Per Se, New York (July 2011)

I came to New York looking for transcendent meals--the kind of transcendence one gets the first time reading Bellow, Nabokov or Amis--and was lucky enough to have three in five days. Normally, on a gourmandizing trip, I try to ease my way into a city's restaurant scene, building up to the pièce de résistance. Four days in New York didn't permit such a strategy, however, and I would have to begin with the titans right from the start.

In 2005, Michelin published its first U.S.-based guide of New York and awarded four restaurants with three stars, of which Per Se was one, and it has maintained that status ever since. Another reason for wanting to dine at Per Se centered on several people, whose opinions I value, telling me that it was the best dining experience in the country. Few restaurants can ever deliver on such lofty expectations. Per Se did.

Sidestepping the nonfunctional cerulean doors, I entered my first three-star Michelin restaurant and was met by Alex, a smiley young woman, who would be my server. Noting my request for an extended tasting menu, she didn't bother bringing me a menu--eating at a restaurant like Per Se is, after all, about submission--but instead started me off with an applely glass of champagne.




Having read The French Laundry Cookbook, I knew several dishes were bound to surface, starting with two gruyère gougeres, a salmon cornet (a salmon tartare wrapped in a little cone filled with red onion crème fraîche) and "oysters and pearls" (sterling white sturgeon caviar, tapioca, an oyster juice sabayon, chives, and Greek and Massachusetts oysters). And even though I knew these dishes were coming, they still floored me. The gruyère flooded my mouth as if it was marrow. The cornet contained the most nicely seasoned tartare that it has ever been my privilege to taste. And the "oysters and pearls" sent me into reverie as I closed my eyes, bursting the smooth as satin caviar on the roof of my mouth. One of the great things about this dish was, not surprisingly, the quenelle of caviar, which held together as if it was in solidarity, allowing me to cut it in half, yielding two exquisite mother of pearl spoonfuls.







Continuing the leitmotif of lusciousness, out came a turnip velouté with mejool dates, spinach purée and olive oil and a diamond-shaped sea urchin panna cotta enhanced by a carrot granita, coconut foam and micro basil.





Next, a silken sashimi of citrus-cured hiramasa with a charred shisito pepper, supremes of orange and two pimentón-honey gelées.



We returned to The French Laundry Cookbook with the white truffle-infused custard topped with a black truffle ragout and a chive potato chip. The reduced veal stock, black truffles and musty custard made for a playground of decadence.





In hindsight, this tartare of 100-day dry-aged American wagyu with marble potatoes, romaine lettuce, shaved parmesan, a caper mayonnaise, dehydrated capers, and a crisp potato tart probably explains why I found Le Bernardin's tartare to be a letdown, for this one had a wallop of salt coming both from the capers and the parm.



Two kinds of butter were on offer, one from Animal Farm in Vermont and one from the Loire Valley, both of which I used on the cooked proteins. I tuned out the bread tray, but did allow a white country roll, which went untouched, to be placed on my bread plate.





The corn velouté with basil oil, soppressata, Espelette pepper and whipped buttermilk foam was delicious enough to drown in. Intense and with a long peppery finish, it is the best version I have ever had.



It was followed by a celeriac-glazed terrine of Hudson Valley foie served alongside a beet gelée, peach marmalade, toasted brioche (again untouched), and six salts: maldon, two grays from Brittany, a Hawaiian sea salt, a black salt and a 40 million-year-old salt from Montana. Fortunately, the portion of foie was large enough to allow me to sample each one. Having consumed my champagne, Alex brought out a honey and apricot-laden glass of 1996 Sauternes.





Moving on to the fish and crustacean courses, there was a striped bass with compressed honeydew and cantalope, Armando Manni extra virgin olive oil, radish and Castelvetrano olives. This was the one dish where I felt the main ingredient wasn't allowed to radiate, as miniscule pieces of cilantro shoots proved to be too harsh for the barely cooked bass. In twenty-plus courses, it was the only foible I could find; those are the kind of positive returns that rival Bernie Madoff! Anyway, I forgot all about it when the magnanimous portion of butter poached Nova Scotia lobster with thompson grapes, celery leaves, celeriac purée, applewood smoked bacon and smoked bacon vinaigrette came out.






