Boulud Sud

to be honest this isn’t the first time I ate at boulud sud but this last visit wasn’t up to their usual standards. maybe it was my fault. after all I did come in restaurant week, I should have known better.
I walked in the restaurant, and usually we are greeted with haste and seated with great service, but this time everyone seemed flustered, there were quick movements from all the staff but no one being attentive. it took a while to just get a table which we had a reservation for.
I was still excited for our meal. last time I came. the escbesche which they make so well with pine nuts and white grapes was possibly the star of the meal. this time it fell flat and failed to impress me or my friend.
their dips and chips have always been great. and it seems while the escbesche didn’t quite deliver this time. they were seemingly going strong! the hummus and the babaganoush was so delicious that we had to get another round for the table. but it seems that everyone else was thinking quite the same and the waiter, when we asked for more bread to dip with, disappeared and never appeared again.
the octopus tasted great. it was just little Chewier than it was when I had it last. mind you I don’t usually go to a place again and order the same items, but I had an important client that night and wanted to show him the best of what I had at Boulud sud.
whoever cooked the pasta that night however, bravo, the parpadelle with the ragu it’s to die for. let’s just say for pg purposes we finished that plate in 2 minutes.
chicken tangine was something I looked forward to that night. last time I was here I stole I bite from my friend and couldn’t stop dreaming about it since. now. everything was perfectly done. chicken nice and moist, the couscous perfectly cooked, and theres the preserved lemon which I always love. there just was no seasoning. and what a shame. so close.
I believe it is partly my fault for choosing to go in restaurant week menu setting. but having been a fan of the Boulud empire, this experience really hurt me and even more so to know my client wasn’t thoroughly impressed with one of the restaurants I deem of quality. I look forward to returning to Boulud sud. but perhaps not too soon.

Had lunch here. Doors opened about 5 minutes late, and there was a queue at the door. That’s fine, but we all watched as the hostess came and unlocked the door and then walked away without opening it for us or welcoming us in. Very awkward. She then muttered some archaisms as she took coats, like «very good». When I dropped my coat check, she remarked «you dropped your coat check, *already*» — I was particularly confused about what she was insinuating with the extra adverb at the end. Perhaps I looked like the type of person that was fated to drop my coat check? Anyway, it all made for a bad first impression. Onto the food:
Sunchoke soup + cured salmon apps:
Both pretty decent and inoffensive. Maybe a bit uninspired. Soup temperature wasn’t quite right.
Shakshouka + tagine entrees:
Both obscenely salty. Shakshouka was basically glorified pasta sauce. Tagine was lots of overcooked chicken with some oily couscous and cauliflower. Our server was gracious in replacing the dry chicken when we brought it up, though seeing as the dish was not tasty, I would have preferred a comp.
Panna cotta + signature grapefruit desserts:
Panna cotta was not great. Texture was kind of gummy and the streusel crumbles inside were pretty hard and gross. Grapefruit dessert was extremely difficult to eat. The form factor makes no sense — imagine trying to scoop ice out of a frozen sphere on a bed of ice cubes without looking like a barbarian. The sorbet itself was pretty good. The candied sesame «hat» and the hair-​looking garnish did nothing.
Our server was nice.
Also the place is decorated like a Hyatt Place lobby.

From décor to food to service! Top notch.
Came here with 4 friends and had an absolute blast. The cuisine has a refined Mediterranean twist under the Ah-​Mazing Chef Daniel Boulad! (Next stop Daniel NYC).
The crispy artichokes are fabulous! Beautifully seasoned and delicious crisp to it. Definitely a must get.
I ordered a seared tuna dish as an entrée. Holy crap I couldn’t get it enough! It was so fresh and enjoyable.
Desserts were something else. The Grapfruit Givre with insane shaved halva on top and the Chocolate Almond Cube are to die for.
We really really enjoyed our evening and hope to come back soon to taste some more beautiful dishes! Pictures below.

It was good besides the fact that there was a hair in my lamb burger. I would have thought they would have given us some sort of discount, extra app, or something, but no. I was offered another lamb burger and the full check.

