Le Cirque

Kalina via Eater

Note: This is a review of Le Cirque under Chef Christophe Bellanca, who left the restaurant in October 2008. Click here for a review under chef Olivier Reginensi, who is the chef as of 2012.

Click here for a review of the Café at Le Cirque.

*

Le Cirque is one of the few remaining bastions of classic old-French luxury in New York. Now in its third location, it was at various times a three or four-star restaurant, but critics hammered it when the current version opened in 2006. Frank Bruni and Adam Platt both returned two-star verdicts, which for this type of restaurant is equivalent to condemnation.

Much beloved of celebrities and the monied set, Le Cirque didn’t need Frank Bruni’s blessing. Owner Siro Maccioni could simply have shrugged, as the owners of the Four Seasons apparently did after a similar Bruni smackdown. Instead, he went to work. He fired chef Pierre Schaedelin, bringing in Christophe Bellanca to replace him. The review cycle is over, so Le Cirque is stuck with its two stars for now. But at least Adam Platt recognized the improvement in his 2007 year-end retrospective:

But perhaps the most impressive kitchen overhaul of all has taken place at Le Cirque, where Sirio Maccioni’s latest chef, Christophe Bellanca, has expanded the pricey, formerly stolid menu to include a whole variety of sophisticated, radically pricey new treats. The grandly impersonal room underneath the Bloomberg tower remains filled with the usual collection of grimly smiling contessas and aging plutocrats tottering to and fro in their pin-striped suits. But when I dropped in not very long ago, there were an impressive nine specials of the day on the menu, along with all sorts of newfangled entrées: dim-sum-size ravioli swollen with foie gras, carefully deboned portions of squab crusted with crushed walnuts, and ribbons of chestnut-flavored pappardelle decked with braised pheasant, which the plutocrats merrily supplemented one night (for a $185 fee) with shavings of white truffle shipped direct, via Maccioni’s fabled connection, from the hills of Alba.

(I don’t quite understand why, if he thinks the improvement is that significant, Platt does not also upgrade his two-star rating, but I’ll save that rant for another post.)

The bifurcated service at Le Cirque—one level for celebrities, another for the rest of us—is the stuff of legend. Upon her arrival in New York, Times critic Ruth Reichl was famously treated like dirt. Everything changed once Maccioni figured out who she was: “The King of Spain is waiting in the bar, but your table is ready.” Reichl demoted the restaurant to three stars. In the 2006 update, Frank Bruni encountered much the same attitude that Reichl did. So did the Amateur Gourmet, who wrote about his experience in a post called “Only a Jerk Would Eat at Le Cirque.”

Perhaps Maccioni has finally learned his lesson. When I visited with a friend for a year-end dinner, we saw no evidence of second-class service. Our table was ready immediately, and we weren’t seated in Siberia. Service was friendly and polished, but the large, busy space is not geared to long, quiet meals. I didn’t note the exact timing, but I felt that the multi-course tasting menu went by a tad quickly.

The clientele was a broad mix of young and old. We didn’t notice any celebrities, but a couple of middle-aged men were with lavishly dressed women who appeared to be a good deal younger than they. You can fill in the possibilities for yourself.

For a variety of reasons, it took me a month to get around to writing this blog post, and I’m afraid my recollections have dimmed somewhat. We ordered the tasting menu, which in general was impressive, with only a couple of dull spots (which most tasting menus have). The food is shown below in photo-essay format.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Le Cirque (151 E. 58th Street between Lexington & Third Avenues, East Midtown)

Food: ***
Service: **½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Picholine

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Picholine.

Picholine has redeemed itself. Two years ago, we were ripped off on New Year’s Eve, spending $800 for two on a meal that might charitably have been worth a third of that. Last night, we spent $400 on an excellent meal that was worth every penny.

I’m not the only one who thought the “old” Picholine needed some attitude adjustment. Before a September 2006 makeover, Frank Bruni chose Picholine for his sister’s birthday, and it was so lackluster that he had to apologize. For the Times restaurant critic, not being able to find the right restaurant for a family celebration must have been acutely embarrassing.

