Easy choice (at least for me): EMP.

I was in town with two friends, one of whom is a vegan, and despite my best efforts, I was unable to locate any photos of what a vegan meal at EMP would include. Attached are a sample of some of the dishes she was presented with the full set here: http://degustingdiary.blogspot.com/20...

Hope this helps the vegans out there looking to splurge!

Same thing I wore to EMP and Jean-Georges: slacks, a button-down shirt and a blazer (and a couple days without a shave).

Just got back from a three-day trip that included revisiting some of my favorites and trying some new restaurants.

**The NoMad**

Food: okay
Highlights: basil-fennel-lemon soda and Milk and Honey
Service: okay
Pr(return): low

Let me explain, in brief, and keep in mind that EMP is my favorite restaurant in New York. Humm and Guidara's NoMad, alas, just left me so sad: fifteen minutes passed from the time I was seated to the time water was poured; a confit of suckling pig with a impressively bronzed crust lacked even a tincture of salt, and it was served with an unpitted cherry (tsk, tsk); and an affogato had so much granita that it watered down the entire dessert. Fortunately, EMP is only blocks away and can cascade over any unsavory memory with alacrity.

**Eleven Madison Park**

All one can do at a restaurant like EMP is sit back with unalloyed admiration and marvel at the scope of their accomplishments, and that's exactly what we did.

Food: world-class
Highlights: the smoked couscous, the mosaic of foie gras and the smoked corn (but honestly you cannot go wrong here; just about anything they put in front of you will be revelatory)
Service: world-class
Pr(return): 1 (at this point a jaunt to New York without a trip to EMP just wouldn't seem right)

**Empellon Cocina**

Food: very good
My photos of said food: terrible (I use a snap and shoot, folks, and their tenebrous dining room didn't make my camera's life especially easy)
Highlights: (1) lobster with Tetilla cheese and tortillas and (2) shrimp with crispy masa and sea urchin mousse
Service: very good (better than I expected, and better than it needs to be)
Pr(return): high

**Marea**

Food: very good, though neither dish was faultless. Despite coating each bite of lobster with a healthy carapace of burrata, I was still left staring at a large mound on the plate. As for the fusilli, it was delicious, but the portion was Flinstonian: after a half-dozen bites, the bottom of the bowl remained elusive, leaving me wondering if there was some sort of self-replenishing mechanism at play.

Highlights: predictably, the fusilli

Service: good

Pr(return): low (why, you might ask? See ambiance below)

Ambiance: stuffy. Until lunch at Marea, I never understood what people meant when they referred to a restaurant as stuffy. Well, now I do. It was as if they were embarrassed to have okayed my reservation. They seated me at Table 1, a table that hugs the set of stairs leading into the dining room, a table where no guest walking down those steps into the dining room would have to see the scruffy tatterdemalion who made it through their sieve of affluence. Indeed, my disheveled disposition may explain why I was never offered a look at either the wine or cocktail lists--did they think I had already been drinking at noon on a Wednesday?--and why no one was seated within a two-table proximity of me. I can tell when I'm unwanted, so I didn't bother looking at the dessert menu. Instead, I ambled across Columbus Circle over to Jean-Georges where I enjoyed two desserts!

**Jean-Georges**

Food: excellent
Highlights: ruby shrimp with uni and the strawberry-themed dessert
Service: very good
Pr(return): high

http://degustingdiary.blogspot.com/

Glad to read you enjoyed dinner, ellenost. While my second dinner there in June was a bit of a letdown, I agree on the mignardises, especially their huge canelé. I'm interested to see who's going to fill the huge lacuna Shawn Gawle leaves.

Hi all,

I just want to provide an update: I ended up contacting Per Se the day after ellenost, DGresh and RGR suggested I do so, spoke with the GM about the extended tasting menu dinner and today in the mail received a One Day at Per Se picture book and a mother of pearl spoon for which I have little use, seeing as how I only eat caviar at two and three-star Michelin restaurants.

Obviously it's not on the same level as getting an extended tasting dinner comped, as RGR's friend was lucky enough to be the beneficiary of, but nevertheless I appreciated the gesture.

I second perk's suggestion to contact Donato. I've eaten at Providence a half-dozen times from 2008-2011. The front-of-house was always middling, especially when compared to three-star Michelin restaurants in the Bay Area and New York. After a comically awful experience last June, I finally decided to speak with Donato. He was apologetic and said if we ever decided to visit again--we haven't--he would take care of us.

Wow, thanks, Riverman! I was planning on adding one course to their $45 two-course business lunch, but you've made that decision far more challenging.

