L'Arpege Paris: Exhausting indulgence

The most amazing thing in this restaurant it's that the party never seems to end. From the moment you're seated for lunch till your departure, three and a half hours later, the dishes just don't stop coming. Some of them small, some of them more copious, most of them very imaginative, some dishes amount to a tour de force of technique, imagination, freshness and flavors (sea urchin and thyme sabayon? OMG!!!!), other dishes use the seasonal ingredients grown at the chef/owner to create delicious combinations of flavors (rhubarb and asparagus season? hope you like rhubarb and asparagus). Just an incredible lunch afternoon.

But....

At some point, it becomes an overdose, I was crying uncle after the 12th dish (there were fifteen all together, not including amuse bouches and mignardises in the "cheaper" prix fixed menu). It just never ended and I really couldn't wait to get out of there.

Another criticism, and it may just be me, but there was very little protein in the dishes; one small medallion of monkfish, two small nibbles of sweetbreads, one small piece of cheese. I needed some protein badly at the end to balance the meal (and to cure a massive headache).

Service was all in all excellent, but the first 8 dishes arrived in very quick succession and the remaining ones came at a much slower pace.

Conclusion: Go if you must experience this once in a lifetime, but just remember in the words of one of the staff, when I said: "It continues?" she said: "IT NEVER STOPS"

• Visited April 2014
• ****

Scarpetta New York City: A few hits among the many misses

Most of the things I hate in NYC restaurants are again obvious here;
The over fifty crowd gets shoved in the corners next to the bathrooms and the wait stations.
The wine list is incomprehensible, the sommelier was nice enough to recommend something affordable among the many overpriced choices. The service actually is ok though too hassled.
The food comes out so fast, no time to relax - hello, tap, mineral or sparkling? hello, any wine or cocktails? hello, need help with the menus? hello, ready to order? hello here is the food. Boom boom boom. take a break guys, let us enjoy our conversation.
Now the food is all coming out at breakneck speed:
Appetizers were frito misto - good, crudo - excellent, polenta - cold, mushy, boring. short ribs - good texture but cold, with a creamy farro risotto (how much butter/cream can you put in that?)
Entrees: the famous spaghetti with tomato sauce, good but not earth shattering good, a black cod entree looked very strange, smallest and thinnest slice of black cod I've ever seen. No sign of the fennel dust and serving three grape tomatoes when the menu says concentrated tomatoes is bordering outrageous.
Dessert: The coconut panna cotta with guava soup is so sweet it has no other flavors except sugar.The chocolate peanut butter ganache is good.
The problem is that when you're sitting down in an unrelaxed atmosphere, everything happens so fast, no time to enjoy the food, no time to have a decent conversation, you just want to leave.
Sure, we could complain and then what? We get comped some other bad dish that we didn't want sitting in an unwelcome space, we get $20 off a $300 check? No thank you. We'd rather not return.

• Visited May 2014
• **

Tribeca Grill New York City: Dependable and good

Six of us and the place is as nice as ever. Excellent service, including excellent wine service with a very helpful and friendly sommelier.
Imaginative and very tasty appetizers and entrees, nice selection of desserts, Cheese course a little pedestrian (Epoisse? La Tur? Aged Gouda? Feels like the nineties) and lacks imagination.

Prices are reasonable for NYC. Only thing is that the staff looked very busy when the restaurant wasn't even full, they may be overwhelmed on a busy night but that's speculation.

• Visited May 2014
• ****

The Modern New York City: Best meal in New York City for years

Could rival Per Se where we ate a few years ago, or Blue Hill at Stone Barns last year. Absolutely magnificent.
Imaginative and appetizing trio of amuses
Every dish looked gorgeous on the plate, complex with multiple layers of flavor, never enough to make one feel full and just big enough to satisfy. 

Recommended: The foie gras praline, the chicken with pistachios, the foie gras and diver scallop, the cod and chorizo, among the desserts the pineapple carpaccio was delicious. The wine list is difficult but the wine service, actually the whole staff, was excellent.
HIghly recommended

• Visited March 2014
• *****

Annisa New York City: good but no fireworks

First the good parts: service was excellent, the setting comfortable, the whole atmosphere very welcoming.

Now for the food, well, it was ok, but nothing spectacular, textures are interesting where there is a contrast between crunchy, soft and foamy elements on a plate but the flavors are very monolithic and bland. The soup dumplings are good but so are most soup dumplings in Chinatown, the hearts of palm salad lacks flavor, the dressing could use some punch, the lobster was a masterpiece of different textures but the flavor profile was just not there and the rabbit was overcooked, its main enhancing flavor was a little tartness from the yogurt/labne paste and 3 (I counted) pomegranate seeds.

The wines by the glass were similar to the dishes, monolithic and lacking in complexity. Pinot Meunier? Now that should be a blending grape in a Champagne, on its own it just tastes like slightly alcoholic thinned grape juice, the white Rhone lacked acidity and was flabby. The sommelier would have been better served by recommending pedestrian Pinot Noir and Chablis instead of these wines.

The cheese course was good but at $21 for seven small slices, not a grand bargain. The yogurt panna cotta again had an appealing tartness but its flavors were unbalanced.

There are far better restaurant choices in NYC in my opinion.

• Visited February 2014
• **

Gramercy Tavern New York City: Disappointing

So this is a great restaurant? For the price I expect:
A more imaginative amuse - we were given one small gougere (cheese puff)!!
A normal sized portion - I am not asking for huge Olive Garden style portions, but the fish dish we got had a fish the size of a crudo appetizer, one small fingerling potato (cut in 2) and some leeks and celery. Pathetic.
The deserts and the bread were good. I guess they expected the diners to fill up on bread.
The wine service was good.
This would be a 3/5 experience if not for the ridiculous price.