In the last three years, a handful of dishes have etched themselves in my memory: Guy Savoy's colors of caviar, Picasso's roast pigeon and Providence's uni-topped brioche with black truffles. This pasta course joins that short list. In The French Laundry Cookbook, Thomas Keller shares the following philosophy: "[of foie] serve just slightly too much. Go overboard with truffles and caviar too, so that people who have perhaps only eaten truffles in stingy quantities can taste them and say, 'Oh, now I understand.'" That's what this caramelized potato gnocchi was all about. Sure there was a delicious duck gizzard ragout. But the real treat centered on the truffle, which Alex unveiled from what looked like a treasure chest. I then looked on as she shaved the soft ball-sized Australian black truffle until the gnocchi were almost entirely obscured, and for the next who-knows-how-many-minutes?--it's almost as if I blacked out and journeyed to some paradisal wonderland--I simply wandered around the plate with fork in hand and allowed the ingredients to seduce me.



How does one even conceive of a follow-up? Well, conceive they did, first, with a sous vide poulard with creamed morels and glazed turnips followed by a rib of baby lamb with navel orange confit, pickled summer squash and a separated gremolata. Back during the foie course, I engaged in a little mischief, placing little piles of the salts on my bread plate, and used them to great effect on both proteins. And the wine paired for these two courses was simple amazing, a 2003 Recioto della Valpolicella Classico, with a finish that seemed to last for days.





A runner then placed the cheese course in front of me, a Pennsylvania Pipe Dreams goat cheese with San Marzano tomato marmalade, and a bean salad tossed in a whole grain mustard vinaigrette, punctuated by a little good-natured, marijuana-based innuendo--I guess I've yet to shed my Berkeley-ish manner. As for the cheese, it had a runniness around the perimeter and firmed up to the consistency of cream cheese as I grew closer to its center.



Finally entering the dessert portion of the meal, the first one, a ginger sorbet encased in plum purée and topped with a sake granita and tiny plum meringues, reminded me of a concentric concoction at Coi in San Francisco, except better. It was quickly followed up by an equally august dehydrated strawberry-coated parfait with a jasmine custard, a jasmine tea foam and a strawberry sorbet.





And to finish dessert proper, a chocolate cremeux with caramelized puff pastry and a bourbon-maple syrup ice cream as well as a cinnamon-dusted brioche doughnut, replete with a churro-like interior (in contrast to the pachydermal preparation at Forest Grill), alongside a cappuccino semifreddo.





Then, what was modestly called "mignardises" began. I was swarmed with sweets--house-made chocolates (vanilla, raspberry, passion fruit, cashew, kona coffee and crème fraîche), butterscotch caramels, hazelnut guanduja, cassis macarons, white, milk and dark chocolate truffles, pulled sugar candies, shortbread cookies--and while I tried most of them, I would end up passing some along to friends the next day.











Per Se isn’t just a restaurant. It’s a civilizing institution. There are few reasons that merit donning slacks and a jacket, but eating here is one of them. Now I cannot imagine what the servers made of my wrinkled shirt, facial hair-clouded face, unkempt hair and Oxford Handbook of Political Economy open to a notationally intensive page. In the end, it didn't matter because I was happy, having just eaten what may well have been the perfect meal.

Corton, New York (July 2011)

With a mere four hours between the end of lunch and my reservation at Corton, I was left trying to figure out some way to amass an appetite. Walking from Brooklyn to Tribeca and getting lost definitely helped, but I was still thirstier than I was hungry by the time I arrived for the most anticipated dinner of this little jaunt, and the food didn't disappoint. Entering, I was met by the maître d', a red-haired, bespectacled young woman, who once worked at, and strongly recommended, Eleven Madison Park. She walked me to a table, where for the next three hours I would remain largely unbothered by the all-too-close tables.

I started by ordering a glass of Grand Cru champagne--more to relieve my thirst than to enjoy--and asked my server how best to extend the very reasonably priced eight-course tasting menu. She suggested just picking the extra dishes from the seasonal menu, and Chef Liebrandt would incorporate them accordingly. I went with the foie, guinea hen and smoked caramel dessert; but when the server mentioned an off-the-menu mangalitsa dish, I had little choice but to tack that on as well. Now I don't generally talk about prices, but it would be just $55 for those four courses, a veritable bargain at any quality restaurant, let alone a two-star Michelin recipient.




Dinner began with a litany of amuse: a crumbly almond-herb-black sesame financier, a potato cracker filled with mornay, a fresh-from-the-fryer potato croquette, a sweetish corn pudding topped with black bean espuma, and finally a not pictured skewered cube of big eye tuna with a garlic chip and charred lime that one is instructed to squeeze over the fish. The warm lime juice glazed the fish, imparting a burst of fresh acidity.

With amuses cleared, out came a gentleman with a selection of breads, including olive-rosemary (pictured below), cranberry-walnut, smoked baguette and one or two others served with sweet cream butter and a seaweed butter.

