UPTOWNflavor

EDITOR’S NOTE: BAYOU IS CLOSED AS OF 2006

This week’s restaurant:
Bayou, New York

Every few months, I head up to Harlem to take a look around, have a drink and maybe get something to eat. While there’s some good food up there–the donuts at George’s bakery beat those from Krispy Kreme any day, and the fried chicken at Charles’ Southern Style Kitchen makes some Southern friends of mine get all misty-eyed–most of the restaurants aren’t places where you want to spend much time.

So when I walked through an unremarkable doorway and up a flight up stairs to Bayou on Saturday night, I wasn’t expecting much in terms of atmosphere. I should have known better. A new Harlem is emerging on these long-neglected streets. You can see it on 125th Street, where shiny new stores like Old Navy and HMV have recently opened. It’s about time somebody noticed that people actually live in Harlem–people who shouldn’t have to trek all the way downtown to go shopping or to have dinner in a stylish, grown-up restaurant. I mean, Sylvia’s is a wonderful place, but I wouldn’t go there on a date.

But I would go to Bayou, just a few doors down Lenox Avenue. The architect who built it, Richard Lewis, has worked on some of downtown’s most atmospheric restaurants, including Pastis and Balthazar, and he’s brought his downtown style uptown. Lewis used cherry wood throughout the room, which glows in the soft light. There are banquettes along the walls, and a handsome bar front and center. All in all, it’s a place I would love to have in my own neighborhood.

The black-and-white photographs of Louisiana are a subtle tip-off that this is a Creole restaurant. The chef, Steve Manning, recently moved north from New Orleans, where he made a name for himself at Clancy’s. A friend who knows New Orleans says that Manning brought most of his menu with him, including his famous fried oysters topped with brie. It’s quite a dish: The oysters sit on top of young spinach leaves sautéed in butter (if you’re eating Creole food, you’re not going to get to the end of a meal with ingesting a stick or two of butter); a sprinkling of cayenne pepper keeps the brie from being too, well, brie-like. I loved it, but I can imagine that after a few servings I’d need to waddle down the street to Old Navy and get myself some baggy jeans with an expandable waistline. Maybe it’s just as well that Bayou isn’t in my neighborhood after all.

After that rich beginning, I moved on to crawfish etouffé, a classic dish that tasted great when I had it in New Orleans years ago but has never lived up to the memory when I’ve ordered it in New York. The version at Bayou is the genuine article, as was the shrimp Creole my girlfriend ordered. I can’t say that Manning has reinvented these venerable dishes, but then again they don’t need reinventing. There are some other intriguing items on the menu, like marinated catfish and sautéed snapper Alexandria, that promise a little bit of inventiveness. I’ll be back at Bayou soon, I’m fairly sure, and next time I’ll bring a bunch of friends so we can eat our way around Manning’s menu. And by the time I get back, no doubt, the new Harlem will be even more apparent.

- Pete Wells

Bayou
308 Lenox Avenue (between 125th & 126th Streets)
New York, NY
212-426-3800

Source: Food & Wine
__________________________

Counter Culture
Up on the Bayou Where the Catfish Doesn’t Bite
by Robert Sietsema
June 27th, 2003 12:30 PM

Gumbo has found a new home at a new Harlem institution.

Bayou 308 Malcolm X Boulevard, 212-426-3800. Open Monday through Thursday 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 10 p.m., Friday to 11, Saturday 6 to 11 p.m., Sunday noon to 4 p.m. Major credit cards. Not wheelchair accessible.

Three years ago, when Bayou debuted in Harlem, I’d just returned from a New Orleans binge and was in no mood to tolerate mediocrity. After downing plump raw oysters and green-tomato remoulade at Uglesich’s, behemoth barbecued shrimp at Mosco’s, and crawfish by the dozen at Paul’s Pirogue, I was nonplussed by Bayou’s too sweet and too mild approach, though their turtle soup—oily, filled with rubbery meat and perfumed with sherry—made me smack my lips. Still, the food wasn’t good enough for me to return, no matter how much Bill Clinton was rumored to adore the place.

Then a friend in the music biz started hectoring me, so once again I made the long climb to the second-floor loft. The decor remained the same: a bare-brick room with a scatter of black-and-white snapshots of fishing boats and hunting parties on the bayou. The best tables are by the windows, looking down on Malcolm X Boulevard—the rollicking Lenox Avenue of yore. But now, instead of Harlem’s craggy old buildings, the view sadly takes in a Staples and a CVS. Does Bayou belong here, or is it part of the problem?

But the first fried oyster ($10.95 for four) dispelled my apprehensions. Cradled in a nest of spinach and topped with melted brie, the flavor was voluptuous, briny, and funky. The ungainly juxtaposition seemed like something you might find at the venerable Galatoire’s in the French Quarter. Though still tasty, the turtle soup was not as good as it had been, marred by a wobbly thickness that suggested too much cornstarch. The gumbo ($4.95), though, was on the money, miring shrimp and smoky tasso ham in a righteously dark roux, the browned combo of butter and flour whose color adjustment is the heart of Creole cooking. A handful of rice tossed on top added a welcome element of chaos. There was also a decent version of barbecued shrimp and a tasty sauté of chicken livers—though the soggy croutons were a drag. Strangely successful was a basket of fried eggplant, which came with powdered sugar for dipping like so many linear donuts.

While the appetizers remained a mixed bag, the entrées triumphed. The crawfish étouffée amazed me—a substantial quantity of curly tails bathed in a midnight roux, ringed with rice and sprinkled with chopped scallions. Memorable, too, was the catfish platter ($15.95), as good as any I’ve had in Mississippi. The fillets were thickly corn crusted and seemingly greaseless, a triumph of the fryer’s art. Even though the whiskered critters were doubtlessly farm raised, there was a hint of mud in the mix. The fries were fabulous—skin on, slightly limp, adequately salted. Most elegant, and once again reminding me of Galatoire’s, was a shrimp and crabmeat “ensemble” ($20.95): a seafood softball tossed into a simple saffron cream sauce garnished with chopped tomato. There were only a couple of duds, including a too sweet and too green-peppery shrimp creole, and a duck breast painted with a cloying sauce that revealed a thick layer of fat beneath the skin. The garlic mashed potatoes, however, were spectacular.
After three years, Bayou has settled in to become a neighborhood institution, with a loyal constituency of diverse age, gender, and race. But does it belong in Harlem?

As if the excellence of its Louisiana standards weren’t enough, I discovered further confirmation. Leafing through a ’40s Amsterdam News, I came across a good-sized display ad for Pete’s Creole Restaurant, which proudly proclaimed: “Home of Louisiana Gumbo.” At long last, gumbo’s found a new home in Harlem.

Source: Village Voice

___________________________

Related: Feature on Bayou’s owner