Monkey Bar

Photo: Jeff Gurwin

The Monkey Bar is defined by its past. The mischievous, 71-year-old simian murals that give this Hotel Elysée den its name, the glamorous icons from the last century who frequented its stools—Joe DiMaggio, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando—and more recently, the talented chefs who cooked here, including Kurt Gutenbrunner (Wallsé, Café Sabarsky), created multiple layers of lore. Patricia Yeo (AZ, Sapa), the lastest formidable toque to take on the kitchen, embarks on a daunting mission of modernity: turning an erstwhile steaks and chops house into a Pan-Asian destination.

The Glazier Group’s three-month renovation dropped the dining room’s Art Deco supper-club vibe and instead created what amounts to an upscale dim sum palace: Red walls painted with naturalistic Asian motifs, gossamer scrims and the gold columns and ceiling add to the effect. (The front bar remains a jewel—the freshly cleaned chimp murals have never looked better.) The short menu, meanwhile, is unrecognizable, save a signature steak entrée, and even that is vamped up with ginger butter and tempura vegetables.

Puzzlingly, the otherwise sophisticated Yeo uses a heavy hand at Monkey Bar, crowding the menu with cloying, gooey sauces (ingredients like caramel and butterscotch abound) that make General Tso’s chicken look like a diabetic’s meal.

Occasionally, the sweet touch works. In one appetizer “salad,” Yeo surrounds grilled cuttlefish with a sticky banana-chili mash. Sliced bananas and honey-roasted peanuts provided great textural contrast with the chewy seafood, and the spice of the chili sauce balanced the ripeness of the banana.

More often, though, the dishes were so unsuccessful that I had difficulty finishing them. A pan-roasted salt-and-pepper chicken tasted only nominally of either flavor. Instead, the moist but bland bird was subsumed by a tarlike apricot hoisin that could have been a McNugget dipping sauce. An arid scallion pancake side did nothing to distract from this lackluster main. The equally lame token noodle dish was thick rice pasta with a fatty pork ragù, deluged in a heavy plum goo—a reduction of orange juice, soy and oyster sauces.

Even when the dishes weren’t too sweet, most were disappointing. A wasabi-pea–encrusted sturgeon was inexcusably dry—especially at $33. A boring dim sum “bento box” appetizer sampler serves as an effective study in how changing up familiar foods—chicken was in the shumai, crab filled steamed rice noodles, and veal was stuffed into dumplings—doesn’t necessarily improve on the originals.

It’s a tough meal when your desserts taste more adult than your savories. Sour-cherry soup and tart honey-and-orange-blossom yogurt save a fried milk custard from being the Asian equivalent of a funnel cake. A peppery tuile and a balsamic vinegar sauce rescued an otherwise dull strawberry sundae.

The stretched Yeo continues to oversee the kitchen at Sapa, which may partly explain how she can perform so far beneath her usual standard. Lucky for her, people have been ignoring the food here for years, drawn instead to the bar and its mythical aura. As long as those playful monkeys keep smiling, Yeo’s dining room will always draw a crowd.