NYCReview
photo credit: Emily Schindler
Estela
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In a hypothetical Restaurant Olympics scenario, we’d nominate Estela to represent New York City. Instead of hurling discs like jumbo Ancient Grecians, the restaurant would show off raw scallops over flattened dates with a dab of uni in between. Rather than landing a double layout dismount with two twists on the uneven bars, Estela would turn an endive salad into food fit for a last meal on earth. And they’d do it all with seductive ease, since that’s exactly the way dinner happens in their dining room above Houston Street. Even after a decade of operation, Estela is one of the best restaurants New York has. It feels like it couldn’t exist anywhere else.
Like New York City, Estela is probably not the place for anyone who prefers hushed tones and wide open spaces. Estela’s quarters are tight and sultry. The room is loud enough for you to identify the song playing, but not so loud that people wouldn’t notice you singing along. Wine is consumed enthusiastically. And there’s a chance a restaurant owner or a reporter with a book deal will be sitting at the bar, squished next to someone visiting from SF who has been rightfully told Estela will convince them to break up with The Cloud and move to New York.
Estela calls itself a Modern American restaurant. That’s a sleek way of saying they blend cuisines to appeal to New Yorkers who want the best of everything. You’ll see French mother sauces, Cantonese condiments, and seaweed given equal airtime. Most of the dishes accentuate whatever is in season, which means you might find celeriac and cuttlefish in warm beurre blanc, or dried shrimp on top of Cara Cara orange wedges. There’s a riff on Valencian arroz negro that never comes off the menu, and, sometimes, a steak with taleggio sauce that sounds like it might be too rich but is in fact perfect. Thanks to meticulous attention to proportions, all of these dishes hit cohesively. Estela’s signature plating style also helps.
The chefs at Estela like to cover up essential components on the plate, prompting you to play hide-and-go-seek with your food. At first glance, some dishes will make you wonder whose sixth-grade earth science project you’re looking at. Did they seriously charge me $22 for what appears to be a molehill of leaves? Dig into your endive salad (an Estela classic) and you’ll uncover sourdough breadcrumbs, cubes of cow’s milk cheese coated in Barolo must, and more walnuts present than you’ll find in most trail mixes. Each endive cup gets splashed with a little bit of orange juice, and when you fill one with cheese and nuts, it’ll taste like you’re microdosing America’s most glamorous salad: nutty, salty, and citric all at once.
You could come here two weeks in a row and still not get bored of what you’re eating. Although you’d have to make a hard decision about which of Estela’s staples you want to order again and again—for us it’s always the beef tartare and endive salad—and which seasonal experiments to try for the first time. The new stuff consistently impresses us as much as the old standards do. Whenever you eat here, make sure you get a healthy mix from both categories.
We can’t imagine having dinner at Estela without talking about the food for 90% of the meal. In that sense, this restaurant is a particularly good destination for anyone who'd prefer to discuss squid ink and sea vegetables, rather than their dining companion's latest streaming habits. Come to Estela to see New York in motion in one restaurant setting. There’s no place quite like it.