Can I ask what about Empellon Cocina you dislike?

Thanks, Cheeryvisage! The crab-uni spaghetti sounds delicious.

Hi,

I'll be in New York for a short stint in mid-August and will be eating at Marea (for lunch) and Empellon Cocina (for dinner). Aside from the lobster-burrata salad and fusilli, are there any other dishes at Marea worth trying? Similar question regarding Empellon Cocina: aside from the lobster with Tetilla, what are the other must-trys?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Others may disagree, but I would suggest skipping wd~50 and Le Bernardin. The Bay Area has a number of restaurants that deliver more exciting and more delicious food: Coi, benu, Atelier Crenn, Meadowood etc.

There's nothing like EMP on either coast, so whether it's for lunch or dinner, it should be a treat (though I prefer lunch given the lighting and $70 markdown on the tasting menu).

Q1: you can certainly call ahead, request an extended menu and specify your per person budget

Q2: yes. Indeed, I would recommend adding the spot prawn dish to whatever menu you select

To your menu dilemma, they don't need to be mutually exclusive. If, for example, you want to replace the first course on that evening's vegetable menu with oysters and pearls, the kitchen will have no problem accommodating such a request. Having eaten at Per Se twice last month--one extended menu and one vegetable menu--I found the vegetable more exciting. But that may just be an artifact of my affinity for vegetable-heavy tasting menus.

Last report of The Modern Dining Room. The rest of the photos are on my blog: http://degustingdiary.blogspot.com/. Thanks again for your help in making my trip so memorable.

I didn't expect The Modern to reach the three-star altitudes I had witnessed earlier in the week. And it didn't. The lemon verbena and cinnamon-laced popcorn was stale. The yuzu marinade on four formidable langoustines masked any trace of top-of-the-sea freshness the crustaceans once bore; that plate also had a bewildering abundance of cucumber, far more than I knew what to do with.

But there were also moments rich with excitement: a tantalizing cloud of applewood smoke filled the air as a server removed the plate's carapace, revealing a smoky, caviar-laden sturgeon-sauerkraut amalgam in a flaky tart shell. And that was soon followed by a delicately poached farm egg that explodes across the bowl upon knife pressure as if it were in a Tarantino film. Now I'm not one to profess a meretricious devotion to egg dishes, but the one-sided salt onslaught--parmesan, olive tapenade and Iberico ham--paired with the egg worked wonderfully. Dessert became a delightful ordeal, a hedonistic treadmill, highlighted by a towering pineapple-citrus macaron that went on being a joy for ten minutes.

Service was stellar throughout with my section of the dining room managed deftly by Erin, blonde and bespectacled, with an endearing awkwardness, the kind characteristic of many academics. I'm convinced I had one of the best seats in the restaurant: looked after by Erin, overlooking the MOMA sculpture garden, far away from the blaring bar and next to an investment banker on a date--with nary a chance of amatory success-- with a woman palpably oozing boredom as the hours passed; when not enmeshed in the complexities of a course, I was sustained--nourished at times--by the catastrophe-prone confabs of these two. I couldn't have planned it better if I had tried.

I had two meals at Per Se and two meals at EMP in mid-June. Both are world-class establishments, though--for what it's worth--I enjoyed the overall dining experience at EMP more.

If for any reason you decide to go the "couple less expensive meals" route, I would replace Le Bernardin with Jean-Georges, that is, if your intention is to remain in 3-star Michelin altitude.

Hah, sorry for the confusion. I meant if one had $330 to spend, one could have two meals at EMP for the same price as one meal at Per Se.

Enjoy your lunch!

Thanks for relaying that story, RGR. I'm slammed at work until the week's end, but I just might have to muster up the moxie and write them just make sure they know what happened and to prevent it from happening to anyone else!

ellenost: cross-referencing your mental notes with the actual menu sound like a good idea. But hopefully, when you return, there won't be any egregious oversights.

PorkBelly: thanks for the suggestion. I'll keep Brooklyn Fare in mind for my next New York trip, whenever that is.

Agreed! For instance, one could enjoy the tasting menu during lunch at EMP twice for the same price as the 9-course at Per Se.

"Royally annoyed" accurately sums up my reaction, ellenost. I guess my hesitation with writing a letter or contacting the restaurant is that I don't envision a remedy: I live in Michigan and--if I'm lucky--visit New York once a year for 3-4 days. I just hope my write-up alerts folks to the fact that spending $500 at Per Se doesn't guarantee a great meal and that the vegetable menu can provide a handful of thrills.