Post renovation, Bruni found it “arguably the nicest restaurant surprise of this disappointing season,” re-affirming the three-star rating two previous critics had awarded. The 2008 Michelin Guide upgraded Picholine to two stars, making it one of the city’s top ten restaurants.

The revamped décor has impressed no one except, perhaps, some Upper West Side dowagers. Even the china looks like something your grandmother would use. La Grenouille, a restaurant that is thirty years older, is far more lively.

There is nothing the management can do about the narrow space, but when you enter you hit a traffic jam around the host station/bar/coat-check area, a drawback I recall from two previous visits. The aisles in the two dining rooms are narrow, and servers sometimes seem to be pirouetting around obstacles.

Fortunately, there is nothing old-fashioned about chef Terrance Brennan’s rejuvenated cuisine, which is reason enough why Picholine remains popular, and one of this town’s toughest tables to book. Even with several weeks’ notice, 8:45 p.m. was the earliest I could get on a Saturday evening, although we showed up at 8:20 and were seated immediately. (Picholine does a lot of pre- and post-Lincoln Center business; it was still more than half full when we left at almost 11:00.)

With the best cheese selection in town (shared with sister restaurant Artisanal), the cheese course at Picholine is practically obligatory. It is therefore curious that the menu does nothing to alert you to this fact. If you choose either of the printed prix fixe options—three courses ($85) or four courses ($95)—it apparently does not include cheese. (Both of the tasting menus, at $110, do include cheese.)

When we told the server we wanted an appetizer, an entrée, and a cheese tasting, he offered us an option not shown on the menu—two courses for $65—and then we were charged separately the odd price of $33.50 for a six-cheese tasting. I am not sure how a first-time visitor would be expected to figure this out. And why is the menu still captioned “Autumn 2007”?

The opening trio of amuses-bouches was slightly pedestrian. A codfish cake (9:00 in the photo) tasted like a smaller version of a cafeteria fish stick, and lobster salad (1:00 in the photo) didn’t taste very lobster-y. A smooth mushroom panna cotta  (5:00) was the best of the group.

 

Chef Brennan loves his panna cottas. Sea urchin panna cotta (above left) with caviar had an ethereal silky texture. My girlfriend ordered the foie gras terrine (above right; $8 suppl.), which was on a par with the better examples of the genre around town.

Heirloom Chicken “Kiev” — the quotation marks suggesting a riff on the classic dish — was a tour de force. It is still January, but for now this is the dish of the year.

Brennan wraps chicken around chanterelles and foie gras, covers it in a cornflake batter and deep fries it, melting the foie gras. After the dish is brought to your table, a server lances the chicken with a silver spear, and the liquid foie gras oozes out. (The photo was taken after this surgery had been performed.)

Frank Bruni loved it too.

The frommagier brought the cheese cart to our table and gave us an overview. We told him our general preferences and asked him to choose six. There was not a weak selection among the group. As always, he handed us a printed cheese guide to take home, with the ones he’d selected for us identified by number. The meal ended with a broad selection of petits-fours.

The wine list is long and expensive, so I decided to let the sommelier choose for us, giving him a ceiling of $100. He came up with a luscious burgundy at $95 that went perfectly with the chicken. We also accepted his offer of a taste of sauterne to go with my girlfriend’s foie gras. We were charged only $10 for that, and he comped a white wine to go with my Sea Urchin appetizer.

Our captain, a veteran no doubt of many dinner services, provided helpful ordering advice and stayed on top of things. Both the frommagier and sommelier followed up to ensure we were happy with our meal. The junior staff that served the bread and amuses-bouches were a little hard to understand—a problem at many New York restaurants, as these positions are often taken by non-native speakers. Although we were seated side-by-side at a table with ample space, the cramped quarters meant that servers had to reach awkwardly to set and clear the silverware.

The space at Picholine will always seem twenty years too old, but the food, wine and cheese are the stars.

