Immaculate Infatuation

After being hyped on this place by friends and food media for the last year, I was pretty confident Aldea was going to be a John Starks over the entire Bulls team kind of slam dunk. Not the case. While some of their highly touted dishes – namely the sea urchin toast and duck paella – were certainly quite good, the rest of the food wasn’t nearly as impressive. Some of it even had to be sent back, and we rarely ever play that game.

Aldea pimps out their chef, George Mendes, New Orleans style. In NOLA, chef photos and accolades greet you at the front door and decorate restaurant walls, watching you eat. By the time your meal is finished, you know damn well that John Besh or Donald Link is the man that made it all possible. Aldea revolves its world around Mendes in a similar way. Our waiter must have dropped George’s name three or four times, and I guarantee he’s required to do that. It all feels a little desperate…if your food is that good, New Yorkers will recognize. No need to shove it in our faces. Despite all the name dropping, Aldea is a very comfortable eating environment. We lucked out and got the best seat in the house, the back booth right in front of the kitchen, which you should absolutely request when you’re making a reservation. Overall, we’re not saying Aldea is a bad restaurant, it just doesn’t live up to all the hype. We’ll go back sometime, we’re just not in any rush.

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Take a look at our La Bottega review, and you’ll see a great example of a restaurant that is surprisingly better than it probably needs to be just due to location and the strength of the space. Unfortunately, Matsuri has no such surprises in store. Matsuri is the other restaurant housed in the Maritime Hotel, and exists as another extremely well done room and a great place to hang out. A few years ago when the restaurant opened, it was the only one of its kind; a huge, awe inspiring space that had people happily lining up to spend an evening at a sceney restaurant eating average sushi. That was all well and good until Buddakan opened its doors right across the street and lured away all those “see and be seen” types. These days, Matsuri still does respectable business, but it’s really more of a place to bring your out of town cousins and impress them with a big city restaurant. Unfortunately for Matsuri, the competition across the street offers the same with better food.

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The owners of Little Giant have a new venture in Chelsea, a “fun” neighborhood restaurant serving “refined comfort food”. We’re not sure that Tipsy Parson feels particularly refined, but it definitely feels overthought. They’ve gone to great lengths to replicate a Southern country cafe in New York City, down to quirky plates decorating the wall, an antique phone, and kitschy old-fashioned desserts and snacks. But that’s just the problem. After a few meals here it’s apparent that they’ve done a perfect job of creating the concept, but at the cost of under-delivering on the food. The majority of the fare falls somewhere between unimpressive and decent – possibly a result of all that “refining”. Comfort food is comfort food when eating it makes you feel like calories make you smarter and your problems don’t exist. Fried chicken with honey and hot sauce on top of a fucking donut. That’s comfort food. Unfortunately you won’t find much of that feel-good decadence at Tipsy Parson. If you’re in the neighborhood searching for a meal to soothe you, hit Cookshop.

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