Brunch at danal is a high concept-affair. Just as Peter Mayle might have imagined a casual meal in a faux French estate: Chintz on the walls, yellow and blue tablecloths on the mismatched wooden tables, pillows casually placed on benches-cum-banquettes. Yet it all feels too phony for its own good–less a restaurant than a service to an American vision of Gallic leisure and gastronomy, a weird gloss on French countryside meets lower Fifth Avenue. Like the first Laura Ashley shop, danal is one of those places that would have been new and unusual in the 1980s; it might even have inspired lines out the door. Today, the restaurant, despite a recent move from a truly diminutive space in the East Village to a much larger, bi-level space near 13th and Fifth, feels distinctly like it's going through the motions, or worse, marking time.
When three good friends joined me for brunch at danal last weekend, we first took notice of the reasonably priced menu: everything, including non-brunch items like the salade nicoise and the meatloaf, is priced below $15, and many items are $12 or $13. Keeping with the general theme, coffee is served in a French press–but impressively, one large enough for the table to share. And the coffee is indeed excellent, albeit rarely refilled.
Unfortunately, brunch items are at once too much and too little, and with the inexplicable Ibero-Hispanic fusion, also a bit unsettling. The breakfast burrito (pictured left, $13) is, to begin with, a strange choice on the menu for an generally French Provencal brunch. It is also the first sign that the Latin-leaning identity confusion might well indicate that danal does not really know what it wants to be. 
Worse, with eggs, chorizo, peppers, sour cream, and onions, there are simply far too many components on the plate for the burrito to resolve into a coherent whole. A smoked salmon omelette (pictured right, also $13) on the other hand is far too simple and lacks any burst of flavor. The swiss cheese and tomatoes do nothing to enhance the flavor of the of the salmon, steering the omelette perilously close to becoming a salty wash-out. The only thing of interest here is a stew of spiced apples, raisins and walnuts that reads curiously like that Passover staple, charoset. Could there be a displaced Latin-Jewish tribe living somewhere in the south of France? The only brunch entrée to pack a punch of flavor is the quesadilla (pictured below, $13) with shrimp, tomatoes and cheese which, while again not particularly French, beguiles with a mildly spicy seasoning and a tartly-dressed side salad.
Service at danal is not its strongest suit: It is often hurried and impersonal, with easily distracted staff who do not seem to be able to cope well with the sizeable brunch rush. We would have preferred more time with our server, or at least more than a perfunctory check-back, especially when all of our glasses were empty and we were sucking on the grounds in the bottom of our French press. The restaurant's move from a cramped location to a much roomier one ought to have invigorated the staff and the cooking, but that that seems not to have happened. Instead, the chilled-out décor and the harried staff just reinforce danal's strangely split personality–casual, Provencal clichés do not mix well with frantic servers and lackluster Spanish-accented French dishes. We don't know the diagnosis for this disease, but we certainly know the cure: danal seems a good candidate for professional help, preferably from a Freudian with a good palate.
danal, 59 5th Avenue (at 13th Street), 212-982-6930.
