The Modern inside the Museum of Modern Art always shows up on NYC’s Restaurant Week list and always gets completely booked well before I’m even aware Restaurant Week is upon me. This summer, my boyfriend and I attempted a walk-in and almost got laughed out of the place, so we decided to plan ahead and save it for our anniversary.

Here’s the tasting menu, served in the formal dining room:

amuse bouche: porcini- and rosemary-dusted popcorn

The flavoring on this was too uneven to make much impact, but we liked the idea of it a lot.

amuse bouche: deconstructed vichyssoise: russet potato, leek soup sphere

Quite an impressive presentation, right? Between this and the spork, the flatware coolness wasn’t lost on us.

amuse bouche: nori rice crisp, celeriac purée, hackleback caviar

Surprisingly, though, this was my favourite of the amuses. Surprising because I haven’t traditionally been the world’s biggest fan of the flavor of the ocean. This was just so fresh-tasting and so salt-concentrated, though, that I couldn’t help myself.

amuse bouche: pâte à choux, avocado purée

my boyfriend’s red bell pepper cocktail

fennel souflée, tomato confit, tomato gelée, candied fennel

Tomato even a bona fide anti-tomato activist like me could enjoy. I guess everything tastes good when you cook it in fat and garnish it in sugar.

“milles feuilles” (thousand leaf, meaning layers) of summer truffle, diver scallops, and watermelon, arugula coulis, sustainable Osetra caviar

This was the only total miss of the night, probably because it had such potential to be a hit. With all of those luxury ingredients, you’d think it would’ve blow our minds with flavor, but it was bland and mushy. The truffle taste wasn’t detectable at all, and the only texture interest came from the caviar.

chilled sweet corn soup, pearl onions, poached quail eggs, hickory smoke

The corn was freeze-dried! And it totally made the dish. I love corn anything to begin with, but everything about this soup was a delight, from the temperature to the herbs to the smoke to the soft eggs with their liquid interiors.

grilled Sullivan County foie gras, champagne-vinegar-preserved strawberries, harissa tuile

Maine lobster tart, fennel purée, red sorrel, “lobster granité”

To be completely honest, this dish didn’t pack a whole lot of flavor. But chewy, gummy lobster and flaky crust are such a good texture combination. Is that a terrible way of describing the way lobster feels in your mouth? It’s one of the few seameats I really, really like, so I don’t want to do it injustice, but you have to admit that it’s totally weird to eat.

bulgur-wheat-crusted john dory, roasted black cherries, lemon verbena oil

I basically just wanted to try the john dory because Chef Gordon Ramsey serves it a bazillion times on every season of “Hell’s Kitchen”. It was a little too fishy for me, but I liked the earthy tones of the wheat and cherry.

Modern “pot au feu” served two ways: New York prime strip loin, summer vegetables, basil emulsion; braised cheek, pommes fondantes

The little copper pot of ultra-tender and sweet beef cheek was definitely the best of the entrees for both of us.

strawberry basil gelée, pistachios, strawberry balsamic foam

buttermilk panna cotta, strawberry soup, pistachio ice cream, caramelized tuile

Dr. Boyfriend didn’t care much about this dessert, but I thought each component was delicious in itself and that the sum of the parts was even greater. The strawberries were refreshing but not too light in their syrupy cold soup, and that sweet, crunchy tuile was such a great texture addition. Dipped in the caramel on the side of the bowl, the tuile was probably my favourite part of the dish.

chocolate petit fours

We made a major mistake at this point, and I want our blunder to serve as warning to you. We had seen this wheeled cart brimming with chocolate treats making the rounds, and figuring it was an additional charge, discussed whether or not we had the room in our stomachs to make it worth our while. Of course it turned out to be included with the tasting menu, and of course we pansied out and only got four pieces for the two of us. As soon as we tasted them, we realized what idiots we were and wanted to call our server back over, but we were too embarrassed to be seen as double-dippers.

LEARN FROM OUR MISTAKE. Take one of everything on the cart and store it in your cheeks for later if you need to.

Chocolate Cones with Maple Ice Cream and Raspberry

This was a solidly delicious and inventive meal and probably would’ve received 4.5 donuts had we not been to other restaurants that just plain packed more flavor into their dishes. I do agree with the single Michelin star it’s had for several years, and I certainly think it’s a worthwhile member of the Danny Meyer restaurant group, but it just didn’t live up wholly to my expectations. There’s really something special about eating inside a museum, but The Wright at the Guggenheim is a better bet for your money.

As a lover of intense flavor experiences and creamy desserts, meringue cookies are about the least interesting treat in the entire world for me. They look nice and all, but their taste is always too weak, and biting into them is like biting into a hunk of diabetes-inducing chalk.

