
Mao
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Everything posted by Mao
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"You know the one - where the cheese doesn't slide off the crust revealing the watery sauce underneath...I find it almost impossible to get a piece of pizza where the cheese and sauce become fused to the crust." Wait, isn't that the way pizza is supposed to taste, so that you end up eating the majority of pizza with fork and knife. Its kind of like when you eat a taco at Taco Bell. Everything is suppose to fall out of the shell. Come one, get with it. Pizza is really a pseudonym for hot salad.
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Not been. And have heard very good things from a Japanese couple I bumped up against last time I was at Gari.
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Per head. I think we jacked up the bill because I have certain dietary allergies that put the tasting menu off limits and we ended up doing lots of half portions from the a la carte menu instead of the standard thing. We also had a 130 EUR bottle of wine etc. About 200 EUR worth of wine in various guises. So I think if you were wine modest you could go nuts for under 250 EUR per capita.
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70 EUR for minimal lunch, 300 if you go bizerk like we did. At current currency rates, discount those numbers by 13% to get USD amounts.
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Just as I was coming to think that Ducasse would be the greatest meal of the trip, we ran head into Guy Martin and Le Grand Vefour. Smack, bang, pow! Let’s be up front and say that as a total dinning experience, it was not comparable to AD, which wraps you up in some kind of cocoon of pleasure. The service wasn’t as good—our server looked perpetually bemused by us. The wine, which was excellent, couldn’t really compete with the Montrachet at Ducasse, though it was the second best wine of the trip. OK, now that the few negatives are out of the way, let me say that what we ate was simply a tour de force of excellence, subtlety, balance and texture. I have never eaten like this. Almost every dish contained 3-5 flavors, each preserved and distinct from the others but working in harmony with the others to bring the absolute essence of whatever the focus item of the dish was into clarity. Each dish was also multitextured in the way the very best Japanese food us. Yes, I have had occasional dishes like this, where all the flavors and textures work together to create a greater whole and yet each voice is still unique. But what really impressed was that this excellence was so sustained. It was one of those fantasy meals where each dish keeps getting better and better, until the desserts, which floored the entire table. It was like a Mozartian opera. Emotive, mental, clever, soulful, and infinitely yummy. Thanks to our balding sommelier’s advise, we ordered a superb Chateauneuf de Pape 1996 Chateau de la Gardine, which was probably the greatest bargain we found the entire trip. We selected a la carte from a slightly deceptive menu. Looking back its clear that the description of each dish on the menu are sort of the tip of the iceberg. Yeah, they describe the 3 basic ingredients of the dish, but then there are 2 other things which perfect dish that aren’t mentioned. Oh, and your meal happens to be in one of the most beautiful rooms in all of Paris. You eat at lunch in a room speckled with the light of the Palais Royal. Onto the food: Two of us started with a salad of potatoes with black truffle shavings and sea salt. Each small potato was cut into 1/8th inch slices and served at room temperature in a slight balsamic vinegrette—seemingly intended as much for color as for flavor, and then the whole thing was umbrella-ed in the thinnest black truffle slices and sea salt. This was totally different from the similar dish at Ducasse, but I thought equally as good, and if not as hearty, then in some ways more complex texturally with sea salt bite, crispy truffles and the warmth of the potatoes and the aroma of the truffles occurring all at once in a way Ducasse did not pull off. Vivin had Ravioli with Foie Gras served with foamed egg whites, foamed sweet butter, black truffle bits and some pepper. Again simply a stunning dish of texture and flavor might. The egg white foam and foamed butter dropped off your tongue like silk, while the black truffles rose into your breath and you break the papery lip of the ravioli and bite into rich Foie Gras. Next came Languostines with 2 lightly encrusted and fried eggplants with a small portion of greed salad in basilic vinaigrette. Again this was brilliant combo of vineger, basil, crunch, softness and sweetness of eggplant and buttery, lobster-like Langoustines. Ten feet high and rising, dude. Scallops in mushroom sauce and parsley root. The one dish that didn’t knock me to the floor with pleasure. After Arpege all scallops were doomed. Anyway, onward and upward. Next came main courses. Vivin’s wife and I both had Filet of Brittany sole in caviar and cream