• The Café at Country

  90 Madison Ave., 212-889-7100

  Geoffrey Zakarian isn’t the only chef in town who’s reinventing the great raw-beef classic (Gray Kunz serves a version at Café Gray, John LaFemina offers one at the Orchard). It’s just that Zakarian is doing it best. At the Café at Country, Zakarian and executive chef Doug Psaltis hand-chop organic beef tenderloin until it’s velvety smooth, then spice it with the unexpected addition of pickled chanterelles. A quail-egg yolk is nestled on top of the meat, and the dish is topped with a quenelle of crème fraîche and Dijon mustard. The whole savory, slippery deal is presented in a chilled Mason jar, for a nice rustic effect.

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