Picholine (35 W. 64th Street between Columbus Avenue & Central Park West, Upper West Side)

Food: ***
Service: ***
Ambiance: **½
Overall: ***

Ilili

I love it when restauranteurs take a chance—bringing something truly new to New York, rather than just copying what everyone else is doing.

But there is a line between risk-taking and recklessness, and I almost wonder if the owners of Ilili have crossed it. The massive 5,000-square-foot space accommodates 330 people in multiple bars and dining rooms on two levels. The high-rent neighborhood (Fifth Avenue between 27th and 28th Streets) is dead to evening foot traffic, and Lebanese cuisine has never been especially popular in New York.

It won’t be easy to keep all of those seats occupied. Shortly after it opened in late 2007, Steve Cuozzo of the Post filed a blistering review. They were apparently busy enough that they couldn’t be bothered to give Cuozzo a walk-in table. The Sun’s Paul Adams enjoyed himself, mainly because he didn’t expect much.

An Eater deathwatch may be premature, but on a Friday night in January we found it dead at 6:30 p.m., and only around half-full by the time we left, around 8:00. That’s not good enough. The high-concept design didn’t come cheap, and the owners surely have a huge investment to recoup.

I haven’t figured out what the name means, but it has attracted its share of ridicule. Eater.com readers voted it the worst name of Fall 2007, beating out Bobo, Kurve, and Say.

Bread service

The menu is a mixture of small and medium-sized “tapas-style” plates in various categories, without the usual appetizer–entrée distinction. There is no clue or suggestion about how much to order, which leaves the guest vulnerable to up-selling—which apparently has been a problem at Ilili. However, we must have had one of the more honest servers: when we chose four dishes to share (which turned out to be plenty), he didn’t try to talk us into a fifth.

Fried Brussels Sprouts

Chef Philippe Massoud comes to New York from Washington, D.C., where he served Mediterranean fare at Nayla. The cuisine is nominally Lebanese, but alongside traditional dishes, like shish kebab and falafel, are ingredients probably not common in Beirut, like foie gras and Kobe beef.

The bread service, which the server called an amuse-bouche, consisted of spicy thin crackers with olives. I loved the goat cheese yogurt spread, but the crackers were over-seasoned.

Our server suggested fried Brussels sprouts ($12), with grapes, a fig puree, walnuts and mint. It is a justly popular dish, but as it came out almost instantly, I strongly suspect it was pre-made, and waiting under a heat lamp. The Brussels sprouts were not quite warm enough.

 

Our remaining three dishes were delivered all at once. Manti, or Lebanese Pasta ($14; above left), was the best of the lot, with a nice balance of beef, lamb, mint, and yogurt. Mekanek, or Lamb Sausage ($13; above right) was lightly sautéed in olive oil and lemon, but it didn’t have a very lamb-y taste.

The Mixed Grill ($20) offered a Kafta (spiced ground beef with parsley and onion), chicken kebab and beef kebob. With thought it peculiar that the chicken and beef were sliced in threes, on a plate clearly designed for sharing. The beef kebab was the best in this grouping, as the cubes of meat were tender, rare, and not at all over-cooked.

The wine list was over-priced in relation to the rest of the menu, with few bottles below $50. Several Lebanese wines are offered, but we weren’t feeling that adventurous, so we settled on a Crozes-Hermitage right at $50.

Service was generally competent. We appreciated the server’s sensible ordering advice. But we weren’t as happy to have dessert plates dropped suggestively on our table before we’d indicated whether we wanted any (which we didn’t).

If Ilili isn’t quite hitting its stride, one can nevertheless put together an enjoyable meal here, and the prices (except for alcohol) are reasonable.

Ilili (236 Fifth Avenue between 27th & 28th Streets, Flatiron District)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *

Adour: Shame on Ed Levine

In a post yesterday about Alain Ducasse’s new restaurant Adour, food journalist Ed Levine asked, “Does the World Need More Fancy-Pants French Restaurants?”

