Gotham, July, $25

Mee-Ryung was on her biannual trip to France with her husband to visit friends and family.  So, I made reservations at Gotham for my husband, Steve, and me.  This is a beautiful restaurant, very tailored looking in white and black, like a tuxedo.  It is well known for its food and service and will now be for its $25, three course, Prix Fixe lunch.  You get to select a starter, entree and dessert.  Unfortunately, there were only two choices for the appetizer and entree and three for the dessert.  The selections looked very good, however, and that made it easy for Steve and me to divi up what to order.

The first offerings were a  sea bass ceviche and a roast beet and mango salad.  The two choices seem proportional in their substance.  Neither of us would be overly satiated after the first course.  We were, also, offered bread, which, while it was good, it was not very memorable. The first plates were colorful and arranged elegantly.  It was a plate that you feel bad to destroy with knife and fork (or spoon).  But it was worth it.  The ceviche was tangy and slightly sweet with a little pop of flavor from the coriander and a cool creaminess from the avocado.  The sea bass was very tender, not chewy or tough and took on the citrus flavors nicely.  Sea bass has a meaty, rugged flesh that

stands up to all types of cooking and is a marvel for caterers because it can be very forgiving.  So its nice to see and taste this fish prepared so delicately. It was a very light and tasty dish, much like the salad, which really wasn't a green, leafy salad like most of us are familiar.  There were big, flavorful chunks of mango and beets, which were the stars of the plate, with an elusive crunch from pistachios and a salty, chew of feta.  All the flavors played off of each other well, including the vinaigrette, but I would have liked more feta and pistachio.  There were some little, leafy green things on the plate, but they got in the way, in my opinion.

The entrees came beautifully presented, as I expected.  The arrangement fit more of a round configuration which seemed a bit more inviting and accessible.  This plate allowed you to eat and not feel as thought you are taking something away from the food by getting into it with your utensils. The salmon was served over farro with precisely cut vegetables no larger than the O on your keyboard,  I must remember to try that at home.  It tasted fantastic, it had soaked up the juice from the salmon.  The salmon skin was crispy, which is something I have just recently begun to appreciate,  and had a bit of ocean flavor.  The flesh itself was a little underdone and not too salmon-y, neither of which are a complaint.  The grilled poussin was cooked perfectly.   It had tremendous flavor and the skin took up the flavor of the sweet, but not too sweet, soy glaze.  It was served atop some sauteed spinach and a couple sweet, pickled radishes. The greens were drowned in the rosemary and garlic jus which cried out for a little mound of farro to be sucked into.  I really enjoyed the meat and had to resist the urge to start eating the young, little, french chicken with my hands, Gotham is not the place for that, unless you get a back table.

  

The desserts were highly anticipated, chocolate cake and fruit crisp.   The chocolate cake is their house specialty.  It was warm with a spicy, mocha ice cream quenelle laid in a chocolate ribbon.  It was fantastic.  I think all chocolate cake should be served warm.  It just makes the dessert more comforting and I think we all have a homey memory of chocolate. The mint sprig was superfluous, but added color.  The apricot and strawberry crisp is also a homey sort of dessert, best served warm.  This one had an incredible crisp section that I did not want to end and mixed with the vanilla ice cream was heavenly. 

I believe that the selection of dishes on the Prix Fixe lunch menu have a complimentary dichotomy or in the case of dessert a "tricotomy".  That's really hard to do in my opinion.  This is a lunch I would recommend for anyone.  This is one of New York's finer restaurants and has a staying power and appeal to many people.  It is fabulous American food with great ingredients.  I call it American food because I could not pick up on any ethnicity theme to the flavors, perhaps the chicken I ate was french and the salmon was from scottish waters, but I didn't get the sense that the origin of the products highly influenced the flavors and accoutrements of the dish.  American food mixes all ethnicities and when its done well it is flavorful, balanced and comforting.

