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Long-Lost Brunch at The Dutch
I looked at my blog yesterday and realized it’s been almost two months since I posted here. I skipped the entire month of November. And you know I’ve been eating this whole time–and how. I have an Eleven Madison Park to write up, a Jean-Georges, a couple of Momofuku Kos . . . but I’m lazy, so I’m just going to post some photos from a trip to The Dutch this summer with my boyfriend and our friends Nik and Marko. It was getting buzz from the second it opened thanks to its chef, Andrew Carmellini, not only being super but having another restaurant with Robert De Niro. And I…
- 4.5, american (new), celebrity chef, jeans-appropriate, lower east side, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, wine-paired menu
wd-50 Attempts the Reinvention
wd~50 is one of the first restaurants my boyfriend and I visited once we agreed that while some couples exercise together and some couples vacation together, we were going to be a couple who ate really fantastically over-the-top meals together. We celebrated our second anniversary with a few savory courses and the five-course dessert tasting and then went back for the full tasting menu, which included dishes that we still talk about years later as iconic examples of molecular gastronomy. When we heard that the menu format had changed to celebrate wd-50’s ninth anniversary, we knew it was time to go back again. The “From the Vault” menu is five…
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Um Segredo – Swinging Summer
Chef David Santos’s secret suppers, Um Segredo, are the fun of a dinner party (minus the clean-up) combined with the food of a world-class restaurant (not your friend’s thawed lasagna). You follow the signs once you get to Roosevelt Island, hand your wine over to Chef Santos, and settle in at a long table for a night of great conversation, great service, and even greater cooking that all makes for such a good time it’s somehow midnight before you know it. We loved our first time at Um Segredo, but we exclaimed over our second time. Swinging Summer dinner, $55 Everyone digging in to the homemade bread–called flatbread but actually…
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Um Segredo, a Secret Supper Club
Even though Chef Dave Santos’s secret dinner clubs have been mentioned on the New York Times and BlackBook websites, have their own Facebook page, and are openly discussed on Chowhound and Mouthfuls, you still feel like you’re privy to something pretty special when you reserve a seat at one of these intimate dinners and receive your e-mail confirmation with directions to the private location on Roosevelt Island. I always say that there are no hidden gems in NYC because the ubiquitous review sites inevitably expose them within weeks of opening, but this is fine dining that’s literally hidden. All of my food-eatin’ friends had been to Um Segredo–Portuguese for “a…
- american (new), french, good for groups, great for dates, restaurant reviews, union square, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
Tocqueville Continues to Go Above and Beyond
With their creative, delicious dishes and impressive service that always delivers more than expected, it’s no wonder Tocqueville has long been one of my favourite NYC restaurants. They’re so good to their repeat customers that I secretly felt a little guilty buying the incredibly cheap four-course tasting deal that came up on Gilt City recently, but it was a great excuse to invite along some friends who hadn’t yet tried the restaurant. I walked away with my Tocqueville love reaffirmed, and they walked away with plans to return as soon as possible. warm cheese gougeres Brought to the bar area while we enjoyed some wine and whiskey, these had just…
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Atera and the Art of Foraging
The moment the four-star, accolade-laden reviews started rolling in for Atera–not all of them from people who had actually been to the restaurant, naturally–I called for a reservation. And then freed up every Saturday for a month in case the waitlist paid off and my boyfriend and I could get a spot. It was being compared to Momofuku Ko, our favourite restaurant in NYC, and Brooklyn Fare, our favourite restaurant in NYC to hate on. The chef, Matthew Lightner, trained at the #1 restaurant in the world and the #3 restaurant in the world, was named Best New Chef and Rising Star and everything else in Portland, and has brought…
- 5, american (new), french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tribeca, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Corton – French/American (New) – Tribeca
Corton wasn’t on our restaurant radar for a long time. I knew it had two Michelin stars, and I’d never heard a bad thing about it, but it took my boyfriend seeing someone else’s review before we figured out that this is exactly our kind of place. “Wacked-out modernist cuisine”, he calls it. Like wd-50 and Momofuku Ko before it, Corton’s Chef Paul Liebrandt is making familiar foods unrecognizable and unrecognizable foods fantastic. We opted for the nine-course, $155 tasting menu, with wine pairings. Wine pairing isn’t mentioned on the menu, but sommelier Shawn Paul introduced us to some really unusual bottles and knew when to give us more extensive…
- 4, american (new), celebrity chef, east village, great for dates, italian, restaurant reviews, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Hearth – Italian/American (New) – East Village
It’s funny how you can ride by a restaurant on the bus every day and not notice it until its chef is a contestant on a reality TV show. Or sad, maybe. But that was the case with Hearth, which I must have seen at least 365 times but didn’t actually see until Chef Marco Canora performed spectacularly on the Food Network’s Next Iron Chef. Another of the Tom-Colicchio-trained, it’s no surprise that his food seems honest and that his ingredients speak for themselves. Hearth is casual without being unimpressive. The waitstaff is in t-shirts and visible tattoos, but the exposed brick, polished wood, and candlelight match the mid-priced menu.…
- 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…
- 4, american (new), flatiron, good for groups, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
Eleven Madison Park’s Tasting Menu – American (New) – Flatiron
Eleven Madison Park bowled me over as soon as I walked in the door. A pleasant young woman greeted us, and when my boyfriend told her his name for the reservation, she said hello to him and then turned to me. “And you must be Katie,” she said. “I was especially excited to meet you because you’re from Ohio.” We chatted with her a bit about how we respectively ended up in NYC after growing up there, and then she passed us to a hostess to be shown our seats. I began setting the white balance on my camera, remarking on the looming windows on each wall, musing about the…
Reviews of the Best Restaurants in NYC
