Per Se at Columbus Circle (Upper West Side) in New York, NY
http://www.perseny.com/
Our friend Andy was in town and he wanted to go to a nice restaurant. After some OpenTable searching, we noticed there was an opening at Per Se. Andy (and Kuau, and our other friend Ben, for that matter) is from the San Francisco Bay Area, where Per Se's sister restaurant, French Laundry, is located, and he's been interested in going there for years. So Per Se was a good substitute.
We thought we'd be able to order the "salon menu," which is closer to an a la carte, four-course menu, rather than the elaborate and quite expensive nine-course tasting menu. However, after we were seated, we found out the dining room is only for the nine-course tasting menu. Andy was sold after looking at the nine-course menu, but the rest of us wouldn't have minded saving a few bucks and getting fewer courses. The maitre'd and our waiter very nicely decided to accommodate us and allow three of us to order a 5-course menu similar to their lunch menu, while Andy got the tasting menu. We were pretty pleased, since usually a tasting menu has to be done for the entire table.
Also, Ellie got a stool for her purse, so that it didn't have to rest on the ground or sway in the wind on the back of a chair. Our other friend Ben was jealous, so our waiter good-humoredly brought him a stool as well for his 2-oz. wallet.
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We had two amuse bouches -- the first was a fried cheese ball, which we unceremoniously devoured. The second was kind of like a salmon hand roll with smoked salmon and creme fraiche. (The waitress joked that we shouldn't try to lick it like an ice cream cone because the salmon would plop off the top, which she said had happened before.) As Andy said, it was "very good."
Our first "real" course was "Oysters and Pearls," described as a "sabayon" of pearl tapioca with Island Creek oysters (from Massachusetts) and sterling white sturgeon caviar. There was a pretty generous serving of caviar, and the oysters were off the shell and supposedly "cooked," although it seemed like a pretty light cooking to us, not that we were complaining. The sabayon kind of was like a very creamy soup with tapioca chunks, which doesn't sound very good, but managed to taste delicious. The caviar added the perfect amount of salt and the oysters had a light, smoky flavor.
We were finally served bread (which we had been eyeing for quite a while now, since it was like 10:30pm). The house made bread, apparently called Parker House bread, was served warm with two kinds of butter: a salted one from Vermont, and a sweet cream butter from California. The bread was, as Ben said, "very good." To be more accurate, it tasted homemade and warm and perfectly soft and went awesome with the butter.
Andy got two extra courses at this time, while the rest of us got decorative plates so we didn't feel left out. He got a "salad" (the lettuce was in little jelly blocks, with accompanying jelly dressing) (that sounds gross, but he said it was "very good") and a fish. He liked the fish, but we thought it was pretty unexciting.
Next we all got a course of "butter poached Nova Scotia lobster." It was a perfect dense little bundle of lobster, seemingly all tail. The accompaniments were a little random -- they didn't really go with the lobster, although they were good on their own. Still, we had no complaints, and in fact Kuau went so far as to say it was "very good." The lobster was just cooked so perfectly and tasted so delicious, with a wonderful creamy-buttery sauce, that it didn't matter what it came with.
The next course was a " 'jambonnette' of Cavendish Farm's quail," with polenta disguised as cornbread, glazed turnips, and fried broccoli rabe.
Our last meat course was a "degustation of Millbrook Farm's venison, with Hadley Orchard's medjool date 'marbles' " and some other stuff, like apple and carrot sticks, and a brussels sprout. The venison was given to us as a truffled sausage, a pate-mousse?, a rack, and some weird thing (the rightmost one in the picture). The pate-mousse square was used to hold up the rack, which was pretty awesome. The rack was barely cooked, so it was really tender and juicy.
Andy then got a cheese course. Next, as a palate cleanser, we got some sort of lemon-lime sorbet/soda/foam. We thought only Andy was supposed to get this dish, but they ended up bringing one for each of us. When Ben tasted it he literally said "Oh God, it's delicious!" in shock. Kuau laughed at him, but then tasted it and had almost the same reaction. He now describes it as "fizzle foam."
