Balthazar

Not to toot my own horn, but Balthazar — one of the most beloved, important restaurants in New York City — features a quote from me on their Press Page: “At its best, I think it’s New York’s most authentic French bistro, and if you catch it at the right moment you can find yourself transported across the Atlantic.” What’s funny is that I don’t remember writing that and I can’t find the post where I said that; there is this post from 2004 called “Transported at Balthazar” where I weirdly compare it to Cirque Du Soleil and complain about the texture of the pork belly.

Anyway, this year I read Keith McNally’s wonderful memoir — it’s right up there with Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood, Bones, and Butter as one of the great food memoirs — and now Craig’s reading it too; so when a 7:30 reservation opened up at Balthazar last night, we snagged it and invited our friend Chris.

Let’s pause for a second and admire the hat on the woman behind them. It’s giving Tin Man meets Wicked Witch.

Walking into Balthazar on a Thursday night at 7:30 is a bit like walking into a clubhouse version of Grand Central Station: it’s overwhelming at first, yet strangely welcoming. You feel like you’re walking into a great New York institution right up there with the Museum of Natural History and The New York Public Library.

When you go to Balthazar, you go for that feeling. The room was buzzing. Everyone seemed famous. Heather Gay was sitting behind us.

We ordered cocktails (now that I’m drinking again) and Gougères, those little French cheese puffs:

They were perfect little spheres of dairy-infused-carb.

This endive salad was ridiculously overpriced ($28!) and ridiculously small (I think it contains one single endive leaf), but that’s the price of admission at Balthazar.

I ordered the trout over lentils for my entree and, unlike the endive salad, this was a surprisingly generous portion: I could’ve knitted together a whole fish.

There were a few missteps here — the skin could’ve been crispier, the asparagus felt out of place in November — but those are small quibbles. It was a hearty, clean-tasting plate of food.

Craig fared better with his steak frites, pretty much the thing to get at Balthazar:

And Chris thoroughly enjoyed his short ribs:

The food was good, overall, but almost completely besides the point.

We come to this place for magic and at Balthazar, magic is what you get. It’s a certain kind of New York City magic that’s concentrated and highlighted in this enchanted space. Like New York itself, Balthazar is exciting, it’s enlivening, and it’s expensive. You can put that on your press page.