{"id":11031,"date":"2013-05-04T23:02:52","date_gmt":"2013-05-04T13:02:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11031"},"modified":"2014-05-10T12:05:46","modified_gmt":"2014-05-10T02:05:46","slug":"le-bernardin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/?p=11031","title":{"rendered":"Le Bernardin"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"tagfood\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\"lebernardin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Chef Eric Ripert’s French seafood cuisine at Le Bernardin is some of the most highly decorated in the world.\u00a0 Most recently, it was recognized as the 19th Best Restaurant In The World<\/a>, in Restaurant Magazine<\/em>‘s annual awards.\u00a0 It has upheld a standard of excellence for an unprecedented thirty six years since it first opened in 1976 and is a permanent fixture of the New York foodie scene.\u00a0 It tops Per Se in the Zagat Guide for favourite New York fine dining.\u00a0 In short, it doesn’t get any better than this.<\/p>\n

For Jen and I, it was also our first Michelin three star dining experience.\u00a0 We were ready to get our taste buds treated to some of the most exquisitely prepared seafood in the world.<\/p>\n

Here’s what we had:<\/p>\n

\"Pen<\/a>

Pen Shell Clam \u201cSashimi\u201d; White Grape-Lime Sauce Vierge<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Poached<\/a>

Poached Halibut; Opal Basil and Shaved Fennel, Red Miso Citrus Emulsion<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Charred<\/a>

Charred Octopus \u201ca la plancha\u201d; Green Olive and Black Garlic, Emulsion, Sundried Tomato Sauce Vierge<\/p><\/div>\n

\"lebernardin004\"<\/a>

Warm Alaskan King Crab \u201cCrabouillabaisse\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Barely<\/a>

Barely Cooked Wild Salmon; Sweet and Sour Hon Shimeji, Mushrooms and Lotus Root, Maitake Broth<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Saut\u00e9ed<\/a>

Saut\u00e9ed Sole; \u201cAlmond-Pistachio-Barberry\u201d Golden Basmati, Brown-Butter Tamarind Vinaigrette<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Sesame<\/a>

Sesame Meringue, Macerated Mango, Black Sesame Ice Cream<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Chocolate<\/a>

Chocolate egg<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Madagascan<\/a>

Madagascan Chocolate Ganache<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Petit<\/a>

Petit Fours<\/p><\/div>\n

The food was perfectly cooked.\u00a0 The presentation was immaculate.\u00a0 The service was speedy and efficient.<\/p>\n

This is going to sound sacrilegious but I determined the experience to be a little underwhelming.\u00a0 Hear me out.\u00a0 On the positive side, there were some delicious and memorable individual courses.\u00a0 The opening course sashimi is wonderfully presented and improbably thinly sliced.\u00a0 The cherry blossom pink Pen Shell is inviting to look at and delectable with the white grape sauce.<\/p>\n

However, when we inquired with our server about the origin of much of the ingredients, we were surprised to hear that the fish was caught on the West Coast or across the Atlantic, off the coast of Scotland.\u00a0 Perhaps its the conditioning that Jen and I have had in Australia where restaurants pride themselves in sourcing local ingredients but this was disappointing to hear.\u00a0 If I wanted to try Scotland’s best halibut, presumably I would go to a Scottish restaurant?\u00a0 The whole concept of shipping in the finest ingredients from ‘around the world’ seemed rather dated to me.<\/p>\n

The other thing about Le Bernardin was the restaurant itself was disappointingly impersonal in its experience.\u00a0 We continuously had different wait staff serve us throughout the tasting menu so we didn’t really build a rapport with anyone and subsequently we learned very little about the food or its preparation.\u00a0 It became very apparent looking around us that during the lunch hour, Le Bernardin is occupied predominantly by wealthy businessmen meeting clients, not food lovers.\u00a0 The reason the staff emphasized speed of service over personality is that its probably what most of their customers would prefer.\u00a0 It was kind of how I imagined dining at a Mitt Romney fundraising luncheon would be like.\u00a0 Everyone else at that restaurant was caucasian, wearing a suit and over fifty.<\/p>\n

It also made me wonder whether Jen and I had treated ourselves to the point of diminishing returns.\u00a0 It’s silly to expect that a three star Michelin restaurant is necessarily an order of magnitude better than Tetsuyas<\/a> or Martin Wishart<\/a>.\u00a0 But our favourite dishes from other restaurants kept colouring our opinion of what we were served at Le Bernardin.\u00a0 It may well be one of the most critically acclaimed seafood restaurants in the world but nothing there was better than Tetsuya’s ocean trout and Martin Wishart did a better octopus course.\u00a0 Le Bernardin was pretty good<\/em> but we were hoping for mind-bogglingly amazing.<\/p>\n

At the time, we were concerned whether we had set ourselves up for disappointment and wondered if Per Se and Eleven Madison Park would be similarly underwhelming.<\/p>\n

It turns out, we needn’t have worried.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chef Eric Ripert’s French seafood cuisine at Le Bernardin is some of the most highly decorated in the world.\u00a0 Most recently, it was recognized as the 19th Best Restaurant In The World, in Restaurant Magazine‘s annual awards.\u00a0 It has upheld a standard of excellence for an unprecedented thirty six years since it first opened in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":11032,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,415,1804,1806],"tags":[1475,1607,626],"class_list":["post-11031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-food-and-drink","category-travel-blog","category-united-states","tag-blogs-from-america","tag-le-bernardin","tag-michelin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11031"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11031\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14552,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11031\/revisions\/14552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thefatwebsite.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}