Uh no, the pictures are of the grocery store in a desolate area on 37th st.
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Seriously, that’s the newer grocery store in Manhattan? And that’s the one SGee was talking about being in a desolate area? Well then… never mind.
And I owe you a drink. At a cocktail bar in the not so desolate area in Bklyn.
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Yes. @Sgee also said he ended up “with Issan takeout from Larb Ubol,” which at 480 9th Ave, is 0.1mi away from the pictured Brooklyn Fare grocery store on 431 W 37th St.
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Go ahead, pile on… I can handle it. You wanna drink too?!
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hahah, none needed! I will be in Brooklyn next week though. Is Torst still good? Also going to Four Horsemen and probably Reynard again.
I haven’t heard anything negative about Torst, but I’ve never been (shameful admission, I know). My good beer bar time is spent at Mekelberg’s in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. You may want to try it (if you haven’t) – they’ll soon be opening a very large place in the Domino factory building in Williamsburg as well. The Four Horsemen is on my short list. Have you ever been to Delaware and Hudson? Excellent chef (Patti Jackson) turning out interesting, non-complicated fare. There are some other new places that are pretty interesting as well – eater.com has some, but not all.
Torst was good - I made a brief visit and got a dubbel and a saison ale on a lazy afternoon. I did not drink that much beer or cocktails this trip. Mainly wine, sake, and whisky. Anyway, Torst is a solid joint in the Greenpoint area, and it’s been a while since I was really into beer, and I’m sure beerheads can assess it better, but I liked it.
Chef’s Table at Brooklyn Fare was fantastic again. I will post pictures shortly. Damn, what a meal. Ingredients and precision were off the charts. In my opinion, CTBF is a strong contender for the best meal in the country for a high-end tasting menu. All the chefs I talked to agreed that CTBF is the best one can have in NYC for that style.
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I really need to make an effort to plan further in advance.
Made it past the doors to the hidden room this time. Amex concierge did a great job scoring ressies.
Well executed meal. Love the fact that Chef Ramirez was completely hands on throughout dinner. What you hope for in a restaurant of this caliber. Excellent wine pairing (highly recommended) with an emphasis on whites appropriate for the seafood centric ingredients.
Minor quibbles - I wanted a bit more acidic elements or palate cleansers between courses. Got mildly rich towards the end. My final wine pairing of a fortified wine was a little too heavy for the lighter desserts. The counter setting causes some logistic problems with service, nothing major. They need to seriously up the coffee prep quality, espresso arrived virtually devoid of crema.
Lovely Scottish langoustine
Custard with foie gras
2nd helping 
Appropriate ratio of caviar to primary ingredient, 1:1 
Kasugodai with excellent al dente koshihikari squid ink risotto. I believe there was abalone too.
Terrific quality A5 although a little acidic component in the dish would have been good to balance the fatty goodness.
No crema 
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Did it top your list too? Anxious to try it myself!
I’ve been out of the tasting menu game for a few years now, dietary restrictions … This was my first meal of that sort in quite a while so I don’t really have any relevant recent experiences to compare. I thought it was a very good meal, excellent quality ingredients and execution. I think you’ll enjoy it, mucho $$$ though… think it ended up being close to $700/pax 
.
Keen to compare the experience vs Noma, Benu, Saison (need to refresh my list) etc… looking for that next elusive mind blowing, holy crap, perception altering experience. Most recent experiences were at Sawada and Taka by Saito and their incredible fish quality. CT@BF did not top that. However their truffle prep was excellent, I think @bradford described it as preserved(?), not superfluous in the uni brioche and duck course. The truffle/duck course was visually stunning! And the quenelle of caviar left me grinning.
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I suppose you went for the wine pairing? Food only is $394 right?
Yes I did the wine pairing, highly recommended btw. Don’t like drinking only one or two wines over these long meals.
There are at least 2 wine pairing options. The prestige pairing is about $298 and included '04 Dom Ruinart, '11 Boillot 1er cru Meursault, and others. It was nice but I’d probably spring for a bottle of Raveneau 1er, or Roulot or some Corton-Charlemagne if it’s a special occasion.
Yes, I believe the truffle on the Hokkaido uni w/ brioche was preserved. It really worked this past time, with the uni’s earth & brine. It’s all about proportions with these “uni toasts” at CTBF, Saison, and others (yes, Jean Georges was probably the one who popularized it, and given chef Skenes’s tenure at JG, his “liquid toast” makes sense but is wholly different). There are many poorly executed ones on the market, elsewhere.
The truffles over your duck dish do not look preserved; I was just talking about the uni toast.
To my tastes, the top 3 high-end tasting menus in America are Saison, CTBF, and probably Restaurant at Meadowood Chef’s Table. Smyth in Chicago is probably the most interesting tasting menu restaurant I haven’t been to yet. (I’ve been to Saison and Meadowood on back to back nights after Manresa. And recently, our party at CTBF went to Per Se and also Daniel on the same trip. The difference between CTBF vs Per se - and Le Bernardin last year - was significant.)
I was just at Californios last night, and while I quite like Californios and enjoyed it, what I remember about my most recent visit to CTBF is just the spot-on execution of great ingredients paired well. In my kasugodai dish, there was a little bit of smoked eggplant creme that worked beautifully with the delicate char on the bream’s skin. The cuisson was perfect and the chanterelles’ meatiness was a great foil to the kasugodai’s texture.
I’ll let some pictures do the talking:
that kasugodai
cuisson on the scallop
perfectly cooked halibut
sawara, flawless ingredient (just like the kinmedai from Chiba)
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Hmmm they didn’t mention a second option. Darn.
You are correct, it was Aussie truffles. Sliced and then stewed/braised. Last time I experienced a sufficiently generous portion of truffles in a dish was at Carre des Feuillants in Paris many years ago where they stuffed a bejeeeezus amount of white truffles between some Pyrenees cheese.
There was indeed a second option, but I had asked for it. Also, I know there were two because I happened to sit next to a restauranteur who asked the sommelier to recite the wines in each pairing before making a decision 
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