The Modern at MoMA – American (New)/French – Midtown West
The Modern inside the Museum of Modern Art always shows up on NYC’s Restaurant Week list and always gets completely booked well before I’m even aware Restaurant Week is upon me. This summer, my boyfriend and I attempted a walk-in and almost got laughed out of the place, so we decided to plan ahead and save it for our anniversary.
Here’s the tasting menu, served in the formal dining room:
amuse bouche: porcini- and rosemary-dusted popcorn
The flavoring on this was too uneven to make much impact, but we liked the idea of it a lot.
amuse bouche: deconstructed vichyssoise: russet potato, leek soup sphere
Quite an impressive presentation, right? Between this and the spork, the flatware coolness wasn’t lost on us.
amuse bouche: nori rice crisp, celeriac purée, hackleback caviar
Surprisingly, though, this was my favourite of the amuses. Surprising because I haven’t traditionally been the world’s biggest fan of the flavor of the ocean. This was just so fresh-tasting and so salt-concentrated, though, that I couldn’t help myself.
amuse bouche: pâte à choux, avocado purée
my boyfriend’s red bell pepper cocktail
fennel souflée, tomato confit, tomato gelée, candied fennel
Tomato even a bona fide anti-tomato activist like me could enjoy. I guess everything tastes good when you cook it in fat and garnish it in sugar.
“milles feuilles” (thousand leaf, meaning layers) of summer truffle, diver scallops, and watermelon, arugula coulis, sustainable Osetra caviar
This was the only total miss of the night, probably because it had such potential to be a hit. With all of those luxury ingredients, you’d think it would’ve blow our minds with flavor, but it was bland and mushy. The truffle taste wasn’t detectable at all, and the only texture interest came from the caviar.
chilled sweet corn soup, pearl onions, poached quail eggs, hickory smoke
The corn was freeze-dried! And it totally made the dish. I love corn anything to begin with, but everything about this soup was a delight, from the temperature to the herbs to the smoke to the soft eggs with their liquid interiors.
grilled Sullivan County foie gras, champagne-vinegar-preserved strawberries, harissa tuile
Maine lobster tart, fennel purée, red sorrel, “lobster granité”
To be completely honest, this dish didn’t pack a whole lot of flavor. But chewy, gummy lobster and flaky crust are such a good texture combination. Is that a terrible way of describing the way lobster feels in your mouth? It’s one of the few seameats I really, really like, so I don’t want to do it injustice, but you have to admit that it’s totally weird to eat.
bulgur-wheat-crusted john dory, roasted black cherries, lemon verbena oil
I basically just wanted to try the john dory because Chef Gordon Ramsey serves it a bazillion times on every season of “Hell’s Kitchen”. It was a little too fishy for me, but I liked the earthy tones of the wheat and cherry.
Modern “pot au feu” served two ways: New York prime strip loin, summer vegetables, basil emulsion; braised cheek, pommes fondantes
The little copper pot of ultra-tender and sweet beef cheek was definitely the best of the entrees for both of us.
strawberry basil gelée, pistachios, strawberry balsamic foam
buttermilk panna cotta, strawberry soup, pistachio ice cream, caramelized tuile
Dr. Boyfriend didn’t care much about this dessert, but I thought each component was delicious in itself and that the sum of the parts was even greater. The strawberries were refreshing but not too light in their syrupy cold soup, and that sweet, crunchy tuile was such a great texture addition. Dipped in the caramel on the side of the bowl, the tuile was probably my favourite part of the dish.
chocolate petit fours
We made a major mistake at this point, and I want our blunder to serve as warning to you. We had seen this wheeled cart brimming with chocolate treats making the rounds, and figuring it was an additional charge, discussed whether or not we had the room in our stomachs to make it worth our while. Of course it turned out to be included with the tasting menu, and of course we pansied out and only got four pieces for the two of us. As soon as we tasted them, we realized what idiots we were and wanted to call our server back over, but we were too embarrassed to be seen as double-dippers.
LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKE. Take one of everything on the cart and store it in your cheeks for later if you need to.
