Why Leave the Flavor Downtown?

King Phojanakong creates terrific, inventive plates at his Lower East Side hideaway Kuma Inn. The most recognizable culinary influences there come from the Philippines and Thailand, but flavors from all over make welcome cameo stints. The chef has no shortage of talent or ideas, and, over the years, I’ve had nothing but praise for him.So it’s hard not to feel a little insulted, as an uptown-dweller, that the cooking at his new restaurant, Talay, aims so low. The restaurant options on this far-western row near the 133rd Street Fairway market are serviceable — barbecue, Italian, miscellaneous — but unadventurous. It seemed a reasonable hope that Mr. Phojanakong and Phet Schwader, who shares equal billing at the new restaurant and who has worked with Patricia Yeo and Laurent Tourondel, might bring some downtown-style freshness to the fast-developing strip.Talay is perhaps the only Manhattan destination I’ve been to that’s most easily arrived at by car, its valet parking proving an alternative to wending down on foot through Riverside Park. The building’s façade glows blue, a putative oasis of sophistication under the overpass. But the sophistication comes to a grinding halt as soon as you’re seated under garish multicolored lights and made to wait ages for a cloying peach cocktail by the gushingly eager but barely trained staff. One busser, full of vim, kept snatching away half-finished plates despite our protests, or pilfering our dipping sauces with most of our morsels still undipped.The menu, of shareable large and small plates, is billed as Thai-Latin and sprawls from dull, gloppy pad thai ($12) to dull, dry paella valenciana ($12 or $24). The three jumbo shrimps hanging from a glass of crushed ice that comprise a shrimp cocktail ($13) are low in flavor and a little short of fresh; the ketchup-like cocktail sauce with them is utterly ordinary. Sliced summer rolls filled with tuna and avocado ($12) get all their appeal from their soy dipping sauce.Grilled octopus, served in a vinegary sauce with bamboo pickles ($10), is the only dish I recognized from Kuma Inn, and it’s a good one, the smoky char on the tentacles soaking into the crunchy shoots. At the downtown spot, though, it’s made with delicately chewy baby octopus. Here, big, tough chunks of the mature animal are used. A plate of pickles by themselves, various kinds, runs $7.Seared sliced ahi ($19) would be bland if not for its thick crust of tingly Szechuan pepper and sticky-sweet ginger dipping sauce. With it, it’s reasonably tasty. An excellent snapper ($24) is left intact but deboned by the efficient kitchen staff, deep-fried and served crisped, whole, and hot in the middle of the table. After a little competitive fork-work from every side, all that’s left is the hollow, conspiratorially grinning head. That’s one of the only dishes I’d consider coming back for; the other is the ropa vieja ($12), which is listed among the “Small Plates” but weighs in like a main course. It’s a slab of brisket, braised to shreddable tenderness in an Asian-inflected soy broth with sesame seeds and delicate white Hakurei turnips.Brazilian-style charred steak with dipping sauces ($25) is nothing special, as likewise is a dish of uninspiring pork meatballs ($11) on skewers like Vietnamese nem. A little care could give these dishes deep, resonant flavor, but that care is omitted.A dessert of dough-wrapped fried plantains akin to Filipino lumpia is made with starchy unripe plantains devoid of sweetness ($8). Caramelly flan flavored with lime and basil ($8) is better, but not remarkably so.Mr. Phojanakong and Mr. Schwader were hard at work in the spacious open kitchen, along with a busy crew, on my visits, so the deficiencies aren’t a case of absentee-chef syndrome. Rather, they seem deliberate, stemming from a grievous underestimation of the tastes of us uptowners.Talay (701 W. 135th St. at Twelfth Avenue, 212-491-8301).

Why Leave the Flavor Downtown?

Why Leave the Flavor Downtown?

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