Bestie NYC Trip - Day 7 - Four Horsemen - Brooklyn, NY

Last day, last restaurant. Rave review, no regrets. 

Ruby-red Yellowfin Tuna tops a pillow of air in the form of a cracker-like gnocco fritto. It's quite simple, a slick slice supplemented with a little garlic from the chives and a hit of acid from the jalapeno. 

A smooth glass of white wine pairs well with all the foods.

The crisp finish adds extra snap to the Sugar Snap Peas, vivacious pods painted with sesame oil, adorned by beautiful buds. It's just a plate of peas...with a flavor-profile so profound I still can't forget it. 

Surf Clam Skewers have soft flesh so supple and sweet, brushed with something soy, offset by pickled strawberries and an assertive aioli more mustard than mayo cream. 

The Sablefish is a beautiful dish, silky filets full of smoke and miso. Unfortunately the smoke and salinity stirs up the sensation of a sandwich so you feel like it belongs on a bagel.

Blue Crab comes to the rescue, soft-boiled egg seeping through the crevices of crustacean chunks. A divine dish. Be sure to drag the baguette through the chili brown butter on the bottom and soak up every drop. 

Seafood Rice is satisfying, more subtly savory with sweet shrimp and succulent scallops, razor clams with a hint of brine. It's an elegant plate but can be overshadowed by the other heavy-hitters.

At the pinnacle is the Pavlova, a flawless meringue with summer strawberries and bits of apple. 

The pavlova is perfection on a plate, but the Panna Cotta proves more interesting with the sour sakura, pickled blossoms both floral and tart, adding a summer breeze and a dash of pickle to perk up a flawless cream. 

If not for the sablefish and even with the sablefish, Four Horsemen, hands-down, serves my favorite food. It's undoubtedly fine dining, but the ambiance is a buzzy bar, with surprisingly straightforward flavors that only crazy-good cooking can concoct. I got up at 4 AM to get this reservation, and I would WILL do it again next time, every time. 

Atomix - New York, NY

I write this review feeling futile as I expound upon a subject that requires no elaboration. Atomix is the restaurant that tops the first-ever North America's 50 Best list, arguably the most accurate restaurant rank-list selected by chefs. 

The excellence at Atomix speaks for itself as the experience is enchanting from the moment you step down those stairs. It all starts with a stop before you sit where they present you with a "before" platter of your food in its freshest form. The clams are closed, the fish look almost alive, and the crab and lobster still move their claws. 

Shift your gaze to this beautiful plate of produce

as you study your Sikhye, a milky, malty rice drink that sips like summer grass. 

They seat strategically, at a staggered pace so there is no squeezing, and just as everyone starts to settle, a sushi-like Scallop shows. Little squares of seaweed and dabs of mustard kimchi stretch out the sweetness of these tender little tidbits. 

This tiny tartlet is the most tantalizing taste tonight. Slips of sea-sweetness are surrounded by an herbaceous slurry like petals around a peridot. I ask them to serve just this the rest of the night, and I am told no, but also that I am not the first to ask.

Pause to choose your chopsticks - it's the only decision you get to make. 

The Threeline Grunt is so good I forget to take a photo, so interesting are the velvety cubes of this lesser-known fish.

Striped Jack with silver skin sits upon some sugar snaps, a supple, springy strip with a clean-green concoction for contrast.

A dreamy-creamy Kohlrabi covers drops of king crab and cradles Kristal caviar.

Nuruk is the highlight of this dish, a fermentation starter most often used for alcohol which adds nutty, aromatic rice-like notes to the sauce. 

I have never hated anything as much as I hate this Abalone. The best ingredients in the industry are combined into a skillful sauce…with the flavor of that sickening syrup into which puffs of deep fried pork from a cheap Chinese restaurant are dipped. It’s an homage to Americanized sweet and sour sauce, an abomination that deserves no honor. A layer of batter already obliterates the fragile flavors of the abalone, and this horrible sauce suffocates what little is left. 

The little side of pickled shallot does not save the dish, but at least it strips the nasty flavor from your tongue. 

Sea Bass is subbed for something seasonal so feast your eyes on this ruby, goldeneye snapper skin. The fish is smooth and supplemented with salt from littleneck clams and shrimp in silky sujebi, a gorgeous green garlic broth. 

They cleverly incorporate banchan to be taken as a bite between each bite. Here the sharp, tart finish of endive salad with pulp of pomelo resets the palate and adds fresh perspective to every bite that follows. 

Lovely Lobster is impossibly tender, wading in white asparagus, treading a creamy white foam. 

The accompanying rice bowl is topped with jeotgal infused with lobster stock for a flavor so sublime it could have been served as a standalone.

The complex bitter-fruit of the goji berry complements and contrasts the Lamb. It highlights the other three dots; offsetting an earthy eggplant and highlighting nutty almond notes. 

The Gochujang Lamb Noodle has more sauce than it really needs, and the noodle could be more firm, but the playfulness of this finish can be appreciated by all.

I am obsessed with flavored jellies, and tea jelly might be the best thing to happen to tea. They add a playful texture to the perky Passion Fruit-flavored ice and lighten the thick tapioca. 

Burdock root ice cream is divine, this indescribable flavor is a floating but grounded, earthy but elegant, every bit elevated, will-never-eat-another-ice-cream-again phenomenon that perfectly complements the cake. The dark chocolate is deep and nutty, buttery, not-so-sugary, melt-in-your-mouth but stay-in-your-senses ball of utter bliss. 