The desserts (pictures below) were "Opera": candied Marcona almonds, Manjari chocolate mousse, almond ice cream, and "whiskey tonic"; and "Florida cocktail": ruby grapefruit "biscuit," Buddha's Hand soda, candied Cara Cara oranges and Okinawa brown sugar ice cream. Both of the ice creams were ridiculously good.
We were just about perfectly full, then we were approached with a selection of mignardises. Our waitress brought over sixteen house made chocolates of eight different flavors. We chose assorted flavors, and Kuau was mildly concerned that it was a small selection for a mignardises course. Ellie had no qualms though, as the maple-filled chocolate was "very good."
Luckily for Kuau, another waiter came along with a bowl of chocolate covered hazelnuts and another bowl full of house made sugar candies (which were basically tiny hard candies of assorted colors). Finally, a cute storage container came out with cinnamon as well as passion fruit chocolate macaroons. Another level contained house made caramels (we rose to the challenge by taking all of them home, since they were wrapped). The last level had three different kinds of truffles. One was a chocolate covered peanut butter marshmallow truffle. Another had coconut, and the last was the richest piece of chocolate created on earth. Really, on earth.
Finally, we were given bags upon bags of cookies to take home. Literally, they gave us each a bag, then upon finding that Andy had left his bag at the table, they met us at the entrance with four more bags and pressed them upon us until we said "what the hell" and took them all.
It was that kind of service that made the meal even more enjoyable than it already was. Though the pricing at Per Se is a bit exorbitant, the service charge is included, and post-meal tea and coffee were included as well (which made us wish we had ordered more tea and coffee, incidentally). The service was not stuffy at all (in direct contrast to certain restaurants), and the waiters joked with us the whole time. Our waiter who helped us create a 5-course menu even encouraged us to include the lobster, quail, and venison in order to "get our money's worth." Overall it was a pretty great experience and -- though I find myself surprised to say this -- I would totally like to go back.
Maybe to the salon this time.
January 22, 2011 - Per Se
May 24, 2010 - Gary Danko
Gary Danko by Fisherman's Wharf/Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, CA
http://www.garydanko.com/
I'm going to try a new strategy for blogging about restaurants. We ate at Gary Danko last night, so I've decided to not wait two months this time. To be fair, it's mostly so that we actually write down the exact cheese that we ate. Otherwise the highlight of this blog will be something like "then we had awesome cheese". While we will still mention that, you're going to get a full paragraph on the extent of our cheese evening.
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Gary Danko did an excellent job of making us feel comfortable as soon as we approached the restaurant. We took the Muni there, so the valet person watched us hop off the bus with a big paper Safeway grocery bag in hand. Yet he somehow knew that we were going into Gary Danko before we actually took any steps toward the door. Once we got in, the woman reminded us about the corkage fee ($35!), and kindly took both the bottle of 2007 Pinot Noir, Golden Eye, 10 Degrees from us, as well as the grocery bag. They made it seem as though we weren't weird. Which was very nice of them. We were then promptly whisked into the main dining room to a table set with us sitting next to each other. We are always a fan of that. Incidentally, the restaurant had a narrow area to push the cheese cart around in, so it actually would have been impossible for us to sit across from each other. I have a feeling that they set the table for us ahead of time because I had mentioned that it was my wife's birthday (yeah, it's over two weeks away, but when we made this reservation it was supposed to be the last nice meal we had together before Ellie's birthday as we weren't going to see each other on her actual birthday).
We started off with an amuse bouche of a beef and foie gras meatball on top of some barley tasting things that looked like corn. It was a very good meatball, but I couldn't help but to wonder why they would waste foie gras by mixing it into a meatball. It was a very soft and flavorful meatball though, so maybe the foie gras helped with that. Then came time to decide on the menu options. Usually this is pretty easy, as we opt for the tasting menu. But in this case, the tasting was five courses, with no choices, all of which were available as eating options on the choose your own adventure section, and the pricing was the same. In the end, Ellie opted for a four course dinner consisting of two appetizers, a meat course, and a dessert. I ordered a five course dinner, which was an app, fish, meat, cheese, and dessert course. Three of our dishes ended up being the same as the suggested tasting menu, and we were actually pretty close to ordering the other two as well.
