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Restaurant guide
ARTHUR SCHWARTZ
WHAT'S A GOOD French restaurant in midtown?" is the question I am most often asked. "What price range?" is the way I always answer it. "Moderately priced," comes the inevitable reply. Which forces me to ask yet another question:-"What do you mean by moderate?" Amounts from $10 to $25 are cited, but if moderate means a price somewhere between the least expensive and the most expensive, here is the shocking, late 1983 Manhattan reality; The most expensive restaurants - French or otherwise - can easily cost $100 a person, with wine of course, but only possibly tax and tip. For example, "The Quilted Giraffe" - a chef-owned nouvelle cuisine boite, where, as one wag put it, "if you want truffles, have you got truffles" - charges $60 for its basic dinner, $80 for the more elaborate "tasting" dinner. The least expensive restaurants cost no less than $7 or $8, but more likely , $10 to $12, possibly including a beer. But now we're talking about hamburger-salad-quiche parlors, delis, Chinatown, a few Eastern European places in the East Village, or, for example, ordering vegetarian (or only appetizers) in an Indian or Greek restaurant . The bottom of the French barrel is considerably more costly, and mostly in the theater district, where a walk-out tab of $25 just might bring a modest three-course dinner, a glass or two of wine, and no guarantees about quality. Obviously, there are vast differences in style (decor, service, approach to the food), culinary skills and ingredients, between the high-end French dinner and the low-end French dinner, but unfortunately there is not so much difference between that barely acceptable $25 dinner and what must now be considered the moderately, if not reasonably priced, "good" French dinner, which costs $35 at least. All this talk of prices is to put La Mediterranée (947 Second Ave., between 50th and 51st Sts.; 755-4155) in perspective. To a lot of people, a $15.75 fixed price pre-theater special menu (served between 5:30 and 7 p.m.) is no bargain. After all, dinner with wine by the glass, tax and tip ends up being $25 a person. But now you can see how $25 can certainly be a good value when the food is as marvelous, the dining room as charming, and the service as attentive as it is here. The special dinner includes choice of soup or appetizer (I'd select the garlicky hot sausage with warm potato salad; the fragile quiche, or plump mussels cloaked in mustard sauce), a house salad, choice of entree (try the chicken Chambertin braised in red wine, the tender roast duckling, calf's liver with raisins, or rabbit braised in red wine) and choice of dessert (fresh and surprisingly sweet strawberries with sabayon, chocolate-sauced profiteroles ,and a slim, rich slice of chocolate mousse encassed in cake make the choice difficult), coffee or tea. The regular a la carte menu is somewhat more pricey, with all-inclusive, three-course dinners averaging that magic, moderate $35. But even at that price, I don't think you can be disappointed. This is the kind of oldfashioned restaurant where everyone knows that their job is to feed you well and make you comfortable. Various hits of French kitsch decorate the small room, and make-believe windows with make-believe Mediterranean views expand its horizons. On Sundays, from 8 pm to closing (about 1 a.m., though last orders are taken at 11:15 p.m.) a concertina player serenades with French folk tunes and music hall numbers. It's almost like a party.
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