Noted. There weren't any scrambled egg dishes on the menu during the week in which I dined.

foodwhisperer: Thanks. Many dishes, particularly on the vegetable side, were exquisite.

gourmandish: Happy to help. I do hope there was something redeeming about your TFL meal. Have fun on your upcoming trip!

Charm approach! That's great, but I'm not sure I could pull it off. When the maitre d' stopped by our table, he said having an AMEX was the surest way of securing a reservation or imploring a Napa resort to handle the tedium. Ultimately, though, as I noted in the write-up, it'll be a while before I return to either TFL or Per Se.

Yeah, I requested it when I made the reservation and--like Spiritchaser said--it served as the main course of our tasting menu.

It was a tricky experience to describe, as I didn't want to come across as querulous.

As for TFL, I can understand why it's your favorite restaurant in the world; my lunch there was wonderful, though I do wish their reservation system wasn't so cumbrous.

Just as nmprisons described it for me at lunch a little over a week ago.

The rest of the photos are on my blog: http://degustingdiary.blogspot.com/

"This is just for you, sir -- it's not on the menu," the server said as he placed before me a mound of shaved and grilled porcini mushrooms accented with parmesan and a peppery heat that lingered long after the plate had been cleared.

That was but one of the inspired partnerships that I marveled at over the course of two meals at Per Se within a four-day span. The Carême-style extravagance included an extended tasting menu to inaugurate my vacation and a vegetable tasting menu for a valedictory lunch. For the latter, it would be my first time seeing a menu in one of Thomas Keller's three-star secular houses of worship, and a surfeit of dishes proved too interesting to bypass.

Andrew, one of two captains patrolling the lower half of dining room during lunch, double-checked, "are you a vegetarian?" "No," I said, and soon learned why he asked, as Tyler--the other affable captain--marked my table with a mother of pearl spoon before my second course; it looked simple enough: two toasted brioche soldiers, Animal Farm butter mixed with whipped crème fraîche, and a generous bowl of white sturgeon caviar. And yet the sensation when all of the disparate parts were combined--crisp and then tender, salty and then creamy--was irrepressibly unsilent with oooooohs and mmmmmms echoing as if I was in an amphitheater. It's the kind of dish that causes you to close your eyes, appreciating, smiling and sincerely hoping you don't say anything incriminating in your state of reverie.

Per Se's caviar courses alone are worth the price of admission. I have tried a number of chefs' signature dishes--Puck's agnolotti, Boulud's bass, Achatz's black truffle explosion, Savoy's colors of caviar--but none deliver quite like Keller's oysters and pearls. However, having just enjoyed it at TFL two weeks earlier, I requested a replacement. What I received was one of three standouts during our extended tasting menu: layer upon layer of lushness with uni mousseline atop white sturgeon caviar atop a bonito gelée atop a soy bean panna cotta. Yes it's indulgent. And if you're ordering the $295 nine-course chef's tasting menu, yes it's even worth the $75 supplement.

As for the other two concitation inducers during dinner, a leg of poularde was cooked into submission, at which point it was dilacerated, shaped into an oval and butter basted for 15 minutes before plump Rainier cherries and an assertive aged balsamic fluid gel sidled up next to it on the plate. It was the cable news of chicken cookery, so over-the-top that you couldn't take your eyes off of it. The other was a dessert: a coconut cloud blanketing ginger purée and feijoa ice cream--think of the sweetest, most aromatic tropical fruit you've ever tasted--rivaled in its deliciousness only by Jordan Kahn's lemongrass pot de creme. You pile up a scoop on your spoon and then ta da, it disappears on your tongue.

Let me briefly get back to the vegetables. There was a smoked buttermilk sorbet that unified an eye wateringly beautiful salad garlanded with Georgia peaches, raw, grilled and dehydrated onions and Hass avocado purée, followed by beurre monté-glazed white asparagus, candied pecans and black truffle coulis, a combination for which I could never tire.

And yet, despite all of that, circumstances surrounding the extended tasting menu conspired to leave me feeling that in their attempt to drape us in delectation, Per Se just didn't have enough material this time. A salad of veal heart as well as a homogeneously textured turbot course ambled parlously close to my multistory salt threshold. More glaring, though, were the two courses that went unserved: (1) Australian black truffle-adorned English pea porridge with Jidori chicken egg yolk confit, parmesan mousse and whipped lardo and (2) 100-day dry aged American wagyu with fork crushed potatoes, haricots verts and breakfast radishes, both of which appeared on the menus we were handed as we left the restaurant.