Chocolate Cones with Maple Ice Cream and Raspberry
This was a solidly delicious and inventive meal and probably would’ve received 4.5 donuts had we not been to other restaurants that just plain packed more flavor into their dishes. I do agree with the single Michelin star it’s had for several years, and I certainly think it’s a worthwhile member of the Danny Meyer restaurant group, but it just didn’t live up wholly to my expectations. There’s really something special about eating inside a museum, but The Wright at the Guggenheim is a better bet for your money.
9 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019 (map)
10 Comments
plumpdumpling
If you’re interested, one of my favourite reviews of this restaurant was posted by Law & Food, and they call this place “a masterpiece”, so I guess it’s all a matter of taste.
Except where the milles feuilles is concerned, because they didn’t like that, either. Boo-yah.
LawandFood
Thank you very much for the link to our review!
I’m sorry you were blown away by The Modern (Dining Room). I will say that one possible explanation for the discrepancy re the meal may be the fact that my gf and I each ordered a different tasting menu, so we effectively had twice as many courses as you and your bf.
Regardless, glad you didn’t totally dislike the experience. Next time you should consider Eleven Madison Park for a special meal. They have raised their prices since revamping the restaurant, but I was blown away by a lunch I had last week. I have a dinner reservation next Saturday and will be posting about each meal soon.
Ells
I don’t feel like a food dummy until I read your NY food reviews … I had to look up a few things.
Let me know if you want guests posts from small town South Carolina, in which I debate the merits of the chinese food restaurant in my tiny town (which doesn’t taste as bad as you’d think, judging by the way their bathroom smells) with the japanese restaurant in the town where I work, which serves fried rice with mayo sauce.
Also: I want to go to there.
plumpdumpling
Oh, sorry; I try to explain the things I don’t think people will know, but I kind of assume everyone knows more than I do. Especially when it comes to the French crap. I actually signed up for French in high school, but they made me take Spanish because the French classes filled up, and they wanted to let the “less privileged” students take it first. I would’ve fought it had I known how much it’d hurt me later on.
Sacrebleu!
Dude, I would love guest posts from you! Especially if you go to all of the places I remember from my J,LC days, like Andolini’s and Mellow Mushroom. And especially because I see nothing inauthentic about rice with mayo.
Heesa Phadie
That corn soup looks and sounds amazing.
Haha. Laughing so hard at the john dory…it’s like the only fish Ramsey serves, WTF!? I hate that.
That lobster, and that steak mmmmm.
Another thing I’ve never had is foie gras. What’s wrong with me. I need to try all these delicious foods you try. You’re so lucky being in NYC. Damn you.
OMG! I’m not even a fan of strawberries but that buttermilk panna cotta, strawberry soup, pistachio ice cream with the caramelized tuile…that just looks incredible. And, cuss me, those truffles and that ice cream, you know me…I’d devour those in second. Oh man…I would never let embarrassment stand between me a some more sweets. I would elbow my own grandma out of the way for more of that.
This is by far the best looking overall meal to me that you’ve reviewed in a bit. It just all looks and sounds incredible. I’m drooling on my keyboard right now.
plumpdumpling
It’s all john dory and lobster risotto on that show. I actually went to one of his restaurants and didn’t have either of those things, though, so apparently he doesn’t put them on his real menus.
Dude, you NEED foie gras. From all I know about you, you’d love it. It’s, like, the richest, most luxurious ingredient out there. But seriously, I can’t imagine I would’ve had it by now if I was still living in Ohio.
Now that we’ve learned our lesson about the dessert cart, we’re always looking for it at other restaurants and are constantly being disappointed. Your grandma is a very unlucky woman.
After being blown away by the tasting menu at Daniel this weekend, we were talking about the difference between it and The Modern. One of the main ones–which you brought up here–is that all of the dishes at The Modern LOOK amazing, while all of the dishes at Danile TASTE amazing. Just wait.
Mrs. Bachelor Girl
This is exactly what I would expect a tasting menu from a restaurant in MoMA to look like, and I’m glad it was tasty to boot.
plumpdumpling
Oh! That’s perfect. I just told Mr. Phadie in the comment above yours that everything at The Modern looked amazing, while everything at the restaurant where we dined this weekend tasted amazing. I never considered that a museum restaurant might put even more emphasis on plating than other restaurants do, but of course that makes sense. Genius, you.
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