I put Spoon and Stable in the “once a year” tier in my Twin Cities Fine Dining Rotation a couple of months ago. It was then drawn to my attention offline that it had been two years since my last report on a meal there. To address this situation I made a reservation for dinner there to celebrate the missus’s birthday earlier this month. We descended on them with a couple of friends we have eaten there with before and had a meal that was both very good and simultaneously an illustration of why I have them in the “once a year” tier in the aforementioned rotation and not at a higher frequency. Allow me to explain. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Fine Dining
Foxface Natural 2 (New York, May 2024)
Here finally is my long-promised last meal report from my brief trip to New Jersey and New York in May. It features my second dinner at Foxface Natural in the East Village. Considering it took me two months last year to write up my first dinner there (in the company of the missus), it’s only fitting that it’s taken me almost three months to write up the second. But will you be grateful? No. This meal was not eaten with the missus—who did not accompany me on this trip—but with a friend, with whom we’d eaten at Semma last year and I’d eaten at Baar Baar with in 2019. I don’t know if she’ll agree re Semma but I think this is easily the best of our three NYC meals together, even if it resulted in the confirmation of the Curse of Foxface Natural. What do I mean by the Curse of Foxface Natural? Read on. Continue reading
Soul Dining (Seoul, March 2024)
You’ll never believe it but I have a restaurant report from Seoul today. I’ve been promising the imminent conclusion of my reports from our five-week trip to the city in February and March for a couple of months, and here I am in mid-July with two more reports still to come after this one. This lunch at Soul Dining was eaten in early March. This was the second of three high-end/Michelin-starred restaurants we ate at on the trip. I’ve previously reported on the first of those meals—at Mingles. At the end of that report—back in April—I’d said I’d have the other two done in the coming weeks. Of course, I meant months. Anyway, here finally is a look at what was an exquisite lunch at Soul Dining. We had lunch there on a weekday in the company of a friend who was in Seoul for a week as part of my program. Continue reading
Mingles (Seoul, February 2024)
The vast majority of our meals out in Seoul—and all the meals I’ve so far reported on—were eaten at more or less casual restaurants and at markets. We did, however, also eat three fancier meals; at places with Michelin stars, no less. Our interest was to see what contemporary high-end Korean cooking looks like, especially in the home country, where diners are intimately familiar with the cuisine in its traditional guises. The first of these three meals was eaten at Mingles, located in Gangnam-gu and currently the holder of two Michelin stars. We ate lunch there on a weekday in late February. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Foxface Natural (New York, October 2023)
My last whisky review of the year turned out to be of one of the best whiskies I drank all year, and I am very happy to say that my last restaurant review of the year is also of one of the best restaurant meals we ate all year. It wasn’t planned this way: this was not our last meal out this year and nor did I save it up for the end. We ate at Foxface Natural on our weekend trip to New York in mid-October and the only reason it has taken me so long to get all the meal reports from that trip up (see also Gouie, Momokawa and Semma) is that I had such a backlog from our summer travels. But I am very happy to close the year in restaurant reviews out on such a high note. For it was indeed an excellent meal. Before I can tell you about it though I have to give you some caveats. Continue reading
Semma (New York, October 2023)
On our weekend jaunt to New York in mid-October, the missus and I ate sushi for early lunch on both days (at Gouie and Momokawa) and then ate rather excessive blowout dinners. The first of those dinners was at Foxface Natural on the Saturday evening, but that’s not the meal I’m reporting on today. On the Sunday evening we met friends at Semma, the South Indian restaurant that has taken New York by storm in the last year and a half, picking up a Michelin star in the process. One of our friends is a good friend of the house, which is how we managed to get a table on pretty short notice. As it turned out, this also meant that we were comped out the wazoo, with the chef sending out not only everything we’d ordered but also almost everything we had not ordered. I note this upfront so you can keep this special treatment in mind as you read my account of the food itself. On the whole, I thought it was a very good meal—better than my dinner at Adda in 2019—but not without some issues. Continue reading
Delahunt (Dublin, Summer 2023)
