Reviews

Eating and Drinking 2005

After a performance at Lincoln Center, audience members used to head to Café Mozart for an exquisite dessert and more music, from the baby grand … begin with a duo of creamy goat-cheese tarts (either truffled mushrooms and onion marmalade or herb-roasted tomatoes and nicoise olives) set in a tasty crackling herbal crust. The earthy flavor of tender, herb-roasted organic chicken, enhanced by spaghetti squash and market vegetables, is sublime. And come back postshow: The Grand Marnier crepe with bing cherries and kirsch is a lovely nightcap.

CitiEats

Change can be terrifying. It can also be necessary. Not to mention wonderful.

After nearly l5 years, Café Mozart is trying to change its image - in a big way.

Supreme among the starters are a duet of tarts: homemade dough filled with goat cheese. one topped with a marvelous melange of mushrooms; the other topped with slices of roasted Roma tomatoes and whole nicoise olives. A cold soup of honeydew, coconut and just a touch dried aanbeny, a special on our visit, was a delightfully refreshing way to start the meal - although it could serve equally well as a dessert. The same can be said of another appetizer, a plate of baked brie paired with perfectly poached pears and strawberry compote..

Both visually and texturally interesting is a bowl of nicely cooked black linguini crowned with sauteed shrimp and napped with a delightful yellow tomato "marinara" that's more chunky than saucy. The French winter staple cassoulet pairs slices of meaty monkfish arid ultra-flavorful chorizo with white beans, mushrooms, cherry tomato and fennel. More conservative palates can settle on simpler options, including steaks, chicken schnitzel and a variety of enticing salads.

Another significant change has been the expansion of the wine list under the direction of the house's charming sommelier (and general manager) Saba. Be sure to ask her which vintages to pair with your meal.

Café Mozart has also added some upscale desserts including a Grand Marnier crepe with cherries and a cardamom tea panna cotta. However, I suspect few diners will be able to resist the tantalizing array of cakes, pies and pastries that have been Mozart's signature all these many years. See, the old and new can oo-cxist happily.

Review by Brian Scott Lipton of Cititour.com

Full Review

The beat goes on at Upper West Side staple Café Mozart…orchestrates a hip European bistro bill of fare.

May 2004

… while the Viennese-themed restaurant has previously been known for its desserts, [the restaurant] is expanding the menu to focus on lavishly presented contemporary Continental fare.

Taste Buddy Section

Café Mozart: A Symphony for the Senses

If you think Mozart's Cafe is still that quaint little cafe and dessert meeting place for aspiring music stars, Juilliard students and other denizens of Lincoln Center, think again. With splashy new decor and a brilliant new chef, the heartbreakingly young and talented Jason Scott Titner (who worked at River Cafe, Danube, 110, Noche) manning the kitchen, it now offers a truly delightful dining experience. For traditionalists, the place still has its full range of coffees and teas, as well as yummy baked goods: croissants, cakes, pies, et al. but the general ambiance is exuberant now, a vaguely French bistro spiced with Upper West Side savvy, plus a live pianist upholding that Juilliard performance tradition. The service is friendly and smooth, and Sommelier Ian Naf offers a wonderfully diverse wine list. We enjoyed my favorite: a smoothly beneficent Chateauneuf du Pape with a really scrumptious meal.

For those who consider salad something of a necessary evil, King's endive concoction will certainly change minds. The most delicious thing we ate,. it's a masterful aggregation of Anjou pears, raisins and spiced honey walnuts slathered with a richly aromatic Gorgonzola dressing ($8). Café Mozart offers another salad delight, a piquantly exotic mix of spicy grilled White Tiger shrimp with pineapple, avocado and radish, bathed in a mango/balsamic dressing ($9). The Figaro Duet of goat cheese tarts seduced us: the first being an herb-roasted Roma tomato and Nicoise olive concoction, and the latter made of truffled mushrooms and onion marmalade ($8). The baked Brie ($8) also charmed, a mouth-watering marriage of poached pears, fresh strawberry compote and toasted baguette ($8).

