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Best of New York Food 2004

Best Amuse-Bouche

  • Alain Ducasse at the Essex House

    155 West 58th Street, 212-265-7300

    Gougères, those wonderfully light cheese puffs, have been elevated to new heights by chef de cuisine Didier Elena at Alain Ducasse, where the little Burgundian delicacies get a surprise creamy cheese filling. The airy, puffy choux pastry shell, flavored with comte cheese from the Jura, is filled with Mornay sauce while still hot and crisp, then served immediately on a silver-edged Lalique plate as a welcoming hors d’oeuvre with an aperitif. Avoid the temptation to take a bite. The cheese might ooze and ruin the evening. Happily, they’re small enough to pop into the mouth whole for an unexpectedly intense cheesy sensation.

From the 2004 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine

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Other Best Of Guides

Our mission this year: to hunt down not just the best but the best values in the eating, shopping, drinking, and general-consuming universe of New York. It’s quite the process, this, requiring eating and shopping and drinking (all in the name of research), followed by heated but civil discussion, and heated but less-civil discussion, until a winner emerges in each category.

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