On a whim, the hubs and I decided to take a trip to New York for the weekend. I’d recently read an article about Eleven Madison Park in the Business Insider about its being named the Best Restaurant in America, so I gave them a call to see about the chances of getting a table for the next day. At first, I was first politely laughed at, and then told that they would be happy to add me to the waiting list (of what I am assuming was 900 thousand people). Imagine my surprise when I got a call from the Maitre’ D minutes after touching down at JFK on a Friday afternoon. The maitre’d, a San Diego native, recognized my 858 area code on the waiting list and decided to give me a call to see if I wanted to fill a last minute cancellation they had received. I believe my response was something along the lines of “oh my God thank you so much we are so excited we will take any table you have what time do you want us there?”

I called my best friend from childhood, Christopher, who lives in Manhattan and explained my good fortune. Being an elitest foodie himself, Christopher decided to join us for the meal and we arranged to meet at 6:45. He brought one of his fashion friends and we met at the bar and exchanged pleasantries over perfectly-made martinis. We were seated promptly at 7 and the experience of a lifetime began.

It would take pages and pages to explain to detail all of the courses we had and the way that the food was prepared, but since this blog is really about my experiences at the restaurant (and not really the food because these are all Michelin starred restaurants so that shouldn’t be in question) I am just going to focus on the 4.5 hours we spent dining here.

 

STANDOUT: SERVICE

There is no other phrase than “incredibly customized ” for the service we received. The culinary journey began with a visit from our waitress who inquired not only about allergies we might have, but also about foods we were averse to. I gave the list of things that I hated (Beans, cucumbers, onions, most vegetables, etc) and she listened to all of them without a single look of judgement flitting over her face.  She sent over the sommelier, a truly fantastic lady who listened to my budget-focused concerns “I want it to be good, but quite frankly can’t tell the difference between a $80 bottle and a $300 bottle”  and balanced them against Chris’s waspy [read with elitest, gay, slightly English-sounding accent] “Jessica, you simply can not find a decent bottle of white in this city for under a hundred dollars”.  Where oh where had the boy I had grown up with in Mobile, Alabama gone? What has this city done to you, Christopher? Is that a man bun?? These musings were spoken out loud, prompting a nice back and forth between Chris and I, all of which the sommelier ignored, choosing a bottle of white for us to begin with that met both my budget concerns ($100) and Chris’s discerning tastes (label snobbery).

 

The wine she chose was amazing, as was the red she brought out next. As was the champagne she chose at the end. The food was incredible. So incredible, in fact, that after 1 dish,  I asked our waitress to relay my apologies to the chef for being a jerk by composing a “do not use these ingredients list”, and to beg him to make the same meal for me he was making for the rest of the table. The dish that truly stands out above all was a caviar dish that was so impossibly good I can’t put it into words. It was a take on Eggs Benedict, with sturgeon caviar and quail egg over mini english muffins. We raved and raved and raved (probably pretty loudly since we were well into our second bottle of wine at this time) about this dish. We begged and pleaded for another taste. The chef acquiesced and sent another round of the caviar. Had the meal ended right then and there I would’ve been happy.

The meal didn’t end there, however. There were what seemed like 58 more courses to go.  At this point I felt a tiny bit of a headache coming on, most likely from the cross country travel (IN COACH!) earlier that day. I expressed this to our lovely sommelier (who by this point had given up all hope of getting away from 4 boisterous, somewhat intoxicated Southerners) and she responded immediately by sending out one of her minions to get Exxcedrin for me at the corner store. She also ordered me my very first coffee drink (a macchiatto) to get me going. The caffeine gave me the pep i needed to get knock out the headache and enjoy the next 3 hours of dinner.

 

Course after course came out and we oooh’d and aahhhh’d at each one. By course #12, though, we asked to throw in the towel. We can’t take it any more, we said. We simply can’t have any more food! Our adorable waitress listened to our plea and decided to skip us to desert. I honestly can’t even remember what desert was, other than it was so fantastic that we sent enumerative compliments back to the pastry chef. Upon hearing that he had a table full of semi-drunk, very complimentary diners from below the Mason-Dixon line singing his praises, he, a fellow southerner from Birmingham, came out to our table and entertained us for a while (and posed for the photo above).
The dinner ended in the best way that any dinner could have ever ended, ever. The bill came and my elitest dinner companion Christopher disappeared, leaving my old friend from the deep south behind: “Oh my God, y’all, this bill! For real though. Imma die when I see my bank statement in the morning”. We all laughed, joking around as we searched for wallets and coats, preparing to leave and much to our surprise, out came four waiters. They surround our table and in perfect unison, sat 4 tall boy Pabst Blue Ribbon beers on the table in brown bags, one in front of each of us. We belted out laughs and commented on how fitting an ending it was for our table, excitedly shaking the hand of every person there who had made our dinner amazing.

We were inconsolably sad to see the night end, as it was at that point, the best dinner any of us had ever had in 35ish years on this planet. But so it concluded, with us walking out of a fancy-pants 3 Michelin Starred restaurant, in a fancy-pants neighborhood in New York, in our fancy-pants clothes…. drinking PBRs out of a bag.