sauce. This may be the best non Japanese fish preparation I have ever had. Who knew that sole was not ordained to be eaten with 16-20 caviar per square inch of bite? Again a textural and taste masterpiece. Firm sole, cream and squishy softness of salty caviar rising together into your mouth. I only had 2 bites of Vivin’s main course—which was the famed lamb in chocolate and coffee with fresh goat cheese and garlic—but was astounded. This perhaps more than other dishes showcased his ability to combine 4-5 tastes and textures simultaneously into one dish and have them all work together and all being distinct. Again simply operatic cooking. Vivin also had a turbot half portion, which I will let him write up. I had what I thought was the best cheese course of the entire trip next, along with a 1986 port that was well matched. And then the desserts of devastation. In case every part of your being were over stimulated in this point, it was necessary to do one last dance. And so let’s put lot’s of veggies in dessert. Passard gets some kudos for the tomato dessert thing. But put an artichoke and celery in my dessert AND make it one of the greatest dishes I have ever eaten, and you begin to win over my soul. Ok, so here’s what for dessert tonight honey—artichokes trapped in a torte surrounded by a sweet celery reduction and a sorbet of almonds. Brilliant or foolish in conception, you decide, brilliant in execution, you bet. Absolutely astounding dish. Lmost equally good was Vivin’s wife’s dessert—a fresh goat cheese gateau with coriander, lychee sorbet and cracked red pepper. Must eat, must try. Masterpiece, Devastating. Floored. Life is and can be an absolute pleasure—when you gaze out across the Palais Royal and eat the greatest food of your life, you do wonder if the angel’s don’t get just a little jealous.
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There is only so much Haute Cuisine a soul can take without pining for something more peasanty and honest. After Ducasse, I quite frankly got a decent craving for Pho of all strange things. I needed a brutally honest build-your-own type meal. So I headed alone to a place I had been once before on Avenue de Choisy called Le Kok. I can’t honestly make any proclamations about it being the best Pho joint in Paris, but it is pretty damn good. At the time and place it was the perfect anecdote and medicine for the high end. I ordered a beef based Pho that came with tripe, and other variegated pieces of cow flesh, some of which were fatty and others were more muscled. The superb bowl of broth came with enormous lemon grass leaves, basil, sprouty proteins, fresh cut red chili peppers, lemon, cured sweet onions, and hoison sauce. Add all of the above to the soup and noodle bowl as well as a healthy dose of hot chile sauce, stanky fish sauce and a dollop of sugar. Toss and spoon like a giddy 5 year old and try not to make a mess. Now consume a dish with 4 textures and 6 tastes all of which are completely distinct. I have to admit that at their best Vietnamese noodles are orchestral—every part of the tongue and nose gets touched, visited and caressed until writhing—salty, hot, sweet, lemongrass, basil, fat, meats, crunch and soft noodles. But you get to conduct the orchestral flavors instead of the chef. Sometimes its important to be in control of the flavor orchestra. As a beer Qingdao does not have many virtues, but it is the best anecdote for Pho. Finish meal, go buy fresh lychee nuts in Chinese market and you have dessert. A superb meal for a whopping 10 euros. After Ducasse the three of us headed to Taillevent. This was the least impressive meal of the trip, even less so than the Pho. Big name, but OK, so what? The restaurant’s greatest feature was surely its art collection, a good $25mm worth of Miro, Braque and other early modernist painters adorned the great walls of the place. The notion of a museum is itself a fairly apt metaphor for the meal we experienced. The place feels more like an institution or an establishment, a standard bearer for a style of eating and meal that no longer exists in the exact same form. Something has moved on, but not here. I started with some duck foie gras, marmalade of some sort and toast. Very competent and delicious, but hardly interesting. I could have gone to Petrossian buy the same quality stuff and get some British marmelade and could have created the same dish. I can’t remember what Vivin and his wife had for appetizers. For main courses, I had some veal that included the chops, some sausage and some kidney. MEAT! The sausage was divine, but the kidneys flat and the actual “chop” had been victimized by some kind of salting spill/error and was barely edible. Vivin had a Salmon in vinegrette that he couldn’t finish because the sauce was too potently vinegary. We also had two half bottles of forgettable wine and dessert. Service, I will say, was extremely gracious, but unlike Ducasse, where you felt like you had been suspended in time in some kind of gilded culinary dream, the result was simply distantly polite. Given the choice I would not go back.
