Only New York’s fad-mad food media could make an overnight global sensation of a chef whose sole claim to fame is making diners keep their mouths shut. But Nicholas Nauman’s restaurant Eat, home to the instantly famous Sunday “silent dinner,” is in Greenpoint, the setting for “Girls.” His last job was at a Williamsburg bar frequently cited for, of all things, noise violations.
Both Brooklyn nabes command a wildly disproportionate hold on culinary sages’ imaginations. And overnight, Eat’s month-old no-talking gimmick set the world press — including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Britain’s Guardian, the LA Times, every local TV station and even a Russian one — on fire.
However, none seemed to try the food, which is said to adhere to “locavore” and organic principles. (The four-course, BYOB, 90-minute silent meal is $40 per person, cash only.) But a better idea for the 20-seat, Meserole Avenue joint would be “no tasting,” based on the amateurish dishes I had the other night.
How about “no looking” as well? A fellow guest called the 100-percent charmless room “kind of minimalist,” a generous take on a bare-walled, closet-like void.
Lockhart Steele, owner/creator of Eater.com, cackles at the concept. “Novelty is everything in a certain corner of the dining world, no matter how fleeting,” he says. “Dining in the dark, dining without talking — all that’s left is eating without eating.”
Friendly Nauman, 28, spent a few months eight years ago in a Buddhist monastery in India where breakfast was served in silence — “I wouldn’t say it gave me the idea, but it definitely influenced me,” he told me.
Of his professional cooking experience, before Eat, “I had done some work at Zebulon,” a defunct Wythe Avenue music bar.
The silent stunt tapped into annoyance over too-loud restaurants. The Buddhist part lent the gimmick gravitas. Nauman, who grew up Catholic, says he’s “sort of a Buddhist.” He calls it “an exploration of the self” and “something I’m still working on.”
How does a serious practicing Buddhist who’s a four-star chef feel about it? Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert keeps a temple at home and studied with the Dalai Lama. He hasn’t been to Eat, but says, “When I want to eat in silence, which happens sometimes, either I stay at home or I go to a monastery. But when I go to a restaurant, it’s to enjoy and share good times with friends and talk at the table.
“So what they are doing is like the opposite of what a restaurant is supposed to do, which is to bring people together.” Rest assured, there’ll be no silent tastings at Le Bernardin.
One non-silent night at Eat, “fall vegetable soup” consisted mainly of potatoes, as in a famine zone where ingredients are “stretched.”
It’s a joke, right? Fearing worse on Sunday, I stashed Haagen-Dazs away at home for later.
With nearly as many journos in the house as customers, the silent feast proved marginally less intolerable — viscous butternut squash soup, cold flounder and bony trout. Vegan chocolate “ice cream” reeked of vinegar.
A good salad of crackling mustard greens laced with radishes and miso was served between “palate-cleansing” teas tasting like watered-down mint toothpaste.
Eating without speaking doesn’t feel punitive, just tedious. During a long lag between courses, a woman methodically rolled her tiny cloth napkin into a tube. A hot couple’s pas de deux of eye-rolling gave way to finger games and footsie. They fled the instant Nauman marked the end of the meal with, “Thanks, guys!”
Among those who stayed were Dylan Skolnick, programming director of the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington, LI, and Suzanne Zoubeck, who have been coming to Eat since its early days.
Skolnick said of the silent meal, “Sometimes it’s mellow, sometimes a little self-conscious.”
Zoubeck said she knows people “who developed tinnitus” from loud restaurants. She found her voice-free meal “pretty darn excellent.”
So did Astoria resident Umberto Spermacetti, who works in the Diamond District, and his wife, Rosa. What drew them to a silent meal? “I wanted her to go through it,” he said with a giggle from chatty Rosa.
She smiled adoringly at him. “Lovely food,” she said. “The cook is amazing, but I like him [Umberto] best.”
On my way out, a quote-starved Al Jazeera correspondent accosted me. “Did you just eat dinner?” she asked.
“Sorry.” I couldn’t wait to get home to salted caramel ice cream — which I was hungry enough to down without making a sound.