It's no secret that restaurants take a while to get up to speed when they first open. The service will be inconsistent, the courses will come staggered at strange intervals, and the whole experience will be, well…a little off. Often restaurants label this period their "soft open" or "preview." Ye Waverly Inn, which has recently reopened, seems to be in a perennial state of preview; Joel Robuchon's L'Atelier had epic lines for tables during its no-reservations soft open; and even the crew at Manhattan's Shake Shack opened a day earlier than they had said they would this past spring in an effort to test out their burger skills. Varietal, a wine bar in the Chelsea-ish area of the Garment District, hasn't declared its a soft open, but the kinks are very much being worked out in this, its first few weeks of business. Though we sat at the bar to eat, the wine service was seriously delayed, our orders had to be repeated several times while our server struggled with the computer system, and, as Ian notes, we were asked if our entrees had arrived yet, though they had not. But so what?
The brandade fries we ordered were perfectly creamy and ocean-y under their crisp exteriors, flecked with little bits of dehydrated olives. Smoked beef consomme was a beautiful amber, nuanced and delicious, with notes of cumin and black beans. We had Basil Hayden bourbon because it would work well with the cherrywood ice cream that accompanied one of the desserts, the sommelier assured us. He could not have been more spot-on. Even the FDA-prohibited tonka bean wolfberry dessert was terrific. The shortcomings that surrounded these pleasures hardly made them less enjoyable. All restaurants experience growing pains, and Varietal can't be faulted for experiencing its own when it's only been open for about nine days. At all new restaurants, kinks get worked out and the restaurant's raw state—dishes that will inevitably evolve into greater versions of themselves, owners who are grateful that you're there so early in the restaurant's life, service that is flawed but enthusiastic—develops into a refined, destination-worthy spot. Returning in six months will be that much more exhilarating because we'll know exactly what humble beginnings the restaurant came from.
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