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This was the greatest dining experience, though not meal, of my life. My facial muscles are still recovering from the 4 hour grin. Almost everything was done superbly. I have never had any particular desire to be king, but the entire experience at Alain Ducasse Plaza Athenee convinces you, at least for the duration of your stay in the room, that you are indeed in control of much of the universe, and that this is your right. For me it was a tremendously transformative dining event for the simple reason that it was so educational—quite frankly I never knew that superb food, wine, service and “overall great vibe” for lack of a better description could be integrated into a meal that pleased the heart, head and soul. For me, it simply hadn’t happened before. Call it the loss of virginity if you like. For the realization what a truly astounding experience a meal can be that I give total credit to ADPA. I will also admit the place has some minor flaws—the bread was only OK and the cheese cart was very good but not superb, and I thought the cooking lacked the astounding sensitivity that I enjoyed at Le Grand Vefour—but its almost a waste of time and energy to dissect the experience of eating at Ducasse, because the whole is so much more than the sum of the pieces. And the whole is great. The list of superlatives related to this meal could go on and on. The wine that we had was the greatest Chardonnay I have ever had—a 1997 Chassagne-Montrachet Baron Chenard. It elevated a sublime meal to another level in a way that I have never experienced with wine and food before. Its color, fragrance, taste and finish were aristocratically confident. But it was also perfectly mannered and in no way overpowered the meal. It simply danced in perfect accompaniment with everything we eat, adding and making a great experience much richer. The use of truffe noir at Arpege and Lucas Carton had been on occasion brutal and heavy handed, however, it was perfectly and delicately handed at Ducasse. At one point early in the meal they brought around a box of truffles and gave you whiff—some kind of demonstration of confidence that they had the best truffles in town (in my opinion they did). For a while I thought that I was just a bit of a ignorant bumpkin for not fawning over the things, but Ducasse rather abruptly changed my mind, and allowed me to love their fragrant virtues. Here’s what we eat: Amuse Bouche 1 - softly cooked spinach in a flaky pastry crust. Amuse Bouche 2 – scallop dolloped with caviar in cream sauce. Balance, poise, wonder. Everything worked sublimely, though the caviar would have worked brilliantly as a thing in itself too, as it was light and soooo delicate. Marmalade of Potatoes, Black Truffles & Sea Salt-Now I have been eating mashed potatoes most of my life. And they are good, homey stuff. The perfect starch launching pad with an accompanying amount of fat or cream for any number of spices—rosemary, cumin, thyme, garlic [insert herb here]. Or if you like insert black truffle chunks and then cover a tiny thin bowl of the truffle potatoes with black truffle shavings. Whole thing was a truffle revelation that worked particularly well with the Montrachet. Our entire table was oohing and ahhing for the better part of 20 minutes. I mind melded with the truffe noire. Lobster with Black truffles in buttery sauce-this dropped the meal back to earth a bit but was still excellent. Chicken breast from Bresse covered with aromatic green herbs and on the side some finally shopped duck liver steamed inside some spinach. The server then poured some rich black truffle sauce I a self-conscious way around the chicken. This dish started off too truffly for me and then after a minute or two the juices from the chicken breast began to run off into the truffle sauce; and that’s when the magic happened--everything started yining and yanging together and the great show began. I don’t think I have ever eaten chickn that was this good before. Again the Montrachet was, of course, perfect with the chicken. At this point in the meal the whole world felt perfect. Cheese course Range of wonderful desserts. But in way no actual description of what was had or eaten can describe the wonder of the total meal. This may be the most civilized way to spend 4 hours of earth. I go to ADNY in 2 weeks. It will be interesting tosee if it is even comparable. I pray that it is. NYC is sorely missing a total dining experience like this.
