Wakiya
This restaurant is closed!
Photo: Cititour.com
Contact Info:
Address: 2 Lexinton Ave (Gramercy Park Hotel)
City: New York, NY
Zip: 10010
map: View the Map
Phone: (212) 920-3300
Website: http://www.gramercyparkhotel.com/
Food Info:
Chef:
Yuji Wakiya
Cuisine:
Chinese
Cititour Review:
Wakiya has opened at the Gramercy Park Hotel. The restaurant is an Ian Schrager production, which came about when things didn’t work out so well with Hakkasan’s Alan Yau. It is run by the Nobu Management team—Richie Notar, Meir Tepper, and Robert De Niro (not the Drew Nieporent Myriad team), and features the cooking of chef Yuji Wakiya, of Wakiya, Roppongi, Turandot and Akasaka in Japan, who came highly recommended to Schrager by Nobu Matsuhisa. Wakiya is known for an innovative, delicate style of Chinese fare that combs the country and includes cooking from Shanghai, Szechuan, Canton and Beijing provinces.The menu is divided between cold dishes like Bang Bang Chicken (cold pulled chicken with spicy red pepper sauce ($16), Endive Tofu Dip ($12) and Chili Soy Celery Sticks ($6), Dim Sum (dumplings $8-$12), and Hot Dishes ranging from Peking Duck ($24) to Double Sautéed Pork and Cabbage ($18), Smoked Lamb with Black Pepper Sauce ($24) and Ma Po Tofu ($21). His signature, The Fiery Pepper Hunt ($16-$36), is your choice of wok-sautéed lobster, scallops, chicken, or vegetables served on a bed of fire breathing chili peppers.
At the moment, the restaurant is still in “preview mode.” This basically means that the restaurant’s publicists—those whose job it is to facilitate press inquiries and to pitch us stories—is to keep press away and be as unhelpful as possible to any press person seeking information about the menu, the designer, the cocktails, the story, anything. As is probably evident, this whole dance between publicist and writer in these cases, quite frankly, drives me crazy. It’s a restaurant. It serves food. Let’s share some information, see the menu, have a look at the chef, and get people to go and eat. I know it’s Ian Schrager, and he’s got his image and the writers he wants to write about him and on and on, but come on. It’s just so New York and so annoying, and I really cannot stand this part of my job. It’s a restaurant. (Potentially a great restaurant.) But it’s not a matter of national intelligence. Get over yourself.
What I also find so irritating about this restaurant is that hospitality is no part of your experience, at least until you get through the guard dogs at the gate who screen you for worthiness to enter. This is how things went the other night at 6pm when Craig and I went in for a drink and a quick bite before seeing our friend’s show, Masked, at the DR2 Theater (a very worthy play about three Palestinian brothers). Okay, here’s the scene:
Tall amazon-like hostess, definitely related to Giselle, standing guard outside restaurant: “Are you having dinner?”
Me (no relation to Giselle): “Hi. Well, we’d like to have a drink and probably a bite at the bar.”
Amazon: “Sorry, unless you’re having dinner you can’t sit at the bar.”
Me: “Well, we’ll probably have something. But I’d like to look at the menu.”
The Amazon then repeated the same “you can’t go in there unless you have dinner,” but eventually relented and told us to speak to the manager about our request.
The hostess inside the restaurant and I had the same exchange, and then she referred me to the manager, who could not have been more rude. “I’m so sorry (condescending tone), but you can’t sit at the bar unless you are having dinner. It is a FOOD bar.” He turned his nose up and returned to his clicking on the computer screen in front of him. “Hey, listen, we live in the neighborhood and it’s empty in here,” I said. “We’d like to take a look at the menu, have a bite and a drink. Okay?” It was not as much a question on my part as a statement of what I was about to do. I wasn’t having any more of his nonsense. Then Craig and I walked past him to take two seats at the bar where a very friendly and hospitable bartender named Ron took care of us with great attention and kindness.
Anyway, last time I checked there was something called hospitality in the restaurant business. (See Drew Nieporent, Danny Meyer, Mario Batali, Danny Abrams, Jimmy Bradley, Vicki Freeman, et al, Mr. Schrager.) Guests come in, you welcome them, you offer them a place to sit and have a drink. Most probably they’ll sit and smell the food and get hungry. This policy of you can’t come in unless you eat is not very forward thinking, and it doesn’t consider the value of good will which increases the possibility of returning customers. There was not one person at the bar and the lounge was empty as well. It’s not like we walked in at 8pm. It would’ve taken nothing for manager Jack Chang to have been cordial and hospitable to us, and he was neither. Turns out, we dropped a hundred dollars that night, mostly because Ron was so nice, and the cocktails were perfect and the food was quite good and inspired us to order more than we had intended. But in terms of returning to Wakiya, I don’t plan on giving more money to people who try so hard to keep me out. There are plenty of other restaurants serving high-priced fancy Chinese in this town for me to choose from where the food’s just as good, and I am welcomed and treated well.
Review By: Andrea Strong
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