Wallsé

Four Reasons to Revisit Wallsé, Austrian Restaurant in the West Village | Eater NY

"Occupying the ground floor of two West Village townhouses, Wallsé has a pair of dining rooms — a lively corner barroom and a more secluded hideaway with partly obscured windows — plastered with avant-garde art (including a Julian Schnabel portrait of chef Kurt Gutenbrunner). An easy bonhomie pervaded the barroom the night I visited; by 8 p.m. on a Tuesday the place was filling up and ultimately thronged, with patrons still dining late. We started with caviar: tiny heaps topping three stumpy palatschinken ($29) filled with smoked trout and served with a hazelnut-strewn endive salad slicked with a sharp sherry vinaigrette; the restaurant also offers a formal caviar service ($110) presented with palatschinken rather than blini. Appetizers included a beet salad, foie gras terrine with pear sorbet, and beef tartare with rye crisp and more caviar. From the medium-size dishes we tried rabbit spaetzle ($30), which was comforting but overly creamy, while the entrees arrive as giant, meal-sized plates. The wiener schnitzel ($44) is the centerpiece: two veal cutlets pounded to abject tenderness and cooked to a perfect medium brown, dressed conventionally with potato salad, a sharp cucumber salad, and a ramekin of lingonberry jelly. The venison stew ($46) had generous hunks of deer that were excessively fibrous and nearly flavorless, though the midnight-brown gravy was fabulous; the softball-size potato dumpling alongside was perfect — ask for two dumplings and gravy and skip the venison for a fine meal. The wine list is a deep, fun collection of Austrian vintners, and the cocktails were fantastic and not too sweet (I loved the tomate, $19, with tomato water and pepper-infused vodka). For dessert we had the Salzburger nockerl ($15), a huckleberry-syrup–underpinned soufflé dusted with powdered sugar that proved the perfect, utterly satisfying conclusion. It remains Kurt Gutenbrunner’s flagship location, serving fine Viennese cuisine with a modern twist." - Robert Sietsema