USA Day 15
Manhattan, NYC
April 27, 2011
Back on U.S. soil and a few hours to kill. We had the option of a six hour layover or a sixteen hour layover, so we opted for the 16 hour layover so we could stretch our vacation to the very limit and squeeze in one last gastronomic HOORAH… I knew exactly where I wanted to dine. ROUGE TOMATE is a super Urban, super Chic, super Contemporary restaurant that I wanted to revisit after enjoying dinner there a couple years ago. The restaurant is located just a half block away from Central Park and 5th Avenue. This makes for a perfect walk from the 53rd Street L Train Stop up 5th Avenue past the most beautiful storefront displays in the world. Louis Viutton, Armani, Swarosfki, Trump Towers, Deisel, Tiffany’s… etc. strung together for an unforgettable stroll that put stars in our eyes.
Entrance to Rouge Tomate is a glass bridge over a lower dining room into a main dining room with soaring ceilings, ultra modern but warm interior architecture, and low light. Sexy would be a good word to describe the ambience. We were guided to a table along a glass balcony overlooking the lower dining room called the cranberry room, with the central focus of the room being a pool of floating cranberries. A trip to the restroom is well worth it at Rouge Tomate. It is a co-ed space at the bottom of a glass staircase with individual WCs wrapped in exotic woods and white granite. The sink is a 10 foot slab of granite slanted backward to create an invisible drain. Exquisite.
Speaking of exquisite, we started dinner with a couple beautiful cocktails that included fresh house made fruit juices including fresh rhubarb and blood orange. They were wonderfully effective at getting our “juices” flowing. We started with a trio of seasonal toasts and a Long Island Fluke Ceviche. The toasts included a spaghetti squash with main crab, dried fruit chutney with Serrano ham, and Wild mushroom with sheep’s milk ricotta, leeks and thyme. The Fluke ceviche was probably the best we had ever had. We had just found a Ceviche that beat out Harry's in Cancun! The key ingredient? Vanilla bean. This Ceviche was chopped into nice large chunks, about 3/4 inch in size which nicely highlighted the freshness and texture of the Fluke. The other ingredients, rhubarb (an ingredient that was all over this Chef's menu), avocado, cilantro and tomato were also a jumbo sized chop which was fun. The red onion was a nice micro chop and then the Vanilla and lime combined to make a juice more delicious than any other Ceviche. Outta this world.
For Entrees, we chose the Squab and the Trout, both local items that were prepared with unique cooking techniques. The Squab was suveed (cooked slowly inside a bag submerged in hot water of a specific temperature that controls the tender meat from cooking over the temperature of the water) This made for a Squab that was beautifully medium rare which had been paired with a light asparagus puree, roasted chestnuts, and cilantro foam. This dish was one of the best of my entire vacation. Our second Entree was a Trout which is grilled on an angular grill that allows the fats to run away from the meat. It was served whole which was a great presentation, topped with citrus segments, rhubarb and cilantro and accompanied by a super whipped parsnip puree.
The local game and fish, the seasonal fruits and vegetables, and the unique and highly nutritious preparation techniques are all part of Rouge Tomates commitment to their mission statement and theme S.P.E which stands for Sanitas Per Escam. This is an innovative approach toward well-being through balanced and optimal nutrition that maintains, protects and strengthens the body. Rouge Tomate does not stray from the S.P.E. mentality in order to harmoniously combine extraordinary cuisine with authentic nutrition. The server staff is incredibly well trained at Rouge Tomate and a highlight of the dinner experience for us was continuously chatting with our server about all the ingredients and techniques used in our dishes.
Instead of pairing our dishes with wine, we decided to continue sampling this restaurant's unique cocktails as they were highly food friendly, not too sweet or muddied up with sugary liquers or syrups. With our Entrees we enjoyed a habanero infuse tequila with passion fruit, orange, and pear puree, and also one with Rum, artichoke bitter, yuzu, cucumber and tarragon. Both cocktails were $14.
We finished off our dinner with a trio of little house made truffles, $5, that were filled with a banana-chai ganache, a passion fruit ganache, and a Earl Grey ganache. These little gems topped off a fabulous dinner, although we were wishing we had enough room to try one of the full desserts as there were a couple that looked divine. The bittersweet morsels I thought were a suitable analogy as a finale to our past 15 days of dining. BITTERSWEET indeed as we were somber to see such an escapade come to an end and happy to have had many top-notch experiences such as this.
We left Rouge Tomate and headed back down the ritzy 5th Avenue for a late night view of what we had passed before dinner in the sunlight. The window displays and buildings were all now dazzling with lights and New Yorkers were headed out for dinner and cocktails rather than rushing home from work or jogging near Central Park. We took the L train back to our hotel to squeeze in a couple hours of shut eye in order to fly home to Ogden in the morning. Excited to return to our friends, family, dogs, and Jasoh, and knowing that all good things must come to an end, we bid our vacation goodbye, comforted that we can revisit great memories and implement many new ideas taken from our travels by visiting this Blog in the future. Thanks for letting us share with You!!!
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