(iii) Les Halles and Gordon Ramsay
Les Halles
Visited the downtown Les Halles (Anthony Bourdain of Kitchen Confidential fame) twice whilst in New York. The food here was superb and very well priced. Everyone raved about the excellent raw materials and chefs skills that culminated in fantastic food. I really can’t praise this place enough.
I had the steak tartare for lunch before heading off to JFK. It was so good, I was tempted to stay in NY for another day and eat it all over again.
Restaurant Gordon Ramsay at the London NYC
I booked a table at 8pm on a Saturday night in August with relative ease. I had heard some pretty poor reviews but as a GR fans we decided to ignore them. With HBiH being looked after by the in-laws, we headed uptown to the London NYC.
The London NYC is a bizarre hotel if you are from London. You step out of Manhattan and into, well, a London hotel where just about everyone has a generic South-East English accent. We took a seat at the bar and ordered two glasses of Nicolas Feuillatte Rosé; it’s a beautiful glass and a great way to start a meal. Shortly before 8pm we were led into the main dining room which was about two-thirds full and sat down at our table located near the left hand wall.
There was only every going to be one choice when it came to food and so with no hesitation we ordered the Menu Prestige. Mrs BiH isn’t a fan of Foie Gras, but that posed no problem as we were told that anything we didn’t like could be substituted.
What was the meal like? It was very good and up to the Ramsay standard. It wasn’t as good as Per Se (Thomas Keller’s NY restaurant at Columbus Circle) and was probably on a par with my current favourite in London – not telling you its name, it’s hard enough to get a table; but lets just say that Hardens raved about its food.
Dinner was accompanied by a smooth bottle of Burgundy (Chassagne-Montrachet), which grew during the course of the meal without overpowering the food.
The service was excellent and we had a great evening.