The first course was a hodgepodge--asparagus spears, sour cherry pate de fui and hazelnuts--tied together by a yuzu-summer truffle mousse and a not pictured (I swear this was my last lapse) buckwheat blini topped with shaved asparagus. I have to say, the summer truffle, a lightweight compared to its hiemal incarnation, got lost amid the other pronounced flavors.

This next course--cherry glazed torchons of foie, pistachio tuile, apricot-black olive butter, brioche and a cloud-like foie chantilly with cucumber gelée and chamomile--was truly a work of art. There are a number of chefs who can make food look good, but not all of them can make it taste good consistently. Chef Liebrandt doesn't have that problem. I loved everything about this multi-plate offering: the element of trompe l'oeil, the flavor and the accoutrement. Dozens of foie gras dishes have been placed in front of me over the years, but none had made me as giddy as the one at Corton.

As good as the ayu with huckleberry purée, osetra caviar, a spinach roulade and shaved Japanese soy salt was, I think I was still smitten by the foie to the point where I seriously considered ordering a second portion just so I could experience that impish joy once more. 

The next course seemed to be a pantry raid of sorts: variegated beets, morels, purple basil, chive chips, romanesco, eggplant caviar, saffron purée and a saffron meringue. Some of the greens were a tad unwieldy, but all of the component parts made for a satisfying salad.

Next out was the vadouvan-spiced monk garlanded with sweet potato gnocchi, a morel, red wine-hibiscus gelée, an abalone and squid amalgam with burnt flower meringue and cippollini and a flaky herb-fava-sea-bean tart. The coarseness of the spice blend imparted a wonderful contrast in texture, but also happened to render the flavor of the gnocchi indistinct.

Chef Liebrandt has a unique genius for persuading proteins into poetry, and that was on full display with the first of three meat dishes: squab breast wrapped in double smoked bacon and sauced with young coconut, turnip and miso. Like the foie, this is just one of those dishes one dreams about, the meat's uniformly florid complexion, its perfect cylindrical shape and the flecks of salt on top. Oh, and lest I forget the accompanying plates of a kimchi gelée with dots of kimchi mayonnaise, foie mousse and a cocoa chip as well as an eggplant-sardine-basil skewer.

Following the squab would be another clever use of transglutaminase (an enzyme that binds proteins):  leg and breast of guinea hen studded with lardo and served alongside ruby red shrimp ballantine, braised cock's comb, romanesco purée, anise-hyssop sauce, a pork trotter croquette with a deliciously gelatinous interior offset by the crepitation-textured exterior and an anise-infused cherry.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet but probably explains why I was so taken by the protein preparations at Corton centers on just how aggressively they season. More broadly, this liberal use of salt may account for why I enjoyed Corton, Daniel and Per Se so much more than Le Bernardin. The last savory course of the evening was a mangalitsa pork chop with a citrus-pork jus, asparagus, corn custard, sesame crusted beet, king oyster mushroom and a potato fondant hollowed out and impregnated with buttery potato purée.

Moving on to the cheese course, here was another beautiful composition, as never before have I seen a slice of cheese used as a canvas; Liebrandt decorated the tomme de cherve (a raw goat's milk cheese from France) with shaved orange cauliflower, pea purée, peas and a pistachio crisp on the side.

Desserts at Corton are a textural playground, starting with the fennel sorbet, a sphere of fromage blanc, blueberries, cheesecake and blueberry tapioca, then the delightfully salty smoked caramel sabayon with caramel corn, brown butter crumble, blackberries and caramel corn ice cream coated in popcorn and finishing with the layered vanilla-saffron fudge with apricot purée, crystallized violet, salted chocolate encased summer truffle, matcha green tea sablé, green tea powder and vanilla bean purée.

The mignardises service continued the theme of deliciousness with the largest pear canalé I've ever seen, strawberry-lemon verbena and passion fruit pate de fui, mojito and pimm's cup (a gin-based cocktail) macarons and four house-made chocolates: palet d'or, Mexican-spiced chocolate, salted caramel and espresso.

In my mind, what might keep Corton from achieving four stars from the New York Times or three stars in the Michelin Guide is the restaurant's ambiance. With the cramped table set-up, it gives off a neighborhood restaurant aura, in contradistinction to the grand destination dining rooms of Daniel or Per Se. And the one detraction from my overall experience resulted from diners being far too close to one another. For the last thirty minutes of my dinner, a yet-to-be-indicted finance fucktard was seated next to me and insisted on making stentorian declarations trying to impress his date all while proving he knew nothing about the food being placed in front of him. This happens everywhere, I know, but not everyone should have to hear it.