• Visited December 2013
• **

Minetta Tavern New York City ; ONLY THE BURGER IS WORTH IT!

Yes I'm screaming. The black label burger is the best I've ever had and the price is now $28 up from $26 a month ago (please tell Mr Bernanke that we do have inflation).
We also had the bone-in strip steak - $59 for a huge strip that contains 70% fat and about 7-8 bites of great meat and a $48 veal chop which doesn't even compare to the $29 great veal chop at Wollensky grill.
The sides are mediocre - fries are sad and a little sogy, the punched potatoes lacked salt, the spinach is good.
The wine list is pathetic, very few good value choices (a $110 Cotes du Rhone? Are you kidding?).
Frankly, the place is a rip-off. Yes, the black label burger is great, but everything else is overpriced and frankly not worth it. The steak at Wolfgang and Sparks is better, the porterhouse at Keens is better, the veal chop at Wollensky is better.
As for the famous scene, forget it, I could care less if celebrities and good looking young people have more money than sense and want to patronize the place. I'll take my business to any other steakhouse in NYC

• Visited December 2013
• **

Churrascaria Plataforma New York City: Protein and salt

It's fine but go easy...The idea is to make things salty and dry so you'll order more and more drinks.
Easy on the pasta when doing the salad bar, you don't want to fill up
From the side dishes, only order the vinaigrette sauce to put on the steaks 
The polenta fries and fried bananas are not worth it, actually almost everything on the side dishes is dry
No filet mignon, too salty and the meat is dry
No chicken, even the thighs are salty and dry
Stick with the ribeye, prime rib, sirloin, beef ribs, lamb and lamb chops.
Go to the bathroom before you leave as you'd have had plenty to drink. You need a buck to pay the attendant(?!?)

October 2013

***

Babbo New York City; Beware, you are about to be scammed!

It's difficult to talk about the experience at Babbo without feeling like a dope. I fell for some of the oldest tricks in the book; first - a smiling staff who speak with a bad accent pushing mediocre overpriced dishes, like strawberries with a 25 year old balsamic vinegar for $20 (are you kidding me?) or burrata (that sells for $5 at the most expensive cheese shops in NYC) with some tomatoes, or the worst - a baby arugula salad (the one that one buys in any supermarket) with some balsamic and three slices of parmesan cheese for $18. 
Second the wine list; I'm a wine geek and I usually can navigate a wine list to find interesting and less overpriced options. Not here; the wine list is extremely complicated - lots of obscure producers at decent prices but also lots of (way) overpriced familiar names - most of them mediocre. That's fair enough - I wanted to go for something obscure at a decent price, but was steered away for something slightly more expensive, then even more and more expensive, till at the end, tired and wanting to make a choice I went for a mediocre wine that is way overpriced. The sommelier should have known from my first indication the price I was comfortable with but probably figured that it was worth steering me to something that ended up costing way way more. I know, I know, buyer beware but my guard was down and I blame mostly myself but this is a tactic worthy of Goldman Sachs or the old Salomon Brothers (aka Hitler and Stalin) not a restaurant where one goes to enjoy the evening.
The food now; ok, it's good. But....
The pastas are slightly better than Serafina and can't hold a candle to some of the other Italian places in NYC, the best dish was the $100 ribeye for two, but for steak go to Luger. The dessert are insipid.
Would i ever go again? No! Never! And hopefully this review will serve as a guide to other patrons who are less gullible and have stronger willpower than me.

July 2013

**

Avra Estitatorio New York City: $18 for a Greek Salad

Seriously, this is one expensive restaurant, the food is decent, but simple and well prepared, the seating is mixed, and one gets seated based on the whim of the hostess; some tables are comfortable in a nice area indoors or outdoors but a lot of other tables are very cramped near waiter stations.
So a little above $250 for two for a Greek salad, 2 grilled fish, 2 side dishes, one dessert, 2 coffees and a $50 bottle of wine. Wow!

• Visited June 2013
• ***

Casa Mono New York City: expensive for what it is

By now everyone has read about the small tables and the loud atmosphere, the food itself was pretty good, but the portions are so small, even for us who usually complain that they are too big. The prices are also astronomical.
We will probably not go back

• Visited May 2013
• ***

La Mangeoire New York City: Decent, but lower your expectations

One would go to La Mangeoire with high expectations considering the place is Christian Delouvrier's. Mr Delouvrier used to be in charge of Lespinasse, has once received a four star review from the NY Times and has written a terrific cookbook (which one should own if only for the risotto recipe).

This however is just plain bistro grub, a good enough coq au vin, a mediocre vichyssoise full of butter, a cauliflower gratin so rich one tastes mainly the comte cheese but not the cauliflowers.

All in all, most of the dishes were lukewarm and inconsistently cooked. Maybe the kitchen was busy that evening, maybe we need to try again, but this was, if not an outright disappointment, then at least a let down.

• Visited May 2013

***

BLT Steak New York City:  consistent mediocrity

Really not up to par, while the hosts are gracious, the waiters have the personality of a sock, the steaks are boring, the seafood even more so (when it's not actually mediocre), even the famed popovers seemed to have suffered from some gruyere cutbacks. Avoid, better steakhouses abound

• May 2013

• **

So after not posting any entries for 3 years, I decided to copy everything that I posted on Trip Advisor since then.  Here's the first post:

Blue Smoke New York City:  Great Food, Great Atmosphere

Typical great hospitality from one of Danny Meyer's places. Good barbecue, good atmosphere, pleasant professional service designed to make you feel welcome. And if you want even more, take the stairs down to Jazz Standard for some music and the same grub

• December 2012
• ****