Wall & Water (CLOSED)

Located in the attractive new Andaz Hotel on Wall Street, Wall & Water touts neither a celebrity chef—top toque Maximo Lopez May previously worked at the Park Hyatt in Buenos Aires—nor a raging boutique-hotel bar scene. In fact, the solid if predictable menu doesn’t particularly stand out, even in a neighborhood with little competition. But out-of-town guests may be perfectly sated by the geographically ambiguous roster of dishes. Lopez and his team—working in an open kitchen beneath a David Rockwell--designed sculptural wood ceiling—prepare simple, at times polished rib-sticking fare like succulent, spicy lamb merguez, and sweet potato soup that’s too potent with ginger. While a section of the menu is devoted to family-style dishes, many other entres are so generously portioned that they, too, ought to be labeled for sharing. Moist veal cheeks in a run-of-the-mill glaze come three to an order, with gigantic hunks of roasted carrot and celery root, while a beautifully blackened whole roasted branzino arrives in the cast-iron pan it was cooked in surrounded by more potatoes (golden roasted fingerlings) than you’d find in an order of supersized fries. Although the rustic cooking—desserts include a classic grandmotherly lemon-curd tart—is at odds with the spare, elegant setting, the familiar, accessible flavors may be just the thing for a right-off-the-plane, jet-lagged arrival.