I have not given much of the opinion of my lunch date, Steve, mainly because, this was a weekday and he was accompanied by his blackberry.  While, he did have an opinion on the dishes and wanted to contribute, his thoughts about the food echoed my sentiments, and his blackberry got most of his attention as something "blew up" at work.  Blackberrys do not make good lunch company, they have too much stuff to say about everything else but the matters of the meal.  

N.B. Gotham's Lunch Prix Fixe has been altered to a Greenmarket Lunch Prix Fixe with two courses for  $24 and a $7 supplement for dessert. 

Blaue Gans, July, $23

Just to mix things up a bit, I decided to make a reservation at the Austrian restaurant, Blaue Gans. Austrian food may sound strange or exotic, but it is shares the same palette of flavors and ingredients as German cuisine which a lot of people are more familiar with.  The chef Kurt Gutenbrunner wanted his restaurant to honor the memory of the "wirsthaus" of his childhood.   At this restaurant the vibe is casual and light and the menu is heavy on the, well, "wirst".  Their lunch Prix Fixe is three course and $23.  You can choose any appetizer or entree for your first two courses and then a dessert for your third course.

Mee-Ryung Lee is my lunch date once again and we were seated in our favorite arrangement, in the corner of a banquette.  The tables, chairs and banquette melt into the background so you can focus on the colorful art on the walls.  The wine list had a nice selection of Austrian and German wines, as well as,  the usual French and California suspects.  The menu is straightforward with salads, sandwiches, entrees and, of course, "wirst".  I decided to embrace the "wirsthaus" offerings and selected the weisswurst with brezel (pretzel) to start.  M chose the beef consomme with vegetables and dumplings.  The second course was obvious for me, schnitzel.  M gave in to her love of seafood and ordered the mussels.  The dessert selection would be offered after we ate our entrees.

First, we got our bread, what a wonderful beginning.  One of the baguettes were pretzel and the other was sesame.  They were soft and warm and did not need any butter.  The pretzel bread had a nice amount of salt and was tender, not like the brutishness of an NYC hot pretzel from a vendor.

My weisswurst and brezel came to me unadorned except for the pot of mustard under the pretzel.  The "wirst" was flavorful and rich, but not oily.  It was cooked well, not bursting at the seams from to much heat or mushy from not enough heat.  The pretzel was warm and soft with the right amount of salt.  It was a very pleasing combination.  M's consomme was enjoyable, as well, but tasted more like a soup than a clear, clean liquid of a consomme.  The vegetables and dumpling were a little sparse for me, but I like thick soups.  We both agreed it needed a little salt.

Our entrees came to us unembellished, stripped of any perfunctory greens or foamy infusions.  I quite like the straightforward presentation in this setting, nothing to distract you from the flavor of the food and calmness of the atmosphere.  My Jaegerschnitzel came with mushrooms and bacon, the Jaeger- part, I guess.  The schnitzel was a flavorful pork chop, pounded thin, breaded and well seasoned and pan fried.  It was very enjoyable and how can you go wrong with mushrooms and bacon?  Oh, and there was yummy mound of herbed spaetzle, too.  M's mussels were a different story.  The lobster broth the mussels came in lacked some flavor and a few mussels were overdone.  It was disappointing, but not devastating.  They were still good enough to eat.

Our desserts, you will have to forgive me, but, I am not really sure what they were called.  Our waitress named and described our choices for us, but I cannot recall it, my notes from that lunch don't make much sense of dessert names and there is no description of the desserts listed on the restaurant's on-line menu.  I can tell you they were both Austrian and delicious.  One dessert was pieces of refried pancake, essentially.  It had powdered sugar and a berry compote.  It was quite tasty and, I thought, quite clever.  I like dishes that you can repurpose a main ingredient into another dish, generally, its called a leftover and I think it works better at home.  The other dessert was a thick, carmelized meringue served over berries.  It was sweet and delicious and quite suprising.

I would definitely come back to this restaurant for another lunch or dinner.  I like the casual nature of the place and while the food is not the best I have ever had, it is fun and interesting.  All the dishes we had were well executed enough to lead me to believe that anything else on the menu would not be disappointing.