurant in town even before it opened. Now that it's been open four months, the guest list has included Madonna, Eddie Murphy, Mike Tyson, Ralph Lauren, Danny DeVito, Molly Ringwald and, as Suzy might say, others too star-studded to mention.
(Oh, there's nothing like a few Names to get people into a restaurant. Ah, there's nothing like a few Names to get people into a restaurant review.)
And the food and service are as good as the people watching; which is a surprise in that celebrity restaurants rarely carry it off so well, and not a surprise in that the managing partner is Drew Nieporent, who has been demonstrating what a consummate restaurateur he is at Montrachet, the celebrated 6-year-old he owns and runs just a few blocks away.
De Niro, a regular at Montrachet, is impressed, too: which is how the two happened to become partners and put together this 150-seat cafe on the first floor of Greenwich Street's former Martinson Coffee Building - now the home of De Niro's movie production facilities.
It's a high-ceilinged, bare brick room with all the wiring and ducts showing, old mosaic tile floors, in some parts, carpeting in others. There are upholstered banquettes on one side and in the back, tables with reasonably comfortable chairs elsewhere, including a skylight-ceilinged side room that seems to be the quietest spot in the place - not that the main room is overly noisy.
Near the front and center, however, is the Nieporent-De Niro prize, the bar from Maxwell's Plum they bought when the furnishings of the old upper East Side watering hole were auctioned off.
As befits such a grand cafe - often treated like the company cafeteria by the movie moguls who work upstairs - Nieporent and chef Don Pintabona have put together a fashionable Continental-American menu with something to please everyone. And everyone is coming; not just celebrities, but judging from a recent Name-less night, all kinds of New Yorkers. It's the kind of eclectic crowd that makes a cafe like this truly exciting to eat in.
And what to eat?
As appetizers, the range goes from a multi-layered foie gras and "fowl" terrine ($12) to a big plateful of mixed green salad ($6) in need only of a little more vinegar.
The standard appetizer pasta (as opposed to a possible pasta special) is cavatelli with a pleasant fresh tomato sauce and shavings of sharp pecorino cheese ($8). And the nowadays obligatory goat-cheese appetizer is a neat cylinder of just-tender zucchini and eggplant slices topped with a warm circle of the cheese and surrounded by squiggly rings of deep-fried onions. The appetizer salad of vinaigrette-dressed lentils with tender slices of pigeon could easily be a light entree, though the duck salad with grilled vegetables and cornbread sounds much more substantial than it is: a tossed green salad (also in need of vinegar) with only a few pieces of duck meat, a single slice of grilled zucchini (on our plate, anyway) and a single corn stick cut diagonally in half.
Cold, oniony lobster gazpacho ($7) really tastes of lobster, and, along with cubes of avocado, there are chunks of lobster meat on top if you are in doubt.
Every day the menu offers three fish entrees ($19) - mahi mahi, swordfish and something special from the market that day - prepared plain, or with a side relish of summer vegetables (like a small-dice ratatouille, heavy on the tomato), or sauteed with lemon and herbs, or roasted and served with a warm vinaigrette. The fish are cut thick, cooked so they stay moist, and delicious any way you get them.
There's not a clinker on the rest of the menu either. I miss the "barbequed" point of the slices of pinkish but fork-tender, boneless duck breast ($18) with cannelini beans in a lightly sweetened (barbecue?) sauce, but anyway they call it, this is a fine dish of food.
Thick cut, pink-cooked calves' liver ($16) with glazed onions; thickly cut, really smoky bacon and (unannounced) fried onion rings is an absolutely first rate dish, too. Two thin, breaded and pan-fried pork cutlets ($16) are amazingly tender, and especially tasty if you mop each forkful in the dark sauce that dresses their accompanying orzo (macaroni) with tiny bits of oven-dried tomato.
On the plainer side, there's wonderfully flavorful citrus grilled chicken ($17) and a thick veal chop ($25) with a mountain of mashed potatoes. There is also a lobster special ($26) every day.
Of the three à la carte potato dishes, the must-taste choice is the plate of four thin, fine-grained potato pancakes ($5), as light as good griddle cakes.
Among the five desserts (all $6), the one that seems to get the most attention is the thin pear and almond tart with vanilla ice cream, but the amazing winner here is the big fruit salad full of berries. There's also a richly flavored but very light chocolate torte for those of us who still feel cake is not supposed to be candy.