Le Gratin, NYC

I wish everyone can experience the joy of discovering Daniel Boulud’s latest restaurant is nestled inside their hotel. Entering Le Gratin, you arrive in the very best worlds of French and New York dining. The tables are tightly packed together. Conversation is humming among the crunch of the paper secured to the tabletops, off the vinyl booths and through the bistro chairs.

To start, the gem lettuces with green beans, foie gras, and hazelnut dressing. Each element, by itself, bright, perfectly prepared, but nothing impressive, however, when thrown together with a little bit of each ingredient on a fork, sings. Whatever happens after this must be good.

On special, chicken in Morel sauce served with vegetables, but of course you cannot go wrong with the sole meunière, we’re told. Lucky for us, a party of two, we don’t have to make these kind of weighty decisions tonight. We’ll have both with the Gratin Dauphinois Comme Marie, of course.

The sole meunière grenobloise arrives, beautifully filleted and more than enough to share. $85 for a fish in brown butter sauce seems steep, but any home cook who has attempted a “simple" brown butter sauce knows there is nothing simple about making a brown butter sauce perfectly. The Maître d’, paying close attention to how each dish is delivered to each table, rushes over to make sure in pouring my sauce over the fish I haven’t lost the capers to the bottom of the carafe. I appreciate her attention to detail, her commitment to making sure patrons enjoy the entirety of a dish, and her dedication to ensuring servers present an experience, not just a plate of food.

Meanwhile, I cannot help but notice my husband is unusually quiet, the kind of quiet that screams a secret has been stumbled upon. The morel sauce. Kindly, he offers me a bite of this secret and so it begins—the haunting between bites—the heavy burden between wanting to experience that sauce again, whatever it is on, and the discipline to stop, savor, and commit to memory this sensory moment. The only logical conclusion of a dish like this is, “let’s come back.”

And we did. This time starting with the deviled eggs with trout caviar and pickled onions. Delicious. Then, the quenelle de brochet au gratin and the duck with a side of green beans and pomme frites. And to end this two-day love affair, gâteau chocolat aux 3 ganaches.