Eggs Benedict

by Celia Sin-Tien Cheng
July 12, 2005

ASIATE
80 Columbus Circle, 35F
@ 60th St
New York, NY 10023
212-805-8881

On the 35th floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel, Asiate offers a great view of Central Park and Manhattan’s cityscape. Unfortunately, the food is not as stunning as the view. Brunch is a $48 prix fixe menu that includes a starter tasting bento box, then a choice of two main entrées, followed by a dessert sampler.

Asiate serves a fusion of French and Japanese inspired cuisine and while chef Nori Sugie* has trained with some of the top chefs in the world, including my all time favorite, Tetsuya Wakuda (chef/owner of Tetsuya’s in Sydney, Australia), the meal I ate today was rather disappointing. The concept of offering a variety of different foods is wonderful, but the fusion of East meets West fails here because the balance is not met and ultimately it is quantity that wins over delicacy. The Japanese are masters at offering a little taste of everything, just enough so that you can savor what you are eating. At Asiate, the portion sizes are too large to be considered delicate, and the food itself just isn’t.

I came to Asiate to try the eggs benedict, which was entirely unspectacular. The toasted white bread on which the poached egg and ham were served was the wrong texture, as it was too fluffy. Even the truffle salsa on the eggs benedict couldn’t save the dish. The raspberry sorbet palate cleanser that came between the starter tasting bento box and main entrées was oddly textured and way too sweet to be a cleanser. Dessert was also nothing to write home about, so I won’t. The only thing I recall that I liked was the lobster tempura that was part of the starter sampler. The tempura batter was crisp and not overly greasy and the lobster tender.

For a Mandarin Oriental Hotel restaurant, the price of the meal is not considered outrageous, but I would rather they reduce the variety by two or three items and instead increase the quality of the menu so that Asiate can actually be the restaurant it purports to be and not just a “hotel restaurant.”

• Nori Sugie was not the chef for brunch today

Also in Asian, Brunch, Eggs, UWS