Restaurant experiment: Veritas

Veritas

43 East 20th Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South

New York, NY 10003

212-353-3700

http://www.veritas-nyc.com/

Eight people commanding a restaurant.  Kind of cool but kind of not since Veritas was on the empty side.  Almost creepy.  It’s nice to have attention lavished on you, but a few more full tables would have been nice.  Holiday weekend?  A shame regardless. 

It was AmyL’s idea to check Veritas out.  Even though the chef associated with the place has since departed, it’s still noted for its cuisine (one Michelin star) and mammoth wine list.

We sat around a figure-8 shaped table which sort of segregated our group into two factions.  After some discussion, it was agreed to try out the nine course tasting menu.  Yikes.  I’ve never done a tasting menu that large before…have I even done a tasting menu?  Don’t think so. 

Armed with glasses of riesling, here’s what we had.  It was too dark in the restaurant for perfect pictures; we must make do with a small smattering.  The kind employees gave us menus to take home so we could remember all the dishes we tried.  Perfect!

1. Amuse bouche–asparagus soup with croutons, thumbs up.
2. Lemon marinated langoustine–mmm!  One of my favorites since I’m partial to raw shellfish, and it came with caviar.  Langoustine is also known as scampi and the Norway lobster, as I looked up just now.  Ah, now Red Lobster Shrimp Scampi makes sense.
3. Foie gras mille-feuille–mmm again!  Foie gras with pineapple was a rather unconventional pairing, but it worked. 
4. Lobster nage–eh.  Lobster soup with white asparagus.
5. Fresh white asparagus roti–the yolk from the egg attacked Stacy!  The egg was somewhat bland, but that was balanced out by the saltiness of the jamon.
6. 6.  Sauteed frogs legs–this had to be the most talked about platter during the meal.  The bone was pulled out in such a way that the meat turned into a lollipop.  Plus you had a special dish of water with which to wash your fingers.  What fun!  Mini-chicken drumsticks with green dipping sauce.
7. Wild turbot–another eh.
8. Barbary duck breast–while I did praise this, I was become stuffed at this point and couldn’t enjoy it as much.  Bummer.  Nectarines (whoops, I said peach) and figs were delightfully warm and sweet. 
9. L-Ossau-Iraty–cheese!
10. 10.  Chocolate mille-feuille–again, I was too stuffed.  They sure do like putting gold flakes in the food.
11. 11.  Bonus dessert–marshmallow and Earl Grey truffle and something that I forgot and ate before I took a snapshot.  The other two were not of note, but I drink Earl Grey like nobody’s business, so the Earl Grey chocolate was just my style.

Nine course tasting menus could be a bit of a mixed bag.  I don’t think any one dinner guest of mine was vehemently infatuated with all eleven courses, but we all liked a lot several and were neutral or didn’t like several.  It all evens out.

Healthy debates–err conversation, good friends, fun food.  And that’s the truth that I found in the wine.

Restaurant experiment: Perry St

Perry St

172 Perry Street at West Street

New York, NY 10014

212-352-1900

jean-georges.com

Are you drooling yet? Let’s start with the best part of any meal, dessert! Or we can be like one of those movies which tells a story in reverse. And now I present Perry St, another eatery in the Jean-Georges restaurant empire. The chef himself has a blog which is worth taking a peek at.

Perry St offers up a $24 lunch prix fixe every day of the week. Bargain indeed! It’s Michelin starred and everything too. The $24 includes two plates and dessert. You have a choice of either ricotta cheesecake or molten chocolate cake. Logical thought led AmyL and I to select the chocolate cake. Mmm, volcanic chocolate. Pretty to boot too, with the light minty-colored pistachio ice cream floating on pistachio crumbles. The photograph speaks for itself.

For plates, I wanted the shrimp and beef tartare, but the waiter broke the sad news that they were all out of beef tartare. Personally I’m in the group that believes waiters should tell you what’s not available as you receive your menu. Then I had to scramble to pick an alternate. It ended up being the Arctic char sashimi. I wasn’t sure what Arctic char was, but it looked and tasted just like salmon.

Fish note: Arctic char is related to both salmon and trout. It’s an eco-friendly fishy, farm raised, something you can feel green about eating.

The sashimi was jazzed up with lemon, olive oil, and crispy skin. Fabulous. If only the portion was bigger since fish isn’t all that heavy. The sauteed shrimp features baby artichokes and lemon fennel vinaigrette. The generous dash of herbs sprinkled on top enhanced the experience. Can’t go wrong with the seafood here at Perry St, and AmyL heartily liked her beets and slow cooked salmon.

AmyL kept ordering dishes that contained more food that me. But I ate the free bread and was decently satisfied.

As for non-edible aspects of Perry St, the spacious restaurant is practically all windows, meaning light galore. And the place sure likes white, though the white leather seat I was sitting on was losing the battle with dirt. The crowd was more business-power-lunch/meet-the-parents. Our waiter looked like a stereotypical geek right out of central casting with the curly fro and huge eyeglasses. He was keeping it real.

