208 West 70th Street (Amsterdam & West End Aves.)
212-875-8600

Last night I took Lisa to the opera. Since going to the opera is pretty much a date, and since Lisa and I aren't really in the "dating" phase anymore, I decided to really get into the date-ness of the evening and make a reservation at a decent restaurant. Nice restaurants are in short supply on the Upper West Side, although if you believe the restaurant reviews in Gourmet's November issue, what few there are have been replicating like a virus. One restaurant which gets consistently good reviews, and which I had not yet tried, is Compass, a relative newcomer next door to the neighborhood's old war horse of a bistro, Cafe Luxembourg. The restaurant that had previously occupied Compass's space went under a couple of years ago, and after eating at Compass, I think I understand why (more on that in a minute). Compass had good reviews, and it's halfway between my apartment and Lincoln Center. A no-brainer.

Compass's menu is impressive, with a decent variety of dishes and preparations - something for the salmon and chicken breast types as well as for the more adventurous diner. Everything we ordered was skillfully prepared, nice to look at and quite tasty. I honestly can't complain about the food at all. But I will never eat at Compass again. (And no, it's not because of the health code violation that closed them down briefly last month. If I made dining decisions based on strict adherence to the health code, I'd never eat anything that came out of my own kitchen.) To be blunt, dining at Compass was a genuinely unpleasant experience, and here's why:

Compass has a lot of space to play with. The main dining room is probably a good 1500 square feet, not including the bar and separate dining areas. But instead of using this space to create a comfortable atmosphere, they've set up the dining room like an upscale mess hall. Postage-stamp sized two-tops are lined up like dominoes down the length of the room, with about 36 inches between the rows and about three inches between the tables. In essence, you're not at a table for two, you're at a table for twenty-four, except twenty-two of your fellow diners are total strangers (and you'd like most of them to stay that way). The menus (big hard-covered monsters) are about two-thirds the size of a table for two, making it impossible to put the menu down until your waiter takes it from you. And speaking of the waiters, the staff (with the exception of the front-of-house managers, who seemed to know what they were doing) was sloppy, slow, and unprofessional. From the moment we sat down, I was anxious to leave.

In fairness, a couple of qualifiers are appropriate. We went to Compass during the pre-theater rush, which at any restaurant will include more than the average proportion of well-to-do seniors who are particular about getting things their way and tend to speak rather loudly. Of course, when you pack several such diners into as tight a space as Compass's main dining room, it's bound to negatively affect your experience. Second, the dining room does have a number of comfortable-looking booths on an elevated level around its perimeter, kind of like guard towers perched over a prison cafeteria. Third, Compass does have a cute little gimmick where they give you a doggie bag with some treats from the pastry kitchen as you're on your way out (we got some decent raisin scones).

I said before I think I understand why Compass's predecessor went under, and it's got to have something to do with the way the dining room is set up. Compass is a decent bargain for the quality of food its kitchen is turning out, which is probably a concession to the thriftiness of your typical Upper West Sider. But the rent on this place must be pretty steep, so to cover it you've got to pack them in as tight as you can. My guess is that Compass's predecessor didn't understand this equation until too late, and Compass understands it only too well. Some might call this a fair compromise, but frankly, the promise of a free breakfast pastry, or even a well-prepared meal (which ours was), isn't enough to get me to eat at Compass again.