sharding

The menu I had was different. This is what I had (typing in by hand, so I'll just give the English versions, and any typos are my fault): Vegetable fondant and crabmeat topped with a delicate avocado cream Sea scallop carpaccio and fresh Japanese sea urchin Spaghettini with shaved Parmesan and black truffle Soft boiled eggs on a spicy eggplant stew Pan sauteed amadai served in a lily bulb broth Pan-fried Kobe beef with truffle frisee salad Grapefruit segments, grape wine gelee, mint sorbet Onctuous Gianduja cream, coffee ice cream, hazelnut crumble Espresso coffee served with salted caramel chocolate The waiter said they change the tasting menu every 2-3 months, IIRC.

I had the tasting menu (with wine pairings) when I ate there. No problem whatsoever. I also had the tasting menu at Jean Georges, fwiw.

I just returned from my trip and I thought I'd drop in an update on my solo dining experiences. I had a great time and had some excellent meals. Nowhere did I feel the least bit awkward eating alone. Here's where I went (the rest of the time I was forced to either eat at the conference I was in town for, or grab something quickly in the hotel). Clearly not all of these are in the "fine dining" category, but I figured I'd be comprehensive... * The Bar Room at the Modern (dinner, dropped in without a reservation the night I flew in) * Ess-a-bagel (breakfast) * Grimaldi's (lunch) * Babbo (dinner, at the bar, no reservation but also no wait) * Stage Deli (dinner, chosen by co-workers, I was unimpressed) * Park Italian Gourmet (lunch) * Jean Georges (dinner) * Katz's Deli (lunch, much better than Stage) * L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon (dinner) Probably my best experience solely from the dining alone perspective was L'Atelier. I sat at the bar, had interesting people sitting next to me and the waiter was fun. But really all of the places were great. The only issue was at Grimaldi's. I didn't know that they don't sell slices! So I ended up having to buy a whole pizza and not finish it. I surely wasn't going to turn around once I made it over there. Thanks for all the recommendations!

Thanks for the help, everyone. I think I'm going to try to hit Jean-Georges and L'Atelier, maybe the bar at Babbo if I have time. Would love to try Per Se, but I'm sure that's hopeless (unless you all have some tricks to share)...

Yeah, but some of the places I've looked at either don't have bars, or don't serve the same menu at the bar, so in those cases it might be an issue. Will most fine dining restaurants even take reservations for a single diner? I haven't tried, so I don't know how it would be received. I don't have many personal hangups about eating alone at a table in a nice place (in fact, I'd prefer it over the bar in most cases, even if the bar does have the same menu), but my gut tells me the restaurant may not want to encourage it...

It's been about a year since the last post in this topic, so I thought I'd check in to see if there are any updates. I'm coming to NYC next month, and I'm looking for ideas about places I should try to eat. Most of my time is going to be consumed by the conference I'm attending, so I probably will only have a couple of free nights to go off and dine some place of my choice. I'll be alone (thus my posting in this topic), and price isn't much of an object, but reservation availability may be (for some places, I imagine it's already too late, and my schedule isn't solidified enough for me to make reservations today). All that said, any recommendations beyond those already mentioned here?

I have to start this out by admitting something that is quite embarrassing in these parts: I had dinner at Olive Garden. Sorry! I was starving, just got off the plane, it was convenient, blah, blah, blah Anyway, I've been there a few times, and it's never great of course. I imagine OG is fertile ground for bad experiences. But this time the server's handling of the wine was the funniest I can remember. First, I ordered a glass of zinfandel, and he asked me to repeat myself. I did, and pointed to the one I wanted from the list. He replied, "oh! The red zinfandel! Yeah, red zinfandel is a brand new thing they just came out with!" Ack. Anyway, he brings it out, and pours a larger portion than normal into my glass, emptying the bottle. I figured he just didn't want to leave a tiny bit in the bottle. But then he said, "oops! I'll open another bottle to top you off!" And top me off he did, he came back and filled the glass all the way. So full that I could barely lift it without spilling. Unfortunately, it wasn't very good wine, so the extra portion wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been...

