[ed. NY Times food critic Sam Sifton's last review on the "best restaurant in New York City": Per Se.]
by Sam Sifton
The appetizer is not food so much as a poem about creaminess, a meditation on brine, a sculpture about the delicious. It is a complete introduction to the restaurant and its pleasures.
But perhaps foie gras is more to your liking? At one dinner at Per Se, I had a torchon of moulard duck foie gras from Élevages Périgord in Quebec, served with a crystallized apple chip, some celery-branch batons (taken to 11 on the flavor scale by some compression and sous-vide cooking), Granny Smith apple marmalade, candied walnuts, frisée and juniper-balsamic vinegar. I spread it thickly on brioche toast that a server kept replacing every few minutes, since (he said) it should never be eaten cool. (This is true, as it happens: the bread grows heavy and stiff.) I ate it silently, as one can do only with friends and family, savoring the experience as I might have a massage or a sunset.
Such excitements have a real effect on who ought to go to Per Se and why. The restaurant is not a place to book for a business meal. Nor is it a restaurant for those who do not eat well together. A meal at Per Se can stretch to four to five hours — a long time to sit with anyone, even a client with whom you are trying to close a multimillion-dollar deal. The restaurant more handsomely rewards the companionship of those who love one another as much as they do pleasure and indulgence.
Nor is Per Se a restaurant for those who do not understand that such pleasure comes at a cost. The menu has a set price of $295 a person, excluding wine. Nine or more courses are prepared, along with canapés to start and mignardises to finish. A conversation with a sommelier can easily double the cost of the buy-in. Dinner for two can scratch at $1,000 — or about the same as the median weekly household income in New York State.
By point of context, though, an aisle orchestra seat at the Metropolitan Opera for Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” runs $330, also excluding wine.
Read more:
photos: Daniel Krieger for The New York Times
by Sam Sifton
***
Per Se’s signature starter course is Oysters and Pearls, a dish Mr. Keller developed at French Laundry and brought with him when he moved East. It combines a sabayon of pearl tapioca with Island Creek oysters (small, marble-shaped, from Duxbury, south of Boston, fantastic) and a fat clump of sturgeon caviar from Northern California. These arrive in a bowl of the finest porcelain from Limoges. Paired with a glass of golden sémillon from Elderton, they make a fine argument for the metaphor of transubstantiation. The appetizer is not food so much as a poem about creaminess, a meditation on brine, a sculpture about the delicious. It is a complete introduction to the restaurant and its pleasures.
But perhaps foie gras is more to your liking? At one dinner at Per Se, I had a torchon of moulard duck foie gras from Élevages Périgord in Quebec, served with a crystallized apple chip, some celery-branch batons (taken to 11 on the flavor scale by some compression and sous-vide cooking), Granny Smith apple marmalade, candied walnuts, frisée and juniper-balsamic vinegar. I spread it thickly on brioche toast that a server kept replacing every few minutes, since (he said) it should never be eaten cool. (This is true, as it happens: the bread grows heavy and stiff.) I ate it silently, as one can do only with friends and family, savoring the experience as I might have a massage or a sunset.
Such excitements have a real effect on who ought to go to Per Se and why. The restaurant is not a place to book for a business meal. Nor is it a restaurant for those who do not eat well together. A meal at Per Se can stretch to four to five hours — a long time to sit with anyone, even a client with whom you are trying to close a multimillion-dollar deal. The restaurant more handsomely rewards the companionship of those who love one another as much as they do pleasure and indulgence.
Nor is Per Se a restaurant for those who do not understand that such pleasure comes at a cost. The menu has a set price of $295 a person, excluding wine. Nine or more courses are prepared, along with canapés to start and mignardises to finish. A conversation with a sommelier can easily double the cost of the buy-in. Dinner for two can scratch at $1,000 — or about the same as the median weekly household income in New York State.
By point of context, though, an aisle orchestra seat at the Metropolitan Opera for Donizetti’s “L’Elisir d’Amore” runs $330, also excluding wine.
Read more:
photos: Daniel Krieger for The New York Times
