Pete Wells Gives 2 Stars To Rôtisserie Georgette

This week, New York Times restaurant critic Pete Wells gives two stars to Upper East Side's Rôtisserie Georgette, where a new chef is in charge, and Wells "couldn't tell the difference."

He means this as a compliment, comparing the new chef's cooking style to classic French music: "Rôtisserie Georgette isn't writing any new music," he says. "The kitchen, now under Chad Brauze, plays standards from the French songbook and plays them well, with what a colleague who has eaten high and low around the city calls 'a refreshing lack of creativity.'"

Two rotisseries, standing back to back in the kitchen, are the chief cookware in this restaurant: "The one facing the dining room is a tall steel model with brass trim, loaded up with pudgy chickens, small flocks of stuffed quail, dorade locked in a cage with lemon wheels and thyme branches."

Wells spends two chunky paragraphs on the chicken, where it comes from, and it's flavor and taste.

"Rôtisserie Georgette will sell you half a chicken for $24 or a whole one, which feeds two people for $36 each. The economy model, raised on an Amish farm in Indiana, is rubbed with herbes de Provence and cracked coriander seeds. Roasted chickens don't always pick up the flavor of the herbs they're stuffed with. These birds do. The legs are tender without disintegrating into strands, as rotisserie dark meat can do. The white meat is close to ideal, with just a whisker of dryness at the narrow tips..."

For Wells' full review, click here.