NYCReview
Little Prince
Here’s what we can’t understand: How is it possible for someone to invest god knows how much money into opening a restaurant in New York - probably at least a million dollars - plus endless amounts of time and energy and emotional strife...only to end up staffing the place with a bunch of people who are f*cking baffled by the concept of serving food to humans?
This was a difficult review to write because we really wanted to love this place. Little Prince is a restaurant in Soho with so much promise, but every time we’ve wanted it to deliver, it’s let us down a little bit. Kind of like your really smart cousin who just can’t kick the weed and sleeps in his car every once in a while. You know he has greatness in him, but he just keeps disappointing you. And it always comes down to discipline. Our meals at Little Prince have been good examples of both those analogies.
On our first visit, we showed up for dinner on a Thursday night and had a really nice time eating some classic French bistro food, though we admittedly ordered very simple things and chalked up some of the small inconsistencies to a busy evening and early stage kinks. But then we returned a few weeks later on a quiet weekday night, and some of the true problems with this place shined through. Big problems. First of all, if there is one thing you can’t afford to screw up when you operate a French restaurant, it’s technique. You cannot serve a classic Lyonnaise-style frisée salad with so much vinaigrette that it could also sort of be a soup. Your simple roast chicken can’t be over-salted to the point that it almost tastes like jerky. And, most importantly, you can’t hire a bunch of waiters because they look cool, even though you could very easily convince them that “poulet” is the French word for swimming pool. That sh*t doesn’t work. Especially not in New York, and especially not with Balthazaar a few blocks away making you look bad. Don’t get us wrong - everyone at Little Prince is very, very nice. But you’d have to think they could find a few people that know not to fill a glass of wine to the very top like it’s the last one on earth. We like to drink and all, but we’d prefer not to need a straw.
I suppose what we’re getting at is that Little Prince would benefit greatly from a little bit (a lot) of fine tuning. This place has to figure out how to be a consistently good restaurant - from the kitchen to the wait staff -before it becomes a Soho go-to. There are too many other places nearby that offer the same experience, only better. See you at Raoul’s.