It’s the hallmark of argumentative writing to ask a question, while at the same time leaving no doubt as to the answer. No one uses the phrase “fancy-pants” about something they like. (Frank Bruni’s obsession with the word “fussy” is very much the same.) In the comments section, Levine said he was really looking for a word like “stuffy,” which isn’t much of an improvement.

It’s no surprise that Levine isn’t really comfortable with luxurious French restaurants. He made his name writing about humbler fare. When Levine dined at Per Se, Thomas Keller (in jest) served him a hot dog. But in phrasing the question as he did, Levine is asking, not merely whether Ducasse is offering what Ed Levine needs, but what the “world” needs. Those are two completely different things.

It’s lazy thinking to presume that one’s own tastes are the same as everyone else’s. Levine says, “In New York people love the energized informality of Babbo or the Union Square Cafe or Craft. We love places that serve serious food in a way that makes us feel comfortable, relaxed, and well taken care of.” Well, there are almost 18 million residents of the New York metro area, and they don’t all love the same thing. I’ll bet the vast majority of them haven’t even heard of those restaurants.

If you add the approximately 44 million tourists who visit New York City annually, that makes at least 62 million people who will eat dinner in New York at least one night this year. Do you think there might be enough of them who, unlike Levine, actually appreciate what Alain Ducasse has to offer?

Levine thinks “we need more restaurants with heart and soul,” apparently having concluded that a Ducasse restaurant cannot qualify. Now, I’m sure Mario Batali (Babbo), Danny Meyer (Union Square Cafe) and Tom Colicchio (Craft) feel passionately about what they’re doing, as does Ducasse. But all three of them are running huge restaurant conglomerates for profit, as does Ducasse.

Ironically, New York has more of Levine’s heart-and-soul restaurants than ever before, while not a single three or four-star restaurant opened last year. Yet, the demand for luxury restaurants remains intense. Just try booking a last-minute prime-time table at any of the city’s high-end dining palaces. They are usually full. Obviously these places aren’t for everybody, but with 20,000 other restaurants in New York, they don’t need to be.

And it’s not as if we have glut of four-star restaurants. There are just five of them (per the Times), and the two most recent (Per Se and Masa) opened four years ago. All candidates since then have been found wanting, at least according to Frank Bruni. I don’t know how much of a chance Adour will have, when a Francophobic critic like Bruni is doing the judging. But should restauranteurs stop trying?

Places like Adour don’t come along very often. Do you want a restaurant with rustic pleasures and menus sourced daily from the greenmarket and local farmers? There’s practically a new one every month. But how many luxury French restaurants are there in New York? They can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

I don’t know whether Adour will be a great restaurant. No one can know that until the place opens. Based on my experience at its predecessor, Alain Ducasse at the Essex House, I am optimistic. From a critic of Levine’s stature one expects a new venture, especially one that comes along this rarely, to be judged on its merits.

First Look: Bar Boulud

Kalina via Eater

In today’s Diner’s Journal, Frank Bruni reports that it’s not easy to make a reservation at Daniel Boulud’s latest restaurant, Bar Boulud. Not since Per Se, almost four years ago, has poor Frank had so much trouble reaching a human being. In Per Se’s case, he waited. In Bar Boulud’s case, he hung up in frustration after 15 minutes. [Update: The next day, he finally got through.]

He should have tried just walking in, which a friend and I did yesterday. At 6:00 p.m., we were seated at the bar without a wait. Three doors down, Josephina was full. Go figure.

Like most Michelin-starred chefs, Daniel Boulud isn’t content to have just one restaurant, but he hasn’t opened them as promiscuously as Jean-Georges Vongerichten or Alain Ducasse. Bar Boulud is his first New York opening in at least four years. The location across Broadway from Lincoln Center has long needed some more serious restaurants. I yawned when I heard that Bar Boulud was going to be focused on wine—who needs another wine bar? It turns out the real star is Sylvain Gasdon’s charcuterie menu.

Though yesterday was the official opening to the public, Boulud has been serving friends and family for a few weeks now. Grub Street responded with “dumbstruck awe,” adding that “this kind of charcuterie has almost never been available in this profusion and variety in the United States.” Ed Levine gushed, “Simply put, Gasdon is making the best charcuterie Americans have ever seen and tasted on these shores.” But he wondered, “are Americans ready for this kind of food?”

