Is a $1,200 dinner at this 3-starred Michelin restaurant worth it?

This week I went to Per Se, a three-starred Michelin restaurant in the heart of New York, and it left me devastated

For the first time in my life, I visited a three-star Michelin restaurant this week. Needless to say, I was excited. 

I've been to two-starred restaurants in New York before, like Aska, a сharming Scandinavian enclave, whose tasting menus felt both inventive and exquisite.

Per Se's fame comes from its chef, Thomas Keller, who won the Best California Chef award in 1996 and the Best Chef in America award in 1997. That was a long time ago, but he is still the only chef who holds three Michelin stars for two of his restaurants simultaneously. Although, the magic might have vanished …

Per Se is tucked away in a shopping mall in Columbus Circle, which might give you the deceptive thought that it won't be pretentious (after all, it's a shopping mall!). However, I can guarantee that it’s going to be one of the most pretentious restaurant you’ll ever visit. At Per Se, they might take it as a compliment, so I’d like to clarify that it is not. 

The mall itself is located in the midst of the most expensive New York buildings, including the Mandarin Hotel and Warner Brothers, right across from 15 Central Park West and Trump Tower.

I couldn’t quite fathom why we did not feel special, but more like unwanted guests. It seemed like we were expected to know everything already, as if we were regulars who had just walked out of one of their gold buildings. I guess neighbors could do just that - have this $1,500 on a regular basis. It was easy to make a reservation, which is rare for such a highly valued restaurant, and there were a few unoccupied tables for the whole evening.

Once we were seated in the sparse dining room, the waitress came up to us and started recounting the options for the tasting menu. She mentioned that there were a few alternatives to each option, such as truffle pasta instead of lobster. Although I was fine with lobster, truffle always sounds better, so I went with the pasta.

We took a few other alternatives, but in the end all of them came with an extra charge (the truffle pasta alone cost me an additional $140!). For the price of $400, which we had paid beforehand to reserve the table, we thought the food was OKAY, and worth the experience. With the extra charges, we felt the opposite.

The overall experience was marred by the attitude of the servers, who seemed to be avoiding any additional questions we had. This created an atmosphere of tension, as if something was bound to go wrong. Add to it a sterile feel, similar to the one you see in the "The Menu."

The best dish I tried was the caviar in a strawberry sauce, which was also an alternative (again, I would have been totally fine with the classic sabayon had I known beforehand), but the combination of fish and strawberry made it memorable. Unfortunately, that’s all for the good memorable part.

Granted, I'm food-spoiled, as restaurants are one thing I allow myself to splurge on, and I also live in the hippest neighborhood in New York, Williamsburg. But shouldn't residents from the most expensive buildings around Columbus Circle deserve a special food experience too? 

“Wagyu is better at Atomix”, my friend said, “Foie gras is OK”, I murmured to her. The cuisine seemed traditional French, which is great, but not what you expect from a highly-rated restaurant. New York is bustling with traditional French restaurants, which wouldn’t make you pay over a thousand dollars. There are only 14 three-starred Michelin restaurants in the whole US, and the guide note them as "exceptional cuisine that is worth a special journey".

We also felt out of place, as if we were outsiders at a party or had signs on our foreheads that read "Brooklyn." Or if we were being treated like idiots for ordering a glass of rosé at the price of a bottle or a “hand-cut pasta” (hey, it’s also hand-cut in any good Italian place in the city) for a price of a week's salary in the most world’s cities.

By dessert time, we were given a small porcelain plate which I thought would be a gift, since there was nothing to put on there, and it looked different from other dishes. When I mentioned it to the waiter, he said that it was supposed to be for a chocolate candy (nobody said that when bringing the chocolate) and took it away. He also asked if we wanted to get another chocolate, and I’m glad we refused. Would it add an extra $100 or so to your bill?

Upon receiving the check, I mentioned to our waiter that we did not know anything about the supplements, and that it’s normal for restaurants to offer alternatives to the main menu, but not for an additional price. She said she was explicit about the pricing, although I can assure you she was not.

The Times article mentioned that when the waiter talked about the pricing, the guests were not happy either. You don’t want to pay extra when you are already thinking you have paid a fixed price. It might be that this establishment has abandoned the idea of displaying prices. In our case, they have definitely “improved” by not letting people know about the prices and surprising them with the hefty bill afterwards.

It might be working for others, but not for me. I was on the edge of canceling the visit and pulling out money to pay taxes as the deadline is approaching this week.

On my way back home, I read an article from The New York Times. In 2016, Pete Wells downgraded Per Se’s rating to two stars. Here is the opening:

“The lady had dropped her napkin.

More accurately, she had hurled it to the floor in a fit of disillusionment, her small protest against the slow creep of mediocrity and missed cues during a four-hour dinner at Per Se that would cost the four of us close to $3,000.

… to make the perception of Per Se as one of the country’s great restaurants, which I shared after visits in the past, appear out of date. Enough to suggest that the four-star rating it received from Sam Sifton in 2011, its most recent review in The New York Times, needs a hard look.

… In its current form and at its current price, Per Se struggled and failed to do this, ranging from respectably dull at best to disappointingly flat-footed at worst.

…. Dinner or lunch at this grand, hermetic, self-regarding, ungenerous restaurant brings a protracted march of many dishes”

This was in 2016, and based on the review, things just started going south, not north. (There was no gift bag, although we received a small box of cookies, and still no mouth-watering dish that would make you want to come back).

The next day, I emailed the manager stating that I would have been happier with the lobster, if I had known I was going to pay extra for the supplement. The manager called me back and said something like, "We did not want to put the dollar sign in the menu, and I will make sure we talk more explicitly about prices with our next guests. I'm sorry you were not happy about your last night with us." That was it. No compensation, no anything. That call again made me feel uncomfortable, like I was working for Per Se and wasting my time pointing out what needs to be improved.