Dovetail

December 7

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about New York’s Upper West Side being the city’s next neighborhood for great restaurants. It’s possible. It seems to me that the neighborhood is loaded with foodies and aspiring foodies with disposable income.
There was talk of an Upper West Side renaissance back when Ouest opened, and again when Telepan opened. I think the Post’s Steve Cuozzo started the buzz this time around.
At any rate, the next chef-focused, culinarily adventurous restaurant — with an “excellence-minded staff,” as the chef and owner puts it — to open there will very likely be Dovetail, chef John Fraser’s first restaurant. (That’s him, above).
He hopes to start serving food there next weekend.
“I don’t want to open with a staff that’s not totally comfortable with the space,” he says. So, they’ll open when they’re ready.
Fraser says the restaurant’s name comes from his desire to have great wine dovetail with great food and great service, for an overall great restaurant experience.
You might have had his food at Snack Taverna or Compass, but Fraser points out that at that first restaurant, he had limited space and budget, at the latter, the restaurant was too big to spend the time he wanted to on each dish.
Dovetail will have 90 seats, including the 20-seat sherry cave.
The menu will change all the time, and even the opening one isn’t set yet, but here are some things he has in mind:
Gnocchi with duck confit, apples and foie gras butter
Creamy clam chowder with smoked potatoes, chorizo and sourdough gougères (that’s a cheese puff);
Rabbit and foie gras terrine with candied kumquats
Bagna cauda-poached cod with broccoli en papillote
His house-made "tater tots" will be made by slowly cooking potatoes in olive oil, crushing them, shaping them into nuggets and then deep-frying them.

I’ll be writing a bit more about the restaurant in other outlets, so stay tuned...