Wicker Park
1469 Third Avenue at 83rd Street (Upper East Side)
NY, NY 10028
(212) 734 5600
4/5/6 trains to 86th Street, Buses 101, 102, 103 to 86th Street

I wish Wicker Park was even slightly good. It happens to be about 2 minutes from my new apartment and the menu has just the kind of basics you think you could eat when in a bind of indecision (the kind of indecision that comes along with being starving and outside your apartment looking around helplessly for a restaurant that motivates you or the frustration you feel when trying to satisfy a group of six who all happen to like different types of food). You know: steaks, burgers, fries, mussels, and salads.

I sat down at Wicker Park for a quick meal and ordered from both the restaurant and bar menus. I chose french onion soup with added chardonnay topped with blue cheese crouton, tomato and mozzarella salad atop baby mixed greens, and filet mignon sliders with blue cheese sauce and caramelized onions on mini onion brioche. Along with Caesar salads, I’m also on a quest to find the best french onion soups around. Think: Balthazar.

Well, back to my meal. Bread at Wicker Park means tough pretzels and creamy honey Dijon dipping sauce. I had a few bites and then pushed the basket away to save room for a hearty meal I was expecting. The french onion soup arrived and I was surprised to see no evidence of a Swiss (or Gruyere) covering. The only evidence of cheese, at all, was a blanket of little, off-white specks floating on top of the soup. I took one bite and I knew that there was nothing good about Wicker Park’s onion soup. The blue cheese was gritty and strong, the crouton was crisp and unchanged in the warmth of the soup, and the chardonnay took away from the onion flavor. Two bites and I reached for the basket of pretzel bread again.

When tomatoes in the summertime and creamy fresh mozzarella combine, little more than salt, pepper, and basil are needed. The best mozzarella and tomato salad I’ve had was at a friend’s house in Bridgehampton. Fresh mozzarella from an Italian deli on Montauk Highway (which is no longer open) and heirloom tomatoes from Beechnut Hill Farm, an organic farm in Bridgehampton. The tomatoes from Beechnut Hill Farm come in all sizes, from grape to heirloom, are always perfectly delicious, and can be found during the summer, when lucky, at City Hall restaurant in Tribeca (www.cityhallnewyork.com).

Oh yes, back to Wicker Park. The tomato and mozzarella salad tasted as though the tomatoes were marinated in balsamic vinaigrette for hours, perhaps days, and then plopped on top of naked chopped lettuce with mini fresh mozzarella and chopped basil. The tomatoes were soggy and over-flavored while the rest of the salad was lacking any flavor whatsoever. Again, I took a few bites and then pulled the pretzels closer to me.

The filet mignon sliders were supposedly dressed in blue cheese sauce; however, the blue cheese was apparently doubled in my soup and halved in my burgers. The onion brioche was so tough that it was chewy and the filet mignon had no flavor (sound familiar?).

By the end of my meal, I had not consumed much at all…except for the pretzel basket. Before my meal was cleared, my phone rang: my friends were eating at Xunta in the East Village. I paid my bill, jumped into a taxi, and headed to Xunta for tapas.