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I feel sorry for Lucas Carton, because I, Vivin and his wife had experienced such a superlative meal at Arpege a mere few hours earlier. So going in our stomachs were largely full and our expectations of Paris’s reputed best establishments were already rather high. To be fair, there are aspects of LC that I genuinely like/find intriguing, notably that each dish should have a wine very clearly associated with it. I mean I have seen this before and actually it is very well carried off at Babbo, but its use in a 3 star French rest seemed a rather assertive gesture to me, especially as I assume that at this level much of each restaurant’s PL is made by the propensity of whimsical, monied Americans showing up and ordering 1982 premier grand cru Bordeaux reds for the equivalent of the GDP per capita of most Less Developed Countries. I got to try a 1990 Corton Charlemagne I had been lusting after for a decade. The wine was not as moving and complex as I had hoped, but such is life. And I am grateful that LC provided the opportunity to try. Unfortunately, I must say that Lucas Carton only just edged out Taillevent as our least interesting meal. There was very little that was wrong mind you. Like Tailevent, I can’t say that there was anything actually bad with the meal. It was just that the food was merely very good, instead of being consistently great. It should also be noted that one of us, Vivin’s wife, had a superb meal, so it can be done. But for euros expended, stars awarded and reputation gained, more than one person in three should have a mind-bending meal. As a physical space, LC is exquisite with stunning early 20th Cent art nouveau woodwork everywhere. It’s a bit more of a formal experience certainly then Arpege. I had the lobster over very thin pasta in a cream sauce and black truffles. Like the chicken at Arpege, this was truffled to death -- no other odor or texture even had the chance of prevailing here. This came with the Corton Charlemagne. Vivin had the overworked, slightly too thinly cut and a bit too overdone red snapper with capers, olives in olive oil with greens, while Vivin’s wife was smart enough to order a Foie Gras that had been cooked au jus and sauced with some sort of nut and pineapples. This was great-crunchy, sweet and with the FG very buttery all at once. This was accompanied by a great Sauterne. A totally balanced and brilliant dish. Vivin’s dish was even less interesting than my lobster. As a main dish, I order red snapper that came with some odd but virtually unedible carrots and other puréed veggies. The fish was perfectly cooked, but also perfectly bland and dull. Vivin had some yawning duck that was rather tasteless. Vivin’s wife ordered scallops with black truffles with butter and a small white pasta. Superb stuff with the butter a great rich foil for the fleshiness of the scallops. We finished with 2 desserts, sinc e we were all gorged. I order poached quinces that had been spiced by cloves, cinnamon and Tahitian vanilla. The quinces were very hard with no clue of the 3 spices which were very evidently promenaded upon the plate. Two bites and the rest was left. I also had an excellent 1996 Tokai with the dessert. I can’t recall Vivin’s dessert other that it involved an ice cream and brioche and was more consumed than my dish. In the end it was a flat and disappointing evening for 2 and a great meal for 1. While I am not sure that the Michelin system is all that reliable, 1 of 3 superb dishes would merit less in my limited experience of Paris.
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Since I was the one who started the whole Craft is dull thread. Let me state that I still think that Craft is dull, and both Steve and Mr. North Carolina Chef's sentiments mirror 95% of mine. Lacks soul is what kept rining through my head when I left the place.
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The place, based on one dinner for 3 that I had last Sat, is absolutely superb, and I had no service problems, though on one occasion the kitchen wa s modestly slow. One dimensional is one way to describe the menu, focused might be another. The menu consists of 4 sections. The crudo section is entirely raw seafood goodies in various combinations, including oysters, razor clams etc. Second section consists of various prepared, cooked, grilled dishes like octopus with grilled onions, calamari, 3rd section is pasta dishes that revolve around fish, and the last section is almost entirely prepared fish--we had turbot and sardines. That's the basic structiue of the menu. The wine list is offbeat and interesting Italian wines--lots of strange and curious things from Friuli, which are very rare in US, and almost none of the usual suspects like Chianti. I guess you could call the place rather one dimensional--its not a good place to go if you feel the need for poultry, steak, lamb or snake. But there are numerous seafood focused places in the city-Cello and Le Bernadin to name but two. Oscars, 3/4ths of the Japanese places that I am addicted to....and so on. You go in knowing this-its a fish place, as Spark's is a steak specialist. I can't really review the thing based on one trip, but the meal we had was superb from end to end. Two things--the Octopus and the razor clams were merely good, but every other dish had my entire table staring at each other and oohing and ahhing.
