(Photo: Mark Peterson/Redux)

• Masa

  10 Columbus Circle, 212-823-9800

  After passing through the grimly fluorescent megamall that is the Time Warner Center, enter the restaurant and let your eyes adjust as one of Masa Takayama’s minions ushers you to the bar. If you’re lucky, Masa himself will be there, ready to give a private command performance that just may be worth the outrageous dinner tab of $350 per head. Maybe you’ll begin with white truffles from Alba frizzled in tempura batter, or little porcelain bowls filled with risotto folded with uni. In between bites of tuna belly, or foie gras gently boiled in the shabu-shabu style, frosty green bottles of sake will appear. As you sip and eat and eat and sip, it will slowly dawn on you that this is the perfect meal, in the perfect place, with the perfect person. But make sure you both like sushi. And whatever you do, don’t let your dinner companion see the check. In fact, don’t even look at it yourself.

From the 2006 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine