For a long time, I've been waiting for a restaurant to surprise me and impress me. I thought I would have to wait for an eternity to spend $100+ on a meal in the city. However, this meal not only was impressive, it was decently cheap considering the amount of food I got. It's not everyday that when you're at a restaurant that you can see the appetizer was the star of the meal, but it was unbelievable. Having calamari with a lemony yogurt yuzu sauce and mussels perfectly steamed a white wine broth was simply divine. These weren't your normal, everyday appetizers. These were exceptional. The calamari was unbelievably crispy yet chewy and the sauce just complemented it so well. The mussels were perfectly steamed and that broth penetrated the flavor into those mussels, producing a wonderful yet balanced flavor to the taste buds.
Moving onto the main course was equally as tasty. Having both a grilled yellowfin tuna burger and grilled hangar steak, it was quite a contrast, but quite good. The yellowfin tuna was fresh and was cooked properly. However, I had a couple of problems with the texture of the entire sandwich, but all in all, very good. The hangar steak was an interesting dish as well. The hangar steak by itself was good, and with the sweet sauce and bitter greens, it proved for one great combination. But if you ate the components separately, it can get rather confusing as to what the dish is and the taste of it. The greens were really better that if it wasn't put together with the sauce, it left a mark on your taste buds. Again, all in all, I can't argue with the flavors presented in that dish and when combined, it was an awesome combination of sweet, savory, and bitter.
Finally, last but not least, the dessert. Both desserts looked amazing and both were made quite well. My roommate had a molten chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream, while I had a carrot passion fruit cake with a sorbet (because I needed to be healthy lol). Both desserts were amazing and offered two completely different tastes. The molten chocolate cake was amazing and was a lot better than those triple chocolate meltdowns at applebee's. The sweet cake with the dark chocolate filling, vanilla ice cream, and brittle proved for one wicked combination. As for the passionfruit cake, it provided a great contrast. It provided a lightness and a well needed fruitiness and soothingness to the party.
Just like having high expectations into a movie, I thought I might be disappointed at the end of it. But it's truly amazing how my expectations were met and more. The meal from beginning to end was truly amazing and where some restaurants may have one aspects that was great, Perry St. certainly clicked on all aspects. It wasn't the fact that it was a complicated menu or the fancy decor or even the great service. It was more that they took menu items that are so common and took them to a new level. Foods that I thought couldn't get any better did get better, and that's
what I really appreciated today.