This is where it ends, the entire evening spanning three hours, floating by like a dream. The service is seamless, so subtle you might miss something if you blink. The servers speak at a volume that is easy to hear but soft enough to never startle. They put you immediately at ease, shifting from genuine enthusiasm to quiet respect to whatever emotion fits the occasion. They chat as much as you wish, engage as much as you desire, yet they never interrupt your conversation and sense your needs before you need them. The devil’s in the details, and nothing here is overlooked. 

What I love most about the menu is the incorporation of Korean influences without literal interpretation. There is no bulgogi, no gimbap, but the food leaves indelible impressions clearly rooted in deep tradition, and they infuse fine dining with all the cultural nuance to make each broth, every sauce, and the very air of foam an unforgettable.

Le Veau d’Or - New York, NY

I have no words to describe this dinner, this decadence, this picnic-table extravagance, a prix-fixe offering of three courses so French that even the French stopped making them. 

Every course is a new adventure, a chance to try something very old and new (to me). 

The Quenelle de Brochet is a dense dumpling, a meatball of fish mousse in a chenille sauce that sings. 

Pommes Soufflees Caviar Rouge a la Creme: Carve out a clot of crème fraiche, cram into the crevice of an impossibly thin potato cigar, and relish the roe.

The mains succeed the pommes soufllees, a progression from luminous light to something deep and grounded. The Duck Magret is meaty and dark, red rounds of juice-jets and game. There are no words to describe the seasoned skin with the sweet and tart dark of the cherry sauce. 

Les Delices "Veau d'Or" Sauce Moutarde speak strongly, a statement of the chef. Three organs served side-by-side, all absolute perfection. The kidney is supple and springy, the brightest of the bunch, with earthy undertones and only the slightest silt. The liver, too, retains a supple texture with barely any iron and delivers a finish that is sensationally smooth. The sweetbreads are the most surprising, soft and creamy with a sweetness that slides and glides like velvet. 

A fresh green salad is served as a reset before the real sweets show up, 

Next comes an ethereal Ile Flottante. Meringue forms a fluffy cloud dotted with caramel, soaked with clinging creme anglaise, to saturate the senses before dissolving into effortless air. 

The Nougat Glace a la Rhubarbe is a surprise, a fantastic, flaky frozen cream encasing nutty specks, covered in tangy-sweet rhubarb chunks. 

They gift us a deep-fried twist of a Beignet, which I wish they hadn't done. The fry wasn't fresh, and the dough had soaked far more oil than it should.

Strangely unsatisfying finale aside, the meal is truly transcendent. I hate to end on a negative note as it in no way negates this spectacular menu, but every rose has its thorns, and if this is the worst of it, I would eat fifty more to earn another meal like this. 

Baby Bistro - Los Angeles

Move over Baroo, and make room for Baby Bistro. Now sharing the podium for my favorite restaurant in LA, this cottage-esque, open-kitchen establishment is the epitome of all things LA. 

The menu is 6 hand-written items with the option to add on something else +/- bread. It's designed to be a tasting for two that preserves the diner's ability to opt out with dignity and grace. Whether for reasons of appetite, allergy, budget, or personal preference, you do you with no explanation required. 

We did us so we did it all. The signature Onion Bread, Foxglove that tops every menu places a cold concoction of green bean and tomato with a stripe of creamy cheese upon a hot, fluffily-dense chewy-crumb slice. 

Unbeknownst to us, we just happened to hit their one-night guest-chef collab with Heritage, and for that we got the Cannonball Cabbage, Anchovy. It's a signature from the Long Beach farm-to-table, a sweet and crunchy slice with charred edges and anchovy cream to add umami. As expected from Heritage, the cabbage itself is stellar, I just wish the portion were a little lot bigger. 

The Scallop, Basil belongs to Baby, a citrus-bright slurp of the sweetest, most tender-textured scallops bolstered by basil. Dehydrated basil seeds add earthiness, and a substantial sprinkle of Aleppo chilies permeate with smoky sophistication. 

The supplemental Salad of Frying Peppers is a play on textures with tenderly-rubbery little-cap mushrooms that make the peppers a bit more playful. Curry leaves set a serious tone, adding dark and earth for cohesion and refinement. 

Baby's Blue Prawns, Cucumber are a close second to the scallops on the list of best things I've ever eaten. Chilies give sweet flesh sass, best consumed with the gooey contents from the head. Cooling cucumber is covered in a clingy, creamy "green goddess"-type sauce, and there's a bed of fat couscous for a hit of acid as well. 

Heritage makes a medium rare King Salmon, Green Garlic with a skin so crispy there's an audible crunch when you cut and flesh that melts in your mouth.

Dessert has Yogurt, Herb Tea with a yogurt most creamy and panna-cotta thick coated by a cool-cuke granita in a tea jelly lake. 

If I had to give a concise description of Baby Bistro (because, let's face it, nothing I describe is concise), I would say it's "LA fine dining", casual fine dining done right. The ambiance is California-casual, friendly service with plenty of chill. They serve what they want, cook what they like, and curate a wine list that contents but doesn't overwhelm. Each dish is exquisite, every ingredient highlighted, not a single flavor wasted. It stands up to anything on the east coast minus the side of stuffy serving, and it sets the standard to which LA fine dining should aspire.