Restaurant experiment: Peter Luger

Peter Luger

178 Broadway at Driggs

Brooklyn, NY 11211

718-387-7400

peterluger.com

AmyL had been the champion of us eating at Peter Luger, the Michelin-starred, established-in-1887 steakhouse institution. She got us a 10:45pm reservation; if you’re planning on coming here, be sure to book about a month in advance for normal times. Peter Luger is not far from the subway, but the surrounding area is almost spooky dead. We met up with the Geneticist and his friends T and the Engineer and prepared ourselves to gouge on steak.

The waiter asked if we needed menus. The menu as you could imagine, is pretty bare bones. I copied AmyL and ordered the small single steak [medium] with French fried potatoes (approximately $32). I was not ravenous due to the big lunch, but I was hungry enough, opting not to fill up on bread which wasn’t receiving rave reviews from the table anyway. What also didn’t receive rave reviews was the world famous Peter Luger’s old fashioned steak sauce which was basically cocktail sauce. A1’s still #1 in my book. The other three decided to order steak for three, rare. I tried a bite of that. Very tuna tartare-like.

As you can see from my photo above, the steak was astronomically amazing. It didn’t even need sauce. So buttery and flavorful and meaty. A vegetarian’s nightmare! Just rented Tommy Boy so now I have that quotation about butchers and steaks in my head. It’s not exactly appropriate to repeat here.

Even though our stomachs were full of steak, we indulged in desserts. The rest of us hacked into a fat slice of cheesecake with homemade “schlag” (whipped cream), and T generously let us try her mango sorbet. Mmm.

From reviews on Yelp, I thought the waiters would be gruffer than they were. They were actually sort of friendly, but you got the feeling that they wouldn’t be bending over backwards to satisfy your every whim. However, they did toss silverware on the table, loud clatter. And they were trying to shoo us out so they could close; we were the last diners at the restaurant. Cash only is annoying. But you receive a shiny gold Peter Luger chocolate coin as a free dessert.

I got oily steak fat onto one of my favorite t-shirts. Oh well, if I had to stain a shirt, it might as well be from phenomenal cuts of cow.

Andy Samberg and Bill Hader from Saturday Night Live were at the next table. Sweet!

The top of the food heap, Michelin-style

This past Monday, both Zagat and the Michelin Guide released their lists of top restaurants in New York City. I’m not much of a Zagat person because you have to sign up to access the reviews and ratings online, but the books are all right. The New York Times has an article comparing the two: it can be safely concluded that overall the lists are pretty in tune with each other.

The Michelin Guide’s list of 2009 starred New York restaurants can be found here. Country fell off the list but I’m not that concerned since I didn’t exactly have a flawless experience there. Notoriously-difficult-to-get-a-reservation Babbo also does not make an appearance. Notoriously-difficult-to-get-a-reservation Momofuku Ko does make an appearance. I want to eat at both of those dining establishments someday, along with the rest I haven’t set foot in. Too many restaurants I want to try…I need to win the lottery, like now.

I’ll be sampling the offerings at two One Stars this weekend and will report back next week!

Restaurant experiment: Anthos

Anthos

36 West 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues

New York, NY 10019

212-582-6900

anthosnyc.com

Anthos sure has accumulated the accolades: one Michelin star, nominated as a James Beard Foundation Award Best New Restaurant. This was the last meal during my Restaurant Week. We were seated upstairs in a small anteroom containing four tables. I couldn’t decide if upstairs was where they put the rejects, or if it was special and more private and quieter than the main dining hall downstairs.

The meal started off with lots of little goodies. There’s a tray of olives and fried fish, amongst other things. And you get a free shot of mysterious vegetable puree. The guy who presented it to us was sort of a low talker. I thought he said parsley soup, but that couldn’t be right. Parsnip? It was truly amusing my mouth. And there is a roll presented with both cow and goat milk butter.

Down to business. My first course was the raw meze of fluke with apricot, yogurt, and hazelnut. It was pleasant, then again, I am a raw fish fiend and am partial to uncooked fish flesh. Ambika said it was a bit salty, but it wasn’t too sodium laden for me. The second was a lamb shank. The meat was falling off the gigantic Flintstones-sized bone, very tender. However the flavors just weren’t doing it. I was eh on it. The dessert was interesting. Stacy got prepared strawberries in a little bird nest, too cute! Ambika and I went with the chocolate sesame cake: chocolate bottom layer, mousse-like sesame top layer. And hazelnut brittle crumbs on the side. At first bite, the combo was a bit weird, but it grew on me with each subsequent bite.

Anthos sure has a large staff. We had a main waiter, and with each plate, it was a different runner. With this kind of upscale joint, you expect a certain level of service. Therefore I was slightly dismayed when the runners put the wrong item in front of me not once but twice. We had to tell the guys that I ordered that, this plate is hers, blah blah. At least the service wasn’t snobby. And when they put the forks down, the tines were facing the table. I wonder if there is a reason for that. The check comes with little take homes, twin almond cookies wrapped up with pink ribbon. Like a party favor from a wedding!