The Table at Season to Taste Review

The Table at Season to Taste: Wonderful addition to Cambridge restaurants

Overall rating: 90

Food rating: 92

Season to Taste is a catering company in Cambridge, and two months ago they opened a small restaurant at their location called The Table. The chef is Carl Dooley, who was chef de cuisine at Craigie on Main and is apparently well known by people who watched this season of Top Chef (I wasn't one of them, so we went in with expectations based only on a number of recent good reviews).

The space is small but pleasant. There are seats at tables for 16 people, and another four seats at a bar looking into the open kitchen (this part is similar to the setup at Momofuku Ko) where we were seated. There is also room for a few people to stand and eat "snacks" and drink wine, beer, or cider; they do not have a full bar selection.

The space is a little loud (mostly by choice -- they have music playing loudly) but it was possible to talk without much problem. There were six people working there, three on food and three on everything else, all of whom were very friendly. These included Carl Dooley, another chef, and a cook.

We arrived a few minutes early for our reservation, and they seemed to be trying to coordinate our service with the other two people at the bar seating, who arrived a bit later. As a result, although we got wine, we did not receive any food or bread for more than 35 minutes. Seems like the sort of problem, though, that will get sorted out over time by this new restaurant.

The wine selection is fairly small, and we got wines by the glass that were okay but overpriced. This and the initial wait were really the only disappointing aspects of the meal.

The Table offers only a $65 prix fixe four course meal with two choices for each course. There were two of us, so we ordered to get eight different dishes and shared each course.

The amuse bouche was a bass sashimi with some kimchi that had a great aroma and was wonderful. At the same time the amuse came, we got bread (toasted semolina bread) that was good, with "house-cured butter", which turned out to be butter which they had cured with cheese rinds that gave it a sweet, cheesy taste that was very interesting.

The first course had a salad of grilled squid in citrus with pistachios and mint. It was aromatic and perfectly prepared. I'm not a big fan of squid, but this was great. The other first course plate was a terrine of foie gras with prunes, mustard and duck breast served with toast. This, also, was delicious.

The second course had a plate of roasted sweet potato with an oxtail ragu. This was good, but not great; the flavors weren't that well balanced. The other plate was a mussel and fregola stew that was incredibly good -- probably the best of the dishes along with the amuse.

Sitting at the bar, we watched an error with our own plates for the third course. The couple siting next to us had both ordered hake, while we got one hake and one chicken dish. The cook prepped as if the other couple had also split their orders, and they were served before us. They pointed out the error, which meant one of them had the correct dish and one a chicken instead of the hake. So the chef took the hake that would have been served to us, and swapped it for the chicken. This left them with two chicken dishes and no ability to serve us until a hake dish was prepared. So the chef sent one chicken dish to the back (presumably to be eaten by the staff later?), and unplated one chicken and put it in the oven to hold it warm. A hake dish was prepared in about 4 minutes, and then the chicken was replated, the hake was plated, and we were served both. As this went on we wondered whether it would lead to overcooked chicken, but the chicken was perfect.

The chicken dish was chicken thigh with grated green apple and cabbage and was delicious. It included cockscomb, which I was thinking/hoping was a name for some vegetable, and which, on the plate, my wife interpreted as an oddly textured mushroom, but was in fact from a chicken and was perfectly tasty. The hake was in a butternut squash curry with raisins and almonds. The hake was perfectly cooked, but the curry overwhelmed the flavors of the fish, so this, like the sweet potato plate, was a bit unbalanced.

The desserts had a citrus pavlova with lemon curd and grapefruit-Campari sorbet that was both beautiful (a perfectly smooth meringue with whipped cream inside it) and delicious. There was also a dark chocolate marquise that was very good with some excellent coffee ice cream.

