César — Restaurant in New York

Updated on July 7th, 2025 — Because dishonesty deserves daylight.

Dear César Team, Your response only confirms this restaurant’s systemic dishonesty. I’m changing my rating from 3 stars to 2. The lost star reflects a fundamental truth: César is built on lies. If this restaurant is the chef’s lifelong masterpiece — his “culinary child” — then let history record it as the most tragically ironic stillbirth of our era: conceived in deception, nurtured by fraud, now gasping for air under the weight of its own contradictions. When a creator denies accountability for his monstrous creation, who but the creator must answer for its ruin?

First: I never returned any dish. I simply left them unfinished because they were far too salty. No one “remade” anything specifically for me — that story, like respect here, is purely imaginary.

Second: The chef disappeared before 9 PM while new guests were still arriving. I watched them sit down — they never saw him once. I asked a staff member where he went. The answer? “It’s Tuesday — we’re closed Wednesday — so tonight’s his weekend.” Next time, tell your guests upfront: if you book late on a Tuesday, expect to pay a tasting menu price for an empty counter.

Third: I never ordered caviar, yet there it was on my plate — and on my bill — forcing me to pay for something I didn’t ask for. Then, conveniently, that charge vanished from my credit card statement later. If it was a “gift,” why was I billed at all? And why did no one think I deserved a call or email explaining this secret rewrite? If your restaurant can edit a guest’s charges in silence, your guests should know: their credit cards aren’t safe here. Now you claim you “comped a few items”? Which ones, exactly? And why bury that detail in a defensive reply weeks later?

I didn’t plan to say more — but dishonesty deserves daylight. Let future guests decide if they want to pay premium prices for secrets behind the counter and stories spun afterward. Moral backbone costs nothing — yet somehow, it’s missing here.

And one last thing: when you reply to guests, don’t drop their names to save face. My name is Kiko. I flew here from San Francisco — twice. You won’t erase that.

— Kiko July 7, 2025

——

(Original review below)

Having dined at César six months prior with unforgettable memories, I eagerly returned during my May trip to NYC. I had hoped for the same magic this time around. While the bread remains divine and some staff were wonderfully attentive (shoutout to the server who remembered my previous visit!), the experience revealed puzzling inconsistencies.

The Curious Case of the Vanishing Chef As a solo diner, I booked the counter hoping to witness the kitchen’s energy—yet César, whom I’d known as a consummate host, left abruptly around 9 PM. For those seeking chef’s signature engagement, opt for earlier seatings.

Menu Mysteries The dishes leaned heavily on salt and oil, a stark contrast to last year’s balanced flavors (the uni course suffered most). Perhaps a generational palate gap? The triple-dessert rollout also baffled—why serve them simultaneously, risking texture compromise?

Service Stumbles While one staffer’s warmth stood out, another’s nervous stuttering—and more critically, the unwarranted reading of my private note to the chef—crossed professional boundaries. A lesson in respect feels overdue.

The Phantom Caviar I signed a receipt that showed caviar charges (which I didn’t order, though I recalled it in the parfait), yet my credit card statement later revealed the amount had vanished without a trace. Whether this was a glitch in their POS system or a belated act of conscience, I’ll never know—but it certainly matched the evening’s theme of disappearing acts.

Final Notes César remains a restaurant of potent memories—both dazzling and dissonant. I’ll return someday, hoping to realign my expectations with reality.

—Kiko, San...

Cesar was an amazing trailer that delivered a boring film.

Our first few courses of small bites were exciting, creative and unique--truly, truly unique. From the Smoke Trout Rillette cigar, to the briney Sawara on Nori Chip, to the fun take on fish 'n' chips a la the Kisu Weaved in a Potato Chip, to the gorgeous, flavorful and perfectly baked Danish Hiramasa Monaka....Every plate was full of humor and personality. There was a true sense of identity coming from the dishes, real personality instead of the soulless copy and paste blandness of so many other fine dining courses.

Then it all ended.

It's like Chef Ramirez got cold feet and didn't dare show more personality in his bigger dishes. The Sea Urchin with Black Truffle and Brioche was an upcharged slice of toast anyone could find at any upscale seafood restaurant. The A4 Wagyu Parfait was pretty but too salty, and the Foie Gras Flan was also too salty. The Stonington Maine Hand Dive Scallop was the obligatory overdone "foam dish" with too-tiny scallops and not much else. The Madai, I could tell, wanted to be something special, but ultimately didn't have the courage to rise beyond its mediocre "herbaceous" sauce.

