UPTOWNflavor

The House That Earl Built

Knicks legend Earl the Pearl tries to up the ante on jock food.

• By Mark Jacobson

Earl Monroe, the incomparable Pearl, who in his heyday bounced a basketball with the sort of idiosyncratic rhythm Thelonious Monk applied to the piano, leans his still-supple body back in his chair and says, yes, the game has changed. “Once it was a veterans’ thing; now the rookies are in charge.”

The Pearl is something of a rookie again himself, with his new restaurant, Earl Monroe’s in Riverbank State Park, set to open this week at the extreme west end of 145th Street. In a down-home Winston-Salem accent not quite vanished 35 years after joining Clyde Frazier in the Knicks’ backcourt, Monroe even admits he has “a few butterflies.”

It’s not that Monroe, 60, hasn’t run anything before: He’s been in the record business for years. But a haute Harlem restaurant, especially this one, with its sleek, football-field-length glassed-in front affording a Hudson Valley view Alfred Bierstadt would kill for (with the George Washington Bridge thrown in for good measure), isn’t simply a business venture. “I’m not going to stick my name on it and never think about it again,” the Pearl says. “We looked for the right location uptown for five years. To me this will be the crown jewel of Harlem.”

Athlete food has never been known for its culinary grandeur. Years ago, Jack Dempsey’s “joint” on Broadway may have been Ed Sullivan’s favorite watering hole, where matzo-ball soup was served in a “tureen,” but the Manassa Mauler’s kitchen served more grease than glory. In the eighties, the robust former Met Rusty Staub was known for his ribs, but no one who’d ever been to Memphis’s famed Cozy Corner would have been fooled. I seem to remember hoisting some serious boilermakers in Tommie Agee’s Queens bar, but for the most part, outside of branding opportunities like Michael Jordan’s in Grand Central station, jock food has been more along the lines of gag burgers slapped onto memorabilia-encased Formica tabletops at places like Bobby Valentine’s string of sports bars.

Earl Monroe’s will be different, says John Lowy, the Pearl’s partner, who formerly worked at the overpriced Ur–jock joint Mickey Mantle’s. “This will be a serious restaurant, with serious but friendly food,” says Lowy. To justify the not-so-uptown $22 entrée prices, Lowy and Monroe have hired Christopher Faulkner, who understudied with Geoffrey Zakarian at Town and the Royalton’s 44. “Chris is smoking,” says Monroe, who’s partial to Faulkner’s extra-succulent crab and lobster cakes as well as his cornmeal-encrusted grouper, which comes with slivered okra and bean stew. The menu will be mostly seafood, with a few exceptions. “I’m being seduced by duck,” Monroe says.

The Pearl expects some “adjustments” at the beginning, like the adjustment he made back in 1967 after he was held scoreless by the Pistons’ Eddie Miles and then dropped 42 on him the very next night. “What I’m hoping for is a place where people come to have a good time. You know, I watch the games and even now I never see anyone who reminds me of me, the way I played. You have to be unique. Earl Monroe’s will be unique.”

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Pearl of Manhattan

By PAUL ADAMS
January 18, 2006

Any questions about why Knicks star Earl “The Pearl” Monroe put his new restaurant in Riverbank State Park are quickly dispelled by the view. Through the vast windows, one can see a long view of the Hudson, including the dramatically lit George Washington Bridge. When the sun returns to setting at a sane hour, dinner at Earl Monroe’s Restaurant will include lovely sunset vistas as well.The kitchen, under the guidance of chef Christopher Faulker, plays freely with cuisines of the South, from Maryland to Louisiana, incorporating contributions from West Indian Creole cooking and beyond. The appetizer list is a whirlwind tour of the Caribbean and the Gulf Coast, from dumpling-like miniature Trinidadian beef roti ($9) to tamales filled with barbecue-style pulled pork ($9). The beef dumplings stand out, their vividly curried fillings accented by sweet pineapple chutney. Caribbean cod fritters ($12) are doughy and well browned, with pickled green beans for a bed; but the tamales are merely satisfactory, offering the best of neither of the worlds they combine. Another starter, a calamari salad ($9), gives a bad impression of a good restaurant. Its components – battered squid rings, mango, cress, and cilantro – should be a rapture of contrast, but instead they all have the same oily texture and tepid temperature.

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By FRANK BRUNI

The location of Earl Monroe’s Restaurant is the geographic equivalent of a “Kick me” sign. It sits in Riverbank State Park, which sounds lovely and bucolic enough until you remember that the park was built atop a waste-treatment plant. The opportunity for jokes at the restaurant’s expense is ripe.

But by choosing the spot, Earl Monroe’s exposes itself to more than ribbing. It exposes itself to a sensational view. The long northern wall of the restaurant is floor-to-ceiling glass facing the Hudson River and the George Washington Bridge.

So while diners heading into Earl Monroe’s for dinner see what look like industrial smokestacks near the entrance, they stare at a broad span of glittering lights once inside. It’s not such a bad trade-off in the end.

Like the restaurants that bear Michael Jordan’s and Don Shula’s names, Earl Monroe’s bets that an athletic legend can become a culinary siren, promising a great meal instead of a great game. Earl Monroe was a star guard for the New York Knicks, and there’s an allusion to that career in the look and feel of the menu. Its exterior resembles the outside of a basketball.

Its interior makes clear that Mr. Monroe wants to present something more original than hefty chunks of beef. Fittingly, the man known as Earl the Pearl wants to mine the seas – for oysters, of course, and for much more. There’s a crab chowder; cakes made of crab and lobster; grilled salmon; a Caesar salad with avocado and fried shrimp.

Several friends and I tried a fillet of striped bass encrusted with corn meal and okra. The contrast between the gritty, crunchy exterior and the moist interior made for a very fine dish.

The ingredients in the dish signaled two related themes behind much of the food at Earl Monroe’s, which explores Southern cuisine – defined broadly enough to flirt at least briefly with Cajun, Creole and even Mexican – and what might be called elevated soul food.

That exploration leads to appetizer selections like pulled pork tamales, and cod fritters with pickled vegetables. To entree selections like shrimp arranged over grits, and chicken with sweet potato gravy. To sides like macaroni-and-cheese croquettes, and collard greens with smoked turkey.

The dishes I tried were a mix of very appealing (those croquettes), overcooked (that chicken) and unremarkable (a grilled skirt steak). They were wedded to service that wasn’t always efficient but was definitely earnest and often charismatic. Both of the waitresses who interacted with our table had senses of humor and senses of just how much conversation we wanted and didn’t and when.

While the view is pure magic, the shape of the dining room, 140 by 20 feet, and its spare aesthetic are awkward. So, too, is getting there, waste-treatment plant or no waste-treatment plant. It’s a hike or bus ride from the nearest subway, and a taxi or car has to look for and cross a narrow bridge connecting Riverside Drive to the raised park.

But there is valet parking. Like the view, it’s not something many Manhattan restaurants offer.

Earl Monroe’s Restaurant, 750 West 145th Street, in Riverbank State Park, off Riverside Drive, Hamilton Heights; (212) 491-1500. Appetizers, $7 to $14. Entrees, $17 to $36.

Source: Diner’s Journal, NY Times Dining & Wine, December 16, 2005

*Editor’s Note: Earl Monroe’s is now known as the River Room