Overall, this enters the scene as one of the best restaurants in Boston. I don't know of a similar place in the area where you are so intimate with the chefs, so it's also a unique dining experience for Boston. Carl Dooley seems friendly and approachable compared to some of the other chefs I've encountered at comparable restaurants in the area, and though he was clearly irritated with the error I described above, he held his cool and kept a pleasant atmosphere for the kitchen and the guests.

The price of $65 per person is reasonable for what you get. The wines made the overall cost of dinner seem a bit high. Either a lower price for those wines or better wine for the same price would have made the entire meal appropriately priced.

I'm a bit concerned what it will be like trying to get reservations down the road, but once it's possible to get in we will certainly be back.

Little Big Diner Review

Little Big Diner: Asian-inspired food in Newton Center

Overall rating: 76

Food rating: 80

Little Big Diner is little, but it isn't really a diner in any common sense of the word. This recently-opened restaurant from the Sycamore folks mainly serves ramen and rice bowls, along with a few appetizers. The overall menu is quite small. A few reviews have called this "Asian fusion", but that's really no more accurate than it would be for Strip-T's. And, more so than for Strip-T's, much of the food at Little Big Diner is fairly Asian, more than being American food with Asian flavors.

We went there for the first time last night for dinner. They do not take reservations or call-ahead, but when you arrive take your cell phone number so you can wander elsewhere in Newton Center. The wait was about 70 minutes.

The space is small, cramped, and loud with pulsing music. The wait staff were young, friendly, and welcoming, and reasonably helpful in selecting dishes. We were seated near the door (hard not to be), and so it was drafty on a cold night, whenever anyone entered or left.

We ordered a "Hawaiian Style Burger" appetizer that was really very good. Steamed dumplings were fine and had a somewhat unusual spice mixture, but weren't anything remarkable. The spicy miso ramen had very tasty corn and spiced ground pork. I'm in no sense a connoisseur of ramen, but the noodles seemed very standard to what you  might get in a noodle dish at any Asian/Chinese restaurant, and the dish as a whole wasn't really very spicy. The big bowl (rice bowl) with chicken was fine as well, but also less interesting that it might have been.

We ordered a cold sake that was recommended and was good.

The meal came to $63 before tip, so a reasonably inexpensive dinner.

Overall, the lack of reservations, noise, draftiness, and cramped space means we're unlikely to go back very often unless the food gets substantially better. Strip T's is somewhat less cramped and less noisy, and the food is better. That said, the owners' nearby restaurant Sycamore has improved more since it opened than any other restaurant I've encountered, and so I hope they accomplish the same with Little Big Diner.

The Bench Review

The Bench: Surprisingly good

Overall rating: 84

Food rating: 84

The Bench lists itself on its web page as "Vermont Comfort Food", which makes it an unusual restaurant to review on this blog. We were in Stowe for a ski trip and came here one night, and then came back the next night just to get drinks and small plates.

From the outside, it has a typical Stowe-overpriced-pub look -- not particularly inviting. Inside is quite different. It's spacious with lots of wood, an open kitchen with a large wood fire, and is set up nicely to accommodate families or people returning from the slopes.

The Bench seems to have opened about 18 months ago. Over two nights there we had several different drinks, all of which were excellent. These included a vodka and ginger beer concoction, a vodka drink with roasted pear liqueur, a take-off on a margarita, and a Whistle Pig bourbon variation on an old fashioned.

Maple butternut squash soup is a fairly common soup in Stowe, but this one was delicious and pretty different, with lots of unusual flavors, and topped with pumpkin seeds. A warm sweet potato salad was excellent, with feta melting from the warmth over kale and topped with additional sweet potato chips. Mussels fra diavolo was delicious as was scallops with a curried cauliflower puree. Asparagus wrapped in prosciutto was tasty. Buffalo wings were very good but not great. Also very good but not great were a lamb burger and the house hamburger. We did not eat any real main entrees, but they have them and they sound interesting.

A wood-fired served-in-the-pan chocolate chip cookie was an excellent dessert but too large for three of us.

