BryanZ

Sounds like you had a good day overall, though.

Part of my soul just died. This past winter I promised Chef Kahn I would be back in May to try everything on what would be his new menu. Kind of like I vowed to return to Gilt under Liebrandt. Oh cruel world.

It would be really nice if we could just ask him in person. If only...

So probably not a good time to eat there then. Hmmm.

Coach K clearly has good taste. Then again, if we were winning he'd have been busy in April. Looks like a great meal nevertheless.

The obvious, though non-NYC, answer is Alinea.

Just go for an afternoon snack if you're in the area; the burgers are small and relatively cheap anyway. The have a kiddie size custard that's more than adequate for sampling the flavor of the day. Makes a wonderful second lunch or pre-dinner.

I've been enjoying this blog very much. Much of the food presented here (curry, katsu, broiled and simmered fish, various miso and clear soups, pickles, etc) is strikingly similar to what my mother served my sister and I growing up. And the festival with all the stalls and produce and catching fish certainly evokes memories of summertime trips to Japan. Good times.

I figure this thread should be started. I'd say this opening falls under the semi-big deal category, yet no one has commented yet. The info.: 777 Seventh Avenue (51st Street) at The Michelangelo Hotel New York, New York 10019 Phone:212.582.1310 Insieme Website Insieme is by Marco Canora of Hearth. Two sides to the menu, one traditional, one contemporary. Plays into the relatively casual trend with no tablecloths. I don't think the two sides to the menu will meet much of a problem as the disconnect isn't so severe. In fact the tasting menu seems to draw a couple of dishes from each side, at least philosophically. Would love to hear reports.

That's a great post. While I agree that offal is fundamentally non-muscle meat and not simply "waste." I would like to throw in this kink. Many people (the general dining public) would consider tongue to be offal and some would even consider pork or beef cheek to be offal. Are they simply mistaken or is there some truth to the "weird" animal part = offal mantra?

The trickle down effect of modern cookery at work.

This discussion could only happen on eG. But yeah, labels aren't all that useful, for restaurants or animal parts. I think most people would agree there are degress of offal-dom. Foie gras is offal, its still a luxury item. The two don't have to be mutually exclusive. Which makes one question why New York has so few places that serve offal besides truly ethnic eateries. I'm guessing for all of NYC's cosmopolitan talk, it's never adopted the "weird" food of even "mainstream" countries like England, France, Spain, Japan, China, etc. Of course, you'll have to forgive my usage of the words weird and mainstream. They're just semantic labels after all.

Within the context of this discussion, yeah, sort of. I think NYC may be at the forefront of updated/modern takes on ethnic (less-represented) cuisines.

I think Grant Achatz said it himself when he was like, "Once the press gets hold of something and run with it, it's out of your hands. There are really only two modern restaurants in Chicago." Modern cooking remains a boutique thing except for a handful of restaurants across the country and their somewhat more numerous copycats. I think the lack of modern restaurants in NYC has more to do with tastes than the fact that Chicago has them "all." What I found most interesting--and this is tangentially related to the somewhat off-topic discussion that's going on in the Ramsay thread regarding the best restaurants in the country--is that you'd have few people who argue that Savoy and Mansion are among the best, if not the very top, French restaurants in the country. It used to be that NYC was the bastion for this kind of thing, but, as Nathan points out and has been discussed here at length, that kind of dining just isn't flying in NYC anymore. Is it really the end of era or just a dry spell?

So it's like an anti-griddle?

I'm kind of wondering if that tasting menu thing is a proper meal. Based on the online menus, it doesn't seem as such. And is the room somewhere you'd want to have an extended meal?

To a certain extent his tastes are right in line with the majority of NYC's dining public. Anyway, it remains to be seen if Gordon Ramsay @ The London will be a commercial success. Although the critics hardly loved it, I still think it's a hard table to book. I'm not sure if it was on Eater or Grub St., but one of them said that tables were booked for a same-day reso.

Agreed. Definitely better than Country, and if I make it to Picholine in the next few weeks I'm feeling like further comparison will be apt. Regardless, I kind of feel like the three restaurants are obvious competitors.

Looking for a hatue, modern-ish Italian meal and Alto came to mind. Has anyone been recently? The last time I was there for restaurant week this past summer, so I'm not familiar with dinner service beyond what's in the somewhat older posts listed here.

Chef Goldfarb's daughter, Lulu, makes her acting debut in this short online video, where Will and his wife reflect on family life, raising kids with developed palattes, and the competitive preschool admissions process. My g/f sent me the link from Eater and even I thought it was devastatingly cute.

I read somewhere that they're 15 for the trio.

I'll let you know when I try it. For now, I'll withhold premature judgement.

More so that Chika, less so than R4D. Kyotofu is less haute than it is just new age Japanese.

I probably got the same PM. It's worth considering for you, but given my location in NC it didn't seem to make sense. I'd be excited to see what us lay folks can do with the chicken in a home environment.

I asked about this a while ago and found that it can be tricky. As far I know, it's not sold retail so you have to know someone.