A bite of the Big Apple

Londoners can enjoy bargain bites in New York thanks to the weak dollar

According to this month's American Gourmet magazine, London is now "the world's best place to eat". Even taking into account a grass-is-greener factor and the journal coming from the stated standpoint that this is after "years of gray [sic] toast and cold oatmeal" (was the Gourmet team last here in 1950?), I beg to differ. There is no mention of that little detail, price.

Now is the time for all Londoners to go to New York, where an exchange rate of nearly two dollars to the pound makes eating out relatively reasonable at even the very highest end. Take, for example, the recently opened PER SE on the fourth floor of the Time Warner Centre, a curious (to the British) architectural assembly of eating as retail.

Thomas Keller's French Laundry in California's Napa Valley has been voted, more than once, the best restaurant in the world. Per Se, meaning by or of itself, is his New York arm, which shares the same eating style of a cavalcade of small dishes. The five-course à la carte, ninecourse Chef 's Tasting Menu and a similar Tasting of Vegetables are each $175 (about £97). If you eat lunch you will not need dinner or vice versa.

Highlights of a quite extraordinary, occasionally whimsical but never ridiculous, four-hour meal, served with due ceremony and careful explanation, were caviar with "pearls" of tapioca (an unannounced extra of which there were several); coddled eggs supplied by Rabbi Zvi from upstate New York, with truffle juice.

There was a celestial cauliflower soup with toasted almonds, plumped red currants and Madras curry oil; equally stunning celeriac-and-celery agnolotti with grated winter truffles; Chatham Bay cod with braised Firefly squid and a chorizo emulsion; dazzlingly good rare seared beef from Snake River Farm - named sources are all the go - with a ragout of mushrooms and bone marrow bread pudding, and a perfect crème brûlée which was just one of an indulgence of desserts that left us reeling and finally resisting the last hurrah of petits fours.

Adam Tihany's expensively restrained interior genuflects to the tapestry of food and also the perfect New York view of the skyline with the trees of Central Park fringing its feet.

It is necessary to book well ahead - or use what influence you can muster. Incidentally, the celebrated Gray Kunz of Café Gray on the third floor of this eating mall, who made his name at Lespinasse, is rumoured to be coming to London to open a restaurant at The Dorchester Hotel.

With the arrival of Danny Meyer's THE MODERN BAR ROOM and The Modern Restaurant in the re-fashioned Museum of Modern Art, the question of which city excels in museum catering is answered emphatically in favour of New York. In fact, any comparison has become laughable. Here is my advice: to avoid queuing, book tickets to MoMA on www.moma.org before you set out on your transatlantic trip.

A day that includes the exceptional art collection, now so beautifully housed, and a meal created by Alsace-born chef Gabriel Kreuther, will be a day like no other.

Presently The Modern Restaurant, looking onto the museum's sculpture garden, is open evenings only. At lunchtime in the bar room the menu is divided into three sections of small dishes plus desserts, inviting you to eat as much or as little as you wish. Order tarte flambée of the thinnest pastry covered with melted cheese and smoked bacon while you decide between, say, modern liverwurst with mustard and lingonberry and peekytoe crab salad with endive and chive oil.

We had both to start, followed by baekenofe of lamb, conch and tripe - excellent - and equally fine sweetbread ravioli with balsamic-and-sage sauce. We then shared grilled quail with chive spaetzle and lentils just to revel in the Alsace influence.

Staff are charming and well drilled, as at all Danny Meyer restaurants - he is the chap behind Union Square Café. Surroundings and tableware, as you might expect, are modern, with some pieces available in MoMA's shop.

The Metropolitan Life Building is the sort of financial institution that must have given the impression of rock-solid permanence before the Great Crash of 1929. Now restaurants symbolise investment in pleasure and in what was once a splendid triple-height gilded and marbled art-deco banking hall is ELEVEN MADISON PARK. Sitting on one of the black leather banquettes, a feeling of being at the heart of New York washes over you.

Madison Square Park was where Theodore Roosevelt was born, where Edith Wharton lived. The staff convey that all is right with the world and certainly chef Kerry Hefferman's dishes, such as Blue Hubbard squash flan with black trumpet mushrooms and prosciutto; flash-seared squid with pea shoots, cauliflower royale and sauce Americaine; roasted free-range chicken with Yukon Gold mash, braised escarole and porcini cream; and almond-crusted shoulder and roasted loin of lamb with braised Swiss chard did nothing to dispel the effect.

The wine list is notable. We were encouraged to go off-list with a Yamhill County Oregon Pinot Noir, Patricia Green Cellars 2003, which was a great bottle at a reasonable price of $54.

Mario Batali is owner of the muchlauded Italian restaurants Babbo and Lupa. Not everyone knows that the shorts-wearing Iron Chef served part of his apprenticeship in London with Marco Pierre White. As a teenager he lived in Spain, which explains the recently opened CASA MONO, a stylish tapas restaurant where, on a Sunday lunchtime, we found an alternative to the brunch menus all over the city.

An open kitchen cooks items to order, resulting in the crispest bacalao croquetas and delectable quail with rhubarb mostaza. Cauliflower with capers had retained its bite, but sepia a la plancha seemed to have been cut from a particularly large and resilient cuttlefish. Should you have to wait for a table - "I'll just do a lap of the room," said the waitress when we turned up without a booking - next door is the ancillary Bar Jamon.

  • Per Se ***** Fourth floor, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 60th at Broadway (+1 212 823 9335). £230.
  • The Modern Bar Room **** Museum of Modern Art, 9 West 53rd Street (+1 212 333 1220) £55.
  • Eleven Madison Park ****11 Madison Avenue at 24th Street (+1 212 889 0905) £80.
Casa Mono

Prices estimate the cost of a meal with drinks for two.

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