Masa: Four Stars, A Thousand Bucks
Masa chef/owner Masayoshi Takayama nearly slays Frank Bruni, scoring a four star review in the New York Times. In doing so, Masa becomes the first Japanese restaurant since 1983 (Hatsuhana, crowned by Mimi Sheraton) to receive that honor. As Amanda Hesser's last review as interim critic, back in June, she gave Masa a glowing but cagey 4-question-mark (????) rating, leaving the final call to Bruni -- a fantastic food writer, by the way -- who opens the review by describing his friend's appreciation of Masa's sublime toro:
His eyes grew instantly bigger as his lips twitched into a coyly restrained grin. Then the full taste of the toro, which is the buttery belly of a bluefin tuna, took visible hold. Forget restraint: he was suddenly smiling as widely as a person with a mouthful of food and a modicum of manners can. His eyes even rolled slightly backward.
A prix fixe session at Masa (you don't get to call the shots) will put you back $350 per person before tax, tip, and sake; so basically, four figures for the best sushi two people are likely ever to eat. If I read the review correctly, a meal at Masa is both inexcusably expensive and obscenely luxurious, and if Masa has done little else, it has made me wish I were the Times' head restaurant critic, so that I might be able to have this kind of sushi for lunch at least once in my life.
With Per Se just down the hall at the Time Warner Center, this puts two four-star restaurants within feet of each other. Bruni's cleaning up over there! What's next, Jamba Juice?
Posted by tangentialist at December 29, 2004 05:17 AM | more tangentialism
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://mt.tangentialism.com/mt-tb.cgi/10
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Masa: Four Stars, A Thousand Bucks:
» Writing About Food Writing from tangentialism
Anybody who has ever seen me eat lunch at a desk knows that I love food writing. Nothing improves a quick plate of macaroni and cheese more than reading about some cream-poached pheasant or oxtail marmalade. I was raised on... [Read More]
Tracked on August 22, 2005 11:00 PM
