It's not a restaurant review, Per Se

When I was up in New York in November for my old boss' 85th birthday party at The Penn Club, I had the opportunity to go to Per Se -- Thomas Keller's highly touted restaurant in the new Time Warner Center. According to many, it's damn near impossible to snag a reservation to eat there, especially given both its Hiltonesque "hotness" and the fact that that you have only a brief window of time -- two months to the day you want to go -- to reserve your spot. Most people try calling the main reservation number to land a space. There is, however, another way. A nearly secret way. And it doesn't involve posing as Richard Parsons.

The alternative route is to use Open Table. The word on the street is that the online restaurant reservations site makes available one two-top and one four-top each day, two months in advance of your desired dining date. There's no guarantee that you'll win one of the coveted tables, but a second, merit-based system is better than none at all. I managed to snare the four-top, but, hey, I'm tenacious.

Anyway, Per Se. Given the fact that I have advertised this site as one that values reasonably priced cuisine and a high cost-to-quality ratio, it may strike you as odd that I plan to tell you about my meal at the restaurant. But the fact is that, at $150 a head in exchange for nearly flawless service, exceptional ingredients, and careful preparation, that price is a bargain for what you get.

Per Se sits in the lavish Time Warner Center, just across the way from the V Steakhouse on the fourth floor. You enter next to faux blue wooden barndoors through automatic sliding glass panels, the former merely to evoke the countryside in an atmosphere that's quite clearly urban. And that's the lone problem with Per Se; it's trying too much to be like the French Laundry and not trying hard enough to find its own identity.

The dining room overlooks Central Park, which we -- my girlfriend, my father, my brother, and I -- saw transform from light to dusk as we ate (we had a 5:30 reservation; if you get a reservation, you don't complain about the time). Of course, we all opted for the chef's tasting menu, which, at $150, was $25 more than the French Laundry's menu -- but the rent is higher, after all. We elected to do wine pairings as well, rather than buy several bottles. (If you're already going to spend at least $200 per person, then you should go all out.)

Before the meal began, we started with aperitifs. My brother and I each had a glass of 2001 Condrieu viognier, and my dad and my girlfriend had a glass of 1997 Schramsberg sparkling. As we finished our glasses, they brought out the amuse bouche -- the miniature poppyseed coronet, engorged with creme fraiche and topped with a scoop of sesame oiled tuna tartare. The time that I took to finish it was inversely proportional to its size; I savored each of the four bites that it merited.

Our first course was the famed Oysters and Pearls. The dish was identical in form and flavor to the West Coast edition, and it was paired with a light, slightly effervescent Basque white wine.

For the next course, we went off the tasting menu (foregoing the Hawaiian hearts of peach palm salad or the Moulard duck fois gras au torchon) and tacked on a $40 supplement for choosing the white truffle risotto. Just as the French Laundry has a "truffle boy" dedicated to presenting and shaving off slices of the gnarly goodness, the truffle boy's East Coast counterpart soon appeared with the truffle box. He opened it and instructed us to sniff what he described as "the first truffle of the season from the region of Alba." The servers then brought out the cymbal-covered risotto dishes and pulled off the tops two by two, as if they were mechanized German
clock figures. Before too much risotto steam could escape skyward, the truffle boy moved from dish to dish, shaved generous portions over top of each bowl. Another server spooned hot browned butter in Pollock-like splotches over the truffle shavings to cook the spores on
site and extract their scent. The wine pairing remained the Basque white, but I really couldn't have cared less about it at that point. As Frank Bruni wrote in his review, "I still remember the first [bite], and how insanely happy it made me, and the last, and how ineffably sad I was."

Throughout the evening, the service was knowledgeable and precise, but a bit more formal and stilted than I would have liked -- especially when compared to Per Se West. But in the realm of comparing apples to apples, either of these two is head and shoulders above virtually anywhere else.

Our next dish was the crispy skin filet of Pacific mo'i, accompanied by stir-fried vegetables and a satay sauce. As with many of Thomas Keller's fishes, he seemed to have marinated this one in buttermilk to prevent it from drying out during the cooking process and to remove any fishy smell. Accordingly, he made the fish taste like Southern fried chicken dappled in General Tso's sauce. The wine pairing was a light red -- a blackberry-nosed Nuits-St. Georges pinot noir that meshed well with the salty-sweetness of the dish.

