Chestnuts

Unless you’ve been in deep hibernation, if you live in New York and have been known to consume food, you’ve probably noticed that Tom Colicchio opened a new restaurant in Manhattan last week.

The breathless chatter over Colicchio & Sons in the Meatpacking District has been inescapable since the “Top Chef” judge announced that he was turning his ailing Craftsteak space into a locavore joint with a comfort food bent. (The restaurant is an offshoot of Colicchio’s popular Tom: Tuesday Dinner, a weekly 32-seat event in which Tom himself put together a $150 to $200 meal made with of-the-season ingredients.)

Now, being a big lover of red meat — even if I wasn’t exactly a fan of the concept of Craftsteak’s $100 steaks — I’m always a little morose whenever a steakhouse shutters.

If its replacement is a worthy one, however, that’s another matter.

We decided to investigate …

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“Let’s meet here,” I had said, noting an Eater.com post that called the new East Side Social Club “a sleek sexy spot for the Monkey Bar rejects.”

My “been everywhere” friend Bob’s immediate response? “I never get rejected at the Monkey Bar.”

Good point.

Even so, East Side Social Club held some intrigue. Opened by Billy Gilroy (owner of Macao and Employees Only), with celebrity photographer Patrick McMullen as an investor and Devon Gilroy, who’s clocked time at Chanterelle and A Voce, helming the kitchen, the restaurant had generated plenty of buzz well before its doors officially opened last week.

The menu was designed to be Italian, with some modern American dishes with a locavore bent tossed in. And the cocktails, given Papa Gilroy’s other establishments, promised to be interesting.

We had no big complaints about either, really — the price and the ambience, however, were another matter altogether.

If you’re expecting anything like the fashionable, genteel comfort of modern supper clubs like Graydon Carter’s Monkey Bar, you’re going to be a little disappointed.

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