Course 1 was a crab salad with an avocado mousse that had subtle hints of lemon and mint mixed in. The crab was four generous claws cooked perfectly, and there was a large serving of avocado, a few hearts of palm, some crispy lotus roots that actually tasted a bit like chips, a couple greens, and a balsamic reduction. Everything went very well together. This was a great start to the evening.
The other dish was a crispy fried country egg on top of mushrooms and other assorted things. The egg was poached, soft boiled, and deep fried. I know, it doesn't make sense. But that's how it was cooked, and it was phenomenal. My only complaint was that the breading from being deep fried slightly overpowered the yolk, and with a perfectly cooked fresh farm egg, I don't want anything messing with my yolk experience. But the complaint was small, and I have a feeling Ellie might say that this was actually a valued addition to the dish.
Course 2 was a lobster risotto. This was pretty disappointing; however Ellie and I did basically confirm that we have the exact same preference for risotto. We both prefer a rich, creamy, risotto with soft rice. Since a "proper" risotto is actually slightly al dente, it turns out that ordering risotto from a restaurant is very risky. We have both been disappointed by extremely good-sounding risottos in the past, and we think that is why. So going forward, our risotto experiences are probably better off from low-end restaurants where everything is cooked ahead of time and therefore overcooked, or we should just make it at home.
The other dish was a branzini (some type of white fish) with all kinds of fun sides that only I can truly enjoy. Fried capers, artichokes, olives, and asparagus adorned the plate. And the fish had perfectly crisped skin. This was also a risky course, because neither of us had any idea what kind of fish we were being served, which gave it a high likelihood of being a mysterious white fish. Seeing as I hate almost all white fish, I was very pleased with a properly cooked, and not dry white fish.
Course 3 was our last savory. Ellie ordered a beef medallion, which was an excellent cut of filet with an awesome seasoning on top and cooked exactly the way she likes it. Not quite as pink as I would have preferred, but just as pink as Ellie's optimal steak would be.
I ordered game hen stuffed with another bird as well as foie gras. It came as a full hen body, but it didn't include a cut in half head like my squab at Quince. Note to self, I should probably stop ordering whole birds. A large breast is good, but these tiny birds are not my thing. Okay, now I'm thinking about Dick Towel and I'm wishing a new It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia would air. Thanks dinner. Anywhoozle (j/k?), it was a good dish, but it sort of tasted like a burger. It was just a bunch of ground up stuff inside this tiny bird. It did have pretty cute legs though (they were smaller than frogs legs, so it amuses me to think of a frog towering over this bird stuffed with another birds liver), which also tasted very good.
Course 4 was cheese. We opted to share this. This should have been the #1 course that we doubled up on. Oh well, it was still amazing and it might have been overkill with twice as much cheese. They rolled out a cart with 17 different cheeses. It was something like seven cows, four sheep, three goat, and three blue. Each cheese was explained to us and we picked the four that sounded best. There were six or seven that sounded awesome, hence thinking that a second cheese course would have been a good idea. Anyway, we got a mildly hard cow's milk cheese to start, which I think was a one year aged cheddar. It was pretty flavorful for a starter cheese, and it was also very good. We then moved onto a soft brie type cheese. It was also good. However, the third (Seal Bay brie) and fourth cheese (roaring 40's blue cheese from King Island Dairy in Melbourne, Australia) were phenomenal. As soon as we tasted them, we instantly knew that these were going to be the highlights of the dinner and the two things that we would actually remember about the meal. Okay, I just looked them both up, and they are both produced by King Island Dairy, which means I want to take a vacation there and taste it fresh (I know, it's been aged so what does fresh mean). Our only complaint is that the cheese was served with a small portion of raisin bread and a few grapes. So the accompaniments were kind of lame.
