Atera

Day 1		Day 2		Day 3		Day 4
Eataly Part 2 Esca Tasting menu		Le Bernardin Appetizers Main course & desserts Men's tennis Final Miss Korea		Lunch at les Halles 911 memorial Staten Island Atera Amuse Bouche Main Dishes Desserts		Streets of New York Daniel Amuse Bouche 3 course dinner

Once you seat down at the counter, there is no menu for you to choose, you eat whatever the chef has chosen to serve for the evening. No substitute unless you have food allergies.

Once the wine is poured and all the beverage are taken care of the food start immediately to come out. There are a total of 9 course of amuse bouche all compliment of the chef and none of them are listed on the menu (good thing I took notes). By the way, menu is given once the meal is over and when you are leaving the restaurant. Basically, when you are sitting down for your meal, there are no reference or indication what the next dish is going to be so you have to trust the chef. The only certitude is the food is going to knock your socks off.

The rhythm in which the "snacks/amuche bouche" came out was perfectly choreograph. Nothing is left out, service is impeccable. Our palates kept going, going, and going and every single course is visual treat but I will let you be the judge. Let's start.

Sweet, soft, airy beer foam macaron that melted in your mouth mixed with the saltiness of caviar, the creaminess and tanginess of the crème fraîche awaken all you senses.

Beyond beautiful that I am almost afraid to eat it! Simply looks like a piece of art.

The beet was sweet, soft, has a nice texture and you can also taste a hint of sweetness from the bee wax.

Simple as simple can be but this flaxseeds cookie has a strong earthy taste with a really nice distinct nuttiness of pine nut and some coriander.

I never heard of Amaranth & ram so I asked our waiter for an explanation. Ramp is a limp and unassuming wild onion harvested in early spring.

Amaranth is the common name for more than 60 different species of amaranthus, which are usually very tall plants with broad green leaves and impressively bright purple, red, or gold flowers. Some species produced Amaranth grain.

Two thin crispy wafers made with Amaranth grain filled with trout roe and a ramp tartare sauce.

Instead of bread it is a delicate, crunchy, so light and airy dry east meringue bun filled of delicious lobster meat and mayonnaise.

The tendon are slowly cooked, puree, and then fried to puff up and has the texture of pork rind (cracklins).

Served with home made fermented uni sauce just like the Vietnamese nuoc mam (fish sauce).

Very unexpected, really fun to eat! The uni sauce is strong and pretty close to Nuoc mam.

7- Pickled quail eggs, with pig's blood sausage wafer filled with chicken liver pate & huckleberry.

Did I hear it right? Pickle quail eggs with pig's blood sausage wafer??? Not sure of what to expect here.

The quail eggs were the first of many instances of trompe l'oeil cooking. They looked exactly like quail eggs but were actually deviled egg filling shaped with liquid nitrogen then wrapped in thin skins of milk.

I could not taste any blood whatsoever but I enjoyed the wafer and the chicken mouse with huckleberry.

A second trompe l'oeil dish. This is a creative play on bone marrow! The bone is replaced with heart of palm and then filled with bone marrow, béchamel sauce and then they ran a blow torch over the surface.

This was so good and so creative by replacing the actual bone with heart of palms. Thumbs up for creativity!

Last amuse bouche made with swordfish belly cured and served dripping with pork fat -the fish belly were made to look like lunch meat.

No fork nor knife were given so you have to grab all the amuse bouche with your hands.

Once all the amuse bouche were served they gave you a fancy wipe to clean your hands.