The service was warm and welcoming, with the wait staff knowledgeable and helpful in making choices and accommodating requests. Prices were quite reasonable for Stowe.

All in all, this is a remarkably good restaurant for the price in Stowe, and we hope they maintain their quality, ambiance, and value in the future -- a hard thing to do in a tourist town.

Il Capriccio Review

Il Capriccio: A restaurant in decline

Overall rating: 78

Food rating: 75

Il Capriccio, like La Campania, provided a chance to eat Italian food in Waltham that was as good as all but the very best restaurants in the North End. It was expensive but elegant and had a number of signature dishes, such as their porcini mushroom souffle, that were spectacularly good. It was a place we would go for anniversaries, birthdays, and other celebrations, and to take visiting family out for a great meal.

I hadn't been there in a couple of years. My last visit was with a large group and the food was only okay, but it was hard to judge given the difficulties in serving such a group at once.

This week I went again, and was sorry to find that the food and atmosphere have both declined.

Service was pleasant but inattentive. For instance, we had to ask for bread to be served, though when it came was perfectly decent crusty bread served with good olive oil.

A glass of pinot grigio was fair at best, though admittedly not very expensive. An appetizer of Gorgonzola and pear ravioli was overly salty, overly rich, unbalanced (there was no taste of pear), and overall very mediocre. For a main, I had the chicken schnitzel, which was also oversalted, had a mustard sauce that overwhelmed the dish a bit, and was only okay.

You can get food of this quality or better at Sweet Basil or Fiorella's, both for less money. The atmosphere isn't as elegant at either of these, but Il Capriccio is feeling worn and tired. It's no longer a place I could imagine taking someone for a marvelous romantic dinner, either for the food or for the atmosphere. I'm sad about that.

The Brewster Fish House Review

The Brewster Fish House: Very good food and drink, with incredible lobster chowder

Overall rating: 90

Food rating: 90

I'd heard about The Brewster Fish House from the same friend who had recommended Fin. The Brewster Fish House doesn't take reservations, though, and is typically very busy, so we hadn't tried it. However, this week is back to school for some locales, so Cape Cod is much quieter than usual for a pre-Labor Day week and thus we made it in early to a nearly empty restaurant.

The location is small but the tables are not crowded together, however it was overly air conditioned. The wait staff were welcoming and helpful with recommendations.

I tried two mixed drinks both of which were very good and both of which were unusual flavors. Not the sort of thing that everyone would necessarily like, and this foreshadowed much of the meal.

For appetizers, I ordered an odd seared foie gras preparation that included herring and white peaches. It was very good but not incredible. My wife ordered a sashimi special that she felt similarly about. However, the waitress had said people go out of their way to get their lobster bisque, and so we also shared a bowl of the bisque. Although I love lobster, I'm nearly always disappointed in lobster bisque. Not so at The Brewster Fish House. Their lobster bisque was one of the more wonderful foods I've eaten, creamy with chunks of lobster, but not overly heavy or improperly seasoned. I'm not sure how better to describe it, but it's worth eating there just for the bisque. I also tried some of someone else's fish chowder, and this was very good.

For mains, my wife got lobster prepared out of the shell with pain perdue, mushrooms, tomatoes, fennel, and some beef bone marrow. This was very good. I had fluke with couscous served with brown butter dashi poured into the bowl. The fluke was delicious, though the skin was a bit tougher and/or less crispy than it might have been. The flavor combination was unusual.

For dessert, I got an odd plate of panna cotta served with a topping of whipped cream, some fresh slices of fruit and blueberries in a separate section of the plate, and a third section with olive oil cake topped with peach ice cream. There didn't seem to be much coherence to the dessert. All three parts were good, though the cake/ice cream was best and the panna cotta a bit dull even with the fruit.

Another member of our group got blackberry sorbet (a song by Prince has been running through my head since), and did not like it. However I thought it was really amazingly good though with a very strong and somewhat sour flavor; I'm not a sorbet fan but this was wonderful.

