This week and next are Restaurant Week in New York. The basic deal is that restaurants, mostly the well-known and well-regarded restaurants located in Manhattan, offer a weekday prix fixe menu. Some restaurants only participate in the lunch program, but some offer lunch and dinner menus. The cost per person for lunch is $24.07 and dinner is $35.00, not including the bar tab, tip and tax. If you use your American Express card, the company donates $.50 to City Harvest.
I love food, and love the experience of eating a great meal with friends, so this is just about the most exciting thing I can imagine. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be eating at (at least): Eleven Madison Park, Craft, Vong and Abboccato.
Today, Peter and I kept our lunch appointment at Eleven Madison Park. The restaurant is on the ground floor of an art deco building, on Madison Square Park. You’ll know the park, if you’ve been to New York, because the Flat Iron building is located at the southern end. It has, as the website reports, a nice set of accolades: three stars from the NYTimes and New York Magazine, and recognition from Food & Wine, Wine Spectator and the James Beard Foundation. In 2006, the restaurant hired head chef Daniel Humm, a Swiss dude who they brought in from San Francisco, and who continues to attract critical acclaim for his work and the restaurant. Oh, and its a Danny Meyer restaurant…like, of Union Square Cafe.
So Eleven Madison Park looks like a typical white table cloth restaurant if that typical restaurant were located in a small deco marble vestibule of a train station. You know, nice, but…cold.
Peter joined me; we’re ladies who lunch, after all, and we were promptly served a carafe of sparkling water and a dish of lemon slices. And I’ll dwell a bit on the details. The lemon wedges were *wedges*. That is, they were actually wide enough to (1) grasp, (2) squeeze, and (3) contain enough liquid to be functional, as, you know, citrus. The next step is to order a drink. We both chose one of the Proprietary Cocktails (as opposed to the Traditional ones, like the Mint Julep): I chose a Cherry Blossom Sling…a variation on the Singapore Sling. It includes Cherry Heering, which is a Danish brandy-based cherry liqueur. Peter had something with apples. His was freakin’ awesome, the one sip I took. Mine….eh.
Now to the food: For appetizers, Peter had the Winter Salad with Beets, Blue Cheese and Walnuts, which was…a salad, with beets, cheese and nuts. It looked good. Frisee lettuce. You know, good. Peter said it was great. Truthfully, I wasn’t paying attention because I ordered the Big Eye Tuna Tartar Nicoise. It was served on a long, rectangular plate, which featured the tuna, carved into coffee bean-sized bites, molded into a rectangular log. They were positively glistening. On top of one end was a small mount of frisee dressed with a kind of simple aioli. Around the tuna were arranged small potato rounds, maybe six, with little pieces of black olive perched on top. In between were small rounds of the aioli, and a single radish, marinated in some kind of acid…I’d guess a gentle vinegar. Leaning against the tuna were four of five little halves of haricot verts (dressed with sea salt) and a five inch long thin breadstick thing, with a whole, trimmed anchovy curled around one end. It was the best salad I’ve ever had. Granted, it was a pretty deconstructed Salad Nicoise. But each bite of this thing was heaven, no matter what combination of ingredients I chose. There was no perfect bite. I thought that was impossible, but I was wrong. It was so pretty, too. Gosh.
Entrees: Peter chose the Seared Salmon with Fennel and Citrus. The Salmon was cooked well–the tasty, thick crust is worthy of mention, but the dish’s genius was in the fennel and citrus salad in which it was resting. The citrus–orange, blood orange, grapefruit, and some other exotic fruit I didn’t catch the name of–had been marinated in the fennel such that each bite of fruit released a little aromatic bit of fennel essence. It was pretty incredible. I ordered the Saffron Risotto with Celery and Amaretti Cookie. The Risotto was very well prepared, and the saffron as subtle and complex as one would hope, but the trick is the paring with the cookie. The cookie had such a strong amaretto taste and smell that it was wafting up just from the dish sitting there. The cookie was crumbled into very small bits–almost a dusting–across the top of the dish. In every bite, I got a little bit of the combination and it never stopped being totally delightful.
Dessert: Peter had a really lovely Fuji Apple Tart with Vanilla Ice Cream and I had the Chocolate Symphony with Caramel and Maldon Sea Salt. These were great, too. I forgot to ask Peter how his coffee was. I had tea. It was tea.
I can’t wait for the next episode. Happy eating!
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