NOCHE []
1604 BROADWAY (AT 49TH STREET) (212) 541-7070
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PERUSING the 49 different items on Noche’s sprawling, Nuevo-Latino menu, and wondering where to look first, we jokingly asked if there were any specials.
“Not yet,” the waiter chuckled, “but they’re coming later this summer.”
“Not yet” applies to lots about Noche, newly descended in the land of a billion bright lights. David Emil’s long-awaited, 500-seat Times Square extravaganza won’t hit its all-singing, all-dancing stride for a couple of months.
After years of planning, Noche somehow managed to open without a marquee or a cabaret license. Still to come are lunch (starting July 23), nightly DJs, and dancing to the “best Latin bands in the world” (with a likely $20 cover charge).
But it’s already packing ’em in for dinner, thanks to a colorful menu that lives up to its promise to “explore” the cuisines of South and Central America and the Caribbean.
Exploring those cuisines is not the same as mastering them – but it’s hard to quibble with giant portions of affordable entrees ($15-$21) in a setting less Latin America than Las Vegas.
Noche totes more emotional baggage than a jet-lagged psychiatrist. As everyone knows, Emil, who owned Windows on the World, is joined by many staffers who survived Sept. 11, including “chef director” Michael Lomonaco and wine wizard Andrea Immer.
If you thought Windows was touristy, wait till you see Noche, a nightclub fantasy piggy-backed onto the $34 million bones of David Copperfield’s stillborn theme joint.
You enter through a tacky lobby/bar congested with deliveries of mojito-bound mint. A stairway leads to a five-level windowless atrium high enough to enclose Disney World’s Space Mountain.
What volume! Tropicalized by David Rockwell with a stage and a blue curtain that ought to rise on Xavier Cugat, it still looks like a magic show waiting to start. The industrial ceiling dome changes colors. A twisting stairway leads to parts unknown.
Nightclub-styled cream banquettes and amber wood chairs support you comfortably for hours. You’ll need the time to make your way through the menu’s torrent of exotic spices and seeds, which reflect the vision of Ramiro Jimenez, the chef of record who was chef de cuisine at Chicama.
So far, Noche has yet to achieve Chicama’s way of taming all its far-flung elements. But three meals there – each better than the last – suggest it’s on its way. There’s no dumbing-down for timid tastes. When the menu says to expect “cochoyuyo” (Chilean seaweed) with your ceviche, count on it to be there.
Four birthday dinners going on around us failed to bring cheer over inept, mushy empanadas ($10) filled with salt cod, beef and eggplant. Yet no Italian, Spanish or Greek place does a better job with grilled octopus ($10), fired with sizzling Thai basil.
Entrées lay on more items than a street fair. Wood-roasted Chilean salmon ($19) anchored “Peruvian” seafood stew – spicy bouillabaisse in a skillet bubbling with shellfish, julienned peppers and yucca, blemished by old and vile mussels. Rich wine sauce sweetened braised short ribs ($16) with corn arepas, bitter greens, cabarales cheese and Lord knows what else.
By comparison, steamed merluza (Chilean bass, $18) in banana leaves was a model of minimalism, paired with gummy bay scallop-coconut rice.
A trusted friend swore that her braised pork shank ($18) with garlic-oregano mojo was the sweetest and tenderest she’d ever had; mine was just so-so under its crackling skin.
The waiters proclaim all desserts ($8) “excellent.” Chocolate Aztec Pyramid tasted of the freezer. But serpentine churros (Mexican crullers) with two dipping sauces went down in seconds. Pastel de tres leches was an irresistible, rum-drenched sponge layer cake.
In a few weeks, the stage and the banquettes attached to it will rotate 180 degrees to reveal the dance floor. One recent night, a lone singer popped out of the curtain and put on a brief, one-woman merengue act.
That’s the magic we want. Bring on the bands!
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