Café Blasé

My alarm clock started beeping the other morning at 6 a.m. Without even lifting my head from the pillow, I reached over and grabbed the little plastic annoyance and tossed it across the room. For good or bad, the battery-operated clock is sturdy enough to withstand this morning ritual, which serves the same purpose as a snooze button. And once again, I snoozed right through breakfast.

The previous night I’d set the alarm for 6 a.m. so I could throw myself together and drive 30 minutes or so from midtown to sample breakfast at The Café at Briarcliff Village. I’d already eaten several dinners and a lunch at the “casual upscale” restaurant — whatever the hell that means — but my friend Jennifer insisted that her favorite meal there was breakfast. She described biscuits and gravy served “in a biscuit that was shaped sort of like a tulip,” adding that the biscuits were nice and crispy. “And the French toast is made with brioche.”

Well, it certainly sounded good. And honestly, I tried to get out of bed on several different mornings to make the northern trek to Briarcliff. But each time I heard that alarm and started kicking the blankets off the bed, I was suddenly reminded of my favorite Mark Twain quote: “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.” And then I went back to sleep.

That’s a long-winded way of saying that even though the ambitious Café at Briarcliff Village offers three meals a day, I’ve only experienced two of them. Sorry if that sounds heretical for a restaurant reviewer. But honestly, my favorite breakfast is a cigarette and a cup of strong espresso, and not a crispy biscuit tulip. Novelty foods offend me until at least noon.

During more lucid hours, I’ve dined at The Café four times. And even though it’s a perfectly pleasant little place, I can’t work up any enthusiasm to go back. It took me a long time to figure out why I had such a halfhearted reaction to a restaurant that’s comfortable, reasonably attractive and moderately priced, with a cheery menu of familiar dishes.

Some kind of vital force is missing from The Café’s concept, but I didn’t make the connection until I logged on to the restaurant’s Web page and read a description of the venue that claimed: “We blur the line between restaurant, café, bistro and retail-food shop.” I’d venture to say there are times when maybe that line shouldn’t be blurred, and a dining establishment should make a conscious decision to boldly state that it’s a restaurant, a café or a bistro, and not some culinary Frankenstein that sews together good intentions.

One Wednesday afternoon, I joined Louise and Justin for lunch in the claustrophobic “bar” area (the dining room was packed). The friendly waitstaff paid lots of attention to us, but the food tasted oddly prefabricated. Louise admired the size and heft of her chipotle chicken sandwich, which topped a grilled chicken breast with melted Swiss cheese, bacon, lettuce and tomato. But, she said, “Everything’s good about this sandwich, except the chicken. It tastes like they grilled it yesterday and stored it in the refrigerator.”

“At least it’s not pounded into the thickness of a flannel sheet,” Justin said, pointing to his plate of flattened “roasted” fowl, lovingly draped in a shiny mushroom and Madeira wine sauce and framed with a few vividly green asparagus stalks. It wasn’t the worst Madeira sauce I’d ever tasted, but it still evoked the kind of mass-produced entrée served at a hotel banquet. And Justin is one of those skinny young men who’s always hungry, so when he didn’t finish his meal, I knew there was a problem.

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I had taken our handsome server’s suggestion and ordered the turkey club sandwich (bland) with a cup of cream of broccoli soup that was a shade too salty. It wasn’t nearly as tasty as the creamy tomato-basil concoction that Louise lapped up. “The soup was the best part of the lunch,” she said afterward. But because it was also the cheapest part, hearing her comment felt like watching a child ignore her expensive Christmas toys to play with an empty box.

On one balmy weeknight, I brought Shelby and Franklin for dinner al fresco on The Café’s pretty outdoor patio. Other patrons were sitting at the adjoining tables, but they were mostly sipping cocktails. One loudmouthed blonde appeared to assume that because there were live bodies sitting nearby, she had an obligation to regale everyone with anecdotes that were only a tad less boring than our dinners.

In another case of chicken breasts being pounded mercilessly thin, the Café’s version of chicken Florentine is a papery sheath of beaten bird rolled around a filling of chopped mushrooms and spinach, smothered in a light cream sauce. The visual effect is somewhat startling: “It looks like three horse hooves in gravy,” roared Shelby. I’m sorry to say that it didn’t taste much better. Shelby could laugh because he’d ordered something else, a bowl of bayou chicken pasta that was kind of Cajun-like thanks to a punchy cream sauce with chopped peppers and chorizo; a surprisingly plump, crunchy fried chicken breast was perched atop the noodles. “That’s my absolute favorite!” gushed that night’s chatty waiter.

Franklin, meanwhile, was raving over his juicy, honey-glazed pork chops. “When the kitchen doesn’t try getting too fussy, the food is on the mark,” he announced.

There wasn’t anything fussy or fancy about that night’s dessert specials, either: slices of homemade coconut and “French silk” pies. The coconut turned out to be phenomenal, but the “French silk” was just old-fashioned chocolate-cream pie with a puddinglike filling, the kind that someone’s grandma (not mine) made for church suppers. But as long as it wasn’t crème brûlée, I was thrilled.

On a different night, I dined inside the softly lit, cappuccino-colored dining room with Bob, who admired our perky waitress’s multicolored hair (she’s in cosmetology school, she explained). I didn’t think I was especially hungry that night, so I ordered something that sounded light: a chicken-salad sandwich. But baby, that’s no dainty number at The Café. It was a jumbo-sized deal with what seemed like a pound of chicken salad — good chicken salad — stuffed between two fat slices of Texas toast!

Bob had wavered between ordering the Hawaiian ribeye steak and the blackened chicken Alfredo before choosing the latter. Smothered in a wildly rich cream-and-Parmesan sauce, the pasta was heaped with not-too-thin chicken slices that had been, we were told, “blackened in a cast-iron skillet.”

After dinner, he had the same general feeling that I’d begun to have about The Café. “It’s pretty good,” he said of the entrée. “But not great. I wouldn’t want to come back and order it again.”

“And what about the chocolate cake?” I asked, watching him dig into a slab of layer cake blanketed with fudgy frosting.

“It’s really great,” he said, grinning. “But way too rich. I’m going to take most of it home and eat it tomorrow morning for my breakfast.”