But after being served a mango macaron at The Wright for my birthday, I keep finding myself unexpectedly craving those little French cookies. They have the tiniest layer of crunch on their outsides, easily broken just by holding them, but then their centers are somehow super-moist, almost like raw cookie dough. And their flavors are always wildly dense, like heavily-concentrated versions of things found in nature.

So naturally I Googled “best macarons NYC”, because I am a master searcher who doesn’t type out entire questions like, “Where do I find the best macarons in NYC?” like everyone who finds my blog via Google. (I still love you, though.) The first viable result came from some snob from Serious Eats who wrote:

After Paris, the city whose macarons I’m most familiar with is New York City. Unfortunately, after eating NYC’s macarons I think I’d rather wait until my next vacation to Paris than eat another one here. I don’t mean to imply that they’re all horrible—obviously someone likes them or else these shops wouldn’t keep churning them out—but I’ve found most of them to be disappointing.

I kind of want to punch the woman in the crotch. Calling a macaron disappointing is like calling a flavor of ice cream disappointing. Or pizza. Or corndogs. Yes, some corndogs are better than others. And when you’ve had a corndog dipped in pumpkin sauce, I can see how other corndogs wouldn’t live up to it. But you’re still getting to eat an effing corndog, so shut it.

Sorry. I’m just jealous that I’ve never eaten a macaron in Paris.

The writer recommended La Maison du Chocolat for the best of the apparently-unsatisfactory NYC macarons, and incredibly, my boyfriend works right above one. I begged and pleaded and called him things like “darling” and “cuppycake”, but he doesn’t think women should be sitting around eating bonbons on a Tuesday night, so I was left to my own devices.

Luckily, a co-worker informed me that Financier, home of the famed Bûche de Noël, carries them. So I stopped after work and bought a package of 8, all in different flavors.

YOU GUYS. Maybe it’s good that I’ve never been to Paris to compare these to the real things, but glurgglurgglurgglurg. They were so good.

When my boyfriend suggested Seasonal Restaurant & Weinbar because it was awarded a Michelin star this year, I pictured a lively Austrian pub type place with comforting foods like bratwurst and sauerkraut and girls named Brunhilda serving them. What I got was a sleek formal dining room with an inventive menu that put me in the mind of wd-50 or Degustation.

This is one of those unfortunate cases where I had the dinner a couple of months ago and was so overwhelmed by the idea of writing about all of the awesomeness I experienced, so pardon my slim review and (hopefully) enjoy the photos.

The tasting menu:

octopus amuse bouche

I basically love anything with one of these green purees. They always taste so refreshing, and they make me think I’m eating something more exciting than leafy vegetables. I’d be so healthy if my life involved more green purees.

salmon with some sort of awesome powder stuff and the BEST, most flavorful microgreens

white asparagus soup, rock shrimp, morcilla, spring onion

I’ve had an interest in white asparagus since Leah said on season 5 of “Top Chef” that it’s her least-favourite ingredient (because, you know, she’s my least-favourite “Top Chef” contestant). Besides tasting fresh and springy, it also has the dubious honor of being the vegetable most resembling a penis. Win-win!

sweetbread, celery root, onion

The best-looking sweetbread you’ve ever seen, am I right?

soft poached egg, lobster, maitake, porcini

This might be the dish that really brings me around to mushrooms. I can handle mushroom flavor but hate the look of the things, so putting them in a foam is genius. And hiding the other kind of mushroom underneath that foam is über-genius. I think this may have been my favourite dish of the night because it was difficult and yet delicious.

trout, goat cheese, pumpkin seed, radish

wagyu, parsley root, black garlic, cipollini, lime

I still think about this dish once a day. There is no reason that lime flavor and steak go together, and the fact that they not only go together but bring out all of the best flavors in each other is mindboggling.

I have no idea what this was, but it really looks exciting, right?

extra dessert!

Since late last year, my officemates and I have been holding a monthly dinner club where we invite our favourite co-workers past and present to dine with us on various cuisines from around the world. As last month’s dinner fell on St. Patrick’s Day, I asked my friend Beth to choose something Irish for us.

No one was excited about the prospect of this, I should mention. Not only did no one believe there’s such a thing as Irish cuisine, but we all imagined being forced into this crowded, divey bar with sticky floors and slobbering drunk frat boys. But when I walked into Kennedy’s, I discovered comfortable booths, old-timey music, and a long bar that was full but not overcrowded with a pleasant mix of young and old.

