Review of Per Se by Peter Elliot

A $14 Million-Dollar Restaurant: Dining Out With Peter Elliot

2004-06-18 00:05 (New York)

(Review. Peter Elliot is the food critic for BloombergMuse. The opinions expressed are his own.)

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Per Se is the long awaited jewel of the Time Warner crown, the collection of top-notch restaurants in the mall at New York's Columbus Circle. The 16 table (64 seat) restaurant is the offshoot of the Chef Thomas Keller's much lauded California restaurant, The French Laundry.

Six days after Per Se opened in February, a kitchen fire closed the place down, preventing most of us from tasting Keller's food or wondering how architect Adam Tihany spent $14 million on the interior. Now that Per Se has reopened it was time to see what lay behind the blue, lacquered door with the knob in the middle.

Per Se is on the coveted 4th floor of the center, like the U.S.'s most expensive restaurant, the $300-a-head Masa, Jean- Georges Vongerichten's Steakhouse V, and the bar Stone Rose. It's coveted because unlike the restaurants on lower levels that have to rub shoulders with retail shops and banks, the top four are on their own Swatch-free floor.

Still, from the glass bridge that connects the restaurants, to the bank of escalators and the 100-foot drop to the main lobby, there's no mistaking that you are in a mall of such architectural banality, it probably increases the bar tabs at all restaurants within.

The blue door doesn't open, for unknown reasons. You actually enter through the glass panel on its right which slides open when the hostess sees you and presses the magic button. The money for the construction has been spent on an enormous bar and waiting area, in addition to the kitchen and wine cellars.

The dining room itself is small and tiered so that every table has a view of Central Park as well as Per Se's most talked about design feature, a fireplace along the glass wall that faces the park.

The $14 million price tab would make Per Se America's most expensive restaurant ``build out.'' That's the term used in the trade for taking a raw space and transforming it to a Chef's needs. Architect Tihany, 56, tells me the price includes the costs of everything inside the restaurant: the carpet, the fireplace, the kitchen, the stoves and his and Keller's table and chinaware. Chef Keller, 49, prefers to look at an $11 million number, the cost of constructing the space, not including the fineries, that went into making it a restaurant. No matter how you slice it, that's a lot of money for a 64-seat eatery.

At Per Se, the concept behind the food is a complex balance. Keller is obsessive about ingredients and about the cooking process. Every dish is exceptionally refined. He may run the last truly haute cuisine restaurant in the West. And the food? My table of four chose the $150 Chef's tasting. Keller is one of the most balanced and original Chefs in the U.S. He's also one of the calmest. When his prized kitchen burned, he saw it as an opportunity to train his staff more and take a holiday. He is the essence of California cool. And so are his dishes.

Here are some of my favorites: A sabayon of Pearl Tapioca, with oysters and a dollop of nutty ossetra caviar. And, to my surprise, shad roe, a seasonal American specialty on the East Coast, whipped into a porridge. Served in tiny white bowls, it sounded awful, but tasted like liquid heaven. Who ever thought of drinking caviar?

Not only are the contents of the plates worthy of discussion, but so are the plates and their presentation. Each guest's plate was slightly different, with flourishes by the staff. Some dishes had little lids, others were open but shaped unusually, such as a linguine that arrived served in a bowl that looked like a nun's wimple.

Classic dishes from Keller's French Laundry, such as the sweet butter-poached lobster, a method whereby the lobster flesh is actually cooked in butter, have been slightly altered. Now a waiter brandishes a tureen of red, slightly spiced liquid to pour over the plate.

After 12 courses, the desserts started to arrive, including a ``salad'' of spring fruits, rhubarb confit, and a memorable veloute of bittersweet chocolate with a hint of gold leaf at the top. We all nibbled, but finally raised the white flag. We could eat no more.

It was a long night. We arrived at 7:30 p.m. and left well after midnight. As the Chef himself said, ``It's not the kind of place you want to take someone you don't want to be with for a long time.''

The Bloomberg Questions
    Cost: There are three prix-fixe menus. Chef's Tasting, $150; the regular menu, $125; and a vegetable tasting menu, $135.
    Would I go back? Definitely, for special occasions.
    Noise level? Hushed to the level of reverence.
    Business meeting? Perhaps the best private room in New York.
    Would I bring a date here? Between the view, the fireplace and the aura, this is a perfect place to get engaged.

--Editor: Hoelterhoff, Ruane, Siler.

Per Se is at 10 Columbus Circle in the Time Warner Center, New York. (1) (212) 823- 9335.

Story illustration: For more restaurant news, see {Dine<Go>}on Bloomberg.

To contact the reporter on this story:
Peter Elliot in New York at (1)(212) 318-2332 or
peterelliot@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Manuela Hoelterhoff at (1)(212) 893-3486 or
mhoelterhoff@bloomberg.net.

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