With a modern American menu, large dining area, white linens and a one-time “Chopped” champion chef, Alex Levine is trying to change the way Great Neck residents dine out.
“We want to make things affordable and great,” said Levine, who recently opened Station Grill, a restaurant located at 20 South Station Plaza. “We want to make it so we can compete with the other restaurants but can also give customers food that is very complex. It takes time but we are able to do it pretty well.”
Station Grill takes the place of the glatt kosher restaurant Lamed Vav.
Levin said the idea behind Lamed Vav was to elevate the quality of kosher cuisine, but the business model didn’t catch on with residents.
“People just weren’t coming in anymore,” Levine said. “There weren’t enough people to support the business.”
Levine said he wanted to change the restaurant’s image so he made Station Grill’s menu non-kosher and hired Milton Enriquez, a one-time winner of the Food Network cooking competition show “Chopped.”
Throughout his 24-year career in the dining industry, Enriquez said, he has worked at such acclaimed Manhattan restaurants as Arizona206 with chef Brendan Walsh – who co-owned the North Street Grill in Great Neck from 1991 to 1993 – the Royalton Hotel with celebrity chef and Food Network personality Geoffrey Zakarian and Eleven Madison Park, restaurateur Danny Meyer’s three Michelin Star fine dining establishment in the Flatiron District.
Enriquez then honed his skills as the executive chef at the closed Manhattan restaurant Compass, which received a two star review from the New York Times while he was in the kitchen, and at The Fig Tree in Hoboken, N.J.
“Everywhere I go I always like to put my fingerprint on it,” Enriquez said. “I want to make something so people will always remember me.”
At the white tablecloth houses of fine dining where Enriquez worked previously, he said he learned to turn out the carefully crafted new American dishes being put out at Station Grill.
Recent menu items include yellowfin tuna tartare, English pea and poppy sea risotto with duck confit and a lamb duo with cauliflower, escarole, zucchini and rhubard. The restaurant also offers a lounge menu with recent items being crispy fried parmesan calamari, a wagyu beef burger and pan roasted organic chicken.
Station Grill also offers a prix-fix menu for $27.95, which both Enriquez and Levine said is much less expensive than what you would find in most comparable Manhattan restaurants.
Recent menu items on the prix-fix included baby spinach salad and rustic rotelle pasta for appetizers, grilled prime flatiron steak and roasted organic chicken for entrees and butter milk panna cotta and fresh fruit carpaccio for dessert.
“Milton doesn’t cook plain stuff,” Levine said. “He makes fresher, better food.”
Enriquez described his “American” cuisine as flexible. He said he can take techniques from other styles of cooking, such as French, Italian or Japanese, and use them to create something new.
Along with the carefully plated food, Enriquez keeps with the new American theme of using local ingredients and making as many pieces of a dish as he can in-house.
“Everything I do I do from scratch,” Enriquez said. “At other places I worked we made everything in house and I’m doing the same thing here.”
In spring, Enriquez said will use primarily asparagus and peas in his dishes, while in the summer he will focus more heavily on corn.
Besides the food tasting better, buying vegetables in-season is cheaper. Buying the food local, Enriquez said, also allows him to develop relationships with local farmers as well.
“We want to support the surrounding community,” Enriquez said.
While Levine had Enriquez create his own menu, Levine said he offers advice on what dishes make it onto the menu as the restaurant tries to figure out what residents like.
The restaurant opened in April, and Enriquez said he wants whoever dines at Station Grill to leave “with big expectations.”
He said he considers good service and good food as part of one whole package for his diners.
Also while working at restaurants in New York City, Enriquez said he learned that if a customer encounters bad service at a restaurant but the food is good, that customer will most likely return. But if both the service and food are equally good, then the restaurant can truly succeed.
Enriquez said he likes to get feedback from diners as well. He said he will often ask bussers to show him the plates of diners to see if they have eaten everything. If they haven’t he looks to see if it is because the food was bad or because they were full.
Looking to the future, Enriquez said he wants to bring in a mixologist bartender to create a list of cocktails without alcohol in them.
Enriquez said he treats all his customers with the same amount of respect.
“I’ll treat VIP’s like I would treat anyone else,” Enriquez said. “If you’re a VIP it doesn’t mean I would make the food any different from anyone else. I still execute food with the best of my knowledge.”
Levine said he wants people in the area to be find Manhattan-level food without Manhattan-level prices.
“I want to make food as cheap as we can make it,” Levine said. “The economy is still tough, but I want people to enjoy great food.”
