Pete Wells Doles 3 Stars to Frenchette, Calling It a ‘Safe Bet’

Good luck to anyone trying to get into the already super-busy Frenchette now: The Tribeca French restaurant from longtime Keith McNally chefs Riad Nasr and Lee Hanson landed three stars from the Times today, plus a glowing two stars from Eater’s critic Ryan Sutton.

In the Times review, Pete Wells deemed that the restaurant is pushing out solid food that will likely keep the restaurant around for a long time — “the closest thing to a safe bet that I’ve seen in years,” he writes. He praises dishes like the crisp duck frites and a juicy roast chicken, plus other impressive dishes “worth planning a night around”:

Some of them don’t look wildly impressive unless you know how they’re made. For each order of brouillade, a pan of eggs has to be stirred constantly over a small flame for a long time, until they look like grits. (There’s a reason you don’t see brouillade on many menus.) Dropped on top are a few excellent snails in parsley and garlic, a buttery garnish for very buttery scrambled eggs.

Calf’s liver was sweet and custardy, the goal in cooking it, and one that’s not often reached. Sweetbreads with creamy white insides were fried to a pale, crinkled gold, then served with a brown, French, lovely and anachronistic sauce made from veal jus and crayfish. Lobster was roasted on a rotisserie, sending some of the shell’s flavor into the meat, which was then given a very luxurious bath in curry butter.

He found some misses though, like smoked eel beignets, pig-foot croquettes, and desserts. Wells considered Frenchette more of a just familiar-enough restaurant, as opposed to Sutton’s declaration that it’s an exciting version of the French bistro. Still, with a good wine list from Jorge Riera and overall pleasant French-ish fare, Frenchette nabbed three stars.