So, reviewing this restaurant is a bit tricky. First, I think the flavors are unusual and this is not an ideal place for people who do not like strong or strange flavors. However, I'm mainly focused on this because the group included people who were less-than-thrilled with such foods, and usually we're out on our own where I wouldn't be commenting on this. Second, and more central to the issue, is that much of the food was very good but not great, the drinks were excellent and strange, and the lobster bisque was so incredibly good that we would be eating here again no matter what the rest of the meal was like.

So the 90 rating needs some explanation as it overrates the overall food a bit, and dramatically underrates the lobster bisque. That said, The Brewster Fish House is one of the very best places I've eaten on Cape Cod.

The Kirkland Tap and Trotter Review

The Kirkland Tap and Trotter: Good food and excellent drinks in a relaxed atmosphere

Overall rating: 87

Food rating: 85

It took us a long time to make it to KT&T, but we finally got there last weekend. Tony Maws' other restaurant, Craigie on Main, has some of the best food in the Boston area, but the reviews I'd seen of KT&T were kind of mediocre. KT&T is in Somerville, around the corner from Bergamot.

The space is brighter than Craigie and more open, and KT&T has an overall relaxed feel to it. Like Craigie, though, the wait staff were extremely friendly, accommodating, and helpful. I asked our waiter for a number of recommendations, and he clearly was giving his actual favorites, and neither trying to avoid giving a recommendation nor up-selling us.

One of these favorites was his favorite cocktail, Smoke N' Bols, which was really wonderful. My wife got a coconut margarita that was unusual and also very good.

For appetizers we got a mussel stew, made with pasta, and the crispy-fried pork ribs. The mussels were very good and the pasta was excellent. I thought the ribs were good but nothing special, but my wife thought they were really superb.

For an entree, we both got the roasted Scottish sea trout, prepared with rice and vegetables. The waiter had told us this farm-raised trout tasted like salmon and that the vegetables were fresh and delicious. Both of these were accurate, but the fish itself while perfectly cooked and tasting like salmon wasn't actually all that interesting. The accompanying vegetables were great.We also got a side of grilled rapini (broccoli rabe) that was well prepared but nothing unusual.

We didn't get dessert, and the price with two drinks each, two entrees, two appetizers, and one side was about $70 per person, so overall a pretty reasonable price.

Overall, the drinks were great, the food was quite good, and the atmosphere and service were excellent. The food is somewhat different from what you would get at most other places in the area, and we will certainly be heading back. Those mediocre reviews I'd seen don't do the place justice.

Blue Hill at Stone Barns Review

Overall rating: 98

Food rating: 95

Blue Hill at Stone Barns: An amazing dining experience

I'd been hearing that Blue Hill at Stone Barns was the best restaurant in Westchester, where we travel fairly often, but had been unable to get a reservation. Then, a couple of days before we were heading down I checked and found an opening for dinner and snapped it up.

The Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture is a non-profit center created by David Rockefeller on land from the Rockefeller estate. Much of the food comes from the working farm, its greenhouse, and surrounding farms.

Reaching Stone Barns is pretty easy, but getting to the parking area at twilight was relatively unmarked and involved a fair number of twisty roads. Once there, we were met by a valet to park the car. You then walk through an open court with surrounded by stone buildings to reach the restaurant. It's a really beautiful space. We didn't take pictures, so I am stealing from the Internet:

The dress code is jacket and tie for men. Once we entered we were offered a chance to either go to our table or sit first at the bar and have drinks. We chose to go to the table, which was in a gorgeous dining room (another stolen picture):

The tables are spaced far apart, and the acoustics make it easy to talk privately. There were an incredibly large number of servers for the number of guests, and so we were very well attended to.

You could easily imagine this feeling stuffy and formal, but it didn't. Everything and everyone felt comfortable and welcoming. I ordered a drink that was basically an old fashioned made in birch wood, which added a birch beer flavor. Unusual and wonderful.

