The Unlucky Strike – New York Bistros

The Unlucky Strike

Lucky Strike

59 Grand (Between Wooster and West Broadway)

New York, New York (10013)

212-941-0722

http://www.luckystrikeny.com/

But shrewd Tyrone hangs around, distributing Lucky Strikes, long enough to find at least what’s up with this Unlucky Strike, here.

Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)

Lucky Strike is owned by Keith McNally and Edward Youkilis. McNally owns a collection of restaurants in New York: Schiller’s Liquor Bar, Cherche Midi, Pastis, Balthazar, Minetta Tavern Restaurant, and Morandi. McNally and his wife opened Odeon in 1980. Youkilis owns Edwards which is a neighborhood diner located in Tribeca on West Broadway and Duane across the street from Odeon. To learn more about Lucky Strike, I reviewed Edward’s. There is a link to the review in Resources.

Question: How can Keith McNally who created the modern bistro experience in New York and gave us such restaurants as Odeon, Cherche Midi and Balthazar produce a restaurant that is so confused in its identity, charmless in its service, uninspired in its design and poor in its execution as Lucky Strike?

The Lucky Strike Brand

Since this restaurant relies so heavily on the Lucky Strike brand to establish its identity, let’s deconstruct the brand to discover what it means.

Lucky Strike has a rich heritage and one of the world’s best-known brands. It was introduced in 1871 as chewing tobacco by the R. A. Patterson Tobacco Company of Richmond, Virginia. Patterson Tobacco was acquired by the American Tobacco Company in 1905, which introduced Lucky Strike as a American blend cigarette in 1916. This was an attempt to compete with the success of the R. J. Reynolds’ Camel brand.

The red-on-green bullseye design was created by Raymond Loewy. Loewy was an industrial designer who also designed the Campbell’s Soup label and logos for Exxon Oil, Shell Oil, and Coca-Cola.

Warhol increased his fame by creating his Campbell Soup can paintings in 1962. To quote Warhol on Campbell’s Soup: “I used to drink it. I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” Perhaps this provides a clue about the restaurant?

The brand was inspired originally by the gold rush. Because finding gold was rare, it was referred to as a “lucky strike.”The brand meant that consumers were lucky because they were choosing a top-quality blend.

The brand was also used in World War II. Lucky Strike was one of the brands included in the C rations provided to US combat troops. Each C ration included nine cigarettes because the military thought that tobacco was essential to the morale of soldiers fighting on the front lines.

Stuart Davis deconstructed the brand in his painting, “Lucky Strike”, which he made in 1921. The Lucky Strike logo would later become an important image in Ray Johnson’s collages.

Lucky Strike can also be found in such shows as Miami Vice, Mad Men, GoodFellas and Fury.

There is a large chain of bowling alleys named “Lucky Strike Lanes” which have bowling, pool, bars, and restaurants.

The Big Lebowski was filmed at the iconic Hollywood Star Lanes which was a famous Hollywood bowling alley. Hollywood Star closed but Lucky Strike Lanes purchased Lane #7 from Star Lanes and made it into the Lucky Strike Hollywood’s bar. I could find no references to the Big Lebowski at Lucky Strike bistro.

The color palette of the Website and the restaurant’s logo is red, black and white which is the same as Lucky Strike cigarettes. The take out menu has an image of a “Lucky Strike Filters” circular tin package.

We have a brand that suggests cigarettes, the gold rush, World War II, Pop art and bowling alleys.

The menus says that Lucky Strike is a casual downtown bistro serving American Continental and French food. But there are offerings such as pork sliders, penne pasta, rigatoni, calamari, vegetable spring rolls, and a hamburger with French fries. These items are Italian and Vietnamese. The menu does not reflect the intention of the restaurant.

The idea behind Edward’s restaurant has influenced Lucky Strike. In describing his restaurant, Edward said: “it has a little French Bistro feeling with somewhat more of an American menu. We have hamburgers, salads and seafood. Edwards mostly concentrates on easy-to-understand and uncomplicated foods.” Edward’s works as a modest neighborhood diner. It has clarity of intention, modest goals and attains them.

Lucky Strike is a mashup of two restaurant ideas-a French bistro and an American diner- and it does not work.

The website says that Lucky Strike is a bistro. My French Bistro Archetype score is a 3, so it does not qualify as a bistro.

We have a “bistro” serving American, French, Italian, and Southeast Asian food. It is based on a sprawling, historical brand that references cigarettes, the gold rush, World War II, pop art and bowling alleys. Where is the common thread? This is why we see such confusion in all phases of my experience at this restaurant. Lack of clarity in identity and intention means lack of clarity in execution.

Archetype

You enter immediately into the bar area. The bar is to the right and is made of copper and there is a large wall of glass and liquor bottles. There are small wooden tables and candles. On the wall to the left is a poster of Antonioni’s L’Eclisse. L’Eclisse is an important black and white movie made in 1962. It was filmed in Rome and Verona. It is about a young woman who breaks up with an older lover. She then has an affair with a young stockbroker whose materialistic nature eventually breaks up their relationship.

I recently returned from Amsterdam where I saw the retrospective of the great Antonioni at the Film Museum know as the “Eye.” Antonioni is a great artist who gave us such masterpieces as Blowup, Zabriskie Point, and L’ Avventura. However, he is Italian-not American or French. Yes, it is a cool cultural reference but how does it support the concept of a French and American bistro?