If you sit at the bar, as we did, you’ll have the massive terrines, pâtés and sausages right in front of you, a gorgeous sight incomparable to anything else in New York. If charcuterie isn’t your cup of espresso, Bar Boulud also has a more conventional bistro menu that takes its cues from Boulud’s native Lyon.

We had actually come in only for drinks, but there was no way I could leave without tasting the charcuterie that refined meatheads like Cutlets and Levine are raving about. So I tried the Pâté Grand-mère ($8), made with chicken liver, pork and cognac. It was a nice hunk, half an inch thick, and about 3 inches by 5, with a dollop of spiced mustard on the side and two bowls of bread (with soft butter). I ignored the bread and just ate the pâté with my fork. It had a luscious buttery taste, the liver pungent but not overwhelming. There’s much more where that came from, and I can’t wait to return.

The wine selection was disappointing. There were just four reds and four whites by the glass, far less than one expects at a purportedly wine-themed restaurant. Bar Boulud needs to do better—far better—than that. Servers were gracious, and the mise en place everything you’d expect in a Boulud restaurant, but the staff was too busy to pay us sufficient attention. We had trouble flagging down a server to order a second glass of wine, and we were there for about 45 minutes before they came with water glasses.

It is too soon to the judge the service, as this was only Bar Boulud’s first night. It will also take more than one pâté to reach a judgment on the food, but Bar Boulud certainly looks promising.

Bar Boulud (1900 Broadway near 63rd Street, Upper West Side)

The Payoff: Barbuto

Yesterday, I suggested that there were two possible reasons why Frank Bruni would review Barbuto. The first is that he thinks it has improved since Eric Asimov’s review four years ago. The second is that he is bored. It turns out his reason was none of the above, in awarding one star:

The chicken is Rule No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3 of eating at Barbuto. It’s Rule No. 4 as well.

Bruni was so transfixed by the chicken that he had hardly anything else to say. The rest of the food is just as uneven as Asimov originally said it was. But if you order the chicken, the pastas, and “sharp chocolate budino,” you can have a fine meal at Barbuto.

The promotion—nay, overpromotion—of chef Jonathan Waxman’s cookbook got on Bruni’s nerves, as it usually does. Memo to chefs: When Bruni’s in the house, hide the cookbook.

We lose $1 on our hypothetical bet, while Eater wins $2.

	Eater		NYJ
Bankroll	$61.50		$80.67
Gain/Loss	+2.00		–1.00
Total	$62.50		$79.67
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Won–Lost	27–11		28–10

Rolling the Dice: Barbuto

Every week, we take our turn with Lady Luck on the BruniBetting odds as posted by Eater. Just for kicks, we track Eater’s bet too, and see who is better at guessing what the unpredictable Bruni will do. We track our sins with an imaginary $1 bet every week.

The Line: Tomorrow, Frank Bruni returns to his favorite pastime, Italian cuisine. The victim, er, beneficiary will be Jonathan Waxman’s Meatpacking-adjacent Barbuto. The Eater oddsmakers have set the action as follows (√√ denotes the Eater bet):

Zero Stars: 4-1
One Star: 2-1 √√
Two Stars: 4-1
Three Stars: 50-1
Four Stars: 25,000-1

The Skinny: Barbuto received a mixed $25-and-under review from Eric Asimov in April 2004. Those were the days when that column regularly covered real restaurants, but even then I thought that Barbuto deserved a rated review. With entrées in the mid-twenties nowadays, Barbuto is squarely in Bruni’s price range.

Historically, most of Bruni’s promotions from $25-and-under have received two stars (Freemans being the notorious counter-example). The rationale, I suppose, is that if a restaurant is merely average—which is the current de facto meaning of one star—it makes little sense to waste space on a place that has already been reviewed.

