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Nyla is the newest celebrity restaurant to hit the Manhattan scene, and promises fans and diners American food with a Louisiana touch. The name is a postal contraction of sorts, combining New York with Spears's birth state of Louisiana. Manifestly, Spears's billboard magic does not extend to the culinary arts. Celebrity status is not a license to serve up mediocre food, especially in New York, and most especially if the restaurant in question is located in a swank midtown hotel (Nyla's home is the Dylan Hotel). Given Nyla's menu, decor, and location, Spears has classed her restaurant with other trendy midtown pieds-à-terre. That being said, one is inclined to cut restaurants like Nyla some slack, since their cachet rests on much more than merely the food. But by the end of our culinary journey, even the allowances made for celebrity influence could not save the place. Nyla is sleek and hip, even if it occasionally verges on Disney-esque. The vast room feels cool and open, though at ground level it is oddly cluttered, with too many tables too close together. Billowing, twisting opalescent fabric adorns the ceiling. An ongoing slideshow of vaguely yonic floral images is projected above a giant fireplace. Wax candles sit atop the mantle, calling to mind tarot readings and séances — or a college dorm room. A chrome-colored staircase leads up to the balcony, where there's another bar and more tables. These decorative touches might be described as whimsical if they weren't constantly reaching for trendy. One of my dining companions aptly described the (very loud) "background" music as bubble-gum-pop-meets-Chelsea-dance-club. (For kicks, we asked our waiter to have the music turned down, a request he received with a quizzical look and much grace. The volume stayed the same.) By 7 P.M., the downstairs bar was packed with excited twentysomethings. The restaurant area was about 95 percent female; it seemed that all the men were at the bar. Herds of aspiring beautiful people crowded the bar, while the dining room was largely populated by the Phantom of the Opera set. I and two friends sat down at a sloping, red-felt corner table and perused the menu's southern-Cajun-Creole offerings, which looked promising: crabmeat gumbo, southern fried chicken, salmon with Mississippi caviar, vegetarian hominy stew. The cocktail menu beckoned the sweet tooth, with offerings such as Naughty Lolita and Whatta-melon Martini. The raspberry mojito was disappointing, though. Not wanting to mortgage his reputation, the male among us ordered a Dewars and soda; apparently the bartender interpreted this standard as a teeny-bopper-sized dollop of scotch drowned in 7 UP. The drink was a treacly mess. Next, Nyla pulled off a feat that we thought impossible: It made Cajun food bland. Of course, "Cajun" and "bland" go together about as well as "CNN" and "objective." The overall flavorlessness of Nyla's cuisine — everything, from the gumbo appetizer to the "southern sushi" to the chocolate pyramid, was bland — could not be saved by the saltshaker. This stuff was incurably tasteless. A goopy crabmeat gumbo arrived with minuscule pieces of andouille sausage, which might as well have been wood shavings for all the flavor they added. Nyla's building insipidity reached a near-miraculous apex when the entrée of duck and wild mushroom étouffée came out looking and tasting identical to the crabmeat gumbo. Everything sounded good on the menu but disappointed on arrival. The smoked cheese and onion tart more resembled a pie and lacked flair. The tuna tartar, described as "hand chopped," was smushed into a ball à la ground round, and the streaks of creamy wasabi sauce on the plate completely overpowered the dish. Highly suspect was the small menu of "southern sushi," from which we ordered the "Poor Boy Roll," comprised of tempura oysters, fried green tomatoes, arugula, cucumber, and smoked chili. Three doorknob-sized sushi rolls arrived tasting no better than the plastic models seen in Japanese restaurants. It was the same story with the short ribs of beef with peppered bacon and red wine. It sounded perfect, but the dish was boring. Ironically, it took the Nyla burger (served with chipotle mayonnaise) and fries for the chef to shine. It arrived rare, just as we had ordered it, and had a blackened, almost smoky taste. Maybe Spears should have opened a diner. By dessert, the light proffered by the hamburger flickered out. The bourbon pecan pie was hard and dry — and un-nutty. The crème brulée was hardly "bruléed," its sugary crust thin and flimsy; not really a crust at all. The wine list was heavily California-influenced, with a price range of $21-76. Cocktails run $10, and dinner for two — sans the drinks and with appetizers — will add up to about $80. As we left the restaurant, we stumbled into a group of college girls from Pennsylvania. They were memorializing their trip by posing in front of the entrance. As the shutter clicked, we noticed their pose: hands out, thumbs down. "Don't go!" they warned. "It's terrible!" One had ordered the southern fried chicken, and when it arrived she asked for a flashlight to check if it had been cooked — at all. "She's expecting to have her head over the toilet tonight," her friend said, only half in jest. Caught between the conflicting worlds of pop-star kitsch and Manhattan swank, Nyla ultimately fails. Nyla will stay in business only if the tourist traffic keeps it afloat (and if the food inspectors don't shut it down for poisoning diners). As Miss Spears sings in her Rolling Stones cover, when it comes to eating at Nyla, "I can't get no satisfaction." — Sarah Maserati is an NR associate editor.
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pop icons, Britney Spears has always (well, for four years, at least)
been a princess of paradox. She's been a champion of virginity for 20-year-olds,
and has inspired prostitute-chic for 10-year-olds. She remains at 20 a
teen sensation who somehow neither crashes nor burns. That may be about
to change, however, as she attempts a mega-star rite of passage: Spears
has become a restaurateur. 
