Dining

By Elizabeth Valerio

New York City may be the king of restaurant cities. But here are some foreign restaurants you shouldn’t miss.

Begin in Berkshire, England with Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck (fatduck.co.uk). The restaurant first opened in 1995 as a bistro in a pub-style environment, serving appetizers, entrees and desserts ranging in price from $9 to $20. Today, the a la carte menu is available nightly for $160 per person and the chef’s tasting menu, which samples Blumenthal’s specialties, costs $230 per person. Dishes offer some unusual tastes like the sardine on toast sorbet or the snail porridge with joselito ham. Stay in Berkshire more than one night to taste both menus: the restaurant’s Web site posts helpful links to hotels, inns and spas in the area and dinner reservations can be booked up to two months in advance.

By Sylvie Bigar
For Manhattan diners, it’s not just enough to eat good food anymore. We want to know where our food comes from; we want it to be organic; we want our favorite chefs to shop at the Green Market; we want downtown buzz uptown. Craving inspiration? Head to the West Village and let yourself get lost in the left-bankish maze. To fuel our collective food fever, here are a few favorites.

Brasserie Ruhlmann (45 Rockefeller Plaza) is the latest venture of Jean Denoyer of La Goulou, Japonais and Orsay fame. Denoyer is an avid collector of Emile-Jacques Ruhlmann’s work, and the restaurant’s decor situated at, pays homage to the Art Deco designer and craftsman. Executive Chef Laurent Tourondel, of BLT fame, serves classic French fare with a twist to a power lunch crowd by day and a bustling fashionable clientele by night. Tourondel tells the Resident about where he likes to dine and the busiest night he’s ever spent in the kitchen.

New Yorkers looking for a gastronomic day trip could do worse than to head to Crystal Springs Resort in Hardyston, N.J. The haute cuisine served up by John Benjamin goes a long way to erase memories of greasy burgers at Garden State diners. He tells the Resident what every good chef should keep in the kitchen and about finding hair in his food.

By Jeanine Zelkas

Chef/owner Wayne Nish revamped his popular high-end townhouse restaurant, March, as well as its menu, with an updated contemporary twist. With a rotating display of modern art adorning the otherwise plain white walls, the slightly more casual multilevel dining room’s understated elegance allows the exotic aromas and flavors of the dishes to prominently stand out.

By Sylvie Bigar

“Mom, there’s a hedgehog in the fridge!” cries the child after peeking over the bowl that holds two plump sea urchins from Maine. If the exterior of the animal is made of pointy movable spines, the inside holds a sensual orange mousse, the “roe” – a word that describes the eggs of other fish but that in the sea urchin is the highly edible reproductive organs. Close cousins of the sea cucumber and the starfish, sea urchins can be found on the ocean floor all over the world but are considered a delicacy in countries such as France, Italy, Chile and Japan. This week, at the height of the sea urchin season, we visited a few top chefs in the city to scope out their favorite recipes.

Chef Portsmouth serves up French-Vietnamese fusion at Sapa (43 W. 24th St.). On some nights, the huge room feels like a nightclub, but the bold flavors on the plate can distract from the impossibly sleek crowd.

By Hugh Spencer

Patroon
160 E. 46th St.
212-883-7373

Patroon’s owner Ken Arestky is more than just a staple in the restaurant industry for a reason. As a manager of the famed 21 Club, he earned his wings and eventually, after years of greeting customers for his longtime mentors, he has taken on his own restaurant. Lucky enough (read smart enough) to go out on his own; Aretsky bought his building on East 46th Street back in the ‘90s before the huge real estate boom.

Any tips for entertaining at home?
Always plan ahead! You should get your shopping done two days before and get your prep done ahead of time. Also, serve all your food family-style.

By Hyon Jung Lee

There’s nothing more fun than a banquet to celebrate a special occasion. A new crop of Asian restaurants all over Manhattan —Morimoto, Buddakan, BuddhaBar and Japonais for instance—create stylish settings for big group dinners. These gigantic Asian restaurants often feature “Modern Asian cuisine,” and offer a chic downtown alternative to their upscale uptown counterparts like Shun Lee Palace or Mr. K’s.