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Le Bernardin

I have the best husband in the world. My birthday was yesterday, Tuesday, and Henry has a late class that doesn’t end until 9pm. Our “plan” was to wing it and figure out what we wanted to eat and find a restaurant since it’d be late anyway instead of making reservations somewhere. I decided I was in the mood for steak, so we were going to find a steakhouse around where we live, there are so many to choose from! I thought maybe we’d go to Del Frisco’s, since it’s supposed to be pretty good and I’ve only had lunch, at the bar, there, so I would like to have a real meal there. But we kept walking along Broadway and went right past 49th Street, so I had no clue where we were going. Eventually he forced me into a restaurant, Le Bernardin! He actually made reservations way ahead of time and completely surprised me. It’s one of those places that we’ve always meant to go to, but never had.

Le Bernardin’s menu is all prix fixe. You pick two items from the “Almost Raw” and “Barely Touched” sections and then one more from “Lightly Cooked” and a dessert. There are also tasting menus, but we passed on them. I ordered the fluke, black bass and surf and turf. Henry got the kanpachi, lobster and black bass. My fluke and black bass were good, but tasted a little salty for me, but were fine for Henry. Henry’s kanpachi was delicious! His lobster was ok, it was under the “Barely Touched” section, but was fully (and maybe even over) cooked, which Henry wasn’t thrilled about, but it was a decent size portion. My surf and turf was presented very well, but had small portions of white tuna and kobe beef, but was absolutely delicious. The kobe beef was the best I’ve ever had and actually reminded me of foie gras. Henry loved it too. Henry’s black bass was good too, but presentation wise, it was placed on top of a papaya salad, pretty boring.

Henry got the chocolate peanut for dessert and I got the mango dessert. Both were very good. But with Henry’s chocolate peanut, there was a scoop of peanut ice cream (?), but when you ate it, there was also a hint of lemon, it was kind of odd.

We had fantastic service while at Le Bernardin and the staff was very friendly and helpful. We had a wonderful time and will eventually go back, after we hit up more places on our list.

Did I mention that Henry also surprised me at work with long stem roses? He got into my laptop and then went into my e-mails to find an e-mail with a signature of one of my co-workers. He called up Ally to get added to the guest list downstairs and then told our receptionist that he was there to surprise me, and surprise me he did! And after dinner, Henry had a bottle of Moet & Chandon chilling in the fridge to celebrate my big 3-0. Henry’s sister’s and the kids also sent me a very cute bouquet of flowers at work.

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