I BEGAN TO CALL it the Per Se face. It was the expression New Yorkers made each time I uttered the two tiny words. Their eyes widened and jaws dropped when I said I was going to eat in the New York restaurant of the French Laundry’s Thomas Keller.
After dozens of emails and phonecalls a table is waiting for me in the restaurant named by the outgoing New York Timescritic as his favourite place to eat in the city. In a rain-lashed Manhattan rush hour I have taken the subway here, sprinted into the lift in the swanky shopping centre that is the Time Warner building. So now I'm standing damp, late and quaking with stress outside an enormous set of glossy blue doors with shiny brass knobs and no visible way of opening them.
Is there a secret knock? Would a tiny hatch fling open, Wizard of Oz style, and an icy face appear to demand a name or credit card? No. Two Bond-style glass panels on either side of the doors slide open soundlessly. “Thank you for coming out in the rain,” the host says with a beatific smile. I don’t tell her I’ve just been catapulted from recession-ridden Ireland to this entrance lobby with its intricately copper-tiled floor and flower arrangement the size of a car. I feel like an emissary on a fact-finding mission to Planet Wealth, with a serious case of the bends.
But there are other people here to do your worrying for you, or at least that’s how they make you feel when you walk into the dining room with its fourth-floor view on to Central Park. It’s a room that could have been written by Tom Wolfe. There is a chocolate and cream swirly carpet, heavily linened tables, some chairs like small thrones, and floor-to-ceiling windows that bring you toe-to-toe with Christopher Columbus glowing greenly on top of his pillar outside on Columbus Circle.
The lighting is dim, from candles, elaborate hanging structures sprouting lamp shades and firelight from the enormous beach stone fire in a glass box in the middle of the window wall. I’m seated at a large table with a curved green leather banquette that I could comfortably lie on and a firm cushion that sits just so at the small of my back. I can see over the tops of other diners’ beautifully-groomed heads to the lights of the skyscrapers beyond. Made it, Ma. Top of the world.
The first mouthful from the Keller kitchen seems designed to charm and calm rather than wow. It’s a Gruyère gougère – a tiny ball of choux pastry and cheese the size of a Malteser. It’s warm and lovely, a sort of beta-blocker in food form. Then a teeny ice-cream cone made of black sesame tuile comes in a silver stand. It’s filled with cream cheese and salmon tartare. It’s the first swoon of the evening, a perfect mix of crisp and cream. The menu is an elongated A4 shape on rich cream card. On the left is an entirely vegetarian tasting menu for (hold tight now) $295. On the right is the meat and fish version, also $295. It reads like a dauntingly long list of the world’s finest things to eat.
Thomas Keller opened Per Se seven years ago, as the New York outpost of his Californian restaurant, which sits in a country house with a garden. Legend has it that the name evolved because Keller found himself telling people the New York restaurant was not going to be a French Laundry per se. This was an austere glass box in a shopping centre, so it was a bit like opening a Ballymaloe in Dundrum.
First up is a cauliflower soup with Medjool dates and pistachios. It’s frothy, nutty and creamy and probably the loveliest I have ever tasted. By now I could slip off my shoes, tuck my feet under me and begin to purr on my perch for one. I am the only lone diner, but this is New York, so no one cares. And with food this good, neither do I.
Besides, the wait staff here are not so much waiters as mind-readers. At one point my main waiter says he’s going to adjust the air for me. By then I’m pretty sure he can, with just a tweak of an atom or two. The staff are a band of smartly suited beautiful and bright people.
After the soup comes oysters and pearls, the one dish that appears every day. Keller has been serving this for 17 years. It is the mother of all signature dishes, a sabayon of pearl tapioca with oysters and white sturgeon caviar. It comes with a beautiful mother-of-pearl spoon on not one but four plates, each one getting smaller until the middle one, which holds the food and is covered in a china dome. The oysters are tiny, mussel-sized, white and smooth and perfect, smothered in a tangy butter sabayon with micro chives. The quenelle of tiny brown-black caviar beads is delicate and pings under tooth with a rich salty flavour. At the bottom are nursery-comfort-level creamy beads of tapioca. It’s simply gorgeous.
Then there’s a citrus-cured mackerel with its flesh turning pale pink, served with fennel and yoghurt. It’s light and beautiful. A heavenly Cape Cod scallop comes with pickled black garlic and black truffle. Then it’s baby food for billionaires in the form of a white hen’s egg (that is as beautiful as any of the elaborate bone china) sliced neatly and refilled with a white truffle-oil infused custard. It swims in a ragout of black winter truffles. The “soldier” in this egg is a translucent chip like a Chinese scroll with a thin black line down the centre. This my least favourite dish. It’s a richness too far.