Then dessert came. We were very full and satisfied at this point. Ellie got the dessert of her dreams. It was called macaroon ice cream sandwiches. And yes, it was plural. There was a pistachio macaroon with vanilla or caramel ice cream, and two others. Ellie paid more attention. I ordered a bittersweet chocolate souffle. The waiter cut a hole in the top and poured in a vanilla sauce, followed by a chocolate sauce. It was decadent. I've failed at ordering souffles a couple times, and this was the first one that came close to my first souffle experience (ginger souffle at either ABC or Hong Kong Club in Hong Kong). In the middle of our desserts, they brought over a super rich and thick lemon mousse with a tall candle on top, which Ellie failed to blow out. And a tray of mignardises. All of which were sub par. As was the lemon mousse. But to be fair, our cheese and dessert courses were the highlight, so another bunch of desserts was not exactly high on our list of desired items by that point.
In all, it was a pleasurable experience. Neither of us would go back, and it's probably a bit over-hyped. In fact, most people in SF seem to recognize Gary Danko as the top dining experience in the city. It's absolutely a step below the Dining Room at the Ritz and Coi. But I would certainly love to drop by for a cheese course if I were in the neighborhood. The cheese monger at Gary Danko is absolutely amazing.
February 11, 2010 - Cyrus Restaurant
Cyrus in Healdsburg, CA (Sonoma wine region)
http://www.cyrusrestaurant.com/
Our decision to eat at Cyrus was fairly rash. I was supposed to fly to SF for Valentine's Day and we already made reservations at Dining Room at the Ritz for the Friday before Valentine's Day. Through some sort of chain of events, we decided to book a room at Indian Springs Spa in Calistoga. We then decided that we might as well eat at a nice restaurant to complete the mini vacation. I had been wanting to eat at Cyrus since the moment I discovered that it existed, and since we were not likely to ever be this close to Healdsburg again, this seemed like a good time to try it out. Luckily we had no problem making a 7pm reservation about three days before we wanted to eat there. Unluckily, Healdsburg is actually a 40 minute drive from Calistoga, half of which is through windy mountain roads.
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Like a good husband should always do, I insisted that we order the eight course tasting menu. Ellie thought there was some decision that had to be made with regards to the menu, as she clearly didn't look ahead of time. Cyrus had exactly four menu options to make. Five course or eight course. Vegetarian or meat. I can't speak for the vegetarian, but the eight course meat was $28 more expensive than the five course. It was the five course plus, chicken cooked two ways, a cheese plate, and an additional orange flavored dessert. Not to give anything away, but you actually would be better off with the five course and an additional cheese plate for $18. In other words, the cheese was worth $18, but the chicken plus additional dessert was not worth $10.
But it's not like we came here to save a couple bucks. We wanted food. And food we got. Pretty much as soon as we sat down a very extensive caviar and Champagne cart rolled up on ice. It was beautiful, but certainly not anything that we are presently interested in (maybe for our 20th anniversary?). We immediately noticed that Cyrus had a similar style to the high caliber style of Joel Robuchon, but it had a much more welcoming vibe. Our head waitress offered us the caviar cart, and provided a very detailed explanation that some patrons prefer to start with caviar, "but of course you may also offer to forgo this cart and go directly to the main menu options." We mentioned that we would forgo the caviar. We also mentioned this with dSLR in hand pointed at the caviar cart. Ellie managed to snap a couple pictures while it was still there, and she handed the camera to me because I had a nice close up shot available. Our waitress was actually kind enough to mention that their weights (pieces of gold with seals on them) made for a very nice shot. She opened the case where the gold weights were kept and patiently waited while I took a shot of them (but as you can see from the blog, I screwed that up so no pics are included). It was very welcoming, but unfortunately you can't tell because I suck at taking pictures, even with a shiny piece of gold one foot away from an awesome camera.