There is no menu at Blue Hill. Food just starts arriving once they check to make sure there are no dietary intolerances. Most courses involve just once piece of food for each guest, and there were 25 or more courses. These ranged from an initial piece of lettuce with some dressing on it, to venison, to dried herring. At one point our table was taken to a separate building (that used to be the manure storage on the farm), where we had some amazing bread with a couple of different accompaniments. I ordered a glass of wine that was at the lower end of the wine prices, but was really delicious.

The foods were unusual and delicious, and the setting and service made it the best restaurant experience I've ever had.

The prices matched the experience: $198 per person before drinks, tax, and tip.

I don't think I can do the restaurant justice in this review, and the expense is enough that it's hard to imagine going back for quite awhile, but if you are in Westchester and want one of the best dining experiences you will ever have, go to Blue Hill at Stone Barns.

Asta Review

Overall rating: 89

Food rating: 92

Asta: Tasting menus with somewhat small portions of excellent food

We went to Asta this weekend with another couple. They had been their twice before, but it was our first time there.

Asta serves only tasting menus, and has a three course tasting for $45, a five course tasting for $70, and an eight course tasting for $95. There is also an optional course of foie gras for an additional $24. Wine pairings are available with the five and eight course options.

The restaurant is next to Deuxaves on Mass. Ave in Boston. It feels much less pretentious and "happening" than Deuxaves, and is a relatively small space but does not feel crowded. The wait staff were welcoming and reasonably helpful. The tables have drawers with silverware, so when courses and silverware are cleared, you replace forks, knives, and spoons from your drawer. Although it sounds kind of hokey, I thought this was a really nice touch.

We were given a welcome glass of sparkling wine. The amuse bouche was some duck liver and hearts on a tortilla and was delicious.

The three course menu actually had the foods that sounded best to both me and my wife, but did not seem like the best way to try a new and highly rated restaurant. Asta can handle different people at the table getting different numbers of courses, so we asked whether we could get one three course meal and one eight course meal with plans to share the dishes between us. The waiter told us that this would not work well because the eight course meal has such small portions that they are hard to share. This was a bit of foreshadowing of one of the main problems with Asta.

The actual options are, of course, quite limited, and so pure tasting menu restaurants, though interesting in theory ("let the chef just pick what he wants to serve"), aren't our favorite choices. Places with some a la carte options necessarily provide more flexibility if you're not thrilled with the tasting menu offerings.

In the end, I got the five course tasting menu and added the foie gras, and my wife got the three course tasting menu. We split the wine pairing for the five course menu.

The first course was octopus with a squid ink sauce that was very tasty. The three course meal had a salad with some biscuits and was excellent and substantially more food. The second course was a bowl of beans that was good but not great. The third course was broccoli prepared with a small amount of cheese and some horseradish, and this was superb -- probably the best course of the five course menu. The foie gras was served with some sweet potatoes and a coffee-based sauce. It was well prepared but not actually that tasty. The main course was this pieces of duck breast that was wonderfully prepared and delicious. The main course on the three course meal was chicken breast, and this was excellent and again quite a bit more food than the duck. The dessert was a hazelnut cake with a lightly poached pear that was very good. The dessert on the three course menu was a crepe with some berries that my wife thought was excellent.

The bread that came midway through the meal was good. The wines were unusual and mostly quite good.

Portions on the five course meal were small enough that I was still hungry at the end of the meal. The couple who was with us had had the eight course meal on one of their visits, and apparently there was very little food in a number of the courses. The amount of wine served as pairings was typically about half a glass, so our plan to share a tasting meant that my wife and I each had much less than two glasses of wine.