You never want to be made to feel like a sucker in a place like Per Se, but that was exactly how it felt. Here's why. First, in my two previous extending tasting menus, a truffle course appeared, which helps rationalize the $500 price tag, and that night I watched as the treasure chest housing those ethereal tubers made their way over to adjacent tables.

Indeed, once I realized we were transitioning away from savories, I asked our captain, whose name I will omit, "was it strategic to avoid a pasta course?" I cannot adduce his exact words, but he did state unambiguously that a pasta course was never on the agenda, a claim belied by the menus we were handed. For a restaurant as well-run as Per Se, it just seems bizarre that a captain and the kitchen creating the menu could be so out of synch.

And that scab was further irritated: a few days before our dinner, I received an email from the maitre d', whose name I will also omit, asking if our reservation could be pushed back three hours on the grounds that it would make for "a more enjoyable experience." I'm not sure what definition of enjoyable he had in mind, but if I had known it meant no black truffles or dry-aged wagyu, I would have politely declined the reservation time change.*

With a bit of percipience, I did notice a large party in the private dining room finishing up as we were seated, and it's possible the kitchen didn't want to be slammed by having both a private party with which to deal and an extended tasting menu at the same time. If that was the case, I would have preferred to have been told as much, and then maybe my dining companion and I could have dined there on another night. Instead we were left with a bowdlerized menu per se.

So what did I learn after these two meals and an extended tasting at TFL two weeks earlier? (1) The gougères at Per Se are better. (2) As much as I like Per Se's dining room, it cannot compete with the preindustrial nostalgia TFL evokes. (3) These restaurants, as is the case with many in this genre, attract cockaloric Facebook philosophers, who desperately want you and the dining room staff to know they matter because, for example, they spend thousands of dollars at Joel Robouchon's Mansion (you can also get big leagued by author Andrew Sullivan in a restaurant like Per Se, as I learned). (4) I need a break, both financially and physically, from Keller's establishments. (5) The relationship between how much one spends and how good a time one has can be non-monotonic. (6) When I do return to either TFL or Per Se, it will almost certainly be for the vegetable tasting.

* The dining room also becomes unusually tenebrous as the evening wears on, resulting in rubbishy photos.

Yes. And if you can swing it, request an extended tasting menu, which I found more impressive than Per Se's. By the way, when we were at TFL last month, we were told they don't offer wine pairings in the traditional sense, but rather ask approximately how many glasses you'd like to enjoy throughout the meal.

http://degustingdiary.blogspot.com/

Here's my report from dinner at Corton (only two write-ups left!):

Chocolate-covered scallops, espuma of calf's brains and foie gras, apple-wasabi sorbet with olive oil, braised pork cheeks and caviar. Those are just a sample of combinations that appear in A Matter of Taste, the HBO documentary chronicling Chef Paul Liebrandt's post-Papillon peregrinations.

During my most recent meal, there certainly was no shortage of tantalizing dish descriptions: roast chicken ice cream with white asparagus velouté (or "milk" as described on the menu), crayfish tortellini with burnt eggplant meringue. And yet, the food never came close to generating the same level of delight as it did on the first go-round, wherein I wrote a real gusher.

That white asparagus soup was watery, resulting in a Sisyphean struggle just to get it to stay on the spoon. At least on that occasion our table was marked with utensils, which wasn't the case with the morel mushroom chawanmushi, as we waited and waited some more before spoons finally arrived. And the unpalatable saffron-yuzu mochi is a memory on which I hope darkness will soon descend.

Let me not give the impression that Corton has somehow atrophied beyond recognition. There was the seductively salty Scotch quail egg tempered by apricot gelée and an august arrangement of rabbit, including a burger with ramp mayonnaise, tender loin and shoulder meat and a cucumber gelée-topped mousse. In the backdrop hid a tiny supreme of grapefruit that jolted the palate amid the carousel of leporine parts. And pastry chef Shawn Gawle's graceful sourdough ice cream sitting atop a terrine of smoked maple and sour cherry proved to be one of the tastiest desserts on my trip.

But in the end, the stentorian conversations from some of the larger parties detract from the ambiance. And the uninviting, amateurish service becomes too annoying to brook. I hope my experience was abberational, but I'm in no hurry to find out.

http://degustingdiary.blogspot.com/

It certainly wasn't my intention. I wanted to order the duck for two, but my dining companion's flight got delayed, so I made a second trip back for the duck later in the week. And there was enough variation in the two lunches to keep me spellbound throughout.