I do admit I’m being terribly lazy but explaining every minute detail of my experience at Jean Georges might be a bit boring to you readers (since I wrote about them thrice already, not counting this post). I’ll let my photos to do the talking.
Most of the food was very good. The memorable dishes were crab and squash blossom beignet; not the beignet itself, I found the filling poorly made (use of finely shredded crab meat and waay too much mayo) but the salad component of the dish. I never loved cherry tomatoes and raspberry vinaigrette that much before, and the roasted sweetbreads and fragrant pickled peach because sweetbreads are delicious and it’s cooked perfectly. I also liked the acid component from the peaches. As for desserts, they were very good. I liked the strawberry tasting because of the delicate yet decadent cheesecake.
The petit fours pretty much stayed the same except for the macarons. Pastry chef Johnny Iuzzini supersized the wee little macarons that were the size of peas to the average macaron, about two to three inches in diameter. I still can’t love his macarons. I found the cookie tough and chewy but the mocha filling was ok. The chocolates are still sublime.
Service, as usual, was professional. The decor still remains the same; minimalist and modern with that large chandelier in the middle of the room. Continue reading “Lunch at Jean Georges” »
About three weeks ago I had lunch with Ariel at Nougatine in Jean Georges before he ships himself trans-Atlantic for his month-long vacation. I would prefer Jean Georges proper, but they don’t serve lunch on the weekends. Go figure.
The most unimaginable thing happened to me for on Thursday: eating lunch with two executive chefs at Jean Georges.
Just to give you the gist on how this event to ever occur, Marc Collins of Circa 1886 in Charleston, SC, emailed me for a bunch of recommendations to eat out around Manhattan since he’s cooking at the James Beard Foundation for the Tastes of Charleston event. We emailed each other for a good number of times and in the end, he asked me to join him for lunch at JG with his best friend, Kyle Ketchum of the Spiced Pear in Newport, RI. When I got this invitation I was thinking, “Huh?! Me, an insignificant food blogger having lunch with executive chefs? Have they gone mad?!” No, I don’t think they’re crazy; only me. (I should clarify this now that I paid my own lunch).
We’ve met outside at Jean Georges and went in to check our stuff. We waited several minutes at the desk for our table to be ready. During our wait, we chatted about their dinner at Momofuku Ssäm and a briefly about myself.
When our table was ready and walked through Nougatine, the casual portion of JG, we all saw Jean Georges himself in the kitchen. This particular moment was poignant since anyone who have ever heard of Jean Georges, he has sixteen restaurants internationally. Obviously, it’s a rare sight to see him in the kitchen. When all three of us got seated, Marc and Kyle started to debate whether or not they should ask for a tour of the kitchen. But the subject got dropped once our waitress started to ask what we like to order.
When I ate this particular lunch at Jean Georges on Tuesday, I realized my blog’s birthday is a year and two days old (if you include the time when I was at Blogger and I moved to my current address here)…it’s just beginning to crawl to its infant stage and hopefully progresses to grow to a slightly normal child. I said “slightly normal” because it’s a food obsessed child. Well, I guess it’s my unintentional splurge birthday present to my blog. Even though, I’m actually the one who is physically eating the food. But still “Happy Birthday!” to my blog. You’re officially a year old. And thank you readers for actually make this blog worthwhile to write about besides my insane love for food.
Anyways, back to Jean Georges. I basically made reservations at Jean Georges in the formal dining room, since I went to the casual section, Nougatine, about four years ago with another friend of mine, Seungmi. This time I invited Ariel. He’s more my dining companion for the splurge places these days.
Jean Georges
I arrived earlier than the expected reservation and the hostess walked me to my table, passing the bar/Nougatine dining area to the minimalist, hotel-style room, where everything is done in beige and white, and each table has either a leather banquette or a leather chair. The odd thing I found out was that the table I’m seated is basically a rectangular table where diners sit side-by-side, instead of sitting across from one another. Eventually when Ariel had arrived, I realized that most of our conversations were basically talking out to the void (since we look straightforward unless we turn our head or glance at each other sideways) even though we know we’re speaking to one another. But it’s a small flaw we’ve dealt with.
