There’s something delicious about the idea that a restaurant in Paris run by a bunch of Americans is elevating modern French cooking. That place, Spring, is known for its precisely composed plates, which, even as they toy with ashes and foams, skirt fuss. Now a chef who ran its kitchen, Daniel Eddy, has come home to his native New York. At Rebelle, on the Lower East Side, Eddy has, in a very short time, become a flag bearer for the newly formal strain of downtown dining. Rebelle is one of those places that regard the wine with as much seriousness as the food, with a list that verges on a tome, and a sommelier eager to show off the funkier corners of his cellar. The waiter, meanwhile, is more focussed, and asks that each diner pick one dish from each of the courses. Stern, sure—but also a source of relief, a welcome bit of bossiness for diners accustomed to juggling small plates that arrive on the kitchen’s idiosyncratic schedule.
So, four courses, fifteen hundred wines on offer, and food that looks like it involves tweezers but also tastes good. Much of the menu involves American tweaks to Gallic classics: fried shallots on a lamb tartare haven’t been put to such good use since last Thanksgiving’s green-bean casserole, and the creamy lobster sauce on sweetbreads evokes a New England chowder. A first course of fluke and lemon sounds familiar, but then you taste the brown butter and sherry and it’s new. What’s best about Rebelle is that it is contemporary but not trendy. There’s a vegetable in quotation marks, and it’s not gimmicky: a velvety, rich “beet” bourguignon, better suited to May in New York than its beefy brethren. The cherry clafoutis is to share, a spontaneous act of generosity from the kitchen, hearty and delicate at the same time. It wears a jaunty hat of Chantilly cream. By this point, there has been a lot of wine. The experience is gouty but elegant, and, tonight, the Bowery is our Boulevard Saint-Germain. ♦
Open for dinner Mondays through Saturdays. Entrées $12-$24.
