New York City: Ritz-Carlton Central Park (October 2018)

Ritz-Carlton Central Park – Helped to Make Our 50^th Birthday Weekend Special

My spouse and I stayed at the Ritz-Carlton Central Park for one night on a Saturday evening in mid-October 2018. We booked our stay online through the Marriott website, and we remitted Marriott rewards points for a complimentary stay. (This was perhaps our best use of points ever, since the room value was upwards of $800 per night!) A few weeks before we arrived, we received an email from guest services inquiring about our preferences and plans, and we mentioned that we were visiting to celebrate our joint milestone 50^th birthdays. (We had already booked our restaurants and theatre tickets on our own, or they would have helped arrange those activities.)

The Ritz-Carlton Central Park is located in a Beaux Arts building on the southern perimeter of the park on West 59^th Street. (Although it occupies the site of the 1930 former St. Moritz Hotel, the building has since been owned by Harry Helmsley, Donald Trump, and Ian Schrager.) From the moment we stepped out of the taxi, staff greeted us by name. I thought that my spouse had provided our surname, and conversely, he thought that I had given it, but neither was true. Our guess is that the doorman/valet sneaked a peek at the luggage tag on our suitcase and then passed our name on to all other staff that we encountered. It was a lovely arrival experience!

The property has an on-site restaurant (Auden Bistro and Bar), afternoon tea (in the Star Lounge), a La Prairie Spa, fitness center, and small sundry shop, in addition to club level accommodations that enjoy a separate private lounge. Many of the hotel’s nearly 260 rooms and suites afford either city or park views. (We were thrilled that the two windows in our standard room allowed us views of Sixth Avenue and a glimpse into Central Park!)

Our standard room had a hallway (which was the most convenient place to open the luggage stand for our small suitcase) that led into the main room. We were blown away by the first thing that we saw: two huge silver Mylar helium balloons with the numbers 5 and 0 to mark our special occasion! The balloons were positioned between the comfy king-size bed (with a nightstand on each side) and the small sitting area (with its tiny sofa, chair, and coffee table [which held a plate of sweets plated to mark our special occasion]). The side of the room opposite the bed contained a built-in unit that included two smallish closets (neither was long enough to hang a calf-length coat) and a shelf that held the TV, with drawers beneath (one of which held a pull-out refrigerated drawer). The marble bathroom was large by Manhattan standards, with a vanity for dual sinks, ample shelving, complimentary toiletries (even men’s dress shirt collar stays were offered!), and a big glass shower. (Note that our room did not have a soaking bathtub; in retrospect, we may have been assigned a semi-handicapped room, since the shower seemed as if it could be rolled into.) Textiles incorporated muted and tasteful earth tones, with creative and memorable wallpaper that showcased clouds. We loved the personal business cards that we could give to acquaintances advertising that we were “In Residence” at the hotel!

We loved our stay at the Ritz-Carlton Central Park! The service was excellent, and our accommodations were comfortable. In fact, we wished that we had booked two nights!

 

New York City: Masa (October 2018)

Masa - Our Most Expensive Meal Ever!

My spouse and I dined at Masa for dinner on a Saturday evening in mid-October 2018. Masa is open for lunch on Tuesdays through Fridays, and dinner on Mondays through Saturdays. A few weeks before we dined, we emailed the restaurant to make a reservation, and they sent us an email reminder a few days prior. Although we specified in the email that we wanted to sit at the sushi counter, when we arrived at the restaurant, the host planned to lead us to a table. Fortunately, there was space at the counter, and we were seated in our desired spot. (Had we sat in the dining room, we would have been so disappointed! We love to interact with the sushi chefs and watch them work!)

Masa is located on the fourth floor of the Shops at Columbus Circle/Time Warner Center, an upscale shopping mall and office building at the intersection of West 59^th Street and 8^th Avenue. Other high-end restaurants are located on the same floor, including Per Se (where we ate in December 2009), Porter House (where we ate in August 2016), and Bar Masa (where we ate in December 2011).

