- 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…
- flatiron, good for groups, great for dates, italian, jeans-appropriate, restaurant reviews, tasting menu
Mamma Guidara’s at The NoMad Bar
If you’ve ever thought, “Boy, I sure love Eleven Madison Park, but wouldn’t it be great if the chef instead used his immense skills to make me a chicken parm?”, Mamma Guidara’s is for you. It’s Chef Daniel Humm’s take on classic red sauce dishes, named in loving honor of his co-owner, Will Guidara’s, mom. On Sunday nights, the NoMad Bar transforms into one of those red-checkered-tablecloth joints from the 80s, and although the decor is a little chintzy (in the best way), the food is just what you’d expect from a three-Michelin-star chef. And it’s only $74 for four courses that seem more like eight or ten by the…
- american (new), food events, good for groups, jeans-appropriate, tasting menu, underground eats, west village
Chef David Santos’s Secret NYC Dinner Club, Um Segredo, at Good Stock
I’ve followed my favorite NYC chef from his West Village restaurant Louro to his taking-the-city-by-storm soup venture, Good Stock, but what made me first fall in love with Chef David Santos‘s cooking were his secret home supper clubs, which he called Um Segredo (“a secret” in Portuguese). Well, they’re back, and they’re not so secret anymore! In that they take place right out in the open at the Good Stock on Carmine Street. But the same secret feel is still there: just you and five others in the tiny store front, gathered around a table while Chef Santos cooks directly in front of you, offering insight about each of the…
- 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…
- 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…
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Game of Thrones Season 6 Dinner by Chef David Santos
I’ve been following Chef David Santos around the city since he was doing secret dinners in his apartment on Roosevelt Island, and I can tell you that there’s no one in NYC doing more creative menus than this guy. There’s been Nashville hot chicken served in giant buckets, a Sun Noodle dinner with bowls of chilled and surf & turf ramen, and meals celebrating Dave’s Portuguese heritage, but I’ve especially come to love the themed dinners. Last week’s “Game of Thrones” pop-up at Noreetuh in the East Village is something my friends and I look forward to every year. Not only because the food is always boundary-pushing but because Dave’s…
- 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…