![]() ![]() Like the foie gras vehicle, it’s a zag and a miss that obscures a shockingly hard-to-find perfect medium rare preparation (perfected here with the rouge to prove it) rather than enhance it. The oversauced steak has plenty of it, befittingly pungent and made with Tellicherry peppercorns, but almost comical, then inconvenient, in quantity, and growing a bit viscous over a few bites. They’re telegenically golden, brittle outside, soft inside and made to soak up liquid. Reunited with their rightful skirt au Poivre or bivalve friends, the fries ($13) are very good one of the things Corner Bar does best. The Atlantic halibut ($44) swims only with its hollandaise. With the exception of the $62 hay-roasted chicken, which comes with salad greens, entrées are all on their own. ![]() Its thick accompanying brioche points, while not an outlandish pairing, are a little too sweet and a little too greasy to let the foie gras dazzle. The duck foie gras terrine ($34) is also nice, as rich and buttery as hoped for and even served with a fun and spritely, glittering riesling jelly and half a caramelized apple. And these midsized bivalves would still be good even closer to land. Pack ice into a tray, elevate it a little, and even this entry-level to a seafood tower gets me every time. To start, Prince Edward Island Lucky Lime oysters ($29/half dozen) are as attractively presented as expected. It seats 68 and tables are arranged tight enough to limit gossip, but not so much to require excess shimmying. The inviting dining room, breezily, barely divided in two by an archway, has high ceilings, a handsome bar, wood finishes, gleaming white tiles and cafe curtains, bistro-ly. All that aside, Corner Bar is fine in the lusty way a ’40s movie star would have shaped the word to improve its meaning from vague indictment to approval. ![]() And that it’s been particularly difficult to book a primetime reservation, even in these enduring years of reservation booking difficulty, is just a little vexing, especially with the benefit of hindsight given how regular the place is. That the bathrooms are in the basement is half-annoying but not uncommon at hotel and hotel-adjacent restaurants. There is nothing irredeemably wrong with chef Ignacio Mattos’ Corner Bar, which followed his highly-regarded Estela and Lodi in June. When a beleaguered career gal huffs onto a bar seat and makes a mildly quirky martini order to establish personality, it is at Corner Bar. When a brooding antihero stirs coffee as the rain falls outside, it is at Corner Bar. It also encapsulates a category I think of as “restaurant in a movie that isn’t about a restaurant.” When an ingénue blows out birthday candles at a round table encircled by friends, it is at Corner Bar. The cozy, kindly space at the base of Nine Orchard Hotel has little abstract character, but its bistro aesthetic successfully captures that intended category. Corner Bar, a restaurant and bar on the corner of Canal and Allen Street downtown, seems designed to be ordinary. ![]()
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