I can't match the detail of the previous writeups here, and I didn't take any photos of our meal, but I do want to chime in with a few words of praise for Binkley's. My wife and I were in Arizona a few weeks ago for a short vacation which included our wedding anniversary. We're normally pretty strong on planning our trips, but this time we didn't plan anything specific in advance. We knew we wanted to go somewhere nice for dinner on our anniversary, but we didn't make reservations before our trip. I'd read about Binkley's here, and I gave them a call when we go to Arizona. Thankfully, they were able to get us in for our anniversary. Both of us chose to go with the tasting menu with wine pairings, and it was wonderful. We loved every course, the amuses were a delight and the service was excellent. Both of us were incredibly thankful that we decided to go there for our special night (and that we were able to get a reservation on one day's notice). We'll definitely go back next time we're in town. So, two more thumbs up for Binkley's!

Does anyone here know of a source for non-annoying bottle tags? I have been using the ubiquitous paper tags (like these), but I find them very frustrating. They're too small for some bottles, requiring cutting (or tearing if I'm lazy) a slit to make them fit, and even then they're never quite right. And they're too big for other bottles -- they hang so loosely that the tag falls of with even the suggestion of contact when I pull out a bottle a foot away. Argh! I found these, which would probably be a bit better, at least on the larger bottle necks. But it seems like there must be something even better out there. I'm envisioning something like a small card with a string to tie around the neck, or a piece of elastic cord like the airport luggage tags have (not sure how well that would hold up long-term). Any suggestions?

I'd like to revive this thread for a little more discussion, and perhaps some advice. I'm kind of stumped about the best reasonable way to store wine at my house. I don't collect wine, and I don't envision myself buying wines that I plan to age for decades. I don't want to go overboard on this. However, I'd also like to feel comfortable having a nice bottle or two around for special occasions without worrying that we need to drink them quickly because we have nowhere good to store it. I see people talking about storing wine in basements (we don't have one), root cellars (we don't have one) and garages (we have one, but in the winter the temperature occasionally goes below freezing, and in the summer it gets above 80 at least a few days of the year, so that seems like a bad choice). We have an unfinished crawlspace, but it's inconvenient, kind of nasty and has most of the same temperature problems as the garage (especially in the winter). So that pretty much leaves us with storing it in the house as the only option, and that's what we do. Thus far, I've been keeping my small stash of bottles in racks on the floor of the pantry, partially because it's where I had room and also because it seems to stay relatively cool (it has a tile floor, it doesn't have any walls that get sunlight and it is pretty far from the oven, etc.). However, it's far from ideal. In the winter, we keep the house around 68-70 most of the time, and in the summer it can get above 80 (no A/C). I can't be the only person in this boat. What would you do? Are any of the reasonably priced SMALL wine refrigerators worth considering? Will they do more harm than good? Any other ideas? Thanks!

We just went (thanks for the replies on the dressiness), and I thought the service was good...

Is Union a dressy kind of restaurant? Will I feel underdressed if I go there after work, in nice jeans and a sweater or something similar?

How long should we allow for dinner (pizza and maybe a starter, but probably no dessert) at Serious Pie? Do they take a long time to bring the pizzas out?

If you go to the Herbfarm, you can sit at the big table and you'll probably meet lots of interesting people. Every time we've been there, everyone at the big table strikes up a conversation even though they don't know each other. In other words, it's not really necessary to pre-arrange a dining companion for the Herbfarm (and it might be tough to do so, due to the cost).

I hope you all can help me with a little recipe archeology. My wife has a childhood memory of making a pumpkin pie which had marshmallows (presumably melted) actually mixed in with the pie filling. The marshmallows weren't on top, and there weren't marshmallow chunks in the pie, it was completely incorporated. She'd like to try to make it again, but we can't find a recipe like that. She made it as a small girl when she was in Girl Scouts, so it was probably a pretty simple recipe. I've searched around the web and I haven't come up with anything that looks right. We could probably try to invent something, but since the goal is replicating what she had in her childhood, it would be better to find the actual recipe. Does this sound familiar to anyone? Do any of you have a recipe like this buried away somewhere? Thanks!