Left Bank

117 Perry St., West Village, NY

3.5

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Neighborhood
West Village

Cuisine
American

Nearby
Highline Ballroom
Hiro

212-727-1170

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By Andrew Steinthal
October 24, 2011

I feel kind of bad about what’s about to unfold right here. Do the good people of Left Bank, who were both friendly and accommodating, realize that the restaurant they work for is awful? We’ve got to believe it’s like working on the set of the new Charlie’s Angels. Deep down, everyone must have known the show would inevitably get cancelled. Not to f*ck with fate, but come on, the West Village needed another faceless New American bistro with a European flair about as badly as the world needed yet another bad remake of Charlie’s Angels. Not trying to be a dick, just stating the obvious.

Left Bank is the new sparsely decorated restaurant that quietly took over the former Braeburn space (another restaurant we didn’t get) this summer. It’s as if Ken Friedman has some kind of deal with the West Village Community Board which insures that no good restaurant will be allowed to open on the same block as The Spotted Pig , especially in this doomed space on the corner of Perry & Greenwich.

We rolled deep into Left Bank the other night, sampled a big chunk of the menu, paid a pretty penny and are here to advise you not to do the same. Even as a backup option for long waits at The Spotted Pig or Aria, this is not the move.

For a fleeting second, we thought we scored big when we arrived sans reservation during prime time on a Saturday night and were awarded a table. It was all down hill from that point forward. They were sold out of my first three drink choices, sweet. Then it took about 20 minutes for our drinks to arrive. Not an overstatement, I watched our waters get refilled three times during that span. Being out of a couple drinks doesn’t warrant a bad review, however, bad food does.

We had a bunch of unhappy people our table. No one enjoyed their food. The short ribs came out cold, the gnocchi was as mushy as baby food and the cod appetizer was straight up inedible. The one redeeming factor of the night was that our waiter didn’t charge us for the cold short ribs and comped us a round of drinks for the mishap. Generous waiter aside, when a couple dishes don’t measure up that’s one thing, but when you sample half the menu and not one item brings you joy, that’s a pretty big problem.

The worst part was that we were really excited about dessert. Plates of insane looking red velvet cake were parading out of the kitchen, which we later found out was brought in for someone’s birthday and not available to the general eating public. Fitting.

Food Rundown:

There’s not much point to doing a full food rundown here so I’m just going to do a summary. As we discussed above, this whole situation was a pretty big sh*t show and it started off out of the gate with the appetizers. The rubbery sausage links were hard to eat. The cod appetizer was insanely fishy, so much so that no one touched it after their first bite (it stank pretty bad too). We sampled some cheese, which has its own section of the menu. Not bad, but cheese is cheese and not something they prepare themselves. The potato gnocchi was a hot mess, it had the texture of baby food. Using goat meat in the capricci pasta was unnecessary, the rich goat flavor overwhelmed the dish to a point where it wasn’t enjoyable. It’s cute, but it just doesn’t work. The paccheria with bolognese was probably the best pasta offering, and that wasn’t saying much. The short ribs came out cold, but even if they were hot they would have sucked. The pork chop was definitely the best dish of the night, it was juicy and well cooked, the only problem was that it was smothered in sauerkraut and dijon which at first was OK, but after a couple bites, it was just too much to handle. So yeah, you probably shouldn’t eat here if you’re looking for an enjoyable meal.