Good Restaurant

"Have you written about our dinners yet?"

"No, Springbok. NO!"

I feel like I'm talking to our old beloved Bernese mountain dog Toby. "Down, boy. DOWN!"

"How about now?"

"No-ho-ho. Still no!" I respond shaking my head with incredulous laughter.

Springbok is riding me pretty hard about writing up our dinner dates, and while I have enjoyed each one of them: Braai, Beyoglu, Bar Etats-Unis and Taste (forgot to tell Winette we went the other night), I have a pretty thick blog-odex of restaurants I have to get to before them. Not to mention I have a policy where I don't write about dates. But if he's asking for it, he's going to get it. I fear one of these days he's going to restaurant ground me and refuse to take me out for another dinner until I write about ONE of our dates. So Springbok, if you stick around, it's coming, OK? Actually, even if you don't, you'll still get a worthy spread on the Apple. Be careful what you wish for!

Fashionista was doing one of her many beautiful apartment renovations and her mom was a hero for the week -- she offered to stay at home cooped up in the kitchen to keep an evil eye on the workers. There was going to be no funny stuff/extraneous breaks in that apartment while Mama Fashionista was on duty. Forget the workers, I wonder how she survived with Nola -- Fashionista's big, longhaired grey cat who rules the roost. I haven't managed to win over the heart of Nola, no matter how many nights I've pre-partied in her crib. She's like the disapproving mother-in-law who on the surface feigns friendship, but when you try to get too close huz-ZAH! GET BACK! WAY back!


Fashionista invited LittleMissSunshine and myself to dinner with her mom and we convened at a spot in the West Village called Good.

"Good what?"

"Just Good."

I somehow showed up early and ran into LittleMissSunshine on the way in. Both of us are notorious for our tardiness, though I am the worst offender of the two. It's awful enough being late for a friend, but for a friend and her mom? Unacceptable. I gave myself about three hours to get downtown from the Upper West Side.

You walk into Good and there's a small bar to your right. They have a marble ledge against the window where LittleMissSunshine and I plopped our stuff down. The bartender asked us if we needed anything and we decided to wait until we sat at the table. This wasn't a night-with-a-mission, here. I order martinis when I'm with my family, but I didn't need to subject Mama Fashionista to that silliness.

Good's decor is very simple. The dining room is divided into small areas of wooden banquettes so you're in a section with only a couple of other tables. Our table was sort of floating off by itself in no-man's-land. I felt like we were at the power table. I noticed the painting to our left of a giant utensil. The other decorations -- wrought-iron chandeliers, plants and pigs -- were contemporary, but had a rural, country kitchen aspect to them. The restaurant was dimly lit, which to me is key. Each table had a candle and every time ours went out, someone would come back to light it. There was just so much conversation and laughter it couldn't keep up.

Here's a list of what we ordered:

Pulled pork sliders
Gnocchi
Potato chips with a caramelized onion dip
Strip steak
NY steak
Crispy chicken salad
Mussels
Burger with pulled pork, cheese and fries
Macaroni and cheese
Chili corn bread

Yup. That's right. No we were not a table of 16 celebrating the return of sensory functions. Our server looked at us with a "You're kidding me, right?" grin and both eyebrows raised, but he kept on writing. We're big girls. We're big girls.

The first item that came to the table was the chile corn bread. I knew I loved corn bread, but the chile really won me over. Had we not ordered more food, I would have been eating this all night. Oh wait, I did anyway. I was that person that kept breaking a piece off until I'd eaten a whole slice. I hate those kinds of people. It was so moist and flavorful it didn't even need any butter.

Round two included gnocchi, potato chips and dip and sliders. The gnocchi itself was incredible. Huge and doughy and the perfect texture. I didn't enjoy the dressings as much. The slices of prosciutto were awkward to eat with the potato dumplings. You kind of had to separate the two before you could eat them. I was expecting something more with the chips. They were basically homemade Maui potato chips - I was expecting more like The Palm's cottage fries. The sliders were everything you'd want a slider to be - juicy with chewy bread. Mmm!


The most astounding dish the server brought to the table was LittleMissSunshine's burger. I've never seen the likes of it anywhere, though its height could be matched at The Sunburnt Cow. It was a grilled burger with pulled pork and smoked mozzarella cheese on a brioche bun, but the cheese wasn't sliced on top. It was actually rolled into the patty. Amazing. I don't know how LMS got her teeth around it. I should have snapped a picture of her going for the goods (though it wouldn't have come out like all of them from this evening). The burger, though nearly impossible to eat, was one of the tastiest burgers I've ever had. Sometimes function defeats taste and in this case, the flavor was negated by how awkward it was to actually consume. She ended up barely being able to put a dent in it. I tried to help but had too much of my own - the mussels and the crispy chicken salad.

The mussels were excellent with white wine, garlic and herbs and grilled country bread that I didn't need after all the cornbread I'd shoved down my throat.

I made it about halfway through my crispy peanut chicken salad with corn, radicchio and Bibb lettuce when I realized the chicken was awfully tough to cut. I love crispy chicken, but it can be crispy on the outside and break away easily in the middle. Little too rough for my taste. The honey jalapeno dressing was a great combo I just wish there'd been more of it.

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Fashionista and Mama Fashionista both ordered steak. One the grilled marinated skirt steak with a potato parmesan croquette in a parsley-garlic sauce and one the N.Y. strip with charred cherry tomatoes, arugula and smoked paprika aioli. It was like a contest to see whose was better.

"Do you like yours?" Mom would ask.

"Yeah, it's great!" Daughter would reply.

"Do YOU like YOURS?" Daughter would ask.

"Yeah, it's great!" Mom would reply.

I tried them both, and while I'm usually a N.Y. steak girl, I liked the grittiness of the strip here. The charred edges had more flavor than the New York's. Not to mention serve me a croquette and I'm DUN-ZO. Mama Fashionista could barely put a dent in it - we were eating her under the table - so she sliced off a big chunk for me.

Last but not least, the macaroni and cheese. It was a green chile mac and cheese with cilantro and tortilla crumb crust. We sort of shared this among the four of us, though I seemed to put my fork in more than anyone else. I don't know what it is. As good as it was, it still left something to be desired. Maybe what I have in my head of what macaroni and cheese should taste like just doesn't exist. Or maybe my taste in cheese ruins me for all macaroni and cheese. I like the hard and bitter or soft and stinky stuff so most macaroni and cheeses end up being pretty bland. The cilantro and chile helped give this macaroni a boost, but not enough for me to name it an unforgettable macaroni and cheese.

Our server was really friendly and super-attentive. He definitely got a kick/shock out of us gorging ourselves. I can't believe he had the nerve to ask us if we wanted dessert. What a joke.

One of the 20 definitions of "good" in Merriam Webster's dictionary is "agreeable, pleasant." Good is just that - go for a solid meal at a solid price. It would have been presumptuous of chef Steven Picker to name his spot Great Restaurant, but Good fits. I won't add it to the top of my all-time favorites list, but if you're in the neighborhood of Bank and W. 12th, stop in for some yummy comfort food. Just do yourself a favor-- don't order 98 percent of the menu and save room for dessert. Who knows? Maybe we left out the best part.

Thanks, Mama Fashionista, for dinner and a great night (oh and bon voyage)!

89 Greenwich Ave., between Bank and W. 12th
212.691.8080