A First Glance at One
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- December
- 6
Not to rip off Jerry Maguire too much (especially because I’m not a big fan of Renee), but  at One, they had me with “egg.”
Add lobster, caviar, chive and creme fraiche and serve it on a bed of salt and you’ve got a winner in my book. (But I guess Jean Georges already knew that.)
One  named for its address, One Bridge St. Irvington. 914-591-2233  is the new restaurant where Solera used to be. My early impressions of the food are favorable, though there are still some kinks in the service.
Above is the main dining room. (This was early; there were more tables filled later.) The wall of wine is way cool, isn’t it? They did a lot of renovations since Solera, but kept the general footprint of the restaurant.
Below, the bar area:
They added tall tables instead of the low ones Solera used to have. Sports fans will be happy to notice the three plasma TVs above the bar.
Boozehounds will be happy to notice the large selection of bottles behind the bar.
The wine list is very nice. (By the glass offerings include Albarino, Gruner Veltliner, a Sicilian wine called Fourplay and some other good choices.) They’re served in quartinos  quarter-bottles  like at Babbo. This is both good and bad. It gives you more than a glass if you like your wine, but if you only want one glass you have to pay more and leave some behind.
Same thing goes for the oysters.
They’re gorgeous, but you can’t buy them by the piece. My friend can’t eat raw fish, so I didn’t want to get the full half-dozen just for me. I asked for two of the beausoliels (one of my favorite kinds) but they only come in orders of 6 or 12. It’s a shame because I overheard another guy asking for a couple by the piece and he was turned down, too. They could have sold more oysters (at least last night) if they changed the policy.
We had a lovely amuse:
Foie gras mousse on a puff pastry. Only complaint: it was cold. Room temp would have been better. Nice luxury ingredients, though.
Then I got the egg. (Those of you who know my tastes know I couldn’t refuse it.)
I’m being nitpicky here but I wish there was more of a temperature contrast between the egg and the creme fraiche. The chive was pretty strong, but I like that. I couldn’t really find much lobster. Still: Isn’t it simply gorgeous?
My friend had the chilled calamari and arugula salad. It looks overdressed in the photo, but it really wasn’t.
Nice balance of flavors and textures. Spicy, smoky chunks of meat (bacon? chorizo?) and the calamari was not at all rubbery. Funny  no temperature complaints here. Even though it said “chilled” it wasn’t cold at all. I would definitely order this again.
Here are a couple photos from my artistic side:
For the next course, we shared a soup and an entree: Duck wtih duck sausage (great) and pumpkin polenta. A big winner.
And pumpkin bisque with apple fritters and chestnuts. Also lovely.
Our neighor here at the bar wanted to set the bartender up with her son. (“He’s gorgeous!” she said.)
This was where the one indictation of service issues came in. The bartender  nice as she was  seemed to know these customers and so was talking with them for a long time. Normally not a problem. Except it kept her from clearing our empty plates for at least 15 minutes. I’m not going to be too picky, because the place is new  but One is not cheap. (My egg was $22 and the duck $27. The soup was $9 and the salad $12. With wine and dessert, the bill was $135.) So you need to watch these things or you’ll piss people off in a hurry.
Dessert was a vanilla pain perdu (or French toast):
Love bananas. Love almonds. Love caramel. Loved this dessert. Though by the end, my teeth were glad we’d shared. It is Sweet with a capital S.
We ended with a pear gelee  kind of like a gum drop.
I liked it. My friend really didn’t. Chacun a son gout  each to his own taste.
I’m excited about One. The restaurant so new  I think they opened the weekend before Thanksgiving?  that you really can’t blame them for needing more time to work out the kinks.
Who else has been to One? Is it going to be your new number one?
This entry was posted
on Wednesday, December 6th, 2006 at 3:58 pm by Liz Johnson.
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(4.62 out of 5)
(4.21 out of 5)
This restaurant is fabulous! Wonderful atmosphere and great food. I will be back!
I’m glad you liked it Kate. What did you have?
I also had the egg, which was excellent! The tuna tartar and pumpkin bisque was also very good. For dinner I enjoyed the chicken with mushroom mousse. The chicken was very nicely prepared and I really enjoyed the mushroom mousse! Finally, dessert…who could resist! I had the apple fritters which were very tasty and nicely presented.
All in all, it was a great dining experience.
I’m so glad to hear that. How was the service? We’ll be running a piece about One in The Line next week.