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“Ama”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	Italian	Soho	Moderate	Don't Bother

who was Karen DeMasco’s pastry sous chef.

Her crispy banana chocolate gateau with chai ice cream ($8) had me squirming with pleasure in my chair. The pastry, about the size of a square knish, was fashioned from thin crispy layers of phyllo dough and stuffed with a flourless banana gateau (think really moist banana bread pudding) served hot and doused in a rich dark chocolate sauce and topped with bruleed banana slices with a scoop of this wild spiced Chai ice cream. It was an instant cure to the Ama trauma that we followed up with her new rhubarb financiers ($8)—three fluffy miniature financiers dusted in powdered sugar and plumped up with diced rhubarb and served with a quenelle of thick and tart lemon verbena cream and a refreshing ruby-pink rhubarb granite that is the color of the perfect summer lip gloss. I want it in a tube. We left, smiling and happy, the past erased by a good dose of dessert.

I am sorry that Ama was so disappointing. Maybe we ordered poorly, or maybe our food suffered so much because we were there on a Monday night. But still. I had to pay for my meal on a Monday even though it was presented in a service free environment by a kitchen on some self-destructive form of auto-pilot. More than the disappointing food, what upset me the most about the place was the fact that it feels like no one cares. Give me a restaurant with so-so food and a wonderful passionate staff and an owner who seems invested in her restaurant, and I will come back. But with Ama, there was no reason for me to care about being there because the feeling I had from the moment I walked in the door was this: Get out! Leave us alone! Don’t bother us by eating here! And as an owner, how do you allow this to happen on your watch? As I mentioned, Ms. Arpaia was seated in the restaurant for most of the evening (with her back to the door—not wise when you are a restaurant owner or Tony Soprano) and made no attempt to take the pulse of her dining room. We were close to flat lining as she made nice-nice with the reporter from the Times. If she keeps this up, she’s going to lose the patient. As it stands, she has already lost me.

Ama is located at 48 MacDougal Street, 212-358-1707.

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Posted: June 13, 2005

Other restaurants in Soho :
+ Balthazar   + Savoy   + Blue Ribbon   + Lupa   + Public   + Kittichai   + Lure Fishbar   + Barmarche   + Porcupine-- CLOSED   + Ama   + La Esquina   + Jerry's- Closed Now   + The Tasting Room   + Papatzul   + Shorty's.32   + The Monday Room   + Ed's Lobster Bar   + Aurora   + Provence   + Tailor   + Hundred Acres   + Delicatessen, By Guest Reviewer Julie Besonen   + The Mott   + The Dutch   + Cherrywood, by Guest Reviewer Dara Pollak   

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