THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Gastroarte

THIS RESTAURANT IS CLOSED Gastroarte Restaurant Review:

Molecular gastronomy, that avant-garde form of cuisine made famous by chefs like Ferran Adrià and Grant Achatz, never really went anywhere in New York. Save for wd-50, the Big Apple happily forfeits the molecular gastronomy crown to Spain. So it’s no surprise that Gastroarte, oddly situated on the sedate Upper West Side, is run by chef Jesus Nunez, a Spaniard who already made a name for himself in Madrid. Nunez is a culinary wizard mixing and matching seemingly incongruent flavors and turning forms on their head. Which work very well some of the time. Tender cubes of beef cheeks are paired with banana polenta; Nunez sneaks a stratum of hazelnut in there, creating layers of flavor. The “Not-Your-Average Egg” isn’t lying: what looks like a hard-boiled egg in a light vegetable stew is actually cauliflower. Sometimes Nunez’s creativity backfires. The deconstructed Spanish omelet, a dish he imported from Madrid, comes in a drinking glass and is meant to be spooned out. But the end result is something akin to a gray, forgettable mush of flavors. The mainly Spanish wine list has some first-rate selections and the creative cocktails are meals in themselves: try “The Beet Goes On,” loaded with vodka and beet juice and topped with celery foam.