Another Brunitrend^® is that restaurants usually aren’t re-reviewed unless there is something substantially new to say. If you take Asimov’s review as the rough equivalent of one star (though Asimov never expressly said that), then two stars is a likely outcome, given that Barbuto is highly unlikely to get the goose egg.

Bruni has been extremely kind to Italian restaurants—though there are a few notable exceptions. It also seems to be his default cuisine, which he reviews when he can’t find anything else. That could mean that Barbuto is in line for a two-star bouquet, but it could also mean that Bruni is bored.

The main argument for one star, as Eater notes, is that Barbuto is notoriously uneven. It also carries one star on this blog, for whatever that’s worth.

The Bet: We don’t have a strong feeling about this one, but most of the Brunitrends^® point to the higher rating, so we are betting that Frank Bruni will award two stars to Barbuto.

Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill

Note: Click here for a more recent review of Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill.

Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill has recently opened in the Thompson Hotel at 6 Columbus Circle. It’s the latest in a chain of eight sushi houses, brasseries, and bakeries in Manhattan and Brooklyn.

Blue Ribbon Sushi on Sullivan Streeet in SoHo is an intimate place, to which Ruth Reichl awarded two stars in 1998. It does not accept reservations. Eager beavers line up around the block for one of the few, coveted seats. Its late hours make it a beloved haunt for chefs all over town.

But Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill is a cynical affair built to capitalize on the name, dressed for the big dance and tricked out in a slightly smaller version of the modern big-box Asian style.

Ryan Sutton, reviewing for bloomberg.com, counted 168 items on the menu. Bravo for Sutton, as he saved me the trouble. All I know is that we were overwhelmed. My son and I each ordered a selection of rolls ($28; photo above), my girlfriend the sushi deluxe ($29.50). We found both dishes competently prepared, but underwhelming. “Pedestrian” was the word that came to mind. With 166 other choices remaining, who’s to know whether this is typical? The choice of sakes was impressive, but expensive.

The address is a tease, by the way: you’ll search in vain for the hotel on Columbus Circle: it’s actually on 58th Street, across from the mall, several doors down from the circle.

Blue Ribbon Sushi Bar & Grill (308 W. 58th Street in the Thompson Hotel, 6 Columbus Circle)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *½
Overall: *

Vince and Eddie's

Note: Vince and Eddie’s closed in March 2011. Even an investment from Lady Gaga couldn’t save it.

*

My mother, girlfriend and I had a quiet weeknight dinner at Vince and Eddie’s about a month ago. My mom described it as “the typical restaurant you imagine in New York.” She meant that it’s one of the many places that’s on the ground floor of a townhouse, and about eight times deeper than it is wide.

In a one-star review over seventeen years ago, Marian Burros admirably summarized the place: “The cooking at Vince and Eddie’s is being compared to Grandma’s, or Mother’s, depending on your last birthday. No matter. The comparison conjures up feel-good adjectives like hearty, simple, warm, comforting.” Burros also found a good deal of unevenness back then, a problem not evident to us, though I’ll admit our sample was small and unscientific.

My mom and I tried some of the tenderest calf’s liver we’ve had anywhere (above). But that’s not good enough for Vince and Eddie’s, which piles on the onion rings, baked apples, bacon, and gravy. I’ve forgotten my girlfriend’s entrée, but I recall that it too was a mountain of rich, uncomplicated food, enjoyably prepared.

The restaurant was not crowded, and I suspect that it seldom is. But it has done well enough to survive as a solid neighborhood place and occasional pre-Lincoln Center standby. The world needs more like it.

Vince and Eddie’s (70 W. 68th Street between Columbus Avenue & Central Park West, Upper West Side)

Food: *
Service: *
Ambiance: *
Overall: *

Rosanjin

Kaiseki is a Japanese tradition from Kyoto that features long multi-course meals in which beautiful presentation is as important as the food on the plate.

Until a year ago, Sugiyama, which carries three stars from the Times, had the Manhattan Kaiseki market almost to itself. It is getting more crowded. Rosanjin opened in late 2006 in TriBeCa. Later this year, David Bouley plans to open Brushstroke just a few blocks away.