After a short break, they then brought us the Nova Scotia lobster "cuit sous vide" with celeriac, Perigord truffles and roasted chestnut puree. Rather than decadently poaching the lobster in butter as he does out west, he takes a Spartan approach here: he vacuum-seals the lobster portion and boils it at very low temperatures for hours on end, so that the meat literally cooks in its own juices. The benefit of the sealant is that none of the juices dissipates during cooking. The celeriac added slight natural saltiness to the dish, and the chestnut puree -- which had the texture of Gerber baby food peaches -- gave it sweet richness. Although fish typically matches with white wines, the sommelier kept us with the pinot noir because the chestnuts hailed from Burgundy and filled the fat void left by the absentee butter.

I sopped up what remained of the chestnut puree with one of three breads that rotates through our side plates during the meal: an olive bread, a German pretzel bread, and a baguette. If the butters were missing from the lobster dish, then they were quite clearly hiding in two bowls on our table holding Straus Family Creamery butter from Northern California and hand-churned unsalted Vermont butter. I don't say this lightly, but I could down a stick of Straus Family Creamery butter in one sitting. The fabulous Santa Barbara grocery store Lazy Acres used to sell it, and I've nearly tried on several occasions to stuff a whole stick in my face. I wished I'd brought a little Playmate cooler with me so that I could transport it back with me as if it were a donor kidney.

Two meat dishes came in rapid succession. The first was an all-day-braised Eden Farm's Berkshire pork shoulder that sat alongside collard greens, poached Granny Smith apples and a whole grain mustard sauce. The second was a roasted saddle of Elysian Fields Farm lamb with forest mushrooms, red-wine-braised pearl onions, and Yukon Gold "pomme puree" (if you call it that instead of mashed potatoes, you can charge $25 more for the dish). In this phase, T.K. went all Willy Wonka on our Violet Beauregarde asses, giving us what were essentially full complementary meals in tiny portions -- with the exception that we did not turn into large blueberries when we'd finished, even if we felt like them. His meats look deceptively dry but simply hemorrhage juices when you cut into them. The pork made you think you were at a
post-revival Sunday dinner in Tuscaloosa, Alabama; indeed, this food is the secular equivalent of a holy ghost explosion. Our wine pairing was a Priorat blend from Spain, heavy on grenache with hints of carignane and syrah. The spiciness and boldness took the edge off the rustic meats.

The slow denouement began with the cheese course: the Bingham Hill "Harvest Moon" cow's milk cheese, which was served with roasted heirloom beets, watercress, and pumpkin seed oil. This cheese was at the other end of the spectrum from the shadily imported, stinky and
runny cheese that we could barely swallow at the French Laundry. It was mild and firm with no distinguishing characteristics. To me, the earthy golden and red beets were the highlight of the plate. We enjoyed it with a slightly sweet Loire Valley semillion.

Our "palate-cleanser" was the Persian lime sorbet, which took its place among a string of dishes matching sweet and salty. Soy-caramel foam ringed the scoop of sorbet, giving the ice a flavor much like that of the barren crust of a key lime pie.

Consistent with my friend Bob's theory that every menu contains a "chocolate bomb," our main dessert arrived: the "Tentation au Chocolat, Noisette et Lait." On one side of a thin, rectangular plate, milk chocolate mousse rested atop of hazelnut streusel, as condensed milk sorbet balanced the seesaw on the other side. Meanwhile, the fulcrum hosted five sweetened salty hazelnuts. Essentially, this was haute-cuisine Nutella and vanilla ice cream -- malt, nut, and vanilla flavor rushing through your olfactory glands long after each bite, just as you can expel alcohol vapors through your nostrils after right drinking a sip of huge red wine. Needless to say, they paired this dish with an appropriately sweet and alcoholic port from Portugal.

For the final course, my brother and I were brought chamomile pot decremes, while my girlfriend and my dad received Tahitian vanilla creme brulees. Our mignardises -- the jellies, macaroons and chocolates -- appeared soon after with our check, probably to ease the pain and shocked caused by the numbers on the bill ("A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down.").

This was the most expensive meal I've ever had. Wonderfully prepared and executed, but not as relaxed as the French Laundry. Even though Per Se tries to remove you from the hustle and bustle of New York, you're just not in a tiny town in the Napa Valley where the chef gets his tomatoes from out back. But it is the best that one can do in the city, and there's no one who does it better. So what if I have to eat Ramen noodles for the next two months?