And as with so many New American fine dining restaurants, most dishes were covered in Japanese/Asian accents (yuzu this, nori that, etc.) because heaven forbid that American fine dining develop its own culinary identity.

Most insulting of all, Chef Ramirez suffered the affliction that seems to infect all fine dining chefs in the US: He served the mediocre "meat on plate" dish. If you've followed my other fine dining reviews, you know how much I gripe about this course: a soulless slab of meat (usually red, usually Wagyu) served with some boring red wine jus that any first-year cooking student could make alongside the world's saddest vegetable. If I had a dollar for every time I've been served this kind of plate as the final savory course in a tasting menu--I'd be richer than Bezos.

Chef Ramirez's boring "meat on plate" course was Australian Baby Lamb with Morel Mushrooms. Plus 2 demi-points for not going the Wagyu beef route, but minus 200 points for not doing anything more interesting than this. Come on! You couldn't have served a meat pastry or a meat dumpling or anything other than a soulless hunk next to lonely vegetables?

Such a disappointment.

After an interesting palate cleanser of rhubarb with yogurt and elderflower, I had new hope that dessert would make up for our lackluster savory dishes, but it was not to be.

We were served Frozen Japanese Green Tea Souffle with Caramel Pearls and Green Tea Cremieux--which is fancy-speak for cold, crunchy air sprinkled with the world's most OVERUSED tea. Seriously. Matcha? In a fine dining dessert? How inventive. Next, will you be serving apple pie? Let me be clear. When you are a chef with the connections Cesar Ramirez has, it is beyond disappointing to be served a dessert--the ONLY dessert of a tasting menu--whose main flavor could be found at Starbucks.

Don't let the five-star reviews fool you. Chef Ramirez is charging the price of an F1 while delivering a Kia. Maybe one day he'll have the courage to be...

Food was amazing.

Our server (we were sitting at the counter by the door) was awful though. The rest of the staff was amazing and so professional though.

Unfortunately, our server ruined our experience. We could barely hear him speak, he explained the dishes incorrectly (e.g. he served pear juice at the beginning and said it tasted like apple juice. I’m gluten free and he never mentioned if the dish was in fact gluten free when it was set down. I mentioned that trace amounts of gluten and soy sauce was fine since I’m just intolerant / I get hives when eating gluten but not celiacs. He misunderstood and served me a puff pastry and he put down a brioche and didn’t tell me it was gluten free so I found myself double checking a number of times).

He was also extremely rude. He asked my group of 3 if we wanted to add-on white truffles on any of the recommended dishes - chawanmushi or sole. We told him that I wanted to add additional white truffle on 1 dish (foie gras chawanmushi only) and my mother wanted it on her Dover sole. This server even had a note pad and wrote down our order, however he misunderstood. When the chawanmushi dish arrived, all 3 had white truffles shaved on it. Do note that we wouldn’t have complained but white truffle add-on costed $150-175 per dish / portion. Which meant a minimum addition of $450 added to our bill. When we mentioned that only 1 person wanted white truffles on the chawanmushi and the other wanted it on the sole, he began saying that we were mistaken. All 3 of us understood correctly on our original order (1 truffle on chawanmushi, 1 truffle on the sole), but somehow he was convinced that we were all wrong.

He then said “well you definitely said all 3, but in any case do you want me to take it off your bill or what?!” in a snarky manner. We said yes that would be greatly appreciated if possible. He then goes to his manager (clearly blaming us since he was glaring at us and giving us looks) and comes back to tell us taking it off the bill was impossible. We said no worries and thanked him for trying.

He also struggled clearing the dishes and even his coworkers glared at him when he would only pick up 1 dish (instead of 2) of our 3.

We also were prompted on whether we wanted to add wagyu beef. We were keen so asked if they could split 1 steak into 3 as we were 3 petite women and knew we’d be full but wanted to try anyway. The server said absolutely not as the steak was tiny so we decided to order 2 steaks split 3 ways. The steaks came and 1 steak was definitely large enough to be split into 4 pieces. We ended up taking 1.5 steaks home to enjoy the next day.

We absolutely LOVED the food and most of the experience but our server ruined it for us. I will be requesting NOT to be seated at the counter next to the front entrance as I’m sure we would have had an amazing experience if it weren’t for him. Unfortunately I didn’t get the name of our server (he was the only non-Asian or Caucasian staff on the team apart from the amazing somm).

I highly recommend that the Chef Cesar reevaluate that server as all other service staff...