Aromatically succulent doesn't even begin to describe the Monkfish Cassoulet, made with white beans, mushrooms, braised fannel, cherry tomatoes and chorizo in a saffron-lobster broth ($18). Every one of our sense literally watered over this superbly grown-up dish. As for the slow-roasted Long Island Crescent Duck Malgret ($16), bird-lovers will simply die for its lushly flavorful heartiness.

Suffice it to say that, dessert-wine, the chocolate mousse cake ($6) was sinful and the French apple tart ($5) both authentic and decadent, just the tip of a 65-selection iceberg of flavor.

Review by David Noh

July/August 2004

When uptown revel in food, drink and good con¬versation at the revamped Cafe Mozart (154 W. 70th Street. 212-595-9797). Visit at dusk when the sidewalk comes alive with sparkly lights, illuminating colorful bistro tables. Thanks to chef Jason Scott Titner (River Cafe, Noche, Danube), Cafe Mozart now offers more than just desserts. For the menu, described as creative European with a contemporary twist, Titner artistically creates dishes like the scrumptious goat cheese tarts appetizer, served with herb¬roasted tomatoes and Kalamata olives or mush¬rooms combined with onion marmalade. Then choose from a worldly wine list hand-selected by sommelier Ian Nal (Bambou, Brasserie 360). For the full experience, come on Monday, select the prix-fixe menu and enjoy half-priced bottles of wine.

June 1992

... we're talking the best desserts on the Upper West Side. Cafe Mozart offers three types of cream cheese with your bagel or a mixed cheese board. A selection of yummy gelato flavors and 50 types of cakes makes Mozart's deserts a rousing final movement. Choose from tiramisu, mud cake, virtually every chocolate cake known to mankind, an array of fruit tarts and cheese cakes. Mozart even has a selection of kosher cakes, perfeect for the fall holidays. Don Giovanni never had it so good!

October 1994

BEST CUP O' JOE: With everything from espresso, cappuccino, latte and cafe au lait to 12 different types of French-pressed coffees, Cafe Mozart is a haven for coffee lovers. The 70th Street location is most popular after 10:30 P.M. any given night, when actors and audiences stop by after Lincoln Center performances and neighborhood residents pop over for late-night coffee and dessert. "Some of the waitresses here are also actresses," says Noah Maltz, a manager. Seems like show biz isn't the only industry to savor Cafe Mozart's macadamia nut, vanilla and hazelnut brews. Word is Billy Jean King is a regular here, too. Live classical music makes coffee-drinking a tasteful experience.

December 1991

Elite cake bakers from the entire metropolitan area were on hand to offer their wares in this spacious and inviting new coffeehouse. "I'll tell you, this place is going to be like a museum for desserts," predeicted Joe Viviano of Dessert Dessert, one of Cafe Mozart's gourmet suppliers. The reason is clear: in addition to Viviano's victuals, Cafe Mozart will be offering cakes from several area cake masters. That means you get the very best each one has to offer rather than being stuck with the best - and also the worst - of just one baker. The upscale but not snooty coffeehouse also has live classical music nightly and a reading area with the latest newspapers and magazies and board games. And the waitresses are even from Juilliard.

Official City Guide of New York

For an unbeatable trio of live classical music, wonderful coffees, and world-class desserts, make a detour into delightful Cafe Mozart.

Full Review

. . . The Uptown Cafe Mozart has hot meals from the kitchen as well as a spectacular array of desserts like its older sibling on W. 70th St. The menu headed "Mozart's Favorite Foods," is basically East European diner fare, with borscht, stuffed cabbage, pierogis, blintzes and Hungarian goulash. A nod to Mozart's place of domicile is a crunchy chicken schnitzel, plus, common at Viennese cafes, a stack of free magazines and newspapers for customers to read. However, other than piped in classical music (and a man playing live classical guitar) there's not a lot else that will make you think of Wolfgang Amadeus. It's a matter of question, for instance, if lie ever sat in a cafe chewing over a Greek salad or a tuna salad sandwich as he jotted down musical notes. But if Cafe Mozart says they were among his favorite foods, who am 1 to say otherwise? It was another century and I wasn't around.