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OK, I will throw in my 2 cents again. I ate at Yasuda last Friday, and went to Kuruma last night. I have to admit, I think Kuruma gets the slight edge. There are some things that Yasuda very clearly does better--all their rolls, the toro, and the unagi (eel). In fact, Yasuda may have the best toro and scallion roll on the planet. Their unagi rolls are also to die for. Yasuda also tends to not simply stick to what are traditional Japanese fish-- when I was there I had fish from Spain, Florida and one form Peru, and I had never heard of any of the fish. He sources whatever he thinks is freshest and throws it on the menu. By contrast, Kuruma offers more traditionally Japanese fish--toro, yellowtail, you know the drill-- and it tends not to stray too far from that, though I had some very unusual cuts of fish last night. But boy is it fresh, boy is it good, and truthfully what amazed me was simply the consistency of excellence and "wow" I experienced. I don't think I can recall a pure sushi experience (Gari is impure but has its own magic and thus can't be compared) that was this consistently fine and delicate from beginning to end. In my experience, Yasuda just isn't able to generate quite the same degree of revelatory excellence with the same consistency, though its darn close. Kuruma is amazing.
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Quite frankly, you won't go too wrong either way. Honestly, in the last 4 months I have eaten at Babbo more than almost any other restaurant (along with Sugiyama and Cafe Boulud), and easting off the regular menu with 3 give you more variety, but the tasing menus @ Babbo are very, very good. They are paths unto themselves, particularly with the wine tasting, which is the best bargain in NYC. Its a great rest, and there aren't many bad paths. Either path you will discover and neither will fail you. The service can suck, but the food never.
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I walked out of Yasuda very full on Friday for 贻 for one. It is is not cheap, as Steve says, especially if you eat omakase, but its pretty #### good stuff.
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I inevitably will go to Craft again, because between Grimes and Fat Guy's fawning and a family friend who works in the kitchen, I must go. There is a sufficiently strong wind blowing against my one experience, that it's possible to write it off as a fluke. I also admit to liking the concept of exposing an ingredient in its full purity and freshness. Having had summers of lobster in Maine and good stretches in Maryland eating crab, I honestly have a hard time ordering either in NYC when they are subject to minimalist preparation for fear of mediocrity. When you "KNOW" what something does taste like in its essence and with no fuss, it obviously a) does give you a strong grounding/knowledge base for what certain things "should" taste like pared down, but b) that knowledge base enables you to appreciate when those basic ingredients are layered into dishes that have greater complexity. In this case, I would say that I "know" what lobster and Maryland crab taste like at their best. There are many things on the menu at Craft that I will admit to not knowing what they should taste like at their pared down best. I think Craft is admirable for offering the possibility of obtaining that knowledge. Steven mentions that his view of the way several dishes should taste was altered by the challenge of Craft's kitchen. In a sense, he was educated by the kitchen. I have had that experience multiple times this year in Japanese kitchens with uni, blowfish, toro, salmon roe and smoked salmon, among other things. Learning what the best is can be a revelation, and one of the joys of eating. I honestly would like to have the same experience at Craft, though perhaps a trip with more people permitting more samplings will make that possible. Still, call me a ignoramus, but the one thing that any good restaurant should have is "yumminess" in the dishes they serve up (something I experienced in spades last night at Babbo with the pasta and wine tasting menu), but that "yumminess" was something that (apart from the mushrooms) I did not encounter at Craft. I believe that at some level we react to food at a very visceral level. Strip out the décor and the service and in a blank room put someone who knows very little to nothing about food but with a broad palette, put a dish in front of them and if they start making "yum" and "yummy" noises, you have good food. Really appreciating good food does benefit from deep knowledge, but there is a part to any eating experience that is very primeval and not intellectual. It was at this level that I found Craft disappointing. Insufficient yumminess. I would like to hear the counterargument to what I stated above: namely that eating and appreciating good food is not possible without deep knowledge. Remember I am simply saying that for me A PART, and a very important part (though not the whole thing) of any food experience, is very intuitive and visceral-the way your senses and your body react to the food with pleasure. Good food for me is pleasure generating at a physical and sensual level, in addition to being an intellectual experience. It was this pleasure generating aspect that I found Craft lacked. As for Mongolian food, having eaten a few times in Chinese Mongolia, I would recommend not persisting under the delusion that there is a whole lot of freshness in Mongolian restaurants almost anywhere.
