Per Se - New York
Nighttime views of Columbus Circle and Central Park
Rating: 15/20
Where: New York, NY
When: Dinner for 2 on 28 November 2025
Cost per Person: Tasting menu $425, Wine pairing $425+
Accolades: 3 Michelin Stars
Why: Easier to reserve than the French Laundry, and with a better view
Per Se, Thomas Keller's East Coast sister restaurant of The French Laundry, has a glorious setting. The dining room's floor-to-ceiling windows face Columbus Circle, and seeing the sun set over Central Park might legitimately provide for the most dramatic urban view of any three-Michelin-starred restaurant in the world.
The day after Thanksgiving is generally not a time when people are looking for another 2000+ calorie meal, but the dining room was completely packed during our visit. So presumably, this restaurant, just like its Californian sibling, is pretty much review proof. So why even bother to write one? Well, for one, it was the only three-starred restaurant in the United States missing from this blog. And then, I was simply curious. My two previous experiences at Per Se in 2008 and 2015 had been very, very different.
In 2008, the service was amazingly good and adaptive: jokey and relaxed at our table, while treating the very-serious-looking family across from us with much more formality. And the food was just as wonderful, including the famous ratatouille dish from the namesake movie. Overall, it was the definition of what a perfect three-star dinner should look like.
Seven years later, things had unfortunately changed for the worse. The service had become impersonal and seemed to be constantly in a hurry, finally (figuratively) tapping their feet waiting for us to leave. An overcooked and chewy butter-poached lobster (one of Keller's signature dishes) was symptomatic for this subpar rendering of the The French Laundry's classic menu. And this was around the time that The New York Times gave Per Se its (in)famous two star review, so our experience unfortunately didn't seem to be an outlier.
However, a few years later, during a pandemic-time dinner at The French Laundry, we heard that things had subsequently been turned around at Per Se, and I figured that it was fair to give the restaurant another shot. Best out of three, then?
Which brings us to 2025. This time, the service fell somewhere in-between the two extremes. Nobody impatiently waited for us to leave, but the dinner also took only 2 1/2 hours - not exactly long by fine-dining standards. Our servers were initially slow to hand us our menus and take our orders, but then became efficient and friendly enough. However, there wasn't any depth or personal touch to the proceedings, everything was pretty much on auto pilot. I was also puzzled why I was asked whether this was my first time at Per Se when I had made multiple previous reservations using the same name and email address. Clearly not the kind of place where anybody would ask you where you are from or what brought you here. (It used to be in 2008.)
In its main dining room, Per Se served two tasting menus of the same length, one of them being vegetarian. For several courses, there were two options to choose from: one was included in the menu’s $425 base price, while the other one required a surcharge. We opted to upgrade two of the four possible dishes. Our server also offered wine pairings priced at multiples of the cost of the menu, so for $425, $850, $1275, etc. The French Laundry’s idea of a pairing is a bespoke one - “name your price, and we'll open wines accordingly" -, but Per Se’s pairings seemed to be set at each price level. Figuring that we might as well try this setup once, we opted for the “basic” $425 pairing, which was was split between good and ok wines. This would have been a decent pairing for $150 or $200, but for $425 it seemed shockingly overpriced (and that’s by wine pairing standards, which are overpriced to begin with). Most of the wines that we received retailed for $80 or so per bottle, with the notable exception of the final 2010 Chateau d'Yquem, which by itself might be responsible for a large fraction of the overall cost. Add to that the lack of customizability of the pairing - a great feature at The French Laundry - and there was very little to recommend it. Get a good bottle or two instead.
Our dinner started with Keller's classic salmon tartare cornet: a black sesame tuile was filled with a red onion crème fraîche and topped with a sphere of salmon tartare. The tuile was light, salty and crunchy - pretty much perfectly prepared. The crème fraîche added some nice creaminess, but the salmon tasted - oddly enough - like a very generic smoked salmon, the kind one might buy in a supermarket. At least in my memory, this dish used to have more depth of flavor 17. Two more appetizers arrived together with the cornet. One was a wagyu saucisson topped with horseradish. The wedge-shaped bite almost looked like a carrot cake, probably intentionally. The sausage was very dense, making this a surprisingly heavy bite. I couldn't taste any of the horseradish, which might have been a good way to lighten up this dish 13. Next, we had a purple sweet potato fritter topped with maple syrup and brown butter. It was extremely sweet with a sticky consistency reminiscent of mochi, and it didn’t have much depth. Maybe this dish was meant to be autumnal, but it was an odd outlier among the appetizers - it could easily have appeared in the dessert spread instead 13.
The first official course of the evening were Thomas Keller's famous “oysters and pearls”. Butter poached Island Creek oysters were served with tapioca pearls, a creamy, buttery sauce and a generous dollop of caviar. This dish was good, but didn't blow me away like previous iterations had done. Maybe it was me getting jaded over the years, but there was also some opportunity to nitpick: the dish was served only lukewarm, and the caviar was actually at a refrigerator temperature. The tapioca pearls clumped together, making them kind of mushy. And the sauce was pretty heavy - a touch of acidity might have helped to lighten it up a bit. So in summary: not bad, but not as good as it used to be 17.
The second course on Thomas Keller's menu is usually a choice between a salad and a foie gras dish. Back when foie gras was legal in California, I used to joke that the salad was intentionally mediocre to drive more sales towards the superior (but more expensive) foie gras dish. And, suspiciously, the quality of the salad has indeed improved in California, now that it doesn't have any competition. So what would we find in New York, where foie gras was still on the menu?
