My second three-star restaurant in New York City following Eleven Madison Park. Le Bernardin specializes in seafood. I only booked around 3 weeks in advance, getting a table for a Friday around 5:30pm. There were no later tables available around the days I wanted to go at.

The restaurant is very large – the largest three-star place I’ve been to so far. Tables upon tables in a large open space with a modern design. It does not feel as cozy and special as some other restaurants in its current category.

There is a normal tasting menu available, and a slightly more expensive and longer “Chef’s Tasting Menu”. This is what I went for together with the wine pairing. We have an amuse-bouche, six main courses, two desserts, and tea or coffee snacks at the end. The menu is on the shorter side of tasting menus (just six main courses) and surprisingly only one amuse-bouche (it could be argued it’s three amuse-bouches presented all at once)

1 The Menu

‘Le Bernardin’ Menu for the night

Oyster, carrot creme.

‘Scallop and Sea Urchin’ : Maine Scallops; Marinated Granny Smith, Meyer Lemon Vinaigrette. Good scallops. It appears the oil and the rest of the sauce are not immiscible making it look not very high standard. Or maybe it's supposed to have this look – your mileage may vary.

‘King Fish Caviar’: Warm King Fish “Sashimi”, Osetra Caviar, Light Mariniere broth. Preferred this to the last dish.

‘Langoustine’: Sauteed Langoustine, Truffle and wild mushrooms, Aged Balsamic Vinaigrette. I'm always wary of dishes that just throw expensive ingredients together (truffle and langoustine in this case), but this worked really well. The foam on the langoustine gives it a nice final touch.

‘Lobster’: Lobster Lasagna, Celeriac, Truffle butter. Having a sauce and top-notch presentation are always difficult to reconcile. Where do you put the sauce as to not destroy presentation which I think partly happened here. The lasagna itself was delightful though. I would recommend pouring the sauce around the lasagna and not on it.

‘Monkfish’: Pan Roasted Monkfish, Sautéed cepes, Pearls onions a la creme, Lemon Paprika sauce. A very geometrical dish. If you don't know what a whole monkfish looks like, google it. It is terrifying!

‘White tuna, Kobe beef’: Grilled escolar and Seared Wagyu beef, Fresh Kimchi, Asian Pear, Soy-Lemon emulsion. I have to say I enjoyed the Kobe beef more than the white tuna, but I think I'm generally more of a meat than fish person (although I do like seafood like scallops or lobster, or tuna and salmon sashimi). I've been to Tokyo, but I have yet to go to Kobe and experience proper Kobe beef. Alternating bites between the mouthwatering Kobe beef and the tuna was blissful.

‘Pear’: Roasted Bosc Pear, Pear William-Olive Oil Emulsion, Vanilla Parfait. We are unfortunately finished with main courses. Good refreshing dessert.

‘Maple’: Maple Candy Cap Cremeux, Maple, Huckleberry confit.

I always finish my good meals with a herbal tisane and these went very well with it.

2 Thoughts

The food was very good and there is nothing to really stick on to regarding quality. But as a whole experience, ‘Le Bernardin’ didn’t deliver for me what I would expect from a restaurant with three-stars.

• The tasting menu should undoubtedly be longer with more smaller dishes interspersed. This is a seafood restaurant, and I should be exposed to as much seafood as possible throughout more dishes. For example I haven’t had any squid or octopus on the menu. The whole tasting menu didn’t feel like any kind of “journey” that I’ve come to expect.
• None of the dishes had any kind of spark or some extra creativity added to them. I wasn’t blown away by any dish, and nothing really caught me by surprise.
• The whole restaurant is too big and feels very mainstream. It looked like it was a lot of businessmen in suits chatting about business on company expense, or couples going out for dinner with men trying to impress their date by taking them to a three-star Michelin restaurant. It didn’t feel like the guests are there for the food but rather as a convenient location for a meeting. An anecdote: At the table next to me, there was a couple with a very talkative male who knew the waiters by name and was chatting with them all the time. It’s clear he wasn’t here for the first time. He even mentioned that he “loves talking, and doesn’t come here just for the food”. This is unfortunately what you will get with an expensive restaurant in the center of an even more expensive city. Compare that with “The Fat Duck” that requires going more than an hour outside of London and spending the night in the countryside. Similarly, “El Celler de Can Roca” is located in Girona, Spain, around two hours away from Barcelona. It requires that you are actually interested in the food enough to take two days out of your calendar and travel to said remote location. Three-starred restaurant in NYC I feel are more about the status symbol of going to them, from the side of the guest, and on maximizing profits, from the business side, instead of focusing on the art of cuisine. In fact, our reservation at ‘Le Bernardin’ was so early (5:30pm) not because the tasting menu takes a very long time, but because the restaurant is greedy and serves dinner in two shifts. A longer tasting menu is probably not even possible as it wouldn’t allow for their two-shift system.