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I have no qualms with the idea behind the restuarant, which by itself I see as daring and praiseworthy. I adore minimally prepared seasonal foods, particularly in excellent Japanese hands. It was the wimpiness of excecution that perturbed me. Had 2 of the other dishes been in the same league as the mushrooms, I would not be offering up the same critique.
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The mushrooms were perfect, grilled in just the right amount of oil and imparted just the correct amount of saltiness to bring out their wonderful texture and flavors. The terrine, particularly, after several terrines sampled in Paris this summer was utterly dull. The scallops were very competent, but also unremarkable. The veal was good, but to my mind not sufficiently salted to bring the flavors of the meat to life in anyway. With the exception of the mushrooms, everything felt like it was from routine, as if the cooks were scared. As I said, nothing was flawed. But in each dish, I walked away with the sense that the preparer was not willing to take the risk to add more salt, to add that something, that little bit more of whatever was required to make competence into excellence, and the reason it seemed to me was a consistent lack of risk taking, a fear that by adding something more (garlic in the swiss chard case, salt with the meat) the person would risk taking the dish over the edge. But they never went up to the edge that would have made that dish perfect. I sensed very strongly that something was held back in every dish from some fear of excess. Consequently the food fell short of its potential.
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I went to Craft last night for the first time with my father. I will confess to being a big fan of Craft's older sibling, GT, both for the quality of food (the stellar desserts in particular) and for the exceptional service, which in my experience has truly been about the food and not simply creating an elegant dining experience. Rare. In this tradition, Craft is also very much about food, albeit food minimalism. The message of let's take the best, freshest ingredients and serve them without a lot of hype, in the simplest and more pared back manner is a risk, a gesture of enormous confidence that whoever is in the kitchen will offer jaded New York mouths something they have never quite experienced before: Essentialism in an city of hype. It's a very intellectual gesture of "let's deconstruct food" to its bare bones. And intellectual food can be interesting because it is challenging or fascinating and even on occasion flawed (Tabla, Union Pacific muck up but they also take big risks and hit great heights). The problem with intellectual food is that it can lack soul. I found Craft both soulless and not at all challenging. Everything from the food to the wine to the dessert was ultimately very cautious. The enormity of menu choices is interesting. But the choices are among dishes which are ultimately puritanical. Everything comes as it is minimally portrayed on the menu, and, with exception of some wonderful mushrooms, tasted as it sounded. Each dish was utterly unmoving and un-revelatory. This was a meal in which nothing went wrong. There was no room for anything to go wrong-the kitchen is too good, the service was excellent. The kitchen almost tells you with each dish how someone who is learning to eat should taste, a strange almost didactic conservatism. Each dish is a boring lecture. But there is no wonder and no "ummm." My father and I split everything. Started with cured sardines, a terrine, and Nantucket bay scallops. We split some swiss chard, shitake mushrooms and roasted veal as a main course and finished with two OK desserts. Everything good, simple, essential, everything a yawn. Look I have nothing against minimally prepared food. The best meals of my life have been Japanese kaiseki affairs where each dish arrived often fewer than 3 ingredients. In fact I prefer to eat this way. But soulless is the word I keep coming back to. No passion, no yumminess. Craft is safe, but ultimately boring.
