The New York Post Rips Into The Park Hyatt's New Restaurant

New York Post restaurant critic Steve Cuozzo recently visited The Back Room at One57, the newly-opened restaurant at Park Hyatt New York, and things didn't go well.

Cuozzo makes no bones about it: first, there was the food —a salmon amuse-bouche introduced "with great detail, down to its last obscure, pickled micro-component" — which he calls a "ridiculous offering at this ridiculous restaurant."

Next, the months of "breathless hype" that promised designer staff uniforms, a three-star chef, and the reputable Hyatt itself—all of which should have meant that the restaurant "will, at the very least, not be completely terrible." That three-star chef, Sam Hazen, formerly of Veritas, quit weeks before the restaurant opened (not days after, as Cuozzo writes), citing a grievously inadequate kitchen.

Sebastien Archambault from the Blue Duck Tavern in D.C. was hired to take over, and served a pared down version of Hazen's menu. The transition has been difficult, if Cuozzo's word is to be trusted.

There are a few dishes he finds tolerable at best, but the lobster salad is described as "a Thermidorish cream bath with a few leaves scrunched into a coffee cup."

A veal chop is identified as "the saddest dead flesh in captivity," and Cuozzo recommends that "the gazillionaires upstairs" find dinner elsewhere.

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Karen Lo is an associate editor at The Daily Meal. Follow her on Twitter @appleplexy.