Past the bar through a narrow passage way and a serving station is the dining room. The dining room has little to suggest a bistro. There are beat up wooden tables and chairs, and a few antique mirrors on the walls with illegible menus written on the mirrors in faded gold flake lettering. The lights are exposed fluorescent tubes. The light is harsh. There is no Jean Perzel lighting art here. Nor are there white table cloths or flowers. Even though the tables are quite close together and the room is crowded, the noise level was not annoying.

The specials for the day or on a ticket stuck in a drinking glass. No blackboard and chalk menus here.

The music was classic rock. I was tortured by such boorish songs as Clapton’s “White Room” and the Who’s “My Generation.” How does this stuff support the restaurant experience they are trying to create? Do the owners even know the experience they are trying to create?

If the restaurant concept is a brand of cigarettes popular during the 1930s and 1940s, the music should have been Tommy Dorsey, Bing Crosby and Artie Shaw.

Staff

I made a reservation but when I arrived at the restaurant I could not find a host. Someone gave me an empty table without bothering to check on my reservation.

A waiter, in shabby blue jeans, dirty black hair and a rumpled Lucky Strike shirt, eventually shambled up to my table with a “What do ya want? The specials are in the glass” and rushed off after taking my order. He appeared a few minutes later: “Tap water did ya say”? A few minutes after that: “Do ya want some bread”?

Dirty dishes were not cleared in a timely manner and there was an uncomfortable interval between my starter and my main. The service was indifferent, rushed and slovenly but it was not hostile or arrogant. My waiter was like a character out of Richard Linklater’s 1991 Slacker rather than Soho in 2016.

Food

The menu has a few bistro classics such as salad nicoise (with grilled fresh tuna); French onion soup; croque monsieur (grilled ham, swiss cheese and bechamel with mixed greens); steak frites (with roquefort butter and french fries) and New York strip steak au poivre (with french fries); and a grilled salmon (with lemon truffle vinaigrette, haricot verts ,and mashed potato). They mark entrees as either vegetarian and gluten-free.

The wine selection is paltry or minimal to put a positive spin on the matter. The reds are three: a California pinot noir, a Cotes Du Rhone and a Montepulciano. The pinot is the most expensive at $11.00. The whites are also three: an Italian Pinot Grigio, and a French Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay Viognier. Again the most expensive wine is $11.00.

I had the Cotes Du Rhone which was unsatisfactory. I could not find that this wine had been reviewed but there would be little point in doing so. Since I saw no other viable options, I satisfied myself with a single glass of wine for the evening.

Lucky Strike offers a few uninteresting beers and a selection of creative cocktails. Budweiser is offered perhaps in some failed attempt at hipster cred. Buzzfeed has a hipster cred calculator which describes the spectrum between mainstream and hipster as “disgusting mainstream whore” or “pure filth hipster scum.”This is probably entry level hipster.

The specials were a black bean soup (with pica de gallo and crouton), an onion and dried fruit tarte (with creme fraiche over arugula with balsamic vinaigrette) and scallops (with artichoke barigoule, carrots, celery, thyme and white wine).

A barigoule is traditional Provençal dish of artichokes braised with onions, garlic and carrots in a broth of wine and water. Originally the term referred to artichokes stuffed with wild mushrooms. Modern variations do not usually use mushrooms, but stuff the artichokes with other ingredients, such as spinach, carrots and cheese.

I opted for the French onion soup and the scallops.

The French onion soup was a mess and I did not finish it. The broth was a pale brown dishwater in color, the bread had disintegrated into a soggy mess and there was a glob of vaguely organic congealed white cheese on top. It was tasteless. After a few bites, I could see no reason to continue eating it. The French onion soup was a gutter ball.

I suggest the chef visit Odeon and learn how to make a good French onion soup. I put it at the end of the table, and it was not cleared until the entree came twenty minutes later.

The bread comes from Balthazar. It was not a baguette but sliced loaf. It was stale. Professor Kaplan, in his review of Balthazar’s baguette noted that the look was “very seductive” and was tied for first place in New York for appearance. However, he called the taste “insipid, flat and disappointing.” Even if the bread had been fresh, I doubt that it would have risen to the level of Balthazar’s baguette in Kaplan’s estimation.

I enjoyed the entree. The scallops were light and firm. They were complimented by the artichoke, carrots and celery. The flavors and textures were clear and fresh. The dish was served very hot and it was attractive with white, yellow and green. I did have to pick out some of the asparagus skin which was not chewable.

The deserts were warm apple crumble, flourless chocolate cake, creme caramel and gelato (from Il Laboratorio on Ludlow). I decided to cut my losses for the evening and had the gelato. The Il Laboratorio gelato was excellent, although it had been re-frozen because some of the ice cream had crystalized.

So, as Tyrone in Gravity’s Rainbow observed, what’s up with this Unlucky Strike? The execution of the restaurant does not reflect its concept. The concept is a bistro based on the Lucky Strike brand that serves American and French food. The menu reads like a mainstream diner with something for everyone. It is a mash-up of disparate ideas that do not work. All mashups of disparate genres do not create good music. This is like mixing Les Rythmes Digitales with Grand Funk Railroad. It simply doesn’t work.

If 300 is a perfect game in bowling and 150 is an average game, Lucky Strike scored a100.

Save your time. Save your money. Save your health; don’t smoke a Lucky Strike cigarette. Go, instead to Cherche Midi or Odeon and have a nice dinner.

Ratings

Service

Archetype

Food

Energy

Resources

Lucky Strike Brand

http://www.ciggiesworld.com/lucky-strike-original/

http://www.buzzfeed.com/txblacklabel/the-hipster-cred-calculator-28m7

Reviews