I’m a chicken pot pie fanatic, and I couldn’t have been more pleased with my thick, golden crust and its piping hot insides. The all-white chicken chunks were tender, huge, and cut in the jagged way that let you know they’re not thawed from a bag.

My friend Jack, along with about half of the table, ordered the shepherd’s pie, which was definitely fit for two people, though Jack certainly gave it a good go.

I find most New York cheesecakes sadly lacking compared to what I can make at home (or order at The Cheesecake Factory), but I couldn’t help wanting to try the Kahlua Cheesecake for dessert. Our waiter reluctantly explained that they had run out of it but then mentioned that pouring a shot of the coffee-flavored liqueur over a slice of cheesecake would give me the same effect. And so that’s what we did, and it was as awesome as expected.

Kennedy’s wouldn’t be the sort of place I’d take a date to impress him or the kind of restaurant I’d bring a visitor to if I wanted to give her a taste of NYC, but for generous portions of home-cooking in a completely unassuming and friendly atmosphere, I’d definitely go back. Plus, we sat beside Jackie Mason there, which means I get to add someone new to my personal blog’s list of Famous People I Have Seen While Living in New York City from July 2005 to Present.

Exciting, eh?

I went into my dinner at Keens Steakhouse with an extremely open mind. I’m a lover of Peter Luger, but I was under the impression that $90 steak is $90 steak wherever you go, and I was excited about the scotch-and-cigars atmosphere of Keens.

I hadn’t known to specify in my reservation that my boyfriend and I wanted to sit in the main dining room, so I was worried when all of the people in front of us were sent to different parts of the restaurant, but we were luckily seated downstairs under the ceiling entirely covered in clay tobacco pipes. The atmosphere is much darker and cozier than Luger’s, with dark walls and low light to contrast Luger’s whitewashed walls and bright windows shining in the midst of nowhere Brooklyn. This is the place you come to slurp oysters and talk about the things gentlemen do.

I love how it looks like the woman behind Kamran is blowing in his ear.

None of the appetizers enticed us in the least–though I’m sure my boyfriend would have jumped at the $65 seafood platter had I given him any indication that I was interested–so we opted for two side dishes with our slab of meat instead. We ordered the porterhouse for two, carrots with brown butter, and boiled baby potatoes with parsley and butter. For the record, any kind of restaurant with a separate menu section entirely for potatoes is my kind of restaurant.

We ordered our steak medium rare, because that’s how my boyfriend likes it, and I prayed that it’d be served on a hot dish like it is at Luger so I could allow my pieces to continue to cook. It was indeed, but we really didn’t need it to be, because the ends were so much darker than the middle that they were perfect for me and my desire for blackened beef.

Right away, I noticed that the plate just didn’t look as good as it does at Luger. The steak was smaller, and it was already cut off the bone. The bone was pathetically propped up on one end of the plate, which was almost worse than it not being there at all. I waited a minute to give our server a chance to put several slices on my plate like the waiters do at Luger, but he just walked away. It’s not that I even like that they put the steak right on your plate at Luger, but I somehow expected it.

The first bite of steak was just as juicy and steaky as any great steak I’ve had, but after that, I honestly believe that I could tell a difference between it and the steak at Luger. To be super, super honest, I think the steak I had at Primehouse might have actually been better than this one, but I don’t want to say that and risk losing my cred and have people think my palate is inferior.

There’s no doubt, though, that the sides we chose were better than anything we’ve had at Luger. My boyfriend said the cooked carrots were the best he’s had; we loved all of the butter left in the dish for spooning over our plates. The potatoes were the kind you close your eyes to savor completely.

My boyfriend ordered the crème brûlée, and I excitedly told him about a review I’d read in which the writer gushed about the deep dish that left plenty of cool custard underneath the layer of custard warmed by the torching of the sugar on top. What the reviewer failed to remind us was that a deeper versus wider dish meant there was a lot less caramel to enjoy.

However, everything I read about the hot fudge sundae was true. The woman at the table next to us was so impressed by the look of it that she leaned over to ask what it was. What it was was a giant cocktail glass filled with hot fudge an inch deep, several scoops of vanilla AND chocolate ice cream, whipped cream, slivered almonds, and wafer triangles. My boyfriend complained that the whipped cream didn’t compare to the schlag at Luger, but I was too busy having a heart attack over how much the hot fudge tasted just like my mom’s homemade sauce to notice.

I wanted to like Keens better than Peter Luger so I could stick to Manhattan when I want a great steak, but it looks like I’m stuck traveling to Brooklyn when I want to impress someone with a stack of meat. Keens wins for atmosphere, service, sides, and desserts hands down, though. And for saving me $20 on cab fare.