NSS Interlude: It wasn't all work...

New York wasn't all work - Candie and I made time Saturday before the National Stationery Show to go to lunch at the acclaimed 3-Michelin star restaurant Jean Georges. We literally went to Javits in the morning, worked on making the booth pretty, took a cab to lunch, and then walked the mile back to Javits to finish our setup. It was totally worth it. I'll admit to being a closet foodie. I've eaten at my fair share of 1-star and 2-star restaurants, but Jean Georges is my first 3 star restaurant. And their lunch deal was hard to beat - $32 for 2 courses. AMAZING for such a high caliber restaurant. Here's my attempt at food blogging.

The dining room is small, with the focal point being this huge octopus of a light fixture:
We start with the amuse bouche, which was some sort of pasta bite, a canape, and "to finish" carrot water:
The order to eat the amuse bouche was exactly that. Taken out of order, I think the carrot water's lingering flavor would have been weird with the other tastes. And I will tell you - that little morsel of pasta goodness was a real party in my mouth. I could not stop thinking about it the entire meal, and that's saying something.

Candie ordered the tuna ribbons, which were AMAZING. I'm from Hawaii, I've had lots of raw tuna, so the item didn't interest me so much, but this tuna was AMAZING:
I ordered the soft shell crab - yum - the flavors weren't as assertive as the tuna but still really good:
Candie ordered the beef. The meat, she said, was average, but the sauce underneath was mind-blowingly delicious (I can attest, I tried it):
I rarely get the chance to order veal sweetbreads, and since it was on the menu, I had to have it. The sweet chili sauce underneath had just the right amount of heat. I did, however, second guess getting two deep fried items for lunch once the sweetbreads came out. I don't think I thought that one through so much. Whatever. It was delicious delicious delicious:
I have a general aversion to fine dining desserts (except at the Dining Room in Pasadena under Chef Strong - best dessert EVER) where I think it's too high concept and not enough OMG OMG OMG YUM, so we waited for another table to get dessert to see their reaction before deciding. It didn't seem orgasmically good (they were just eating it like...eh...dessert) so we decided to skip it. Besides, thanks to Patina in LA, I have a strong strong preference for those fancy marshamallows at the end:
Lavender macarons (a little too sweet and floral for me) rather reinforced my opinion about not getting dessert. Although the marshmallows at Jean Georges were really high caliber. I am a huge fan of gourmet marshmallows!

Hope you enjoyed our little food trek in NYC!