Restaurant review, Hot Number.

In restaurant land, like everywhere else, there’s a quirky, unfathomable quality to the wisdom of crowds. Some places never get off the ground, some take off after one good review, and some are popular the minute they open their doors. 10 Downing, which opened a couple of months ago in an angular corner space on lower Sixth Avenue, appears to be one of the lucky ones. Possibly it’s the Euro-accented name, which also happens to be the restaurant’s address. Or maybe it’s the carefully contrived downtown vibe, which includes a Damien Hirst poster in the bathroom and lots of jumbled artifacts on the walls, among them a pair of entwined antlers and a lush landscape photo of somewhere in Mexico. Even though the place has no hard- liquor license, the patrons were three deep at the bar, waiting for their tables, when I dropped by a few weeks back. On a recent Friday evening, the party was still more or less in full swing, even with the city sunk in its deep recessionary gloom. One of 10 Downing’s proprietors used to run a buzzy Village bistro called Le Zoo, among other establishments, so they know a little bit about the delicate alchemy that goes into creating a trendy restaurant. It helps to have an eye for real estate (10 Downing is across the street from Da Silvano; Le Zoo used to occupy the space that now houses the Spotted Pig), an energetic publicist (the food blogosphere has been chronicling the oft-delayed project for months), and the services of a chef who cooks the kind of food that even the most addled hipster might actually wish to eat. The person they’ve chosen for this challenging job is a talented though star-crossed young cook named Jason Neroni, who made his reputation creating inventive, high-wire recipes at the prominent Lower East Side restaurant 71 Clinton, then almost ruined it in a murky, much-blogged-about dispute with the owner of a now-defunct restaurant in Brooklyn.

Read more at http://nymag.com/