NY Times clobbers New York's (formerly) #1 restaurant

Per Se, a restaurant I'd never heard of, because I can't can't afford $3,000 for a dinner for four. They downgraded it from four stars to two.

At Thomas Keller’s Per Se, Slips and Stumbles

Such is Per Se’s mystique that I briefly wondered if the failure to bring her a new napkin could have been intentional. The restaurant’s identity, to the extent that it has one distinct from that of its owner and chef, Thomas Keller, is based on fastidiously minding the tiniest details. This is the place, after all, that brought in a ballet dancer to help servers slip around the tables with poise. So I had to consider the chance that the server was just making a thoughtful accommodation to a diner with a napkin allergy.

****

With each fresh review, a restaurant has to earn its stars again. In its current form and at its current price, Per Se struggled and failed to do this, ranging from respectably dull at best to disappointingly flat-footed at worst.

****

The kitchen could improve the bacon-wrapped cylinder of quail simply by not placing it on top of a dismal green pulp of cooked romaine lettuce, crunchy and mushy at once. Draining off the gluey, oily liquid would have helped a mushroom potpie from turning into a swampy mess. I don’t know what could have saved limp, dispiriting yam dumplings, but it definitely wasn’t a lukewarm matsutake mushroom bouillon as murky and appealing as bong water.

Yikes!

Servers sometimes give you the feeling that you work for them, and your job is to feel lucky to receive whatever you get. As you leave, you’re handed a gift bag. It’s small, but still too big for its contents, two chocolate sandwich cookies for each person and an illustrated booklet called “Per Se Purveyors.” No doubt this will make useful reading some sleepless night, but it feels like the swag that’s given out after a free press lunch. Except Per Se isn’t free.

Devastating.

 

Comments

[June]

Ahhh - first world problems... Probably Trump's local take-away.

[Karen]

Gotta appreciate the writing. This is a big reason to read the Times,not just for the news.