On our plate was a long strip made of two layers: a Hawaiian hearts of palm bavarois and a cranberry gelee. Next to it were some cranberries and sauteed chicory seasoned with blood oranges. The cranberries were tart and the chicorees bitter, balancing (to an extent) the sweet baverois/cranberry combination. The latter could easily have been used in a dessert - the cranberry gelee literally tasted like jelly. When everything was eaten together, the lingering taste was one of bitterness. Somehow this dish didn't come together for me: none of the components were particularly memorable, and there wasn't a great synergy between them either 14.
The bread served with the salad was a checkerboard-patterned combination of pumpernickel and rye bread that came with a salted butter from Vermont. The bread was lightly warm, tasted noticeably of rye, and went great with the butter. But it was also a bit heavy and dense for a bread course, and had so much inherent flavor that is was not very useful for sopping up sauces. This was therefore a eat-by-itself or nibble-between-courses kind of bread accompaniment 16.
A skin-on filet of rainbow trout had been grilled and then prepared as a confit. It came with toasted almond slices, two dollops of cauliflower cream and a Meyer lemon brown butter sauce. The fish was very nice, with a melt-in-your-mouth consistency, a softly crunchy skin, and a strong flavor. The cauliflower puree was buttery and quite lovely as well. The brown butter sauce was a bit puzzling, though; it might more accurately be described as a Meyer lemon caramel, and was so sweet that it could easily have been part of a dessert - apparently that was a theme that the kitchen was going for tonight. When one ate everything together, it actually worked better than expected, with the flavors combining pretty well. However, I wonder if this might have been even better as a genuinely savory dish 16.
The second seafood dish of the night featured a pan-seared Maine sea scallop with a scallion nage, Thompson grapes and compressed leeks. The scallop was lovely: flavorful and nicely fried, but its visually impressive crust had been slightly softened by the flavorful sauce. The rest of the dish was less successful: the leeks didn't taste of much, and the grapes were not only incredibly sweet, but also felt pretty much like supermarket grapes - no subtlety here. Ignoring the grapes and leeks, a 16.
For the following two courses we ordered the available upgrades. So instead of a quail dish, we received homemade hand-cut pasta with a white truffle butter. Tableside, our servers added shaved white truffles and drizzled a brown butter sauce on top. For the $190 surcharge, the amount of shaved truffles was pretty small, especially compared to the same dish at The French Laundry. The pasta itself tasted mostly of the creamy, cheesy sauce that - oddly enough - didn't have much of a truffle flavor. The shaved truffles smelled great, but added at most a hint of nuttiness to the dish. So on the one hand, this was a tasty dish, but on the other hand, it didn't seem particularly complex. I'd previously had a revelatory truffle risotto course at The French Laundry, but this was a much more pedestrian dish 15.
Charcoal-grilled Japanese wagyu was served with chanterelle mushrooms, radishes and a Sichuan peppercorn mignonette. (And cost $135 more than the standard venison course.) Even with its renowned pedigree, this beef was merely ok. Served lukewarm, its marbling was not obvious, and its texture was not the melt-in-your-mouth kind, but rather the “mostly tender with some chewy parts” kind. To be fair, though, the meat's flavor was pretty nice. Overall, a far cry from the best Japanese beef preparations I've had (even a recent one at a one-star restaurant in Tokyo was far better). The mushrooms seemed a bit overcooked, and the braised radish had an odd aftertaste. Given the mention of Sichuan peppercorns, I was surprised that the sauce had no spice at all 15.
The following cheese course featured two wedges of “Alp Blossom” cheese, paired with a quince marmalade and jasmine whipped honey. The cheese was fine, but nothing special, and the quince was decidedly non-sweet. Overall, this dish was more on the savory side 13.
Per Se's dessert course used an “everything but the kitchen sink” approach - lots of small bites, but missing a true stand-alone dessert. Keller's classic cappuccino-flavored semifreddo was lovely: creamy with a nice foam on top 18. The accompanying brioche-cinnamon donuts (aka beignets) were fine, but nothing out of the ordinary 15. A caramel macaron had a caramelized sugar disc on top, giving it an unusual crunchy/chewy texture. Yummy 16. A dish inspired by the Almond Joy candy bar had a coconut sponge cake, dark chocolate and a coconut macaroon on the side with a slightly preserved tasting lime flavor 14. A poached pear dessert modeled on a sticky toffee pudding was not very sweet, and had a light pear flavor 14. Finally, a “gingerbread ice cream” with a milk tuile didn't really taste of gingerbread, but rather had a hint of Christmas spices. Most notably though, it was very salty. Ugh 13.
Even though coffee and tea were included in the overall menu price, I had to proactively order some. I noticed that other tables were offered coffee without having to ask, so this must have fallen through the cracks for us.
We were given some chocolates to conclude our dinner. Caramelized macadamia nuts covered in chocolate were nicely crunchy 16. Among a selection of eight different kinds of chocolate pralines, I tried the peanut butter and jelly one, mostly because The French Laundry's version had been surprisingly good last time. This one was very heavy on the peanut butter, and pretty salty. Just ok 14.
Overall: The East Coast version of the French Laundry served a much weaker version of the same menu. The service and the dishes lacked the playfulness that enlivened the dinner during its heydays. Gone were the clever riffs on American food classics. Enjoymentwise, the dishes were all fine - but for three Michelin stars and the commensurate price point, one should be able to expect more than just “fine”. Sadly, nothing in today's dinner was particularly memorable 15.