Once we ordered the eight course (four of the courses had options, so there were something like 15 different items that we tried counting the amuse et al) menu, a cute platter of flavor sensation was brought to our table. No really, a platter of flavor sensation. We were told that the bottom contained an example of umami and sweet, the middle of salt, and the top of bitter and whatever the other taste sensation is. We both thought the highlight was umami (maybe we need to get in touch with our inner umami?), as it offered, well, a different flavor sensation than we were used to. Really though, it was a warm mushroom tasting soup with a mild lemon flavor. It was really refreshing, and a soup made from this base would be incredible.
An amuse bouche of Nantucket Bay scallops served three ways followed the flavor opening experience. There was a raw scallop, a ceviche scallop, and a seared scallop that was cooled in the fridge. This was fun as they tasted different but essentially looked the same.
After the amuse bouche, we were then offered an array of bread. It wasn't quite the cart from Joel Robuchon, but it was a breadster holding a pair of tongs and a big old basket of bread. He named about eight breads, and Ellie and I each picked two. They were pretty good. We were also provided a small serving bowl that contained sea salt from somewhere in Europe and another Hawaiian sea salt with shrimp flavoring. And two different butters. A yellow one from Sonoma and a white one from Europe. Whatever though, the butter wheel from Joel Robuchon still had them beat.
Apparently we got some duck or something at some point. A memory lost to the ravages of time ...
After the soup, we were then served half a lobster tail with pickled ramp and a yuzu sauce. This was incredible. The lobster was perfectly cooked and the flavors paired very well together. But after tuna, abalone, and lobster, we were in for our first truly amazing course.
The foie gras came out in lobe form. It was a huge piece of seared foie gras. It wasn't all small and pretty. This was large and ready to be eaten. And eat it we did. Now, we are usually excited to eat small amounts of refined food, but this was a quality foie gras, and I could have eaten an entire lobe if given the chance. I'll let Ellie add specifics if she would like. I just ate a turkey bagel dog on the airplane, so it's pretty hard to think of descriptive ways of describing food.
A salmon course came out next. This was good enough to remind Ellie that she actually likes salmon. I cooked it for her once when we first met, and because it was fresh from a fish monger I let some of the salmon flavor sneak through by not cooking it super well. I was going for a seared sushi type of thing, but it just reminded her of raw meat so she had been disgusted by salmon for the last couple years. This managed to reverse that.
Ellie then got a wagyu course. I had basically come to the conclusion that wagyu is good, but drastically overrated and never worth the supplement fee or the premium it commands over other foods. However, this wagyu was incredible. I felt like it was what wagyu was supposed to taste like. In other words, a tasty piece of meat with the flavor and tenderness of fat but the texture of a meat. By this point, our experience had easily propelled the meal to a top three best meal ever. Up there with Coi and wd-50. These are all so different that ranking them would be impossible. They are all perfect depending on your mood. But hey, we are only done with the entrees. There was still plenty of food to eat.
After our second dessert, a mignardises cart came by. I really liked how the guy basically just looked at us and decided which mignardises we would like. It was refreshing to get a big plate of personalized chocolate handed to you without having to make any decisions. Also, it's super hard for me to remember more than my favorite three, but I always want more than three. I think we did ask for an additional macaroon though. Also, we didn't really eat any of them, as we opted to stuff them into the brownie box that they they proceeded to give us (which included a really soft fudge brownie with walnuts).
I think there were only two very small complaints. We ordered a half bottle of white wine which was simply left on the table and not put on ice. It would have been nice if they asked us if we wanted it on ice. I'm sure we could have asked if it actually bothered us, and we did seem to imply that we would possibly order a second half bottle, so they probably just assumed that we would finish drinking it before it got warm. But that ended up being incorrect. It took us over two hours to finish the bottle. The only other complaint is that most other tables seemed to be offered a homemade chocolate soda. After our amazing grapefruit soda experience at Coi, we were looking forward to homemade soda from Cyrus. But after the cheese plate we literally became too full to even care about getting the soda. For real, soda seemed too filling.
