During my stint in NYC, I had the occasion to dine at a few restaurants that I would qualify as upscale — Jean Georges, Blue Hill and Babbo — a very pleasant experience I will now gladly relate.
Jean Georges
The first in this series was Jean Georges, to which I went for lunch. I was very excited about it, having heard a lot about the Alsatian chef, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, whose innovative cuisine mixes French and Asian influences. We were there on the perfect summer day (quite fitting as it was, in fact, the summer solstice) and the warm cream-colored room was drenched in sunlight. Our waiter presented us with the lunch menu and explained that it offered “small plates” adapted from the dinner menu and not particularly arranged in terms of first or main courses. He said that three was usually a good number (nice try) but we opted for two, especially since some of us (ahem) wanted to save a little room for dessert. While ordering, I tried to steer clear of the dishes that sounded very French, and went instead for those that seemed to demonstrate the chef’s inventivity. We also ordered Claret from Sonoma, by the glass.
They started us off with a platter of three amuse-bouche — a peekytoe crab salad (peekytoe is a variety of crab, but I mistakenly understood “piquito” and thought the salad had some kind of Mexican pepper in it) topped with a thin slice of dried onion, a beet and balsamic salad served in a spoon and decorated with a peeled cherry tomato (which gave it the most alien, interesting look), and a papaya, coconut and lemongrass soup with chive froth served in a high shot glass — all three very tasty, pretty to look at and fun to eat, precisely the qualities you expect from a good amuse-bouche.
My first plate was Crispy softshell crab, served on a piece of avocado with sticks of cucumber, and a lime and crystallized ginger vinaigrette that the waiter poured on in front of me. (Tableside sauce pouring was something that they did on three occasions over the course of the meal: this is sort of fun, but it can also be a little awkward if the timing is not right and you start forking in before they come with the finishing touch.) Softshell crabs are crabs that have just newly molted, so they are still small, and their shell is still, well, soft, so the whole thing can be eaten (and don’t you oh-poor-adolescent-crab me). This dish had so many of my trigger ingredients that I simply couldn’t pass it (Crab, avocado, lime and ginger? Dish! Will you marry me?) and it was indeed just what I’d hoped, a great combination of tastes and textures, very refreshing.
The second plate I ordered was the Soy-glazed veal cheeks, served with a dollop of celeriac purée and topped with an apple-jalapeño salad. It didn’t strike me at the time, but now that I reflect upon it this wasn’t a very seasonal dish (stewed meat? with celery root? and apple? in late June?). I enjoyed it very much all the same, the sauce subtly flavorful and the meat extremely tender. I did however feel that the apple-jalapeño salad could have stood up for itself a bit more. (Apple, jalapeño! Speak up, we want to hear you too!)
as a gift) so I went to check it out on my very first day if only to see the line. But there was none at all, which was sort of a disappointment: it would have been fun to watch, a bit like the line outside 