Rosanjin doesn’t call much attention to itself—a problem you can rest assured Bouley won’t have. Paul Adams and Frank Bruni were the only mainstream critics to review it. Bruni awarded two stars—relegating it to the indiscriminate scrum of earnest neighborhood joints, pizza places, and steakhouses that have caught his fancy. Forbes awarded four stars, calling it “[one of] the most divine Japanese meals you’ll ever experience in New York.”

Dinner at Rosanjin moves at a quiet and leisurely pace, with the $150 prix fixe meal unfolding over many hours. There are only seven tables, and I get the idea that they are seldom fully booked. There were just two other parties when we were there, and that was on a Saturday night.

The owner, Jungjin Park (who is from Korea) choreographs a tiny staff, who could be part of a ballet. Every plate, no matter how tiny, is placed or retrieved individually with two hands. Mr. Park is the only one who speaks, which he does in such quiet tones that one feels almost obligated to whisper, even when he is not within earshot. There is no menu. You are served whatever Mr. Park is offering that day.

Mr. Park’s collection of sake decanters belongs in a museum. For us, he produced a sphere resembling a tea-pot, with a removable center core that he filled with ice. At another table, the decanter looked like a tall vase. We asked him why he chose one or the other. He replied, “It is according to my mood.”

I felt that flash photography would be inappropriate, and unfortunately the photos don’t do full justice to the beautiful creations that come out of Rosanjin’s kitchen. 

 

The first course (above left) had three contrasting dishes: 1) monkfish liver with tofu and sesame paste (lower left of photo); 2) Japanese clam with brocolli rabe, white asparagus and brussels sprout (top); 3) grilled fresh scallop in a squash puree (bottom right). All three were impeccably assembled and gorgeous, with the monkfish liver especially standing out.

I didn’t photograph the second course, which came in a lovely black bowl decorated with painted pink flowers. Inside was a fish broth with lobster, fried tofu, two pieces of string bean, and orange rind.

The third course (above right) had pieces of raw snapper, medium fatty tuna, squid and codfish on a bed of shredded radish and shiso leaf. Alongside  was a bowl of fresh salmon roe, which Mr. Park advised us to drink like fruit juice and two contrasting sauces for the fish.

 

The sushi course (above left) presented the evening’s only choice: fatty tuna or eel. Mr. Park commended our judgment when we both chose the tuna, which was heavily marbled like a ribeye steak. He told us it was a rare variety from the cold waters between Japan and Russa that is seldom available in New York. According to Mr. Park, 99.5% of it goes to Japan, Boston, Spain, and Croatia.

Next came Kobe beef tempura (above right), spinach salad with walnuts and pecorino Romano. This course was one of the evening’s few duds. Kobe beef feels like a default luxury, but I hardly tasted much beef at all—Kobe or otherwise.

 

Next, a slice of baby yellowtail teriyaki (above left) came with a blade of “shishito” bean and two ginko nuts (“break with your hands and enjoy”). It was impeccable and beautiful, like everything else, and we enjoyed the texture of the warm fish against the cool lima bean. But I didn’t feel that cooked fish was the kitchen’s strength.

Waves of flavor and contrast washed over us, and I don’t recall any specific impression of simmered codfish (above right) with a radish, Japanese spinach and ginger.

 

The savory portion of the meal ended with a striking soup (above left) of egg white, vegetable and turtle (“which is very much a delicacy in Japan”), with pickled vegetables. Dessert (above right) was yet another striking combination — crème brûlée, chocolate ice cream and mango juice — though none of these items alone would have been especially memorable.

As this was our first kaiseki experience, I don’t have anything to compare it to, except for the long tasting menus in Western restaurants. But there was only one clear miss (the tempura) dampening the parade of truly exquisite creations, served in a serene environment that almost makes you forget you’re in Manhattan. We will certainly be back.

Rosanjin (141 Duane Street between West Broadway & Church Street, TriBeCa)

Food: ***
Service: ***½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***