Samuel and I arrived at our hotel in NYC for an overnight and headed right
to it's restaurant, MAZE by Gordon Ramsay at the London in NYC...yes a long
name, with not so illustrious a meal to match. It's a very casual spot, indeed
really worn with wobbly tables with chrome trim and no linens to cover their
wear. The booths are worn silvery leather and chairs that are oddly quite
low.
I went to put may napkin in my lap, and there was hair on it!! YECH! It
also dawned on me after the meal, that no bread was ever proffered.
Samuel started with the Buttermilk Chicken Sliders with lettuce, tomato,
bacon & black peppercorn ranch that were deliciously crunchy from the
buttermilk batter and really the best thing we had all afternoon. My Grilled
Octopus was tasty, but suffered from truly atrocious presentation (check my FB
page from yesterday) and also was not cooked to a nice crunch at the thick end
and suffered from a slight sliminess therein. It came with "tomato tartare"
which strikes me as an odd name as tomatoes are indeed always tartare when not
cooked and this was simply a small pile of chopped tomatoes that were not even
quality tasty heirloom; a sad parsley spring was on top.
I did enjoy my glass of Domaine Vocoret et Fils 2013 Chablis from Burgundy,
but then at an average of $15-20 per glass, any wine here should be
awesome.
Samuel's main of The London Mini-steak Frites which was a small, but
filling grilled flat iron steak with herb fines frites, steak sauce and garlic
mayo that was indeed a delicious dish. My Seared Jerk Snapper was tasty as can
be and cooked to perfection with Braised Rainbow Chard and a tasty Citrus
Emulsion, but I told the server to mail Chef Ramsay they 1/2 dozen or so large
bones that I found in the fish. I think he might need to go back and take one of
his own Master Chef Challenges on how to fillet a fish.
The cappuccino was fine and off we went, knowing we would never return to
Maze, except for the free breakfast this morning, which had few highs (the
scrambled eggs and croissants) and many lows (the cheese, cold potatoes--though
tasty, and cold bacon and sausage....)
