- american (new), flatiron, good for groups, great for dates, michelin-starred, nomad, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
Eleven Madison Park, Redesigned
Before we visited the new Eleven Madison Park, I read the best article about the most earnest things about the redesign, and they’re just adorable. My favorite is the stairstep leading up into the dining room, which is made of all of the old kitchen’s steel appliances, melted down into an inch-high plank. They paid an artist to make that for them. And you have to read Chef Daniel Humm’s Instagram post about it. Like, come on! You’ve never seen anything more earnest. And earnest really is the best way to describe it. I honestly just don’t think these Eleven Madison Park guys are doing anything more than trying to…
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The Tasting Menu at Le Cinq, Four Seasons Hotel, Paris
I read aaaaall about the ten restaurants in Paris with three Michelin stars before my fiancé and I visited with the hope that one would stand out to me. Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée was the most beautiful one. Astrance was the hardest to get into. Arpège was the vegetable-focused one. And then I read the review that opened the heavens and shone a light on the perfect three-star for me: Jay Rayner’s takedown of Le Cinq in The Guardian. It’s not worth your time to bother with the actual review–it reads like it’s written by someone who won’t go to a fine dining restaurant because they won’t let him…
- good for groups, great for dates, jeans-appropriate, michelin-starred, midtown east, restaurant reviews, scandinavian, tasting menu, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Agern
Had you asked me a week ago if I had any interest in Nordic cuisine, I would’ve given you something like a polite, “Sure, I’m interested in all cuisines!” And then, you know, gone back to eating my tacos. But if you’d prefaced that question by mentioning that the chef at Agern, the restaurant inside of Grand Central Terminal, has a restaurant in Iceland called Dill, I might have thought differently. I LOVE dill. And it doesn’t hurt that the owner of Agern is the same guy who helped found Noma in Denmark, which has been named the best restaurant in the world, oh, I don’t know, four times?
- good for groups, great for dates, michelin-starred, poland, polish, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, warsaw, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Senses – Warsaw, Poland
I’m not sure people think of creative fine dining when they think of Poland, so it’s not surprising that Warsaw’s Senses restaurant only has one Michelin star, even if that’s a crime. My boyfriend and his family are from the area originally, so he took me there last month to see where he grew up, and naturally, I checked the Michelin guide. There are only two Michelin-starred restaurants in the whole country, and one just received its star this year, so we decided to give the new kid a try. I emailed the restaurant for a reservation two weeks before our trip and was able to get us in at…
- french, great for dates, michelin-starred, midtown east, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
Gabriel Kreuther Probably Deserves More Than One Michelin Star
Chef Gabriel Kreuther left the Michelin-starred Modern a couple of years ago and took his pastry chef with him to open up his new namesake space in the Grace Building across from Bryant Park. Beloved from the get-go, the restaurant earned a Michelin star of its own in its first year, but having tried the 4-course, $125 tasting menu a few weeks ago, I can’t imagine that it won’t gain another star or even two in the coming years. It wasn’t as fussy as the three-Michelin-starred favorites in the city thanks to touches of whimsy here and there in elements like a stork-patterned wallpaper (the stork is a symbol of…
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The Tasting Menu at Le Cinq, Four Seasons Hotel, Paris
- american (new), bar-centric, great for dates, greenpoint, jeans-appropriate, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, scandinavian, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
Luksus Probably Deserves Its One Michelin Star
Luksus, the Nordic tasting-menu-only restaurant hidden behind a door in Greenpoint’s Tørst beer bar, has been on my list for a long time as a Brooklynite who’d love to never have to leave the borough for her fine dining. I was scheduled to go see my family in Ohio over the July 4th weekend, but when my flight got canceled despite clear blue skies, I consoled myself by booking a table for two there in the hope of getting to sit at the bar and watch the chefs work. The OpenTable reviewers had given Luksus a 4.5, and Eleven Madison Park, which I would call one of the standard-bearers in…
- austria, austrian, country, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, travel eats, vegetarian-friendly, vienna, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Steirereck im Stadtpark in Vienna, Austria
Early last year, my friends and I were planning a trip to Prague, Vienna, Budapest, and Athens, so I pulled up the ol’ San Pellegrino World’s 50 Best list to see if that part of the world had anything to offer. Lo and behold, #15 was smack-dab in the middle of Wien (that’s Vienna in German, see; I’m getting you ready for your future trip there), a modern Austrian restaurant perched on a canal of the Danube River in the middle of a 19th-Century park. Steirereck promised the white gloves and unnecessary decorative plates stacked beneath each dish that I love but also tons of fresh local ingredients that I…
- 5, asian fusion, bowery, celebrity chef, great for dates, jeans-appropriate, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, wine-paired menu
The New Momofuku Ko
You wouldn’t know it from reading my blog, but Momofuku Ko is the restaurant I’ve been to most in NYC. I only ever reviewed my first meal there, because their no-photo policy meant that my reviews would just be words, and my dearest friends have let me know that no one cares about my writing. But I loved Ko for its creativity, its super-relaxed atmosphere where jeans were recommended and the soundtrack included everything from 70s prog rock to 80s alternative to current hip hop, and the way its counter seating allowed you to talk to your chef as he used tweezers to top your miso ice cream cone with…
- 5, american (new), flatiron, great for dates, michelin-starred, tasting menu, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu
Eleven Madison Park in Pictures
My relationship with Eleven Madison Park caused a little bit of a ruckus once. The first time I dined there, I thought the meal was generally fantastic but not as life-altering as I’d expected. I gave it meal 4 out of 5 donuts without an ounce of malevolence intended. But the restaurant wanted me to be completely happy, so they invited me back for a meal on the house and the opportunity to be wowed. People on the food-related message board where I posted the review called me a whiner, and donuts4dinner got mean comments for the first time in its history. But I didn’t care, because my second meal…
- 4.5, american (new), celebrity chef, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, tasting menu, upper east side, wine-paired menu
The Tasting Menu at Daniel
I called our first visit to Daniel back in 2011 “as close to perfect a meal as Kamran and I have had in NYC”. It was our first time at a restaurant with three Michelin stars and our first time eating one of these over-the-top, wine-paired, France-fueled tasting menus. Since then, we’ve been to all but one of the three-Michelin-starred places (if anyone wants to put in a good word for Masa, I’m listening) and have basically had so much good food that we’ve started to question whether or not it’s been a mistake to ruin ourselves for mediocre food, so we decided it was time to go back to…
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