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Dinner ran me 趚, though that included a ็ bottle of sake that they will hold until I arrive again. One of the nicer restuarant touches I have encountered, besides GT's propaganda mailings. Food is very seasonal and that is the point of kaiseki. I agree that you can also experience ingrediant roulette on occasion. Kobe beef was OK first trip and superlative the next. But you can get around this by simply asking for only what is very fresh, and he will happily oblige-I think there are people who go there expecting to be served what was described in Ruth Reichel (sp? sorry) review from a few years ago, and so he feels obliged to keep certain signature dishes in the omakase. Among these items is Kobe beef and the monkfish liver pate and zensai, which are always good, but seem the few constants on an ever changing menu. Unlike you I am actually much less fond of Sugiyama's grilled dishes than the cold and raw stuff. Its also a very particular experience-textually oriented as Japanese cuisine is with the emphasis on small tastes. It is in every sense the antithesis of the Steakhouse experience, which has its own merits. I would never bring my streak frites loving father there. People have their food biases and there is nothing wrong to admitting to them, unless you are a paid critic. Sugiyama also shatters the stereotypes of Americanized Japanese food-sushi, yakitori, tempura and noodles. Five people were there is front of me when I arrived, and exclaimed, "They don't have any sushi rolls or noodles, let's go" and they went next door to one of the branches of the East chain where they no doubt got the food they expected. Also, and apologies for being schoolteachery pedantic, his name is actually Sugiyama Nao, not Naos. I think its cool he likes the Mets though. he's pretty laidback and played air guiter for a few minutes in a respite of food preperation.
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I ate there Saturday and Sunday night, and was offered tap or bottled in both cases right up front and was shown no ill will whatsoever when requesting tap. I should also add that having experienced a decent amount of recent disappointment at 2 of NYC's more reputable French restaurants recently (Lespinasse & Daniel in the last month), both meals AT Babbo were stupendously good and consistent.
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If anyone is interested, Kung Pao is actually pronounced Gong Bao. There are two commonly used formed of romanizing Chinese sounds into English. Wade-Giles was the first popular romanization scheme used in Nationalist (pre 1949) China and still loosely employed in Taiwan today. Pinyin is the official romanization scheme employed in the PRC. The Wade-Giles rendering of the Chinese dish is Kung Pao, and the Pinyin version would be Gong Bao, though the Chinese pronounciation is the same in either case. Both romanization systems have their weaknesses and strengths, and ironically Gong Bao is the perfect word to highlight Wade-Giles's weaknesses. If Kung Pao were pronounced as most people think it should sound in English, that is Kong Pao, the Wade-Giles for this would be K'ung-P'ao. If I recall correctly, the Chinese means something like "Palace Treasure Chicken" The dish is a pretty ubiquitous (almost standard) dish all over China, not just in Sichuan, though the best version of it that I have had has been in Beijing.
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On the lunch vs dinner thing, I must confess that I have never eaten lunch there so I can't comment. I can concur with Steven that the food is rather consistently excellent, though I also have yet to eat a meal there where both appet and main couse were equal in quality. Perhaps my luck, but one or the other is usually awesome and overshadows the other. The one oddity that CB has is not really their doing. Maybe its age discimination on my part but the great majority of people who eat at CB are well above 60 and dressed to the nines (by my standards). One of CB's major appeals vs Daniel (the latter is 10 blocks closer) is that I can walk in not dressed to the neck is a strangling tie. This may be purely a function of the demographics of higher end food - people who are older have saved, no longer have to pay for college, mortgage etc- and thus can afford to enjoy CB. But whenever I am there, I am definately the odd person out age & dres wise, which is not the case at the other high end places I eat. I also don't think its something CB intentionally cultivated. Sometimes it feels a bit like the crowd still thinks that CB is Daniel and flocks here out of ten year old habit. I have seen young people come in casually dressed, but I would say that on an average night suited couples in their early 60s represent 90% of the clientele. Demographic diversity is not teh resuarant's strongsuit, despite the casual image they saught to cultivate. One other thing, Steven mentioned the tasting menu there. I have yet to encounter a tasting menu at the restauarant, and was wondering when you last saw one.
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I concur with Felonius on this one, run (do not walk) to Cafe Boulud and eat the venison. I just ate the same sequence of dishes (save dessert 24 hours after the fact). I trust Felonius's taste enough at this point, after recent off board conversations made it clear that there were certain commonalities of taste, to at least try CB tonight (I was torn between a trip to eat at the Tavern at GT and eating at CB). I eat at CB a lot more than I do at GT, mostly because of its location convenience. A few more thoughts about CB-their soups are among the best in NYC, their fish main courses are not as good as their meat dishes, and their desserts are very good, but not great. Claudia Fleming is a national treasure, and I should have left CG for GT for dessert. That said, the ravioli were excellent, though the venison was truly amongst the best main courses I have tried this year (Bouley Bakery has been only competition).
