I’ve been meaning to eat here for awhile and so I made a reservation for after watching Star Wars (my third viewing) at the Kabuki. We had, what I would say, were the best seats (for us) in the restaurant at the chefs counter. It was great to see the cooks and chefs in action. Clearly, a couple of the cooks were relatively inexperienced and the sous chef kept them in line. There was a white truffle dish that I had to get of course, but not before asking to smell the truffles first since we were burned on the first dish at Acquerello; also not having a Barolo or Barbaresco available by the glass was a miss IMO.

All the dishes were decent but nothing was spectacular; no doubt we have become very snobby, but the dishes just seemed to lack a level of refinement to which we’re accustomed (to be fair, our meal was quite a bit less expensive than either Spruce or Acquerello which were the other two restaurants at which we had white truffle). The bone marrow dish was far from the best I’ve had and I wouldn’t mistake California wagyu for Japanese wagyu, that’s for sure. Pacing on the dishes was uneven; first course took a long time, second was timed well, third came a bit too soon and dessert took a long time. It’s good we were entertained by our view of the kitchen. Andrea said it was the best post-movie meal we’ve had which was somewhat damming with faint praise. Overall we did have a good time though thanks esp. to the catbird seating we had since we enjoyed seeing the entire process at work.