A million a day seems a bit steep unless Cuomo and de Blasio are skimming off the top. A spread sheet of the costs would be helpful to Mr. and Mrs. NYC Taxpayer.
On an aside, after all the hullabaloo over the meal Trump and Romney had at Jean-Georges’ restaurant the other night, I thought it’d be fun to do a “Julie and Julia” with the menu. It was a complete waste of time and money. Do NOT ever use one of 3 Michellin Star Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s online or video recipes. None of the dishes from that meal are correct. Not saying Jean-George is a big fat liar who’s too full of his pompus jerk self to post an honest ingredient list but... Excuse me, but 1/4 C of sugar for a chocolate cake is blatantly obvious.
Mr. b is always laughing as I don’t like following recipes but this time I did with the exception of substituting chicken wings for frog legs and doubling the cake sugar to 1/2 C knowing full well even that wasn’t enough. Who passes up chocolate cake?!? Well, my garbage can doesn’t since that’s where the cake ended up.
The garlic soup with 4 heads of garlic to 4 cups of broth? Yes, that’s heads. But, hey, I was determined so played along with the chef’s famous recipe. The kitchen sink drain got the pleasure of that dish and I burped garlic for two days. BTW, we used to get frog legs (not sold in stores here) fresh from the stock tank so I know substituting the accompanying chicken wings didn’t change the concept of the dish.
The steak, well, anyone with two taste buds to rub together knows to let the steak speak for itself. It’s supposed to be the star. That’s why Georgie boy charges $25 extra for it. It isn’t supposed to be drowned in sauce.
Speaking of sauce, not everything needs sauce, “Chef”. There was also sauce on the cauliflower and scallops and the carrots had a glaze. The cauliflower and scallops were boring with no taste despite having a capers and raisin sauce which was the color of baby you know what.
Tomorrow, I’ll steam the remaining 95% of the unused portion of the cauliflower as a low carb mashed “potato” dish with an appetizing buttery color, thank you very much. Roast some carrots with olive oil and salt and pepper without any sauce so they taste like... carrots. And grill the remaining steaks without sauce so they’ll taste like steak.
Jean-George should be ashamed and return each of his stars. The cooking shows, Good Morning America or whomever and Epicurious and the various foodie magazines should ban him from their guest list. He shouldn’t be allowed to make dog food. And, yes, $138 plus $25 extra for the steak is waaay too much even if the REAL honest to goodness edible recipes were used. We all know the customers are paying for the name of the chef, the building and most importantly for “being seen” rather than the food. With steak on sale here (I’m sure Georgie boy gets his discounted) for $4/lb, an 8 oz steak with all the side dishes and dessert, my cost was less than $5 per person including what was thrown out.
NYC is soooooo Liberal, they could only get 100,000 New Yorkers? LOL
But as for other high-style recipes, meh. The only celebrity whose recipes work for me are Rachael Ray's. Hardly high-style. And even her recipes I have to adapt.