“I don’t care what you wear, as long as your feet and your genitals are covered,” Drew Nieporent, the avuncular owner of Bâtard, said to a couple in the corner who had been admiring the relaxed atmosphere of his restaurant. It’s a testament to the obscene deliciousness of what they were eating that neither stopped. They were on dessert, which was milk bread, a Christmastime treat from Germany. Analogies tumbled forth: the caramelized crust broke with a crème-brûlée crackle; the puffy, unctuous interior was like the world’s best French toast; the contrast in textures reminded them of iced donuts from childhood.
The milk bread was gone even before Nieporent had moved to the next table, to hold forth with stories from years past in the same Tribeca space—and photos, too, loaded on his iPhone. There was a shot of the crew from his first restaurant, Montrachet. (You could tell it was the early eighties because of the hair gel.) A few years after that popular bistro closed came Corton, a frankly luxurious experience for the boom years, and the expense accounts, of the mid-aughts. The room is an unlikely spot for so many nice dinners. It’s L-shaped, with barely any windows and a ceiling as low as a brownstone basement’s. And yet, with Bâtard, Nieporent has created another special place. The aggressively relaxed dress code and clubhouse-like atmosphere take nothing away from the sophisticated northern-European food—if anything, it feels just right for now to serve a serious three-course meal, at relatively gentle prices for the neighborhood, without a tablecloth.
The menu makes few concessions to the heat of a New York summer. Veal is one thing; wrapping it in bread, tramezzini style, with a cube of sweetbread on the side, is not necessarily appealing to someone who was recently on an A train with no air-conditioning. But just about everything’s enjoyable, even if you didn’t know you wanted lamb chops dusted in parsley bread crumbs, doused in jus, with a side of lamb bacon and vegetables in a Le Creuset pot. Memories of dishes lingered for weeks afterward: an appetizer of heirloom tomatoes, all angles and preposterously bright, scattered with Sicilian pistachios, daubed with avocado, dressed with a hint of vanilla; an octopus terrine, made with pastrami spices and chunks of braised ham hock, meaty with an interesting aftertaste of brine. Before the lamb, the octopus, and the milk bread, there was another dairy-based confection: the Southern cocktail known as milk punch, enjoying a moment in some of the city’s fancier bars, which steeps for nine hours, so that the drink winds up clear, rather than cloudy. Bâtard’s comes in a little bottle, with a label around the neck reading trink mich, or “drink me” in German, and the two diners, dressed in jeans, did. ♦
Open for dinner Tuesdays through Sundays. Three-course menu, $65.
