Interesting reports on e.leaven. I visited yesterday for lunch post-Hanks/Roberts at the AMC River East (review on that is that it's light as a feather and not really believable romance wise-but still a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. Amusing.) and I thought it was a decent meal for the money. I had the french dip, which was served on really good brioche-y bread. The roast beast was a little well done for me--but the au jus had a good taste and did the trick to mitigate the overdone meat. Good kettle chips -- not too salty, were seved with it. My pals had a turkey sandwich and a roasted veggie sandwich and both finished them completely -- the multigrain bread on which the roasted veggie sandwich was served was really good, I thought. One also had the matzoh ball soup which left a little to be desired on the broth side but I thought the matzoh ball was a good texture and flavorful.
The bagels were incredible though. Chewy interior, crusty exterior -- and they maintained that for the second day, which is frankly not often found in this town. I thought they were as good as any New York bagel I've had in the past and I will be making them my bagel of choice. I also tried a few of their macaron and I will confess that I'm not at all an expert on this confection -- I've never had a bite of one from Laduree or anything even close to the lightness of these macaron. They were lovely and melted on my tongue. I tried strawberry (yummy), pistachio (really yummy), and caramel (very yummy with a sort of burnt caramel taste that I think will appeal to those who care about that sort of thing).
So -- I found none of the mediocrity that has been mentioned earlier in this thread and I'm not exactly an easy audience. Well...except for Tom Hanks movies, I guess.