Pete Wells is Three-Stars Excited Over The Grill

Pete Wells was thrilled with The Grill in the former Four Seasons, giving it three stars in a review for a theatrical meal in a space that that’s been properly revamped.

He starts with a look back, reminding readers that “long before the end” The Four Seasons in the Seagram building “was a mess,” giving his own story of a disaster dinner back in 2013, that started with stale rolls and finished with “grocery store pie.” Everything has changed with this opening, where Major Food Group delivers the kind of restaurant that “many of us imagined in this space all along.”

Today, “the beads are strung back together” and “Lippold’s bronze glints again,” — props for the show that takes place in the “high point of midcentury modernism.” Mostly he loves it, along with absurd props that keep him engaged, like the “buffet in name only,” the “traffic jam of rolling carts,” and the peach melba on fire.

It’s been awhile that Wells has devoted paragraph after paragraph to dishes he likes, in this case, the “spectacularly good guinea hen,” the Seagram crab cake that’s “very sweet and pure,” the prime rib, the lamb chops, the larded squab, and the honey-mustard duck breast. “I’ll be thinking about those dishes for the rest of the year, and probably beyond,” he says.

Why not four stars? For the handful of dishes that are merely “very, very good,” like the avocado crab Louis, or the less-good mushroom omelet. No mention of the feat that is pasta a la presse.

The prices, of course, range from “Wow” to “Are you guys serious?” But they don’t mute his enthusiasm. “It was always one of the most beautiful dining rooms in New York,” he writes. “Now it’s also one of its most exciting restaurants.” Three stars.