(Photo: Danny Kim)

• Ai Fiori

  400 Fifth Ave., at 36th St. 212-613-8660

  How do you make that perennial fine-dining favorite the lamb chop taste like something more than a lamb chop without losing that essential lamby flavor? If you’re the omnivorous, frenetically talented Michael White, the answer is simple: You wrap your rack of baby-pink, impossibly tender agnello in a scrim of finely ground lamb, foie gras, and caul fat. You roast this delicate package until it’s a tender medium-rare, spooning it all the while with a delicately rendered lamb jus. You leaven a mound of Swiss chard with beurre blanc, then arrange it, with your perfectly cooked chops, on the plate. The resulting dish, served dinnertimes at White’s latest restaurant, Ai Fiori, is as familiar and comforting as a classic Greenmarket lamb chop, and as artfully decadent as anything you’ll find in the grand restaurants of Paris or Rome.

  See Also: A Look at the Ai Fiori Menu

From the 2011 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine