The New Chef Hangout

As my friends and I were leaving the Adrienne Shelly Foundation benefit last night, we were starving, it was raining and we were in the NYU ’hood, which doesn't boast a lot of great dining options. (The ASF, which honors the murdered actress, writer and director, raises money for female filmmakers. The gala included a reading of a Shelly screenplay and if anyone is wondering how good Edie Falco, Jason Patric, Ally Sheedy and Mary-Louise Parker are at readings, they're very very good.) So we decided to head east, to a restaurant that we’d all been hearing about nonstop for almost a week—Solex. The third venture from the Bar Veloce team, Solex features Eric Hubert, a guy who Snack calls a “chef’s chef,”  and a long, narrow room, though this one has a line of little tables with stools that make you feel like you’re on a high chair. We got there and found out we’d just missed Will Goldfarb (who was raving about it at midnight the other evening at his brand-new Dessert Studio inside ABC Carpet & Home, where I was all over the white-chocolate ganache with olive oil and smoked sea salt). Right behind us was Zak Pelaccio, who won’t talk about most of his future plans—except that he’s taking over Borough Food & Wine from Jeffrey Chodorow and doing a little redesign, which sounds like good news to me. At Solex, that mythical chef Hubert makes some pretty great savory pastry—we particularly loved the free-form tomato tart with olives and the nifty little croque-monsieurs—and the French wine list had some inspired choices. The only question now is whether you’ll find a greater concentration of chefs here or at the new Momofuku Noodle Bar just a few blocks away.