Bloomingdale Road

Peanut butter and jelly tart

Photograph: Jeff Gurwin

Call it a sign of the times. Having devolved from cutting-edge French showcase to casual neighborhood bistro, the restaurant formerly known as Aix recently abandoned the last of its haute cuisine pretense, reemerging under new ownership as a glorified diner, Bloomingdale Road.

Named for Broadway’s colonial precursor, its family-friendly food and decor—think Johnny Rockets filtered through a contemporary New York lens—seem to have been determined by focus groups to capture Upper West Siders’ famously fickle hearts and stomachs. Surrounded by high-gloss blowups of neon signs and photos of bygone Manhattan, Jerry and Elaine’s spiritual heirs pack the place nightly, tucked into gray flannel booths and digging into generous iceberg-lettuce salads and green-chili–spiked sliders.

Ed Witt, who cooked rustic Italian at Il Buco and small-plate experimental at Varietal before disappearing briefly into exile on Long Island, seems humbled by his new lowbrow digs. From the restaurant’s manic wide-open kitchen, the amply tattooed chef works double time, banging out dishes like a short-order cook.

Embracing his most playful impulses, he’s devised a fun-house menu of intended-for-sharing comfort-food plates—a culinary odditorium that seems to draw inspiration from the city’s most eccentric menus, reworking but not always improving on some novel ideas. His tuna ribs, though meatier and smokier than the ones I first tasted downtown at Anita Lo’s Bar Q, are still more weird than enchanting. Meanwhile, his David Burke–style chicken lollipops—fried buffalo-sauced meatballs on little white sticks—are too dry and brittle. And his Coca-Cola-roasted white-trash country ham—served like office-party leftovers in desiccated room-temperature shards—lacks the simple pedigreed charm of better-conceived country-ham plates available at places like Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Char No. 4.

The gratis bread, a warm phallic dinner roll baked in an empty tin can, is consistent with the tongue-in-cheek tone that runs from the appetizers on through dessert. A dish of mac and cheese surrounded by sprinkle-on condiments—mini croutons, fried elbow pasta, and diced jalapeños and bacon—might have been more entertaining if the centerpiece white-cheddar macaroni weren’t so mushy and bland. More alarming was the pacing on a recent weeknight. As a rule, our waiter explained, the food dribbles out from the kitchen in no discernible order, arriving piping hot as it’s ready. Then he proceeded to deliver every single small plate at once—so many that they barely fit on our table. That starter onslaught was followed by a very long pause before the two entrées finally showed up.

That those mains were the most assured part of the meal offered some consolation—and an indication of Witt’s skills as a cook. His pepper-crusted grass-fed strip steak had rich, beefy flavor, and came with creamy red-wine aioli and delicious bone-marrow-laced fries. His lamb “julep” was even better, featuring pink loin with mint jelly and falling-off-the-bone bourbon-braised ribs.

Desserts veered back into less steady territory, hitting homey all-American notes—in a peanut butter and jelly tart that was a rich, creamy, breadless facsimile of the sandwich that inspired it, and in a generic ice cream sundae featuring dense scoops of Breyers-style chocolate and vanilla, scantly caramelized bananas, cherries and whipped cream. Though we left our sundae unfinished, the tables around us all seemed to be eating with gusto. In fact, judging from the dining room’s general good cheer, I’d say Witt’s crowd-pleasing food has managed to find its best possible audience.