This weekend was spent in my favorite city and amongst some of my favorite people. It's been a while since I've taken part in NYC's fine-dining scene, so on Saturday Yu and I decided to visit Jean Georges' Perry Street near Chelsea Piers.
The atmosphere was right up my alley - clean and modern on the inside, with a color scheme primarily consisting of white, black, and silver. The dining area was busy enough to speak well of the restaurant's reputation and the quality of the food, but not noisy enough to drown out conversation with friends.
Yu had already been to the restaurant once before and had good memories of the salmon entree, however it's hard for me to resist the tasting menu in any restaurant that offers one, so that's what we ultimately decided on.
After the Amuse Bouche pictured above, the tasting menu began with an appetizer of rice cracker-crusted tuna with Sriracha-citrus emulsion: this was probably my favorite dish of the entire meal. The rice cracker crust was a perfect texture-paring with the raw tuna, and the Siracha-citrus emulsion had the nice balance of sweet and sour
Next were the crab dumplings with market peas, spicy ginger, and carrot broth: the spicy ginger sauce and carrot broth reminded me of a type of sweet and spicy Vietnamese chili sauce that was often used in my home for accompaniment of fried chicken dishes when I was growing up
The entrees began with the sourdough-crusted Scottish salmon with Fava beans and herbs:
Next came the grilled lamb chops with black olives and fried artichoke hearts: the lamb was cooked a medium-rare (which in my personal opinion is the only *proper* way to prepare any sort of red meat), and was tender. However, I'm not normally a fan of black olives, and my artichoke hearts were over-fried to the point of tasting burnt. Those accompaniments I could have done without, and been happier
[By this point in the night the sun had set and the restaurant had gotten dark enough that my camera was refusing to snap pictures without supplemental lighting, so I finally had to venture into the previously-avoided territory of photography with flash. I'm still not a fan...]
Dessert was Perry Street's chocolate candy bar, which had a texture similar to a thick chocolate mousse. It was delicious, but by this point I was too full to clean my plate. Although I'm usually the one with the biggest sweet-tooth out of my all my friends, I have a feeling that this was Yu's favorite part of dinner
Afterwards, I asked him what he thought about his second Perry Street experience, and either a) his palate has become more refined with time, b) the quality of the food has deteriorated, or c) the tasting menu did not appropriately reflect the chef's true skill level, but he was slightly disappointed
From my standpoint, I thought it was an enjoyable experience, and definitely better than my other run-in with a Jean Georges' restaurant (see my post on Mercer Kitchen) although the dishes were by no means perfect. So....
Overall rating: 7/10
176 Perry Street
New York, NY 10014