With the foie gras course, we were served a tumbler of some Trappist monk ale, and when the bill came it turned out that there was an unmentioned (on the menu or by the waiter) $8 charge for this. Apparently it was assumed that if you were having the wine paring that you would want this tiny non-wine paring with the foie gras. We mentioned this to our waiter, and one member of the group asked him to take this charge ($16, since two of us had gotten the foie gras) off the bill. He did this, but clearly wasn't pleased about it.

For me, this put a bit of a damper on the meal. I did not want to feel like we were being cheap or haggling over the cost, but I would expect a restaurant to mention that when you add a $24 item like the foie gras, that you are actually adding a $32 item if you happen to have picked a wine pairing. This is particularly the case given that I would not have chosen to have ale, and that $8 seemed like a lot for the tiny portion presented.

Overall, Asta is a very nice place to eat if you area okay with being constrained to a tasting menu. Much of the food was excellent and the wines were good. The prices are a bit high for the amount of food served, and my impression is that this becomes more of an issue as you go from three to five to eight courses, but this is a Boston restaurant on Mass. Ave., and the prices are not out of line for this quality of food.

For a place with only a tasting menu, I much preferred Asta to Journeyman.

Updated ratings

As of October 2014, I decided it was time to go through all my restaurant ratings and make sure that I still agreed with them and that they accurately reflected how I would order the various restaurants I'd reviewed.

I took the opportunity to spread out the lower ratings, since my ratings all tended to cluster above 80, which compressed differences between restaurants. I also revised ratings for restaurants whose food/quality had changed some over time. Most particularly, this affected Ribelle -- now one of my top-rated restaurants.

When I look at reviews of restaurants, I often wish I could quickly see all their reviews to get a sense of whether I agree with them about restaurants we've both been to, since if I do their reviews of restaurants I haven't been to seem more useful to me.

With that in mind, here is a list of the restaurants with their revised ratings, sorted by overall quality:

Name	Overall	Food
T.W. Food	96	95
Craigie on Main	93	93
Hungry Mother	93	95
Ribelle	93	94
Momofuku Ko	93	94
Hamersley’s Bistro	92	93
Oleana	91	94
Speakeasy	91	85
Myers&Chang	89	86
Bronwyn	88	90
Sycamore	88	88
Bergamot	88	88
Strip T’s	87	90
Journeyman	86	85
Sarma	86	85
Fin	85	89
Bar Boulud Boston	84	83
Lineage	83	85
Puritan & Company	82	84
Lumiere	80	80
51 Lincoln	79	79
Farmstead Table	78	79
Sweet Basil	75	75
Buca’s Tuscan Roadhouse	73	75
Elephant Walk (Waltham)	50	50

Here is the same list, sorted by food quality:

Name	Overall	Food
T.W. Food	96	95
Hungry Mother	93	95
Ribelle	93	94
Momofuku Ko	93	94
Oleana	91	94
Craigie on Main	93	93
Hamersley’s Bistro	92	93
Bronwyn	88	90
Strip T’s	87	90
Fin	85	89
Sycamore	88	88
Bergamot	88	88
Myers&Chang	89	86
Speakeasy	91	85
Journeyman	86	85
Sarma	86	85
Lineage	83	85
Puritan & Company	82	84
Bar Boulud Boston	84	83
Lumiere	80	80
51 Lincoln	79	79
Farmstead Table	78	79
Sweet Basil	75	75
Buca’s Tuscan Roadhouse	73	75
Elephant Walk (Waltham)	50	50

Momofuku Ko Review

Overall rating: 93

Food rating: 94

Momofuku Ko: Great, tiny restaurant in New York City's East Village

If you're reading this and considering going to Momofuku Ko, you are likely well aware of the difficulty in making reservations (just has 12 seats at a bar around the kitchen; you use their online system to sign up and reservations open at 10am ten days before dinner seatings [or 14 days before lunch seatings]), that it has held two Michelin stars for years, and is considered one of the best restaurants in NYC.

I knew we'd be in NY this past weekend, and at 10am ten days earlier, having previously registered on their system, I went online and had no problems quickly making a reservation for Saturday evening.

