Bobby Flay must be one heck of a boss. Chef Neil Mancale worked for him for a record 16 years. When you translate that to kitchen years (it’s kind of like calculations in dog years) that translates to, oh, a lifetime. But Manacle, a former NYC bus driver who grew up on Staten Island, started out as line cook on the opening team at Mesa Grill and just never left. He worked his way up to hold the top-level posts of chef de cuisine at Bolo and Bar Americain. (Incidentally, Neil is not the only one who’s been a Flay loyalist. Flay’s other number two, Larry Manheim, was also with him for over a decade.)

But all good things must come to an end, and last year Neil decided it was time to break away from Flay’s Teflon empire and find out what life in the kitchen might be like on his own. With him, he took a few lessons he says he attributes to Flay: a respect for seasonality and an appreciation for bold flavors and bright colors. But it seems that’s where Manacle drew the line. From the looks of the menu at Apiary, the super stylish East Village eatery he owns with Ligne Roset and partner Jenny Moon, you’d never know the two had ever shared a kitchen. Indeed, Flay’s hallmarks are nowhere to be seen. You won’t find a single habanero, ancho, chipotle, or jalapeno on your plate. Nor will you uncover anything barbecued, smoked or cornmeal-crusted. Absent are pepitas, plantains, chorizo and cornbread. Indeed, the appealing neighborhood-friendly menu at Apiary, which is heavy on ingredients like honey, curry, pistachios, fennel, olives, and lemon, reads (and eats) more like it came from someone who trained under Jimmy Bradley or Tom Valenti. It’s curious, but also impressive to me, that with his first foray out on his own, Neil chose to speak his own unique and distinct language so quickly an so confidently.

The restaurant itself is also quite different than anything Flay has ever opened. It’s small for one, with only 60 seats, and it’s delicately and elegantly designed by the furniture company Ligne Roset, with a smooth long bar hung with cone-shaped ivory fixtures. The modern dining room is divided from the bar by horizontal slots of smooth ebony wood, and is lit softly by silver-coated bare bulbs and a laser-cut crystal chandelier. At your table, you’ll be seated at wildly comfortable “Luca” chairs the color of Pinot Noir. You’ll most probably like to take these chairs home with you. You’ll need something larger than your purse to pull off that trick.

Julie, Kathy and I had dinner at Apiary, named for a bee’s colony or yard, on a dark unusually cold Monday night. Quite honestly, I expected to find the place pretty quiet, but instead it was (excuse the pun) buzzing with all the signs of a more typical West Village hot spot. At the bar, a pair of David Barton-sculpted men shared glasses of spiced pear sangria, while an attractive single woman in black framed glasses and a charcoal grey sweater cape read the New York Times while polishing off a glass of white wine and a plate of sea scallops (served with bacon risotto and acorn squash, $26).

In the dining room, where we were seated at a four top in the center of the room, the population seemed to be split evenly between cozy handsome couples (gay and straight), and larger groups of pretty young women in uniforms of dark hair, dark skinny denim, fashionable tunics, shin-high boots, and palms filled with blackberries. This place is going to succeed, I thought to myself. They’ve got the gay vote and the single girl vote. They’re set.

The popularity of the spot is partially owed to the style of the restaurant. It’s a chic little oasis in a raging sea of NYU taverns, all-you-can-eat sushi joints, and ubiquitous multi-cultural bistros. While Apiary seems a tad out of place here, located across from The Smith and the m2m market, it’s clear that it’s found an audience eager for its more sophisticated wares.

While more stylish than its neighbors, Apiary is not a restaurant that’s unaware of our economy’s uncertain health. Thankfully, Manacle has priced appetizers gently from $7 and $14, and all of his entrees are all under $30, with most of them in the $23 range. To usher in a bar crowd, beverage consultant Nick Mautone curated a sweet little wine list with many selections from New York State, 30 wines by the glass, and many by the half glass and also by the flight. He’s also whipped up some nice cocktails and sangrias made from sake and wine until the full liquor license comes in.

And so, what of the food? If you’ve been paying attention to my restaurant critic colleagues you probably already know that a lot has already been said and some of it not so kind. I’d say some of the criticism is justified and some of it is way off base.

