Urban Hawkers didn’t cut it for us, as we both prefer being served to food courts. That’s how we ended up at Aldo Salm, the casual wine bar across the alley from Le Bernardin serving light French fare.

I’d expect a server to provide a clean glass for sampling each wine at a wine bar. Not! Our waiter oddly used one wine glass for sampling two wines.

We ended up with the crisp Fiano, Ciro Picariello, Irpinia, Campania ‘21 ($14), which worked with the whole roasted cauliflower with chimichurri sauce ($18) and the duck confit ($26) over highly dressed frisée and watercress with thinly sliced fennel and radishes. I wished they had cooked the cauliflower much more to make it knife-tender.

This location worked to get a quick bite before seeing Leopoldstadt at the Longacre Theatre. It’s Tom Stoppard’s haunting epic play about the holocaust.

Aldo Salm
Midtown West
151 West 51st Street,
New York, NY 10019
212.554.1515