So basically Cyrus was exactly what we were expecting Joel Robuchon to be. There was lots of amazing food, all kinds of super extravagant things like mignardes, a caviar cart, tons of bread options, and multiple amuse bouches, excellent service, and the whole place made us feel really comfortable. In all, this dinner competes with Coi and wd-50 as top restaurants that we have been to so far. In fact, it was so good that we came really close to canceling our Dining Room at the Ritz dinner which was scheduled for the very next night. But ... we didn't.
February 12th, 2010 - Dining Room at the Ritz
The Dining Room at the Ritz in Nob Hill in San Francisco, CA
http://www.ritzcarltondiningroom.com/
I did not realize I've had these pictures up for so long. Luckily, I started this post in March 2010, so all the semi-clear statements are from then, and all the even-less-clear statements are from ... January 2011. Oops. Well anyway, we went to the Dining Room at the Ritz, the day after we'd gone to Cyrus, because apparently when we eat at nice restaurants we cram in three in two weeks instead of spreading them out like intelligent people with moderation. We were excited to be eating at the Ritz, with our fancy umbrella, as you can see.
The first thing we noticed when we walked in was that it was darker than a lot of our other SF experiences -- it had more of a "man cave" feel, as Kuau described it. We were asked to wait a couple minutes for our table in the bar area in this picture, complete with dark leather chairs and dim lighting. It was still a nice atmosphere though.
The decor of the table was very simple, but nice -- just a tiny cup of adorable bud tulips, and a little lamp. We were also greeted with a champagne and caviar cart, similar to Cyrus's champagne cart (we didn't order any though). Overall, you'll see that we mentally compared this experience to Cyrus often, since the experiences were back to back ... and somehow the Ritz edged out Cyrus in every way.
This was apparently our first amuse bouche. I believe it was scallops, but I don't remember. It looks like a significant size though, right? Sure, we'll go with that. (This is one of those 11 months post-meal comments, obviously.)
Our other amuse bouche was this caviar and poached quail egg with smoke. "Smoke??" you ask, puzzled. The plastic container in the picture was covered with saran wrap to keep the smoke inside. We were encouraged to poke a hole in the saran wrap to let some of the smoke flavor out, permeating the egg and caviar. I don't know if I actually tasted any of the smoky flavor, but you could see little white wisps of smoke come out of the vessel, which was pretty cool -- and a really unique presentation.
I believe this dish was tuna sashimi with salt and pepper, some kind of special soy sauce (housemade maybe?), and Japanese wasabi. Like at Makoto, the wasabi was clearly grated from a whole root and not squeezed out of a horseradish-y tube, so it had a similarly fresh flavor (but spicier than I remembered the Makoto wasabi being). Also, I'm sad to say I can't recall why, but I know this small piece of sashimi was absolutely delicious combined with everything else on the plate.
Not sure what these next two courses were -- abalone, I think, and a fish. And they look pretty!
We included this picture mostly to remind ourselves of what happened when I went to the bathroom: a waiter came by and took my napkin. Instead of refolding it and placing it on the table, as you might suspect, he ditched my napkin in a laundry container, and took a new folded napkin out for me -- with tongs -- to gently place it at my seat. Kuau was super enchanted with this little detail, so here it is.
This is (obviously) a lobster dish, and I believe it also came with meat. From what I recall the lobster was perfectly cooked, and overall this was quite delicious. 11 months later the picture is certainly making my mouth water, so that's cool.
This is the only dish that was still on their menu last March: hot foie gras with spiced huckleberry compote (and a bunch of other things). This picture is not an illusion: this was a giant piece of foie gras, a little bit bigger than half my palm, not to mention the obvious depth. The waiter even commented that it was really big when he handed it to me. I gave about a third of it to Kuau and was still full since it was so rich. It was absolutely delicious with the huckleberry compote as well; again, similar to Cyrus, which also paired their foie gras with some kind of fruit ... but this one was just a tad better.A couple more forgotten courses ... it makes me sad that we've forgotten :(
I ordered a latte and thought the presentation was pretty cute -- although they filled it so much that it overflowed when I tried to put in the spoon! The waiter fussed over it and eventually came back with another spoon.We ended with an intermezzo and a dessert.
