I'm never one to cheer at the misfortune of others, but when it's hard to root against it when it results in an incredible windfallthrough some random good luck I ended up going back to Atera just over six months after my first visit.

Whenever I go back to a restaurant I adored on my first visit, there is always some trepidation - will it be as good as last time?  Will it be as good as I remembered it?  Will the dishes be all the same?  Will my favorites from last time still be served? 

The answered turned out to be: yes, yes, no, and mostly yes.

Here without further ado are the pictures of the feast.

Atera is a new addition to New York City dining scene - and it just earned two Michelin stars in its first year.  Having been to every three Michelin star place in Manhattan (except for Eleven Madison, but since I consider that I discovered Daniel Humm at Campton Place I figure it's "as good as") and to several two star ones, we decided Atera would be our next target.  We are big fans of "molecular gastronomy" and have been to most such restaurants in the U.S.  Even though some of the reviews I read were more mixed than raving, it was definitely our sort of thing, so we decided to go.

It was surprisingly easy to get a reservation - everything was handled on-line via Cityeats which I like (I would much rather interact with a website than a human on the phone every day of the week).  A few days before we got a call confirming our reservations and dietary restrictions - the fact that I don't eat meat would be  cheerfully accommodated, however my mild chocolate allergy was hard to cater to as I was told several dessert courses have chocolate.  I said we'd figure something out (maybe I could trade my chocolate to Ben for something delicious that I wanted more of!) and we were all set to go.

We picked the earlier seating (6pm - the other option was 9:30pm) and I'm glad we did as we were barely making our way out of there by 9:35pm after arriving about five minutes before six.  We were escorted to a very lovely though tiny bar where we witnessed an awesome sounding cocktail menu:

It did not take very long before we were escorted back upstairs to the dining room and the show was ready to begin.  I had read that 13 people could sit around the "counter" - in addition to those chairs there was a table off to the corner and back that had four people around it (we later took a look and it could have squeezed one more person).  There were two empty seats at the counter so we would be among fifteen lucky diners to share in this dinner...   

The rest of the story will have to be told in pictures.  I'm able to describe the dishes accurately because we were presented with exact menus of our dinner at the very end - but even so I took copious notes, and I was glad I did because the "tastes" - amuses but there were around ten of them - were not listed in the menu.  And since it was early on, I was still focused enough to make detailed notes.  After a while I lost all concentration as most of the time I was too busy moaning with pleasure or giggling with amusement to remember to take notes (at least I *mostly* remembered to take pictures).

I put the description of dishes and our reactions in the picture captions (you see them when you select each photo).  Even a few days later, I have very vivid recall of pretty much all of the courses - this is a sign of an exceptional meal for me - after a more ordinary meal I will usually remember only one or two stand-out courses.  Here just about every course was a stand-out, a revelation or a delight in one way or another. 

TL;DR if you are in NY you should make an effort to get to Atera.  

For Ben's birthday I picked Edition by Koji Shimomura.   The concept intrigued me because the Japanese chef has traditional French cooking training and experience and the restaurant is classified as "French" but is known for using locally sourced Japanese ingredients and for using no butter or cream in preparation of dishes.  They have two Michelin stars but I was able to get a reservation there for the same day.  The fact that they were not booked weeks in advance like Ben's first choice Ryugin need not have worried me - this dinner was easily one of the best we've ever had.

This was a "custom" chef's tasting menu.  Their process is that if you order "omakase" they ask you what you like/dislike, can't eat, love, etc. and based on that and the available fresh ingredients the chef "edits" a menu for you.  They return before starting and read off the proposed courses in case there is something you forgot to mention.  Because of my preference to eat no/less meat I had more seafood courses when Ben had meat courses.  

In the bathroom there was this gorgeous lion carved from wood.

Dinner for 60+ can be difficult.  The organizers did a great job setting up a private room in an izakaya with a set menu - except of course, not being a meat eater or alcohol drinker I begged off and was allowed to order a la carte which worked out really well as there were many yummy options on the menu that weren't part of the group dinner courses, and two hours of unlimited drinking would definitely be wasted on me!

We spent Wednesday in Kyoto and had a kaiseki meal, as one is supposed to there.  We picked a nice place on 11th floor of Isetan Department Store just north of Kyoto JR station called Shozankaku.

We were not disappointed.  

We had to sign in when we arrived (there was a wait of about 45 minutes).  That's Ben's name on the right on the line third from the bottom - he wrote that himself!

Ben got sake. We had simple place settings and some bowls with roasted rice kernels.  Tea or finger bowls? :)

Ben got the full "Kaiseki" meal, but because it had steak, I got the option with same number of courses but "no meat" according to the server.  I was impressed enough that Ben said in Japanese that I don't eat meat!  

After wandering around sake breweries all morning we were getting quite hungry but couldn't find much in Nada around the brewery area, so we hopped on a train to Kobe hoping to find something yummy.

Either we got lucky with our pick or all food in Japan is always good!  :)

Since I'm platinum with Starwood, we got free breakfast either at the lounge on 19th floor (just across from our room) or at the buffet restaurant on the first floor.  We opted for the restaurant on our first morning and I really enjoyed being able to use the typical multi-compartment Japanese plates to sample lots of options.

You can't tell in the picture but the mini-pancakes in the middle of the plate are green-tea flavored.  Yum!

On our relatively short ICN-NRT flight (under two hours) we were served a wonderful lunch.

It was a multi-course affair with choices from Western or Korean menus.

Both of us had the same dessert - a wonderful fruit plate - the mango was one of the best I had ever tasted!

All in all, the food was great and the service was impeccable!

The trip report is over in the "Travel" section of this blog, but here are all the food pictures from the trip, starting with the highly anticipated Singapore Airlines first class trip from San Francisco to Seoul, South Korea.

First was "lunch" which was really more like a dinner.  We had caviar, I skipped the soup which Ben had, we both had salad, then I had fish while he had the lobster.