First thing you need to know about Per Se: it’s fancy. The Thomas Keller-owned New York City establishment offers a $325 tasting menu that today features “compressed chicories,” “oat lavash,” “garlic pudding” and “cocktail artichokes” (for an additional $125, you can have… tagliatelle). Second thing you need to know about my old neighborhood watering hole is that the average tab comes to $851 per person, making Per Se reportedly the third most expensive restaurant in the world. Third cool fact about my favorite restaurant Per Se: IT TASTES LIKE BONGS!
Pete Wells delivers the slow but undoubtedly first-degree burn in the New York Times today, deeming Per Se a “no-fun house” full of “struggling” and “failing,” which in its current incarnation “rang[es] from respectably dull at best to disappointingly flat-footed at worst.” He suggests that the formerly ballet-dancer-trained staff has been re-educated in the arts of rugby, with their “hard shoves” and the sommelier arguing with a customer that didn’t like his wine. The salad vs. foie gras ($30 extra on today’s menu) decision is fraught with “menace,” and the salad itself “felt like extortion.”