Next up is a tartare of 100-day dry-aged American Wagyu with celery radishes and mustard crème fraiche. It’s presented on a heavy silver dessertspoon, which you tip into your mouth and hand back to the waiter, a mouthful of wondrousness. By now I’m begging the waiters to keep the portions small. At this point I switch from the Champagne I’ve been nursing since the start, a Jose Dhondt, Blanc de Blancs, to a Californian Chardonnay, Ceritas from the Russian River Valley. It’s a glass of wild flowers.
Then a matchbox-sized piece of Spanish seabass comes with a sunflower-shaped ravioli filled with charred aubergine. Each dish has arrived on an elaborate plate or plates. This one is like a white long-play record with finely etched grooves in the perimeter that ask to be touched. Scottish langoustines (there’s plenty of long-haul food here) on a pumpkin puree with pomegranate syrup are magnificent. A slice of capon (a castrated rooster) with savoy cabbage and chestnut mousse is almost ham-like in its flavour. A piece of lamb as pink as a sunburnt Irish farmer’s neck gets its bouillon poured on from a jug. Then there’s a brie so ripe you could drink it, with bacon lardons, caramelised salsify and sour cherries.
I’ve almost thrown in the towel but it’s worth pushing the belt out for dessert. It’s a ginger marinated pineapple coconut sorbet. It comes with a perfect piece of pineapple that’s wafer-thin and translucent, like a skeletal autumn leaf. There’s a sherbet tingle to the mousse and it goes from froth to an unbaked meringue consistency as you go down the glass. It’s a magical dessert. But there’s a second dessert, an elaborate chocolate caramel cheesecake with a string-sized swirl of chocolate that must have broken several hearts to perfect. This is the point at which this menu begins to be so much food your head spins.
At the table another group has just been served their Gruyère balls, another symphony of surprise, delight and decadence starting afresh. But I’m not finished yet. There’s the box of 24 individually-flavoured chocolates, which feels like the conveyor belt in the Generation Game as you struggle to remember what was the first. I’m guessing they give out many Dirty Martini flavoured ones as it’s the one that sticks in my memory.
Coffee and doughnuts (we’re in New York remember?) of the three-star Michelin restaurant variety round it off. The cappuccino is a coffee ice-cream with a frothy milk top and there are teeny cinnamon doughnut balls, deep-fried hits of warmth, soft dough and sugar.
Per Se is an awesome restaurant, in the old-fashioned sense of the word. Spending this much money on something as fleeting as a meal is ludicrous. But it’s a different New York experience, more of a fairytale than the jostling-jangling-shopping trip.
I come home with nothing to declare at Customs, no cashmere bargains or killer heels or bag. But I have a golden set of food memories in which to luxuriate the next time I’m putting on a pot of pasta to boil.
With wine ($35) and the little sting of sales tax ($29.29) the bill came to $359.29.
Catherine Cleary was flown to New York by Aer Lingus on an organised press trip
Per Se
10 Columbus Circle, New York, perseny.com
Facilities: Vast, marble-lined and with piped music but the tap water, surprisingly, was cold
Music: None, but you can hear the low hum of money
Food provenance: One of the butters comes from a herd of six cows. It’s that detailed
Wheelchair access: Yes
Cheap(er) eats New York style
For a less eye-wateringly expensive Thomas Keller experience in New York, you only need to go one floor down in the Time Warner Building. Bouchon Bakery is a tiny soup, sandwich and pastry bar with more everyday food that looks pretty tasty. Soup starts at around $8 and sandwiches are around $10. Pastries and breads come from the restaurant kitchen upstairs and are laid out like jewels. Here you get to eat from the same stable without needing a big win on the horses to fund it. You perch at a tall table outside the tiny shop to eat. Bouchon Bakery at Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, Third Floor
In the basement of the Time Warner building there is a Whole Foods supermarket with a Genji Sushi Bar where you can get a delicious miso soup, a small bowl of warmth and flavour, for $2.50. I had a portion of summer roll for $4.50 and four delicious vegetable dumplings with a tangy dipping sauce for $5.50. You eat at the bar where you can watch the busy sushi chefs work and busy New Yorkers shop
Eating in the hotel restaurant is an unadventurous approach but I got lucky with the Metro Grill on West 35th Street. A wild mushroom risotto for $12 was the real deal, good Italian cooking. Hotel Metro, 45 West 35th Street, New York. Likewise, the mac-and-cheese in the Fitzpatrick Grand Central hotel near Grand Central Station was a portion of great comfort carbs, and an American classic. Fitzpatrick, Grand Central, 141 E 44th Street
A place that comes highly recommended is Keith McNally's Minetta Tavern. Londoner McNally opened Balthazar and Pastis and is now here. The menu is full of hearty bistro classics, such as roasted baby beets for $18, oxtail and foie gras terrine ($16) and pig's trotter with Dijon mustard, lentils and a herb salad for $26. Minetta Tavern, 113 MacDougal Street, (between Bleecker and W3rd St)
