[Pink Pig Time Machine: February 8, 2016]
Today, it's still the prime contender for least known expensive restaurant in New York City. Ask an informed diner where dinner costs most. The chances are they'll say Per Se. Then if they remember sushi, they'll say Masa.
Kurumazushi, that rather plain dining room reached by ascending a functional elevator in a midtown office block, was pulling in over $400 a head for an omakase meal ten years ago. I know: I was there.
Kurumazushi was the blow-out of the week, a procession of sashimi and sushi preceded by the chef's smiling question "My choice? My choice?" Here are my notes verbatim: "chopped sardines with scallops; otoro with scallops and herbs; sea bream; thin sliced fluke with lemon; sea eel; uni; langoustine; sweet shrimp; small sweet shrimp; more scallops; king crab, squid, salmon skin; green tea ice cream with red bean sauce."
It was spectacularly good, as it should have been. The offering which sticks in my memory: the "small sweet shrimp," tiny creatures flown in from Tokyo and served raw. I suspected each of them had their own seat on the airplane. First class.
But the week had another highlight: a party thrown by Tocqueville to celebrate its relocation from the rather awkward triangular room, thereafter home to co-owned 15 East, to a grander bar and dining room down the block. The passed hors d'oeuvres were memorable: venison with red cabbage, potato and celeriac croquettes with truffles, rabbit with tomato. And plenty of Jacquart champagne was poured.
We were greedy enough to follow that with a spontaneous late dinner at the bar at Craft. Sea urchin with apple, braised buffalo, wild mushrooms, sweet potatoes. We passed on dessert.
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