So which comes first in the making of a polished, successful restaurant, the restaurateur or the chef? It’s the eternal chicken-and-egg question in fine-dining circles, and the great pasta savant Michael White, who’s been opening upscale trattorias around town lately like so many Subway franchises, is currently putting the query to the test. Like Mario Batali did with his partners the Bastianichs, White rose to prominence under the steadying influence of Chris Cannon, a restaurant man of the old school. With Cannon presiding over the front of the house and White twirling out inventive Italian recipes in the kitchen, they launched Convivio, in Tudor City; the fine Northern Italian restaurant Alto, in midtown; and the grand, recession-proof seafood palace Marea, on Central Park South, to (mostly) glowing reviews. But late last year, the partners went through a messy breakup, and since then, White, with the backing of the financier Ahmass Fakahany, has been frenetically expanding his empire on his own.
White’s first official solo venture was the casual downtown taverna Osteria Morini, which Cannon helped supervise (he built the wine list and consulted on the décor) before dropping out in the late stages. Now comes Ai Fiori (“Among the Flowers”), a more opulent but much more conventional restaurant, which opened shortly after Morini in the monolithic new Setai Fifth Avenue hotel (and residences) near the Empire State Building. Like lots of hotel restaurants, this one occupies an awkward, slightly tortured space, which you get to from the lobby, up a flight of twisting marble stairs. As at Marea (which White retained in the divorce), the bar here is made with imported polished stone (onyx at the former, marble at the latter). But unlike at Marea, the dining room is colored in gloomy shades of brown and green, and, because the curtains are drawn in the evenings to obscure the trinket shops along Fifth Avenue, there is no view.
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