Restaurant Review - Back Forty and Back Forty West - NYTimes.com AS SoHo began to feel less like a New York neighborhood and more like a suburban shopping mall with two lanes of taxis running down the middle, there was Savoy, a sane oasis on the quiet corner of Prince and Crosby Streets. Even when years passed between visits, I felt better knowing Savoy was there. Then one day last June, it wasn't there anymore after 21 years, and the city felt a little smaller. Some of the sting was taken out when Peter Hoffman, the chef and owner, promised to reincarnate the place in a new form along the lines of his other restaurant, Back Forty. Opened on Avenue B in 2007, Back Forty has become an East Village go-to place for grass-fed burgers, sustainably raised pork shanks and vegetables straight off the back of a farm truck. Back Forty West isn't a total clone. It's more like a fraternal twin, sharing the logo and the look of the first place, along with a few menu items and an overall philosophy. Mr. Hoffman's move toward a casual format that can be easily replicated is, of course, one that makes sense to more and more restaurateurs. But this time around, the familiar story has a strange ending. Over the last month or so, I've had a string of extremely pleasant meals at second-generation Back Forty West, and a succession of sloppy, careless ones at the place it was modeled after. It's as if Back Forty has gone into a long, jealous sulk, like a family cat that responds to the arrival of a new baby by hiding under the couch and scratching at anybody who gets too close. Unlike the original, Back Forty West is open all day, an agreeable corner cafe that pours coffee by 8 a.m. and fries chicken to serve over waffles at lunch. The neighborhood has embraced it, giving the place a confidence and sparkle that take it well beyond the routine farm-to-table tropes. A filling bowl of Brazilian fisherman's stew loaded with squid and shellfish was bright green with cilantro and bracingly spicy. Eat locally, cook globally. Squid played to even better effect in another dish, this one inspired by Spain. Seared on a plancha until it was just done and not a moment longer, exactly the way squid has to be cooked, it was served with smashed fingerlings and with butter dyed rusty orange by pimentón. Butter, pepper, squid, potatoes: elemental and hard to argue with. Mr. Hoffman has installed a smoker on the second floor of Back Forty West, near where the small bar used to be, and the restaurant makes excellent, judicious use of it. A smoked chicken leg was so pink and juicy that a friend called it chicken ham; pork ribs in a Carolina-style vinegar sauce might have been a little more tender, but the low-key interplay of smoke and pig fat was just right. More than any one dish he created, an early and steadfast loyalty to Greenmarket produce defined Mr. Hoffman as a chef. So it's the nicest kind of nonsurprise to find that Back Forty West handles vegetables with care and imagination. Dressing asparagus spears with rhubarb vinaigrette struck me at first as seasonal overkill, but it was in fact a lovely pairing. I also got a kick out of the restaurant's tribute to the Caesar salad, with leaves of grilled kale, white anchovies and, in the role often played by stale croutons, some irresistible fried chickpeas. The menu at Back Forty West is organized in a way I've never seen before and hope not to see again: by eating utensil. If you have ever walked into a restaurant thinking, "Boy, I don't know if I should be trusted with a knife tonight," this is the place for you. Simply skip over the "Fork & Knife" section in favor of plain old "Fork," or "Spoon & Ladle" or "Hands." Unmasking the main courses in this jumble takes bit of sleuthing, but it's obvious that the "Spoon" category is for desserts. A chocolate cake with hazelnuts was more gummy than chocolaty, but I'd order the cookie plate again (and then make sure I kept all the bacon-fat snickerdoodles for myself). And everyone seems to like the caramel pudding under an inch or two of marshmallow, too. The same dessert is served at Back Forty, yet it isn't the same at all. In SoHo, the marshmallow is caramelized on top, giving it a tinge of bitterness that helps offset the sweetness, and the pudding is very slightly salty. In the East Village, nothing stands in the way of the sugar rush. One spoonful is more than enough. Direct comparisons between the two restaurants were nearly always punishing to the older sibling. The grass-fed burger at Back Forty West, on a soft potato roll, had plenty of character. The one at Back Forty, served on a crumbly sesame-seed bun, had almost none. Back Forty West had the bright idea to grill pea pods with olive oil and smoked sea salt and serve them whole; you pop the peas into your mouth like edamame. Back Forty had the less bright idea to grill whole fava pods; you pop out the beans, then have to separate them from their gray skins. Stranger still, the fava pods were plopped on top of some (quite good) hummus. It's hard to imagine this ungainly dish on the menu at Back Forty West, and not just because you need your hands and a fork to eat it. This kind of inattention to detail was evident in every meal I had at Back Forty. Grilled whole onions and chard leaves with their stems intact were so undercooked, they were difficult to cut with a knife. Half the food, from French fries to a yogurt-dill sauce, seemed to have been tossed into an open barrel of salt before serving, and food that ought to have looked beautiful, like a beet salad, had been slammed carelessly down on the plate, as if to punish it.