Zimmi’s Only Looks Humble – Grub Street

Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission.Though I am skeptical about astrology, omens, “signs from the universe,” and ghosts, I maintain a carve-out for magic numbers. My recent visits to Zimmi’s, which opened late last year on an aggressively charming corner in the West Village, have only strengthened my belief that where restaurants are concerned, a number somewhere around 40 has a particular magic.With 40 seats, a restaurant is a jewel box — apropos, you might say, since Zimmi’s is named for the Arts and Crafts jeweler and metalsmith Marie Zimmermann. Forty people is a party. Forty people can make a festive din, and 40 people who have found their way in, sourced from the ranks of the committed and the cunning, are enough to be various without overwhelming. With 40 hungry customers, chefs are freed from the exigencies of the assembly line. They can personally oversee dinner and still duck out from behind the pass to greet the regulars. Forty seats grant quality control without claustrophobia, homeyness without home cooking.Zimmi’s, with 37 seats, is tantalizingly close to magical. If you can count yourself one among those, I would. Zimmi’s is the spotlight for Maxime Pradié, a talented chef who previously served in the kitchens of Lodi and the dearly departed Flora Bar. Pradié is a born-and-raised New Yorker the blood of a Bordelais, and he cooks like a grand-mère — his own, it turns out, at whose stove he learned over summers in the south of France.French cooking is enjoying a revival in New York, across the gamut that runs from glou-glou neo-bistro to the truffled extravagance of Chez Fifi on the Upper East Side, where seats before 11 p.m. are in such short supply that I have temporarily given up trying to go. Zimmi’s falls somewhere in between, what might be called auberge cooking. It is rustic without being rough. Pradié’s lamb stew is served in gamy hunks, but those hunks recline on a bed of pommes purées only slightly less silky than Joël Robuchon’s.If the auberge of it all is apt — and I submit that it is — it is partly the country cooking and partly the size, and most of all the innkeeper’s knowledge that real hospitality comes from small, manageable details. Things at Zimmi’s are just so. The curtains fly at half-height to keep in the warm light. The service is attentive and informed. The vast majority of the wine list — overseen by proprietor Jenni Guizio and general manager Cory Holt — is available by the half-bottle as well as the full. The mostly French list is especially strong in the country’s south, meeting the food where it lives, with a savvy eye to benchmark producers like the Châteauneuf’s Emmanuel Reynaud, represented here by his more (relatively) affordable Domaine des Tours and Château de Fonsalette instead of his auction-ready Rayas trophy bottlings.I’d just as soon skip the 40-ounce côte de boeuf at an eye-watering market price of around $300, but whatever else you do, start with a slice of pissaladière, like a cheeseless pizza niçoise, only better: short as a biscuit, sweet with onions frizzled to a caramel darkness, draped in anchovies and oily black olives. It’s one of the dishes Pradié made as an audition for his partnership with Guizio, and you can see why: More than a soft squiggle of foie gras mousse glittering with Sauternes gelée, more than oysters beneath a snowy pyramid of celery granita, it sets the tone. Nothing wrong with offal or oysters (the foie mousse is very good); it’s just that these are dishes that would be familiar at starrier, dressier establishments. Zimmi’s is at its best when it is, in the words of Pradié, comme dans l’arrière pays: like back in the Old Country. It excels within its own cozy parameters.The menu keeps evolving, and several items I had on one visit had excused themselves on another. Provençal barbajuans — little fried pockets of Swiss chard and cheese — gave way to a tastier chickpea-flour socca, acidified with soft cheese and rindlike shavings of bottarga. I missed the biscuits less than a pretty terrine de potager, vegetable aspic, which seemed mostly cast for looks until I tasted its bracing hit of vinegar. Two pastas do seem set for now — Grandma was Italian born, and nobody leaves the kitchens of Ignacio Mattos without a pasta or two in their back pocket — one with pesto and green beans, the other tossed in a nubby chicken-and-sage ragout dialed up with a whisper of liver.Among the mains, there are no bad choices, though there are also maybe no allowances. Salmon mi-cuit was, as advertised, swimmingly rare, tender as pudding. A burnished pork collar, redolent of hazelnuts and a sweet, shallot-y jus, was fattier than some at my table were used to. Give in gladly, is my advice. As any French innkeeper from the Thénardiers on down will tell you, in the Old Country, it’s the kitchen, not the customer, who’s always right. Top Pick 72 Bedford St., at Commerce St.; zimmisnyc.comTight SqueezeThough the compact size fits the mood, navigating can be tricky. Be prepared to graze your fellow diners’ tables.Dessert Is DivisiveVanilla ice cream is so beaned it’s gray, and riz au lait is way thick. Next time, I might stick to the cheese.More on the WayZimmi’s will expand with a small wine bar, which Eater NY reports will be opening this spring.Thank you for subscribing and supporting our journalism.
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Source: http://www.grubstreet.com/article/zimmis-nyc-restaurant-review.html