Perry St.

We kicked off this season's Restaurant Week with a trip to Perry St., Jean-Georges Vongerichten's modernist restaurant in the far West Village. In the company of some of our nearest and dearest, we were able to sample everything on the RW menu. The appetizer options were either a zesty plate of house-made mozzarella with tomatoes and lemon verbena or a crab salad with a nicely contrasting mix of crunchy mango and asparagus but curiously out-of-place croutons. A let's-drink-this-everyday vodka lemonade may have been the star of the first part of the meal.




As for the main course, we were surprised to see fried chicken, which at Perry St. is like a handmade quilt tossed over a Barcelona chair. The kitchen kept the plate interesting by including a corn puree so opaque taste-wise that we had to ask the server to explain it. The chicken itself was lightly fried, butter-soft, and so plentiful that it took all four of us to polish off two servings. The other main was salmon and spinach; here boredom was alleviated by an olive-and-jalapeno topping, as well as a strong, strange, but not entirely successful passion fruit emulsion.



Desserts were a berry salad that tasted like a delicious soup and a Valhrona chocolate cake that oozed a week's worth of wonderful calories. But sweetest of all was the chance to break bread with some folks we see all too rarely.