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“Thor”

Occasion:	Cuisine:	Area:	Cost:	Rating:
Night Out	New American	Lower East Side	Moderate	Good

rd to checking out this place called Thor. The name sort of made me chuckle. While it stands for The Hotel on Rivington, I could not get this superhero dining room imagery out of my head. THOR! Insert thunder and lightening bolts. And the thing is, the space only adds to the feeling that this is a den for superheroes. Everyone here is fabulous, or thinks they are. The lounge is teaming with assorted superheroes of the downtown tragically hip world, peppered with out of towners who just don’t know any better. The design of the place is sort of Jetsons-like—super modern, with a red carpeted pod-like entranceway that leads to a giant lounge filled with low couches organized in large squares, and a bar three deep with assorted long-haired, long legged beauties and men in black. It’s a scene people. My favorite part of the room was this sort of kryptonite shaped closure that shelters the stairwell in the center of the room. This black hexagonal shaped structure juts up into the dining room and makes you feel as though it may light up and start to glow on and off like some sort of communication transmitter to superheroes everywhere. It didn’t do that on my evening there, but watch out. There’s still time.

The restaurant itself is clean and lean—walls are dressed in a white, gray and black floral-jigsaw pattern, and the ceiling, a sheet of glass, allows you to peer up at the fire escapes of the surrounding tenement buildings. It’s quite beautiful, in a way, but I felt as though I might be getting ready to watch a dress rehearsal of West Side Story—like Tony would swing out onto a fire escape in tight black pants, crooning for Maria. No such luck.

The food at this superhero dinning room known as Thor comes to us from chef Kurt Gutenbrunner, the highly acclaimed Austrian chef at Wallsé. At Thor, his subject is not Austria but contemporary America, though his menu does nod to his roots with sides like quark spaetzle (bland), and potatoes rosti (an unfortunate unseasoned hash brown). But we’ll get to all that. Let me begin by saying that the menu at Thor, which is nicely priced on the modest side, is just too large. There are Cold Plates to start (nine of them), Warm Plates in the Middle (eight of these), then entrees called Hot Plates divided into the fish (five) and meat (six) categories. The format is meant to make it easy to eat here often and for any sort of appetite, which is great, e ... [more, click below]

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Posted: September 25, 2005

Other restaurants in Lower East Side :
+ Mojo   + WD-50   + Schiller's Liquor Bar   + Azul Bistro   + Barrio Chino   + 71 Clinton Fresh Food-- Closed   + Little Giant   + Kuma Inn   + Falai   + The Stanton Social   + The Tides   + Thor   + The Orchard   + El Bocadito-- CLOSED   + Bondi Road   + Rayuela   + Suba   + Bun (boone)   + Sorella   + The Fat Hippo   + Pulino's   

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