Back to Ireland, back to Dublin. The missus and I ate two high-end dinners in the city. By “high-end” I mean contemporary Michelin-bait restaurants. While Delahunt—unlike the second place—does not currently have a Michelin star, you will find it to be very much in a familiar one star genre now found pretty much all over the globe, particularly in the West. The setting is casual, evoking an unspecified vernacular aesthetic, while the cooking is fussy and mostly presented in the form of a tasting menu. This tasting menu seems spare—the one at Delahunt lists six courses—but unfurls to reveal a number of secondary flourishes and curlicues. The unkind might describe the effect of much of this as revealing a sort of culinary attention deficit disorder in the kitchen and encouraging it at the table. There is so much going on that it’s hard to be taken by very much of it. But this, as I say, is a problem with the genre writ large, not just at Delahunt. Nonetheless, it’s the general feeling we left the meal with, even as we enjoyed many elements of it. Herewith, the details. Continue reading
Spoon and Stable IV (Minneapolis)
We went two and a half years between our first and second meals at Spoon and Stable, and three and a half years between the second and third. We ate our fourth meal there, however, only a little over a year after the third. That third dinner was eaten on their sidewalk at the end of October last year. This was a December meal though and there was no outdoor seating and no question of our wanting to sit outside. We were scheduled to eat there with friends but they ended up having to punt. We considered cancelling and then seeing if we could cut the reservation down to a table for two. In the end, we decided to stick with the table of four and take our boys along with us for their first look at the true high-end in the Twin Cities. A good decision too as the meal was very good and we had a great time together. Continue reading
Spoon and Stable III (Minneapolis)
I had not realized until just over a week ago that Spoon and Stable has outside seating. We’ve eaten there twice before but the last of those occasions was in the dead of winter and there was no question of anyone sitting outside. And I have no memory of seeing outdoor seating on our first visit in the late summer/early fall of 2015. This may, of course, be a more recent pandemic development but at least of late they have had a few tables set out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant with heaters by every table. Or rather they did. It turns out this past weekend was the last weekend for their outdoor seating. Well, if we’d known about this earlier we would have eaten there quite a bit earlier this year but I’m very glad we found out before it went away for the winter. Our meal there this past Saturday evening was very good indeed, on par with our previous very good meals there (here and here). Continue reading
Crown Shy (New York, August 2019)
In my review of our dinner at Rezdora a few weeks ago I noted that we’d managed to a table for two at prime time on a Friday despite booking just a few weeks in advance. The same was true of Crown Shy, where we dined the next evening: we managed a table for two at 8.30 pm on a Saturday without very much fuss. Now, however, Crown Shy has picked up a star in the most recent Michelin list for New York and I’d guess tables are a much harder proposition at any time. I’d also guess that my other comment at the end of the Rezdora review—that dinner at Crown Shy was quite a bit cheaper—is probably also now not going to be true much longer. What has not changed at all, however, is our opinion of the meal: we thought it was very good indeed and a very good value—the latter of which is not something I would have expected to say of a tony restaurant in Manhattan’s financial district. Here’s how it went. Continue reading
Rezdora (New York, August 2019)
Back to New York. After a run of informal or relatively casual meals, here’s the first fancy’ish restaurant for which we hired a sitter and abandoned the boys to go eat at. (By the way, Manhattan babysitting rates: what the fuck?)
When I was planning our New York eating I asked the brain trust at Mouthfuls to recommend a couple of “fine dining” (whatever that means these days) places in Manhattan where two people could eat well and get out for about $250 all-in. This sounds like a tough proposition in Manhattan but bear in mind that the missus never has more than one drink and I rarely have more than two. A few names came up but after filtering for “sounds interesting to us” and “not difficult to get a table” only two remained: Rezdora and Crown Shy. We ate at both on consecutive nights. Here first is the Rezdora write-up. Continue reading
Spoon and Stable II
After a long run of reviews of more affordable places in the Twin Cities metro area, here is a review of a recent dinner at one of the top contenders to be the Twin Cities’ best fine dining restaurant: Spoon and Stable. We enjoyed our first dinner there in late 2015, less than a year after they opened, and had always meant to go back soon for another meal. However, more than three years past their opening they remain a difficult reservation and so it took almost 2.5 years for us to finally get back (I don’t mean to suggest that we were trying to get a table every month after that first meal). I guess it’s a positive development that we were able to get in on a Friday this time—but even booking a month ahead, the best we could do was 9.15. Anyway, this dinner was as good as the first in some ways, lesser and better in others. Continue reading