I’ve always been a bad news first kind of person (not sure what that says about me) so why don’t we start with the more troubling news and then get to the good stuff. So, here’s the bad news. The spice-crusted lamb T-bones in a sweet and sour fruit sauce with fried hummus ($28) came across like a poorly styled outfit. Separately, all the elements were lovely, but together, the look was rather incongruous. The lamb was expertly prepared (it gave me probable cause for gnawing at the bones), but that sweet and sour sauce was too cloying and seemed better suited for a plate of freshly fried egg rolls. Now, I love hummus, but a fried hummus cake was a textural mess and didn’t complement the lamb or the pair well with the sauce. Do over.

I wasn’t really all that wild about the grilled octopus ($12) that we shared as a starter either. The tentacles were tender enough, but the dish also seemed confused: green lentils, pickled onions and fennel confit? The plate seemed riddled with too many highly acidic ingredients that worked against each other rather than in harmony.
The Moroccan-spiced chicken with green olives and lemon ($21) wasn’t bad, but it should have been better. I love the idea of roasting a chicken in a North African spice rub—cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, ginger—but the spice rub seemed to assault the chicken (a perfectly juicy quarter of a bird) rather than caress it. Instead of the thrilling effect I was hoping for, the chicken tasted (and looked) muddy. And where were the green olives and lemon? I couldn’t find any on my plate. And why was the couscous, so wonderfully fluffy and punctuated by apricots and mint, served separately from the chicken, in a bowl on the side? This chicken needs gentle spicing (rather than an all out lather), some olives and lemon, and a partner on the plate, not a next-door neighbor.

Now for the good news. A thick and flavorful fall squash soup the color of butternut is given a sassy personality thanks to a spicy dollop of tangy curried yogurt ($7). Hunks of roasted and caramelized pears are paired up with sheets of salty, smoky Serrano ham and a lovely pile up of radicchio, endive, and frisee tossed with Maytag blue cheese tossed in an aged sherry whole grain mustard vinaigrette ($12). These flavors were so beautifully bright and wildly vivid that I practically needed sunglasses at the dinner table. Mussels also show up here with a nice twist: plump and steamy in a broth of wine, citrus and herbs, generously adorned with coins of my favorite sausages from Spain, fuet ($10).

Now that sounds better, doesn’t it? Wait, there’s more. Skate gets dusted in almond flour and pan-fried, then fanned out on a plate with spicy eggplant caponata, tiny heads of roasted cauliflower, and a super vivid anchovy-caper vinaigrette ($23) that makes sure that no taste bud is left untouched. Manacle’s Long Island Peking Duck ($27) was my favorite of the entrees. It should be considered required eating. It includes a confited leg and a sliced loin, served over brown butter spaetzle and wild mushrooms in a honey-thyme just. I felt like it was Thanksgiving in some ways, because I spent a good deal of time picking succulent pieces of leg meat from the bone with my fingers and snacking on all the wonderful bits of meat and spaetzle left over even after the loin was eaten. I only wish I had tried Manacle’s Brussels sprouts before I wrote my Required Eating piece on them last week, because these too deserve to be on that list. They are served split in half, roasted with a fine mess of sticky smoky caramelized shallots and bacon ($5).

Apiary’s desserts (most $8) are all good news, no bad. Cashews finally get their due in a spectacular cashew chocolate brownie tart. This dessert is dangerous for anyone with a weakness for chocolate or cashews as it snuggles a gooey chocolate and cashew brownie into a pastry shell and tops it off with a scoop of cashew ice cream. Kathy had to force me to take it from her. (It wasn’t much of a fight.) A warm and buttery toasted almond pound cake is served like a little cupcake, split in half and filled with a dollop of crème fraiche. It was pretty simple but pretty good, too.

Being your own boss has its perks, and I am sure Manacle is thrilled about finally having a place to call his own. Clearly, he’s learned a lot from his mentor, but, as I am sure his mentor would tell him, whether you’re cooking with plantains and habanero peppers or pistachios and couscous, it takes time to get it right. The good news is that Manacle is a chef with a lot of passion who’s turning out food that hits the mark most of the time and that’s appealing to a neighborhood eager for a place that’s a bit more elegant than the maddening local NYU joints. And when you look at it that way, there’s really no bad news.

Apiary is located at 60 Third Avenue, between 10th and 11th Streets, 212-254-0888.

Andrea Strong