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“Zoe Townhouse”

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

Zoë Townhouse is the new incarnation of the (sadly) short-lived Jovia, Stephen and Thalia Loffredo’s upscale and elegant Italian restaurant that opened in that space in 2006. When their concept fell flat, they had to retool and reconsider their options. They hired a new chef for Jovia at first, which didn’t really do it, and so they regrouped again. What they decided was to return to what they know best: the Zoë formula (read: contemporary American food, a stylish, comfortable setting, an all-American wine list.) It had worked for 15 years downtown, why not uptown? Why not, indeed. While they began a search for a new chef, they brought in Jeffery Beers to strip down and redesign the place, transforming it from a museum-like space of adult seriousness into an easy, playful restaurant more suitable for a neighborhood looking for a regular haunt for pasta, chicken, burgers and salads—good crowd pleasing food. Down on the parlor floor, Beers’ has done a great job of brightening up the bar and lounge by opening up the kitchen, and adding a dazzling mosaic of sunflower yellow tiles and a wood-burning pizza oven to the bar (more on the pizzas that come out of that oven in a moment). Upstairs, he added exposed brick and mirrors to the walls and hung the far wall with cut raw barrels from Pelligrini vineyards for a warm and rustic wine cave effect that really turns the key in transforming the place from Jovia into Zoë.
To handle the food, they found a West Coast chef named Matthew Zappoli who was most recently executive chef at Fresh Seafood Restaurant & Bar in La Jolla. From what I found last week, he’s the right choice for Zoë North. He’s created an updated and rejuvenated version of the downtown menu with classic Zoë dishes like the crispy calamari and grilled yellowfin tuna club sandwich. But for the uptown Townhouse space, Matt offers two menus—a casual one down in the pizza bar that includes cute kobe beef sliders with Vermont cheddar, pickled jalapenos, and Walla Walla onion rings ($12), juicy beef burgers on brioche buns with hand cut fries and garlic pickles, $10.75), entrée-sized salads like rosemary roast chicken with purple potatoes, green beans and grape tomatoes ($13.75), and hand-tossed, rectangular pizza pies with ethereal crusts—light and bubbly and almost pastry like in consistency topped with bubbly toppings in simple (mushroom, margarita) to more elabora ... [more, click below]

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Posted: August 20, 2007

Other restaurants in Upper East Side :
+ Sfoglia   + Zoe Townhouse   + Accademia di Vino   + T-Bar Steak and Lounge   + Parlor Steakhouse   + Le Caprice   

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