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Thanks for the link. It was thanks to your site and Jim Leff that I knew the place existed at all, so take is as an expression of gratitude on my part.
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Since I have been eating a lot of Japanese recently (I went to Sushi of Gari on Friday for the second time in 2 weeks and it was kick ass), I thought I would check out Saka Gura. The Sake Club is located in what can only be described as one of the most bizarre restaurant locations in Manhattan: the basement of a nondescript midtown corporate building. As you go down two flights of stairs past a security guard reading the Post, it seems more probable that you are about to check out the boiler room than sit down for a top notch Japanese meal. But there it is. A long, elevated Sake bar runs down the left hand side of the joint where there are lots of empty bottles, a lot of people speaking Japanese, and strips of bamboo nailed into the concrete block wall that remind you that you are in the basement. Its fairly clear that this is going to be a funkier and less aesthetically clean dining experience than eating at Sushi Yasuda, which is literally right across the street. For better or worse this establishment is not listed in Zagats, so you have to go their website to even find where they are (the white pages work too: 211 East 43rd). While there appears to be every kind of sake known to humanity on the menu, thankfully, for the sake ignorant like me, there are also various sake tasting samplers that enable you to try 4 different sakes in one sitting. I did 2 of the high end samplers-#8 (ฦ) and #7 (ม). The ม tasting sampler was extraordinary. Sake doesn't have Western wine's reputation for subtely. I am not sure if this is correct or not, since I haven't tried that many sakes yet. So far, though, I would say that sake has almost as much internal variety of taste as scotch whisky-Cadenheads cask strength Laphroig tastes very different from the more ubiquitously available bottle, tastes very different from Springbank etc. Saka Gura is a learning experience and a good place to learn. Two sakes that were part of the ม taster Itten (yidian (a little in Chinese)) and Iyo Densetsu were so different from the generic ป/bottle sake that you would buy at a liquor store in NYC that it was shocking. Both were dry, full and floral and excellent, though I don't think I have any kind of vocabulary for accurately describing the taste. In either case they were both very wonderful. The food is in some ways traditionally Japanese, though not in the generic way that most Americans think of Japanese food-tempura, yakitori, udon and sushi. Think two fried rice balls with bonito shavings on top. The menu consists of basically two sections-the main part offers a massive number of different more traditional dishes (too long to describe here), and a back page of recommended daily specials. I did the latter. Now if you like weird and different (and I love weird) than you will adore Saka Gura, because its relatively unlike most food you have ever eaten before-unless you grew up in the Kanto region or Guangzhou (I grew up in NJ). The notion of different courses coming in succession appears to be an anathema at Saka Gura-what you order comes all at once. To start, I tried roasted dried sardine sheets. These were porous long thin strips of sardines which you dipped in a sauce of home made mayonnaise sitting in a small pool of soy sauce. Strangely wonderful and unlike anything else I have eaten before. The second dish I ordered was deep fried lily bulbs and shrimp in miso sauce all within a hollowed out eggplant. Unfortunately, the miso sauce kind of overpowered everything. Third was sea urchin wrapped in fluke with 2 different kinds of seaweed and a lemon-basil sauce and topped with watercress. This was definitely one of the better things I have eaten this year, in part because the sea urchin appears to be really fresh at the moment in NYC. But the combination of flavors was so delicate and sensuous: the lemon and the basil were perfect for the sea urchin. At that point I was still hungry so I ordered two more dishes: salt broiled mackerel pike & deep friend octopus and asparagus in sesame vinegar. The mackerel pike came whole with no innards removed and was a real bone picking fest. Lemon and soy sauce accompanied. Overall, good but not great. The fried octopus was fabulous, however. The octopus had been fried to perfection and sesame vinegar, which I had never heard of let alone tried before, was a brilliant accompaniment. As meals go this was a total trip. Not as delicate or as creative food as you will find at Sushi of Gari or Sugiyama, but for ฮ-40 for 4-5 things, it's a cheap and educational trip.