Perry Street
176 Perry Street
NY, NY 10014

Went to Perry Street on Sunday night for a 5:30pm dinner. The restaurant is all the way over on the West Side Highway in a hotel. It's very isolated with bumpy cobblestone streets and I can't imagine many people going out of their way to get here. Inside is dark and very sleek and modern. The place was absolutely empty, which isn't surprising for a 5:30pm early bird special. I started with a Cherry yuzu soda and found it to be nicely tart with a delicious cherry flavor. Payton started with a mojito.

The starting amuse was a sweet potato soup with Parmesan - delicious, warm and perfect on a cold day - salty, rich and smooth. Payton started with Calamari with chili and yuzu dipping sauce - lightly fried and perfectly cooked with a lemony garlic spiced dipping sauce. I chose to go with Poached eggs coated in panko and covered in caviar and on a buttered toasted brioche with a cream. This was rich and perfect and I wondered how they so perfectly poached the eggs and then managed to coat the eggs in the panko coated as if it was bonded through frying. The yolks oozed out of the eggs and I sopped this up with the small, buttery pieces of toast. The caviar lent a pop of saltiness to each bite. Perfect and very filling.


Payton went with the Chili crusted rack of lamb. It was accompanied by a chinese style BBQ sauce and haricot vert beans. The lamb was cooked perfectly and I enjoyed the asian, smoky flavor of the BBQ sauce and thought it went well with the lamb. I went with the butter poached lobster with plum vinegar and crystallized ginger. The lobster was covered in a foam and they were quite generous with the portion. The butter and lobster went well together as usual, but I also enjoyed the subtle ginger and vinegar flavor of the sauce. Both dishes were a good sized portions and thought they were very well cooked.

Saving room for dessert, Payton went with the roasted figs with creme fraiche and cumin ice cream. The cumin ice cream had a very distinctive taste and after having endured the scent and flavor of cumin all over my kitchen it was so nice to finally see it in a new and different fashion that might have actually made me stop hating it again. I chose the pear cobbler with fig sorbet and caramel sauce. The dessert was well done with a crisp tart crust underneath and not overly sweet. Payton enjoyed a nice glass of Port with her dessert and I had a glass of Sauternes.

By time we finished dinner it was 7:30pm and there were only 12 diners in the restaurant. There was plenty of staff and while service was relative good, they seemed to congregate together a lot and not be as attentive as they could. While the food was very good, I don't think we'd go out of our way to return here.

Too lazy too post

We've been to a lot of places since my last post and unfortunately I haven't written about any of them. So, because of my horrible memory (that was the point of this whole blog) I cant really write anything. Let me at least try to remember where we've been (we've been to and I've written about some of these places already):

1. Momofuku Ko - wasn't very impressed and nothing was very memorable - I'd rather go to Ssam.
2. Blue Hill NYC - enjoyed it very much and want to go to the one to the north of NYC
3. Four Seasons - very expensive and mediocre
4. Babbo - always amazing - duck egg with white truffles on perfectly grilled bread is well worth the $80 in the Fall
5. Jean Georges – this place and Babbo have to be my favorites in the city. One dish: egg shell filled with caviar and an egg cream inside is amazing – I'm not even a huge caviar person.
6. Topolobampo – Chicago – Mexican food sounds so much better in your head and on the menu – the result is just muddled flavors
7. Charlie Trotters – Chicago - phenominal
8. Aureole – service and food were mediocre – it's a shame because I've had better experiences in the past
9. Peasant – pretty good
10. Santon Social – I really enjoyed the whole small plates of good food concept
11. Spotted Pig – ate at the bar – food was OK – salty and fried – maybe a little too salty in some cases
12. L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon - Four Seasons Hotel New York – costs and arm and a leg – thats why the 2nd time I went back for lunch and had Payton's ex-co-worker pay it tasted a lot better
13. Centro Vinoteca – I really like to concept of inexpensive small, Italian 'tapas'
14. Casa Mono - always a pretty tasty experience - wish they could get access to some of those 'illegal' Spanish hams
    

I also travel around the country a lot for work and most of the food is garbage. I'm probably just eating at the wrong places. I'll do a better job of cataloging these meals so that I can actually back up my claims that most of the food around the country is garbage.