Newly polished
Brass (Nomad)
RESTAURANTS • First Person
There aren’t many new restaurants below 42nd Street that look like Brass. Just above Madison Square Park on East 27th St. and set deep in the back of the Evelyn Hotel (itself operational since 1903, fully updated in 2017), the restaurant easily captures the feel of old New York: dark mahogany bar, booths lining the dining room, a giant skylight welcoming twilight’s fading wisps, and in the middle of it all, a grand piano.
On a recent Saturday night, the room immediately captivated our crew. The menu, less so. It, too, appears to harken back to another era with greatest hits of a time gone by — steak tartare, crab cakes, crusted duck breast. We weren’t sure we needed this sort of nostalgia.
But there’s much more going on at Brass than meets the eye. Our first evidence of this came with the small hors d’oeuvres, starting with a circle of gougères. Pulling the individual bites apart, I found a perfect consistency to the cheese and bread, and on the tongue, the surprise of fennel seeds. What the menu terms “moules frites” — actually three marinated mussels, set atop a chickpea fritter — also rocked. And then, crab and miatake tartlets, each a small circle of intense flavor, topped with black truffle. Everyone at our table looked at each other: Friends, we’re not at Bemelmans anymore.
Then again, I should’ve known not to take the seemingly straightforward menu at face value. Brass is the latest restaurant from the duo behind two celebrated Lower East Side spots, Wildair and (Bar) Contra, chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabián von Hauske Valtierra (here, working with restaurant owner Nick Hatsatoruis of Trapizzino on the LES and Moby’s in East Hampton). Their food is never ordinary.
Two appetizers came next: choux farci of cabbage and berkshire pork, sliced like paté and served with a charred sauce of the last of the season’s Jimmy Nardello peppers. Even better marking the summer harvest’s end was tomato carpaccio, served with lobster, atop impossibly thinly sliced cherry tomatoes.
Then, a killer one-two punch to round out the evening. First, the pièce de résistance, a golden Amish chicken roulade for two, served deboned and stuffed with a mousseline of herbs and black truffle, with potato-celeriac pureé. It arrived nearly simultaneously with the knockout: the evening’s piano player. Sitting adjacent to the piano, our table got swept up in the opening of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy,” segueing into the Beatles and then Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You.” All I want on a Saturday night in Manhattan, I thought, is to be sitting in this room, soaking up this food and this vibe.
When the pianist took a setbreak 20 minutes or so later, I realized one more thing about Brass: we could hear each other talk without raising our voices. This is a spot for when I’m 64 — but also, very much for right now. –Lockhart Steele