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Tavern: A jewel on the green

Erica Marcus | NEWSDAY STAFF WRITER

December 14, 2007

Tables set up in the garden of Tavern on the Green (HANDOUT)

It's a tradition among New York's glutterati to dismiss Tavern on the Green as an overdecorated tourist trap that serves catering-hall fare.

While there's no disputing either the rococo furnishings or the preponderance of out-of-towners, the rap on the food is wrong. I recently enjoyed a dinner there that was, for the most part, delicious.

The prices are steep, but $70 will buy you a large quantity of chef Brian Young's accomplished fare. (Young joined the 850-seat restaurant in March of this year, charged with "bringing exceptional quality to exceptional volume.") What's more, you will be able to easily identify all the food. Service is professional. The wine list is extensive, featuring dozens of reasonably priced selections, many of them available by the glass. There are plenty of "better" restaurants in New York that cannot make these same claims.

During the holidays, Tavern's decor goes from overboard to overkill, with Christmas trees, wreaths and garlands duking it out with flowers, balloons and chandeliers. My 11-year-old friend, however, thought it was just grand.

She also loved her salad, an iceberg wedge anointed with blue cheese dressing, bacon, cherry tomatoes, red onions and croutons. Surely nature never intended iceberg lettuce to stand on its own, for it is a peerless vehicle for cheese and bacon.

Her mother, a cookbook author, was equally impressed by her harmonious starter of cherry-wood-smoked salmon garnished with mustard, white asparagus and gribiche, a sort of fancy tartar sauce, even if the promised "soft egg" did not materialize. And I was just as happy with a more modern classic, seared rare tuna with a soy-truffle jus, lotus-root crisps and a black-seaweed salad.

Our entrees also went three for three. Rack of lamb was tender and perfectly medium rare, ably supported by watercress and a thyme-garlic sauce, though the roast fennel and eggplant were a bit pallid. The kid had (and finished!) a huge slab of pink prime rib, served with mashed potatoes and slightly underdone green beans.

My cioppino, a big bowl of rich, red saffron-fennel-garlic-broth overflowing with lobster, clams, mussels, shrimp, crab and Israeli couscous, lacked only a crunchy baguette to wipe the bowl with; I had to make do with the virtuous but uninspiring seeded whole-grain house roll.

Desserts were a letdown. The "dark chocolate cake," of the ubiquitous individual molten variety, was overcooked. A weak-crusted crème brûlée was pedestrian; its accompanying almond tuile one inappropriately tough cookie.

Still, it was the kid's first crème brûlée, a momentous rite of passage that could not have been celebrated in more festive surroundings.

TAVERN ON THE GREEN Central Park at West 67th Street; 212-873-3200; tavernonthegreen.com

CUISINE: Crowd-pleasing contemporary-Continental

CHECK: Appetizers, $13 to $23; main courses, $28 to $46; desserts, $12; 3-course prix fixe, $66. Credit cards accepted

HOURS: Brunch, Saturday and Sunday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.; lunch, Monday to Friday 11:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.; dinner, Sunday to Thursday 5 to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday, 5 to 10:30 p.m.

WHEELCHAIR ACCESS: Accessible

ALSO IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD . . .

Parking for patrons is available at Tavern on the Green's lot; rates are $8 for the first two hours and $2 for each additional hour.

Central Park has a stark beauty in the winter. Why not bundle up the family and spend the day there? Visit the Central Park Zoo (64th Street and Fifth Avenue; 212-439-6500; winter hours, 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m). Skate, or take skating lessons, at the Wollman Rink (up the path from the entrance at Central Park South and Sixth Avenue; 212-439-6900; Sunday to Thursday

10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Friday and Saturday 10 a.m. to 11 p.m.). Treat yourself to a horse-drawn carriage ride (carriages congregate along Central Park South; call 212-736-0680 for rates). For information on virtually every event, attraction and activity in Central Park, go to centralpark.com.

More Restaurants: There is one other restaurant in the park proper, the Boathouse (East 72nd Street and Park Drive North, 212-517-2233). The blocks just west of the park are fertile territory for fine dining: Café des Artistes (1 W. 67th St., 212-877-3500) for classic cuisine accompanied by the murals of Howard Chandler Christy; Shun Lee West (43 W. 65th St., 212-595-8895) for refined Chinese; Telepan (72 W. 69th St., 212-580-4300) for ingredient-driven New American and Picholine (35 W. 64th St., 212-724-8585), for Terrence Brennan's updated Provençal.