Guests enter Masa by walking through a traditional noren (a fabric divider) and then through an intricate wooden door. Inside, the restaurant is spacious, divided into two areas: a small dining room with traditional blonde-wood tables and chairs, and the sushi counter (with 10 or 12 high leather chairs). The stunning sushi counter is a work of art – a solid piece of Hinoki Cyprus that is sanded daily for a super-soft finish. (Its estimated worth is a whopping $260,000!) Behind the bar, a seasonal tree provides a focal point, and a wood-fired grill is located near it. Three sushi chefs work at the counter, which displays huge blocks of ice to keep the fish cold. We were fortunate to have the chef/owner Masayoshi Takayama (“Masa”) as our chef.

Masa grew up in Japan and learned his craft from a sushi master at Tokyo’s Ginza Sushi-ko. He moved to the US and opened a small restaurant in Los Angeles that he named after his mentor. In 2004, he opened Masa and Bar Masa in New York. (A second location of Bar Masa is located in Las Vegas.) Chef also owns NYC’s Kappo Masa (where we ate in December 2017) and Tetsu.

Dining at Masa has been on our bucket list for years, but we felt that we had to wait for a really special occasion (like our joint 50^th birthdays!) to justify the astronomical price tag ($595 per person, which includes gratuity but not beverages or taxes). Masa holds the distinction as the most expensive restaurant in the United States, and one of the eight most expensive restaurants in the world! We had been working ourselves up to Masa after dining at other Manhattan Japanese restaurants like Kura (January 2015), O Ya (January 2017), Jewel Bako (May 2017), Brushstroke (August 2016), and BONDST (October 2017). Masa has held three Michelin stars for many years, as well as three stars from the New York Times, and five stars from Forbes (formerly Mobil).

Masa serves Japanese cuisine in an omakase format, whereby there is no written menu and no choices for diners to make; the chef selects what he will feed you from seasonal products that are flown in daily from Japan so that the fish is fresh and never frozen. Because photographs are forbidden (we think not for the proprietary nature of what is served but because Chef wants his guests to eat the food exactly when he presents it without pausing to take pictures), we are relying on our memory of what was served.

We began with seven (7) composed dishes:

1. Kegani (hairy crab) and uni on delicate cucumber salad

2. Caviar-topped toro tartare with toast

3. Suzuki (sea bass) sashimi with ponzu vinaigrette and shiso flowers

4. Crab leg with broth

5. Roasted sea urchin summer truffle

6. (Optional $150 per person supplemental dish of Waygu beef with truffles, which we did not purchase)

7. Matsutake broth

Next we received about 16+ pieces of sushi, each crafted one at a time and placed in front of us by the chef himself:

8. Toro (two pieces)

9. Shima aji (striped jack) nigiri

10. Hirame (fluke) with grated turnip nigiri

11. Tai (sea bream) nigiri

12. Kinme dai (golden eye snapper) nigiri

13. Ika (squid) nigiri with Himalayan salt

14. Amaebi (sweet shrimp) nigiri from Hokkaido

15. Kuruma ebi (Japanese imperial prawn) nigiri from Okinawa

16. Mirugai (geoduck) nigiri

17. Suji (grilled toro sinew/collar) with shaved green onion nigiri

18. Saba (mackerel) nigiri

19. Another type of saba (mackerel) nigiri

20. Grilled shiitake mushroom nigiri

21. Anago (seawater eel) nigiri

22. Uni handroll

23. Toro handroll

And then we finished with three (3) sweet/dessert courses:

24. Lotus root with shiso and ume

25. Pear slices served alongside soba-cha (buckwheat tea)

26. Matcha mille feuille (green tea layered crepe cake)

After we finished our meal (two hours passed so quickly!) and paid the bill (gulp!), Masa invited us to come behind the sushi counter and have a photograph taken with him before we left. It was an amazing ending to a fantastic meal!