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The Times visited Jonathan Benno, the outgoing chef of the four-star restaurant Per Se, and also managed to get a behind the scenes peek at the multimillion dollar kitchen, described in part as "an inhumanly immaculate expanse of burner rings and countertops." But that's not all: there's also a video screen with a real-time uplink to Per Se’s sister restaurant, the French Laundry, all the way on the West Coast! "When it comes to fine dining in New York, the fiscal situation is often irrelevant," writes Alan Feuer. "Elites will always and forever be elites." Of course this is true, but Feuer calling a restaurant kitchen "something akin to a gold vault or the Queen of England’s bedroom" takes things a little too far. Dude, it's a kitchen. Filled with really expensive equipment. It probably smells a little bit better in there than a royal bedroom, too. And for certain, Per Se costs a lot of money—the last (and only) time Gothamist visited the place, the post-dinner report was followed by a Piranha-style frenzy of comments that somehow even managed to namecheck the economist Thorstein Bunde Veblen.
Inside Per Se's "Gold Vault" of Kitchens
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The thing I love about Per Se is that I think it's one of the more accessible high-end meals in the city. Friendly staff, explained complex things without pretension, no attitudes or arrogance at special requests, and they seem to be willing to go the extra mile.
Along those lines, I was eating there with my brother, and mid-meal another table got served a totally different amuse bouche than us. We'd been given the "salmon cornets", which are one of Keller's signature dishes, while this other table got this amazing looking dish of a globe filled with smoke and something at the bottom, with the tops all removed simultaneously by the runners.
I asked what that was, and apparently it was a special amuse that they received - eggplant puree and anchovy, covered in a mix of cherry and hickory smoke. I then asked if we could possibly try it, and five minutes later, we had our own extra course of that amuse, without comment or complaint, and they didn't charge us a surplus. They even paused to let me get set up for a photo:
http://drop.io/uodvavp/asset/smoke-jpg
It was wonderful, and I was glad I asked.
Per Se is definitely a special place. People may shudder at dropping 250 (or is it 275 now?) on dinner, but will turn around and spend 450 dollars on a bottle of vodka at a club in Chelsea.
275 now, but with service included as always, so that's a little closer to $230/pp. Also, Per Se is now doing an a la carte service in the lounge area, which isn't ideal for a proper dinner, but if you want to see the room, and try the food and have a drink and splurge a little, you can give that a shot for closer to $40-60/pp.
Good to know - I haven't been to Per Se for a few years, and no other fine dining experience I have had since has been able to compare. Hopefully Keller finds someone capable to fill Benno's shoes, and are able to weather this recession (I read somewhere that they made alot of money from private events held by finance types, and are hurting a bit - hence the bar menu being introduced)
I love you, Gothamist, but nobody uses Thorstein Veblen's middle name. That said, he should be trotted out more than he is - - along with "conspicuous consumption," he was big on the idea that the more useless the labor, the more honorific and status-giving rich folks would find it to be. Keller's artistry (so much time for so tiny and ephemeral a result) would definitely qualify...