15 EAST @ Tocqueville — Restaurant in New York

I discovered Tocqueville last New Year’s Eve, and it’s been my go-to place ever since when special people come to town. My latest visit to this understated yet elegant Union Square New American-French restaurant with a French flare and amiable, well-trained servers brought rave “reviews” from the entire table.

Seven days a week, the restaurant offers an excellent value prix fixe menu ($29). The menu consists of three courses — appetizer, main course and dessert — as well as an amuse-bouche and interesting housemade bread à go-go. In the evening, Tocqueville offers a pre-theatre menu at $44, as well as a full à la carte menu. We went for Saturday lunch, when the restaurant was unusually uncrowded, so we sat on the ground floor from where we could enjoy a view of the restaurant’s refined décor. The dining room was pleasantly quiet with tables set widely apart and well-designed acoustics, allowing us to concentrate on the marvelous food and have good conversation too.

As mentioned, the prix fixe offers three courses, with two choices per course. From the appetizers, everyone tried both offerings, the “creamless sunchoke soup” and the “salad with mushroom terrine”; both dishes were flawless, the flavors bold but balanced. Prior to our appetizer arriving, we were served an excellent “roasted asparagus and beets” amuse-bouche, a great start to our culinary adventure. Throughout the lunch we were also able to enjoy an assortment of homemade bread, namely, brioche, focaccia filled with olive chunks, and crusty, white sourdough with homemade butter (you heard me right, homemade).

For the main course we all opted to for the “pan roasted hake” served with Brussels sprouts and other baby root vegetables, although the other main course option did sound quite flavorsome though not quite as original: “housemade gnocchi” with rainbow Swiss chard, toasted garlic, roasted mushrooms and Parmigiano. We all chose the hake because it’s not common to find extra-fresh, perfectly-cooked hake in NYC, and we were pretty sure that Tocqueville would not disappoint us in this regard. Sure enough, the hake, grilled primarily on one side and cooked to perfection, conserved all its moistness and flavor, while the root vegetables provided a perfect, faintly bitter compliment to the slight sweetness of the fish.

For dessert, we tried both the “bittersweet chocolate bon bon” served with espresso ice cream and the trio of homemade sorbets, of which the dark chocolate was the most worthy of note. In addition, the chef graciously offered us a complimentary dessert of warm rhubarb pie with yoghurt and cheese ice cream.

Roger Dagorn, sommelier and Sake Samurai at Tocqueville restaurant in Manhattan The wine did not fall short of our expectations either, as the sommelier, Roger Dagorn, who besides being a master sommelier — one of the best in the world — is also a Sake Samurai for Tocqueville’s sister sushi restaurant, 15 East, just down the block, recommended a reasonably priced, dry German Riesling ($50), and we were lucky enough to catch the last bottle they had in stock. The wine was both earthy and fruity and matched up perfectly with all our courses.

Dining at Tocqueville is memorable. You eat exceptionally well and you’re treated well. I’d recommend it for anyone who is looking for a gourmet meal on a...

Dined at 15 East @ Tocqueville on November 14 as a party of 4, myself + fiancee and a friend + his fiancee/

Reservation was made for the 'Patio', which apparently does NOT mean the covered area, but rather simply the exposed sidewalk. No heat lamps either, so it was frigid.

Right after being seated, my fiancee ordered a hot green tea. It never arrived. We asked again. Still never arrived. Only after asking a third time (well after an hour) did they finally bring a cup of hot tea. If only this was the worst of the issues...

The 2 guys in our party opted for the 6-course tasting menu, while the ladies ordered 2 entrees. We were advised that the "food would come out at different times", but insisted this didn't matter.

Surprisingly the entrees came out after about 10 minutes, before even the sashimi course was ready, but we shrugged this off. The sashimi didn't arrive for 30 more minutes. Then another 30 minutes to get the second course (a soup or custard choice).

At 9:35pm, we were still waiting for our 3rd course - sushi - and our server asked if we would be OK taking the duck first. Fine by us! But how can the sushi take so long!?!? It doesn't even need to be cooked!

We FINALLY received our third course (of six!) at 9:49pm, about 100 minutes after we actually ordered. All NYC restaurants are now required to close at 10PM, but it seemed this restaurant simply DGAF.

Then we got our wagyu dumplings next around 10PM, before FINALLY getting the sushi around 10:15PM. We still had dessert too and didn't close out our bill until after 10:30PM.

Again, all NYC restaurants MUST close by 10pm, yet we noticed a few other tables opting for the serving menu that were still only halfway through their dinners at 10:30PM. Nearly all tables were seated by 8:30pm, so this seemed to be inept service across the board.

Perhaps as a mea culpa, we received 4 desserts orders vs. 2 actually ordered, but this hardly improved our mood. And serving us ice cream in the frigid night only added to the laughable irony of the disastrous dinner.

Other notable serving errors include:

Bringing us a martini no one ordered near the beginning of the meal, then giving us a very long look when we mentioned this wasn't ours Ordering a second hot sake and having to follow-up after 20 minutes to get it (in between courses 2 and 3!) Forgetting a subsequent cocktail order until we reminded them

Food was excellent and worthy of 5 stars (as other reviewers have noted), but the service was beyond atrocious. In years of living in NYC I've never had a service experience even half as bad. For a $145 tasting menu, I expect more.

Word to management: you have a great product (food), but if you don't fix your inept service, no one will come here twice and you...

I came here with a purpose: I wanted to try a real Japanese Omakase tasting menu. I already knew the price was going to be steep and I was willing to eat my filling of deliciousness.

15 East is a rather small modern Japanese restaurant with dark walls and hints of classical Japanese patterns. The large paper lamps on the ceilings give the small space a very spacious feel. Being in the heart of Union Square, I can imagine the rent is expensive, but they make use of the space very well. The front openly shows the chef's sushi bar with limited seating for the private food show. (If you can, I would recommend getting bar seating).

The restaurant has about 40 seats, which is usually full, and has 7 people attending to these tables with the utmost attention. I felt respected and loved by each of these experts. The lovely lady who took our order gave excellent suggestions on drinks and made sure everything was perfect. There was a point where a bit of the water condensation of my cold water glass had pooled beneath it and I wiped it with my lap napkin. 2 seconds later, someone hands me a new one. Damn, that was awesome.

All 6 courses were elegantly planned as a food adventure. Palette cleansing dishes were given in between to make sure the taste buds were neutral before eating the new plate.

Although the whole thing is magnificent, there were a few notable items:

octopus appetizer: it's so rich and tender. Those few slices of the tentacles were meaty and balanced very well with a few grains of salt prawn sashimi: i don't know how they made the prawn sashimi so sweet. It was definitely not the corn syrup. The sweetness is one that can't be artificial medium fatty tuna sashimi - this just melted in my mouth and gave me an erection. What the Hell is this made of? Alaskan salmon sushi: I have had some excellent sushi in Japan, but this was one of the best. There's a lingering taste of the fresh water river and I would suggest eating this as the last piece. Eel sushi: It doesn't look like it's dipped in the eel sauce, but the flavor is all contained in those precious bites. The eel flakes off somehow and the light sweetness pulls it all together

The chef's tasting menu is 6 courses for $120 and drinks are around $20 per cocktail/sake, so expect the bill to come to around $175 per person with tax and tip. We sat there for around 2.5 hours enjoying the dinner and the decor. I think it's...