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- 5, american (new), flatiron, good for groups, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
Eleven Madison Park Tasting Menu: Redux
The first time my boyfriend and I dined at Eleven Madison Park, I gave the tasting menu a four-star rating. I went in with the expectation that it might be the best meal I’d ever have and came out feeling underwhelmed. The food we had was five-star, but it was the food we didn’t have that left an impression on me. I felt like we hadn’t been served any of the most interesting dishes on the menu, and in all of the moments where we could have been made to feel special, we were reminded that we weren’t. Still, I thought it was a better-than-average experience overall and was happy…
- 5, american (new), french, good for groups, great for dates, restaurant reviews, union square, wine-paired menu
Tocqueville’s Greenmarket Menu – French/American (New) – Union Square
I think at this point, I can comfortably call Tocqueville my favourite restaurant in New York. Sure, I really look forward to the over-the-top creativity at Momofuku Ko and wd-50, and I love the decadence of Daniel and Per Se, but Tocqueville is both serving up interesting food and dishing out the kind of lavish service that makes you feel like you’re dropping a whole paycheck on the meal, when it’s really just $55 for the food and $30 for the wine pairings. My boyfriend and I have had Tocqueville’s tasting menu, hunter’s menu, Restaurant Week menu, and lunch prix-fixe, but up until last weekend, we’d never had their pride…
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Tocqueville’s Tasting Menu – French/American (New) – Union Square
I keep calling Tocqueville my maybe-favourite restaurant in NYC. And then I keep giving it four and a half donuts. But thanks to a purchase on one of those deal-a-day websites, I had my best meal at Tocqueville to date and also one of the best meals I’ve had in NYC period. The stage was set with a specially-printed menu on thick, shimmery silver paper and an offer by the sommelier to pair the meal for us. First up were warm cheese puffs, or gougéres, that tasted so strongly of cheddar: cheddar gougéres They were a little crispy on the outside but bready on the inside. They were certainly more…
- 5, celebrity chef, columbus circle, french, great for dates, restaurant reviews, Uncategorized, vegetarian-friendly
Per Se – French – Columbus Circle
Proving I like seafood enough to make a trip to Per Se worthwhile has been my goal for a couple of years now. I’ve made an effort to eat every oyster, every bit of fish roe, and every octopus mosaic my boyfriend, Kamran, has offered me in the hope that I could weasel the tasting menu out of him. So when he finally relented, it felt like a real victory for me. Even if he really just wanted to reward himself for finishing the New York bar exam. Getting a reservation at Per Se is quite a complicated maneuver, at least in our experience. We watched OpenTable for weeks and…
- 5, american (new), celebrity chef, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, upper east side
Daniel – French/American (New) – Upper East Side
Having left both Bar Boulud and DBGB feeling like I was missing what all the fuss was about, I was hopeful but not convinced about Daniel and the third Michelin star it received this year. To celebrate my boyfriend, Kamran, finishing law school(!), we ordered the 6-course tasting menu with wine pairings. We had hoped to try the 8-course menu, but it’s not available on the weekends due to the increased crowds, and in the end, there were more than enough surprises that we definitely didn’t need the extra courses. amuse bouche: parsnip mousse, green apple, duck prosciutto around crostini The texture of this was as creamy as it looks.…
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Babbo – Italian – West Village
It’s hard to get into Mario Batali’s Babbo. They don’t do online reservations, and week after week when I called, they would tell me they were full. At one point, my boyfriend and I said, “Screw Batali! We don’t want his relatively cheap ($75) tasting menu with also-cheap ($50) wine pairings if it means being jerked around like this!” But once we finally did get in, we realized why the place is always full and why our persistence was totally worth it. We sat in the upstairs portion, which has a lovely skylight that made me excited to take photos. The problem was that as the sun set, so did…
- 5, american (new), celebrity chef, east village, great for dates, japanese, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews
Momofuku Ko – Japanese/American (New) – East Village
I maaaaay have said some mean things about Chef David Chang in the past. I may have suggested he’s arrogant and that all of the NYC food critics are stuck up his butt. I may have complained about his anti-photo policy and his online reservation system that requires weeks (months!) of clicking just for the opportunity to spend $700 and not eat until 9:40 p.m. on a Monday night. But I was wrong, and on Saturday, Dr. Boyfriend and I had what was so unequivocally the best meal of our lives that I might have to add an extra doughnut to my rating system just to accommodate it. We’d heard…
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Restaurant Review: wd-50
Evidently finally seeing my review of our first dinner at wd~50 made my boyfriend crave some foams and powders, so before we left for Christmas vacation in our respective home states, we made a reservation to return. The only time we could get on Saturday night, even with a few weeks notice, was 6 p.m. Which means that despite the terrible economy, New Yorkers are still lining up to pay $200 each for dinner. We were oddly seated in the same exact table as last time, which happens to have a straight view into the kitchen, where we saw chef/owner Wylie Dufresne talking to Chef de Cuisine Jon Bignelli (who…
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Restaurant Review: wd-50
It was more than a year ago that I announced my impending trip to wd~50 on my personal blog and got a load of comments from my mostly-Ohioan readership that mostly talked about how ridiculously small and not-at-all-like-real-food the dish in the picture I posted was. I was skeptical, too, to be honest, but it turned out that the meal was fantastic–really, really fantastic–surprising, playful, and memorable. It must have overwhelmed me so much, though, that I failed to write about it, and my boyfriend has been bothering me about it ever since. Now that we have a January reservation to try the current tasting menu, I figured I owed…