- 5, columbus circle, french, great for dates, michelin-starred, restaurant reviews, vegetarian-friendly, wine-paired menu, worthwhile views
The Extended Tasting Menu at Per Se
Stepping through the sliding glass partitions to the left and right of Per Se‘s unmistakable and infamously nonfunctioning blue door should be a once-in-a-lifetime experience for a country gal like me, but I’m fortunate to have a boyfriend with an insatiable appetite for tasting menus (okay, okay, it’s not just him with the appetite). So when I was finally able to make a reservation for my birthday (after an hour and a half of nonstop calling and then holding), he started tossing around the idea of the extended tasting. He’d read that it was a couple hundred dollars more for a number of extra courses, and since we’d also heard…
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Alta – Tapas – West Village
My boyfriend and I started going to Alta well before this food blog existed. We went there before we even knew about the Le Bernardins and the Jean-Georges of the city, before things like ratings and Michelin stars mattered to us, and well before I’d even consider eating seafood. It feels homey to me. Now that I’m a fish-consuming machine, we decided to go back last weekend to see what we’d been missing out on. It’s giant menu full of small plates, and every one sounds delicious in its own way. (Which is why I really should’ve tried harder to talk Dr. Boyfriend into trying the Whole Shebang: $310 for…
- 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.…
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DBGB – French/American – East Village
When my friend Kim saw a four-person dinner at DBGB pop up on GiltCity for $150, the first thing she thought was, “SUNDAE!!” And the second thing she thought was, “Can I eat four sundaes by myself?” And the third thing she thought was, “Guess I have to invite Katie.” I’d had a very so-so experience the first time around at DBGB, but my subsequent tasting menu at Chef Boulud’s flagship restaurant, Daniel, was so outstanding it changed the way I rate all other restaurants; naturally, I was interested in a second try at DBGB. So Dr. Boyfriend and I met Kim and her friend Kelly on Friday night to…
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Quality Meats – Steak – Midtown West
After a totally-not-heated debate over on my personal blog, I decided to watermark my photos until enough people complain about them being ugly. Well, as luck would have it, Dr. Boyfriend invited me to Quality Meats for lunch on a whim last week, so I didn’t have my DSLR with me, and I forgot to set my point-and-shoot to take RAW photos, so the first time you’re going to see my watermark is on these less-than-stellar pictures. I recognize the error of my ways! No need to publicly mock me! Anyway. Niko from Dessert Buzz was kind enough to link to one of my posts last week and also mentioned…
- 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…
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The Croque-Madame at Pastis – French – Meatpacking
Having grown up on a diet that consisted entirely of American classics with a visit to The Spaghetti Warehouse thrown in every now and then for a little foreign culture, the croque-madame was an entirely new thing to me when I tried one for the first time a couple of years ago. I mean, it’s basically a grilled cheese sandwich. Except with fancy cheese that happens to be melted on top. And a big, ol’ slab of ham in the middle. And an egg over the whole thing. It’s so savory and decadent that French law should prohibit their being eaten more than once a year. I’ve had really excellent…
- 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…
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Obao – Pan-Asian – Midtown East
Dr. Boyfriend and I had been watching too much “Bizarre Foods” and desperately wanted some pho from Xi’an Famous Foods, but we were too lazy to take the bus two miles downtown, so I hopped onto our favourite delivery site, Seamlessweb, to find someone who’d bring it to us. And that day changed our lives forever. Since then, we’ve tried as much of Obao‘s menu as possible, but the problem is that everything is so good that we hate to give up our favourites to order the dishes we haven’t tried. So here’s what we’ve managed to eat thus far: crispy pork belly ($9) My friend Chubby Chinese Girl thought…
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