Central Park Boathouse dining is back — and it’s very bad

The Dining Millions are eagerly anticipating the fabled Central Park Boathouse lakefront dining room reopening in late summer or fall.

I often enjoyed it before previous operator Dean Poll gave it up last year.

But hospitality giant Legends’ just-launched Boathouse Cafe, a casual, counter-service precursor to the main venue — it’s on an alfresco patio with nice greenery but no water views — doesn’t have me counting down the days.

Just the opposite, in fact.  

Legends won a 10-year license from the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation to re-float the Boathouse for $11 million, including over $3 million in capital upgrades.

Even the simple Cafe, the first part of a multiphase reopening, should at least live up to the food that Legends oversees at Yankee Stadium.

But five of six items I tried on two visits struck out.

Some of the counter crew must start their day getting stoned at Weed World. My $12 cheeseburger had lettuce, tomato, onion slices and “secret sauce” nicely layered on the potato bun.

The only thing missing was the burger and the cheese — a first in my many years of reporting on restaurant fiascos. Perhaps the ghostburger was a vegan prankster’s joke.

“Oops!” they laughed when I returned and exchanged it for an actual cheeseburger that, while complete, was far from satisfying.

The flavor-free, mystery-meat patty, if you must know, was almost as thin as the paper-thin cheese on top. Shouldn’t a cheeseburger be a no-brainer at a place like this? It was no better on a second visit.

I adore Schaller & Weber’s German-style meat products — we consume their bratwurst by the barrel at home and I love their Stube sausage bar. But the Cafe’s griddled, all-beef S&W hot dogs ($6 each) were altogether too skinny for a picnic-like setting where I crave mammoth mouthfuls. What faint smoky flavor the franks had was defeated by cellophane-tough casings I left on the plate.

I can only marvel that David Pasternack — a big-league talent who first popularized crudo at the long-gone Esca — signed on as “consulting chef” at the Boathouse.

I thought a seafood master like Pasternack surely wouldn’t let me down with a crispy Atlantic cod sandwich on a potato bun ($15). The textures were delightfully contrasting — the batter crackling and the cod flesh nicely moist. All that was missing was the taste of actual fish.

It reminded me of McDonald’s notoriously flavorless filets.

The lobster roll ($25) at last delivered the goods: a generous heap of fresh-tasting claw and tail meat tossed with lemon aioli and chives in a buttered, split-top bun, served with super-crisp potato chips.

I’d rush back if everything was as good.

Let’s hope the Boathouse dining room menu beats the one at Legends’ mediocre (at best) One Dine top-floor restaurant at One World Trade Center — and that the Cafe isn’t an omen of what to expect.

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