Catherine Cleary’s review of restaurant that’s just been named best in the world

It’s all here. The soaring gorgeousness of a room, the gleam of white collars against expensive dark suits, magic mouthfuls, parlour tricks and guessing games. And to end? A fireball, possibly unintended. I’m in Eleven Madison Park, a three-star restaurant, with a reputation for splicing New York into edible shards, a food parcel from a city in love with its own stories.

It’s been five years since I last ate in an eye-wateringly expensive New York restaurant. Back then my despatch from planet wealth came from the Bond villain lair over Columbus Circle that is Thomas Keller’s Per Se. Tonight’s bill will be epic (sorry folks). But that’s another kind of eyebrow scorcher and we’re not there yet.

My friend is at the bar with a glass of champagne alongside a small happy group that looks like stragglers from lunch. Our table for two is an expanse of white linen and butter soft black leather seating in an art deco room that would break your heart if you have a soft spot for that era. There’s a slice of the Flatiron building out one vast metal-framed window and the still-green trees of Madison Square Park out the other. In a timepiece from an elegant age there’s no museum stuffiness to the food.

Eleven Madison Park has gone through several ideas of what it wants to be. Each dish used to come with a small yarn about the city’s past. Now there are nuggets but no sagas. We don’t get a menu. That’s printed on circles of paper concertina-style and put in a keepsake tin box to take home. We have, our waiter explains, a couple of choices to make and then our work is done and it’s showtime.

First up we get to open the white box tied with string that sat unnoticed on the table as we arrived. Savoury black and white cookies, are two mouthful crumbles of butter, cheese and flour. No one calls them snacks, canapes or amuse bouches but next is a platter of small variations of melon, cucumber and cheese. It’s the 1970s made chic, so exquisitely assembled the elements might have been cut by laser. Top taste is the cantaloupe with smoked watermelon, an orange wedge of the cantaloupe topped with a curl of what looks like the sheerest paring of ham, but is in fact watermelon. The trick has been the injection of smoked creamy mayonnaise into the melon underneath, spotted by my eagle-eyed friend. So your mouth gets ham. From fruit.

We’ve chosen the two separate options next. One is a perfect round of sweet crab meat topped with a doily of sliced courgette, five cent coin-sized slices glazed with lemon. There’s an upside down French tart feel underneath with a biscuity layer. I have the tomato and basil (or tomayto and baysil as they say here). Yawnsville ingredients that have been put through the three-D printer imaginations of chefs Daniel Humm and Will Guidara. So what looks like a  slice of beef tomato is concentrated tomato fashioned into the shape of a slice of tomato, completed with tweezer-positioned seeds and slivers of basil. It gets marooned in tomato water as viscous as warm honey to finish the trick.

Then a proper Hanna-Barbera pic-a-nic basket comes with gingham “blanket” and weighty real plates cast to look like paper plates that have been crushed at the sides. We unpack tins with cream cheese and caviar, two tiny jars one with silvery soft pickled mackerel the other with a ratatouille cut doll-sized small. A bottle of “tomato champagne soda” has elderflower somewhere in its cloudy fizz and we get mother of pearl spoons to slather caviar everything on sourdough toast.

Lovliest thing

Then there’s a plate of the simplest and loveliest thing: cured egg yolk and clams topped with shavings of corn and some thyme leaves. Next the only recognition lapse. A lobster boil is probably something New Yorkers know but not us. Served from a copper pot at the table onto a brown paper rectangle it’s the least “Wow” moment of the meal. And we get one empty clam shell with the clam lost in the broth which has been whisked back behind the scenes.

There’s another tomato dish, duck and daikon radish and marble small smoked potatoes with deep fried blisters of airy potato crisps. Balls of brioche have been filled with camembert and tucked into bed under a warm napkin to get slathered with plum puree and a basil gel with cream cheese for deeply satisfying oozy cheesy pleasure.

And so to the fireball. A football-sized barbecue comes to the table and is lit with a taper from the candle. It seems someone added a smidgeon too much lighter fuel and there’s a vwomp-whoosh that takes everyone a bit by surprise. Pro that he is, our waiter grills a peeled plum drizzled in honey over the glowing coals. No eyebrows have been lost.

There’s a chocolate “name that milk” guessing game to finish where we have to guess the milk from which four separate bars were made. We do okay, mixing up our sheep and our goats. I wonder how the hedge funders deal with this one. “I got zero,” our waiter tells us reassuringly.

The chocolate comes with apple brandy made with New York apples by a Californian maker, and a salted chocolate pretzel sweet.

There’s a jar of three-star granola to take home, which is so good much of it gets necked without ever meeting a bowl and some milk. Like removing a plaster in one swift go, the bill includes service a la Danny Meyer, who used to own this restaurant before the chefs bought him out.

Was it worth it? Yes. Eating at Eleven Madison Park is my own New York story to remember for a long time to come.

Dinner for two with three glasses of champagne and tea came to $715.31 (€650.53)

Top 10 restaurants in the world

1.

Osteria Francescana, Modena, Italy; Chef: Massimo Bottura; Last year’s rank: 2

2.

El Celler de Can Roca, Girona, Spain; Chef: Joan Roca; Last year: 1

3.

Eleven Madison Park, New York, USA; Chef: Daniel Humm; Last year: 5

4.

Central, Lima, Peru; Chef: Virgilio Martinez and Pia Leon; Last year: 4

5.

Noma, Copenhagen, Denmark Chef: René Redzepi ; Last year: 2

6.

Mirazur, Menton, France; Chef: Mauro Colagreco; Last year: 11

7.

Mugaritz, Errenteria, Spain; Chef: Andoni Luis Aduriz; Last year: 6

8.

Narisawa, Tokyo, Japan; Chef: Yoshihiro Narisawa; Last year: 8

9.

Steirereck, Vienna, Austria; Chef: Heinz Reitbauer; Last year: 15

10. Asador Etxebarri, Axpe, Spain; Chef: Victor Arguinzoniz; Last year: 13

(Source: San Pellegrino The World's 50 Best Restaurants, theworlds50best.com)