Review: Mercat Negre

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Diners looking for Williamsburg tapas spot Mercat Negre shouldn't have any trouble finding it: There's a ginormous spotlight of the restaurant's logo shining on the building's façade—a Bat-signal beckoning to gastronomes. Holy smokes, Batman, tapas! It's also a brash announcement that the restaurant has arrived in this nabe, and with well-earned chutzpah to back it up: Negre is a spin-off of Mercat, the excellent Bowery eatery from Barcelona native Jamie Reixach. We swung by Mercat 1.0 the night before heading to Negre, and it reaffirmed a common sentiment: Reixach's kitchen there churns out Michelin-worthy plates filled with vivid, well-focused flavors. The downside: It makes Mercat Negre's shortcomings—of which there are many—even more glaring than that Bat-signal. —ALL

If it ain’t broke, flip the script?
Reixach has placed Mercat Negre’s success on the shoulders of executive chef Oriol Sala Colomer, a Ferran Adria protégé who’s cooked at El Bulli and Michelin-starred Can Jubany in Spain. It’s obvious from looking at the menu that unlike Mercat, where the formula is pretty straightforward Catalonian (and successful at that), the Williamsburg spot gives the chef room to play. Wasabi mayo hints at an Asian influence. There are spins on fish-and-chips and a cheeseburger. So, unlike his Grand Street neighbor Aurora, which has an almost mirror location in Soho, Reixach has rolled the dice by monkeying with the concept. We’re not so sure this risk will be rewarded. —MR

Bad cop: Empanadas, duck cheeseburger sliders, veal rolls, carrot risotto, the misses roll on…
At a buck each, we ordered the entire empanada menu: They were amuse-size, and even smaller in flavor. There was neither salmon nor sobrassada sausage in empanadas that claimed to have some—they were all crust and air. Croquettes fared no better. When cut in half, a lava of flavorless chicken spilled out. (We ordered shrimp, but the poultry version arrived instead.) Ham, advertised as Ibérico, was maybe shrimp? We gave up the guessing game—the flavors were that indistinct. Fish-and-chips included fishy salmon and a dull wasabi mayo, with nary an acid burst to mask the flavor insufficiencies.

Between courses, we whispered about the seasoning issues. Somebody must have been listening, as a breaded-and-fried chicken egg arrived with nasty chunks of rock salt. Inedible. A duck cheeseburgers slider was predictably tough. The opposite was true for gummy veal rolls, which we couldn't finish. Two specials did not stop the bleeding. Carrot risotto, made with barley instead of traditional rice, was bland, while a short rib cannelloni (phyllo replaced pasta dough) was bathed in a boring béchamel and Manchego sauce. There’s no other way to say it: This was an epically bad meal. —MR

Good cop: Rabbit-and-pork paella; spinach, raisin and pine nut croquette; lemon frappe
Glass half-full, glass half-full. We keep mumbling this as we tried to single out dishes that offered some degree of joy, but which were few. The closest one was a paella-like rice dish of rabbit and pork—"New York-style" paella according the manager. Eh? It's served in a shallow pan that's supposed to allow more surface area for crisping. There wasn't any crispness in our rice—we would have preferred it firmer—but the dish had a nice, subtle sweetness that melded well with its meaty flavors (it was infused with a mixture of chicken and beef stock). A light spinach croquette got a welcome perk-me-up from raisins and pine nuts, while the desserts salvaged what was left of a dismal meal; a creamy "lemon frappe," served inside a chilled and hollowed-out lemon, was a highlight. —ALL

All told…
It's a pity that Mercat Negre disappoints on so many levels, considering its terrific lineage—it's like a long-lost cousin who doesn't quite have his act together yet. The space itself is a looker, with a rustic loft for private parties and a gorgeous rooftop with a pretty view of the East River. We're told they're brainstorming some exciting ideas for it, come summertime: cookouts, parties, maybe even a film screening projected against that façade. We're looking forward to it, too. They have all winter to hopefully get their cooking to finally live up to its promise. —ALL


Photo by Sam Horine

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