To invert things a little here, you can't go wrong with Cafe Mozart as a dessert stop. We tried four and they were all fresh, flavorful and luscious. The apple brown betty was moist, crisp and abounding with cinnamon, the banana split cake creamy and chocolaty, the cake part having a good banana flavor and not even the slightest whiff of refrigerator-taste. The Napoleon cake was a delight, with light, flaky layers of mille-feuille and custard. The dessert our folks fought over most was the candy bar cheesecake which tasted like a Snickers bar had collided with a cheesecake. Delicious.

Reqular coffee is nicely served in a white pitcher so you can pour your own refills. A veritable cornucopia of irregular coffees right out of L.A. Story include decaf double espresso, diet decaf cappuccino, iced diet decaf mochaccino-you get the idea. An ideal place to take kids, there are also milkshakes and fruit shakes and something called a Mozart shake with a mix of four kinds of ice cram with chocolate.

The deluxe Mozart plate ($12.95) was successful. It included smooth and garlickly potato blintzes, cheese blintzes tasting like good hot cannoli, a tasty piece of grilled chicken with herbs like a Smmon and Garfunkel recipe (rosemary, thyme-you know the one), and the great crispy chicken schnitzel mentioned earlier.

Cafe Mozart also has a selection of sandwiches, daily pasta and fish specials and breakfast food such as buttermilk pancakes, challah Trench toast and omelettes. It looks spare, clean and new . . . what really spiced up the meal was our engaging waitress. We also liked the busboy who cheerfully refilled our water glasses ten times, as well as the fact that our check was low and came with a plate of chocolate and cocoa-covered espresso beans.

The Upper West Side Resident

Cafe Mozart bakes its own breads and most of its cakes and pies, according to Amir, the manager. "We own 20 percent of a bakery in Westchester - a classical baking company," he said. "Everything here is of the best quality." But Cafe Mozart-now in two locations-is not a bakery; but a cake extravaganza emporium. There are at least three different kinds of chocolate cake (I lost track at the chocolate truffle cake) and pies galore. You're not coming here to buy a whole apple pie, but to hang out, listen to some live piano or violin music, have a cappuccino, eat some cake and read foreign magazines. And, as a crowning touch, Cafe Mozart also has gelato, ice cream, sorbet and frozen yogurt, so no matter how you like your pastries a la mode, Cafe Mozart has something for you.

1993

We haven't gone wrong on desserts here yet-abundant in number and all of them faultless and flavorful. There are also over 40 special coffee drinks which alone take up a whole page of a menu. Who says New York hasn't caught up to Seattle on coffee bars? Who apple brown betty is moist, crisp and lavish with cinnamon, the banana split cake creamy and chocolatey, the cake part oozing banana flavor and not the slightest whiff of refrigerator taste. The Napoleon cake is a triumph, with light, flaky layers of mille-feuille and custard, but the dessert our folks fought over most was the candy bar cheesecake-an accident that should happen more often.

2000

As you walk into this warm and spacious cafe, you will be welcomed by a waitress in a Venetian dress. You will see pictures of Mozart in golden antique frames as you approach your table, hear Mozart's music, and smell the variety of flavored coffee in the air. This nine month-old cafe has dedicated its whole decor to the composer. In the evenings, musicians play Mozart's music on piano and violin. The menu features Mozart Mousse Cake and Rock Me Amadeus-a mud pie with chocolate ice cream, chocolate syrup and fresh whipped cream. Then you'll sit there-forever-drinking your gourmet coffee, playing with the French press it's served with, and reading your Sunday New York Times. Once in a while, you'll lift your head away from the paper and find an elderly couple's eyes lighting up as they look into the selections of world class Italian, French, German and Viennese desserts and pastries. In the evenings, the place is usually packed with people of all ages, enjoying each others' company and their cappuccinos served in a double cup, which is twice as large as a normal cup. Open seven days, the prices are reasonable with a wide range of cakes priced under $5. The variety of gourmet coffees include Chocolate Raspberry, Macadamia Nut, and Bavarian Chocolate Mint. The management claims that they serve the best Tiramisu in the city.