After spending a lifetime trying to figure out who or what's to blame for Upper West Side dining misery, I finally nailed the perps — Upper West Siders themselves.
Something in the water from the wooden rooftop tanks seeps into local pores and neutralizes tongues and palates. They deserve Manhattan's dullest restaurant scene, even if they don't recognize it.
Take the example of Parm. When a friend asked me the "secret" of getting a table at Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi's wonderful new place on Columbus Avenue, I told her, "Try opentable.com. You can often get seats at 8 p.m. the same day" — as I found on Tuesday when I checked the site at 2:30 p.m.
At any of the hot chefs' other restaurants, it can take weeks to get tables at good times. But to Upper West Siders, Parm in their midst might be an ordinary pasta joint like the dozens nearby.
It's hardly the only case of Upper West Side indifference.
By 9:30 p.m., you'll find empty seats in many of the best restaurants. While fine eateries like Barcelona-themed Boqueria on the supposedly dull Upper East Side are packed, sleepy locals west of Central Park are packing it in, heading home to their babies and the next episode of "Empire."
The Upper West Side "is entirely a 6 to 9 p.m. business," agrees former BR Guest owner Stephen Hanson, who created popular Ocean Grill and Isabella's and lives nearby.
Even at Broadway's thriving RedFarm, the best Chinese restaurant between Columbus Circle and Grant's Tomb, the communal table can be half empty by 10 p.m.
RedFarm's Chinese cuisine may be tops north of Columbus Circle, but are enough customers stopping by to sample the delicacies?Photo: Gabi Porter
"The Upper West Side is a remarkably early neighborhood for New York City," marvels owner Ed Schoenfeld, who runs the West Village original as well. "You can usually walk in and be seated at 9:30 or 10 p.m., but not downtown."
It isn't exactly breaking news that the blocks north of 72nd Street — my first Manhattan home in the 1970s, and a land I still love — are Manhattan's most miserable eating zone. But I never wanted to face the truth about why: They like it that way.
It's not that there aren't enough single people (the Upper West Side is 25 percent single versus 16 percent for the Upper East Side, according to realtor.com), or that big kitchens encourage home cooking (at any given moment the entire Upper West Side is having General Tso's chicken delivered on wheels), or that young marrieds won't go out with their tots (in Park Slope, they stand at the bar at Talde for an hour, waiting for tables).
Photo: Lorenzo Ciniglio; Tamara Beckwith
It's that Upper West Siders sneer at the culinary passion of other neighborhoods. They let marvelous restaurants like Ed Brown's modern-American Eighty One and Vietnamese-inspired Bar Bao die, while propping up mediocrities like Cafe Luxembourg and Pappardella forever.
Restaurants that bravely open with creative menus quickly dumb them down for proletarian tastes left over from the age when bearded "intellectuals" debated Sino-Soviet relations over refried beans, and "fine dining" struck West End Avenue sages as capitalist decadence.
Tom Valenti's Ouest was hot news when it opened 14 years ago, but nothing in its class has opened in the West 80s since then — and Ouest seems to be running on its past glory.
'Cesca, a rustic-Italian place from Valenti with Amanda Freitag in the kitchen, retreated into generic-Italian after both left in 2006.
Nice Matin is less persuasively Provencal than when it opened 12 years ago. Mediterranean-inspired Bustan has lost its specialness in the year since I reviewed it. It's still good but it's not the same — a decline I noticed even before its original chef left months ago.
Even modest Asian exoticism chases Upper West Siders to the nearest cookie-cutter takeout joint. Michael Bao Huynh's Bar Bao lasted just two years. Sizzling cuttlefish in "salsa verde" of mint, chili and anchovies scandalized palates more attuned to formulaic chicken panang at "Thai" locations.
Cuozzo says Bustan has sadly lost its lustre.Photo: Gabi Porter
And yes, Zak Pelaccio's short-lived Fatty Crab (now the site of RedFarm) was dark, erratic and badly run, but the Broadway satellite of downtown's fiery Malaysian favorite roared like a tiger in 2009 and lasted barely three years.
While Upper West Siders brag about their neighborhood favorites — don't we all love our neighborhood favorites? — those who move elsewhere are amazed to discover how limited their old food scene really was.
Barbara Wagner, a real estate publicist who long lived in the West 80s, found that her family's new neighborhood, the supposedly stodgy far-East 50s, "is actually more vibrant," full of good French, Greek, Japanese and Italian options between First and Third avenues.
Meanwhile, current residents say even older ethnic spots on the Upper West Side, historically integral to the neighborhood fabric, are in free-fall.
"The Japanese, Thai and Chinese places used to be much better," says Jane Schreck, an arts administrator and script supervisor who's lived with her husband in the West 70s for 30 years.
Their old Chinese favorite, the Cottage on Amsterdam Avenue, has gone "way downhill," says Schreck, who's been to China and loves the cuisine. "We ordered the same dishes all the time. They were always good, but now they're greasy and don't seem as fresh."
The district is as starved for buzz as for spice.
Unlike in nabes with at least the illusion of a dynamic dining scene, "there is no scene" on the Upper West Side, says restaurant publicist Jennifer Baum, who also lives there. "People go downtown because they want to see the people who are there, even if the food is terrible," she says.
No wonder: The Upper West Side is all "baby carriages" and "boring," Wagner says.
Once, apparently swayed by too much Amsterdam Avenue ale, I proclaimed the district the "Upper Best Side."
A handful of truly grand places — Bar Boulud, Boulud Sud, Lincoln, Telepan, Leopard des Artistes — are clustered near Lincoln Center. But only a few restaurants north of 72nd Street, like Dovetail and RedFarm, have refused to dilute their original bold styles.
And a new place that sticks to its guns must put up with what Schoenfeld calls the "kvetch factor."
On Christmas at RedFarm, "A lady at the bar was counting people and seats to see who should get a table next." She made a loud stink and "made my manager cry," Schoenfeld recalls ruefully.
He asked her to leave — "I basically fired my customer," he laughs. "You'd never see that downtown."
Perhaps locals share lingering nostalgia for the days of Mexican beaneries and dairy cafeterias. Call it Karl Marx's revenge on a neighborhood that prefers Gray's Papaya to the eats that make this city the most famous dining destination in the world.
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