Try the “Bacon and Eggs” (bits of braised calf’s head molded in a cake, with a poached quail egg wobbling on top), a sinful fat man’s treat called “Chaud Froid” (soft foie gras confit, apple purée, brioche croutons, and sweet cipollini onions), and anything you can find containing lobster, scallops, or snails. The specialty of the house (following a bowl of truffled popcorn at the bar) is a profusion of small, preciously wrought, archly named dishes, many of which might be considered pretentious if they weren’t so damn delicious.
Next door, at Per Se, the décor is pristine in an icy sort of way, the service is immaculate, and even if Thomas Keller isn’t actually in New York that day, he’s always connected to his palatial East Coast kitchen via videophone. Maybe you’d enjoy a bowl of truffled uni risotto, or tuna rolls stuffed with milky pink tuna belly, and it’s perfectly permissible to close your eyes in quiet ecstasy when you take your first bite of Masa’s “Foie Gras Shabu Shabu.” But if by chance you don’t see Masa at the bar, or if they try to seat you at one of the small, dimly lit tables, do what my wife did when she first glimpsed our bill: complain bitterly, and threaten to turn on your heel and go spend all that cash at the Bose store downstairs. If you find yourself face-to-face with a wry, middle-aged, vaguely monkish-looking gentleman, don’t lift a finger-Masa Takayama will do the rest. I’m not normally in favor of spending $350 on a single meal, but if you have a fat year-end bonus to blow, take the elevator up past the Aveda store to the fourth floor of the Time Warner Center, bow politely to the security guard patrolling the area, and take a seat at the glowing blond Hinoki-wood bar at Masa. Organic food is big business in the city these days, fancy Shanghai banquets are all the rage among Chinese connoisseurs, and down on the Bowery, the hot new restaurants are doing what the fancy uptown joints do: They’re serving an elaborate champagne brunch. Out in Brooklyn, little mom-and-pop joints are serving foie gras and salting their dishes with black truffles, and in Manhattan, diners can blow $180 on a single entrée of Kobe-beef “Châteaubriand,” and $13,000 for a magnum of 1899 Château Lafite-Rothschild. Grand old French restaurants have been replaced by baroque new corporate venues, extravagant wine bars, and Pan-Asian food palaces as big as bus depots.
Overnight, the meatpacking district has blown up into a chaotic gastronomic version of Bourbon Street.
The great restaurant boom that began in the nineties but fizzled out at the beginning of the new millennium has exploded all over again. Twelve short months ago, members of the city’s restaurant cognoscenti were still huddled in poky little rooms, picking at warmed-over barbecued ribs and platters of frites, gamely singing the praises of neighborhood restaurants and comfort food.