Before I started down that path, I'd had to learn which Momofuku restaurant was the one with the Michelin stars, since there are something like five Momofukus in NYC, all considered excellent. We had never been to a restaurant with a Michelin star and wanted to see what it was like. As restaurants like this go in NYC, Momofuku Ko isn't insanely expensive. Also, Tim Maslow, chef behind Strip T's and Ribelle, had been chef de cuisine at Momofuku Ssäm bar before returning to Boston, and those are two of our favorite Boston restaurants.

Momofuku Ko is tiny and they don't let you take pictures. There is almost nothing on the door to indicate the existence of the restaurant, save a small two letters reading "Ko". We entered and were greeted immediately by a friendly hostess who confirmed that we had a reservation and seated us. There are only stools at a bar. Ten of the seats run deep from the doorway along the length of the bar; we were at the two just in from the doorway that make an L from the bar.

There were four chefs working in the kitchen, plus at least two or three other support staff clearing, taking drink orders, etc., and the service was impeccable. Ko is casual with no dress code. I was wearing pants with shoes and a button down shirt with the sleeves rolled up and was the most formally dressed man in the restaurant. Women were dressed similarly informally.

As soon as we sat down we were offered a drink menu, and we selected a half bottle of a Gruner Veltliner that was very good. There is no menu at Ko, they just start bringing food, though do ask if you have any allergies/intolerances.

One of the chefs came over early on and explained that we would be getting a few items before the start of the meal. A few turned out to be five or six items including pork rinds, a sesame cracker, and a delicious soup shooter.

The meal then began with small item after small item showing up. The meal was very heavily fish based with raw or nearly raw fish items that were delicious, a wonderful smoky broth with a poached egg, and a very rare piece of duck as the main non-fish protein. About midway through the meal, with the broth, there was some very light sourdough bread served that was great. There was a course with foie gras that was frozen and then shaved and this was remarkably good. There were two desserts including a chocolate "cake" that was millimeters high but really did taste cake like, and a meringue that was wonderful.

The food was fresh and tasty, with appropriate but not overwhelming flavorings and the preparations were excellent and interesting. The music level in the restaurant was loud enough to make conversations private, and the selection seemed right for people of our age and (outdated) tastes.

My wife talked a lot with the chefs asking various questions about preparation of the food. One of the chefs we dealt with was very new there (three weeks) and was friendly and fun to talk to (and was originally from the South Shore in Massachusetts). The other, who is listed on the website as the sous chef at Ko and seemed to be in charge of the service, was more knowledgeable but less friendly and was from Chicago. It actually made the evening less fun that he was less engaged, since if you are going to be right up at the kitchen with all the chefs you'd like to be able to interact in a fun meal.

The prix fixe before tax and tip is $125 per person for dinner (more for lunch, which has more courses), and the half bottle of wine was $32. That made this a very expensive dinner for Boston, but seemed pretty reasonable for this level of quality in NYC.

We've now been to a restaurant with Michelin stars and it was really wonderfully good. We now also have a better comparator for our favorite restaurant in Boston, T.W. Food. For me, at least, I'd wondered if going to a restaurant like this in NY would explain why you see occasional reviews of TW suggesting that real foodies wouldn't want to go there. I can now confirm that those reviews/opinions are snooty, inane, or both. The food at Ko was much more fish based than TW, but the overall quality was quite similar to what you would get at TW from a tasting menu. I slightly prefer the food at TW, though some of that is just the kind of food I like (less fish, more other proteins). I also somewhat prefer the ambiance at TW, though the setup at Ko is a lot of fun as well.

Overall, we had a great time and a great meal at Momofuku Ko, but while I have the sense that there are many more spectacular restaurants in NYC than in Boston, I have no sense that we should be jealous for having an easy time getting to TW and a long, long ride to a place like Ko. I wouldn't trade, though would be quite happy to have Ko available in Boston.