Food was delicious, service was a bit rushed. I recommend the chicken tangine and the freshly made pastas. Try and sit on the back area

What a wonderful experience! I can’t wait to go back the next time I’m in NYC. Everything was excellent for Restaurant Week for my dinner. I would give this restaurant 6 stars if it was an option. Every single dish I had was amazing and the staff was great!
The menu has a mediterranean influence. I tried the octopus for the first course. It was the best I have ever had. It was tender and had so many different flavors that made it so good. Service was exceptional and on point. I enjoyed the chicken dish that was served on the menu for restaurant week.
Cocktails were perfectly prepared too! Speciality cocktails are the way to go. I enjoyed a French 64! It was similar to the classic champagne cocktail French 75 but since it is on 64^th street that is why they named it this to have a little bit of a twist on a classic.
CHEERS!

Food: Excellent
Service: Excellent
Ambience: Excellent
Don’t you love it when you have heard great things about a place and you are excited about going there and it lives up to the hype? This place is that. The food was amazing, the space it self is beautiful, high ceilings, vast with distance between tables and modern décor.
The staff was polite, well informed and attentive.
The food looked beautiful I apologize to fellow Unilocalers and Instagramers I should have taken pictures #foodporn :).
I highly highly highly recommend them.
Hopefully will be back soon

Came here for restaurant week, and I got to say what a classy spot. The menu is Mediterranean fare but what I really enjoyed was the bar. Going back to the classy comment, I ordered a old fashion and the bartender made in front of me and I honestly haven’t had a better old fashion in a long time. The place is a bit pricey but its worth it.

It’s retaurant week! Fantastic and elegant dining room here at French maestro Daniel Boulud’s Mediterranean-​focused restaurant. It’s quite close to Lincoln center and also right next door to a couple other famous Boulud establishments, in case you’re hungry for more after eating here.
Service is exceptional here (no surprise there), and the menu offerings are just as good. Highlight of the meal would definitely be their well-​known grapefruit givré — a hollowed out grapefruit filled to the brim with grapefruit sorbet, grapefruit pieces, cubes of Turkish delight, and crumble! It’s topped off with foam, a caramel tuile, and spun sugar. A must-​try, it tastes as good as it looks!

Traditional dining room and good bar area to meet friends for a drink and a bite to eat. Boulud Sud has an eclectic, Mediterranean-​inspired menu. I had the sea bass, which was phenomenal! Perfectly cooked and perfectly flaky with a beautiful crust. My glass of red wine was wonderful. My friend didn’t like his taramasalata and I don’t blame him, I tasted it and it tasted like a bitter hummus — I guess fish eggs are an acquired taste.
Service at the bar was friendly. A slightly older crowd at this restaurant. Not to be confused with its sister restaurant Bar Boulud around the corner (the food was better at Sud). Great for special occasions. Make reservations!

The restaurant week menu is tasty. We were a party of three and had scallop, pork and fish as entrees: amazing sophisticated flavor from all 3! Also had great shrimps as starter. Desert was creative and also a combination of multiple materials (can’t name them all…). In general a very good experience. Service was also great.

I live in UWS but I barely eat up here. However, I had some guests in town staying at empire and they wanted to eat very close by so we came here.
I got lamp loin. My food lacked flavor and even temperature was not right.
I can’t necessary recommend this place specially when the options are endless in the city!

All food was fantastic. We opted for the pre fixe menu before an opera. I had the monkfish and my wife had the scallops and both were absolutely amazing. The scallops melted like butter. The monkfish was firm and very well seasoned absolutely delicious. We both had the grapefruit givre desert and it was masterful. It was very interesting and had a lot of different complementing favors. If you go only once you must have this desert.
The meal was great, service was impeccable and the ambience was warm and inviting.

Blown away by this place. What a gorgeous spot. Beautifully designed with minimalistic modern décor. Service was excellent, the cocktails magnificent and the food…
Yes… THE FOOD…
It’s not food. It’s art. Made with so much love and care that you barely even dare to dig in. If you’re into fine top-​notch French cuisine, I think this is the place to go. I went here on a date. We had the fried artichokes and beet salad as an appetizer, the risotto special with white truffle as a main course, as well as that chicken tagine that everybody seems to be raving about. We loved every single dish. Portion size is just perfect. We left completely satisfied.
I’ll definitely be back as soon as I have another opportunity to go.
I highly recommend Boulud Sud.

Food was never so good in such an antiseptic and «mature» establishment. Seriously AMAZING meal of world-​class proportions leaving nothing to desire, but an oddly un-​Medditeranean décor within a Lincoln Center area building and an old and stuffy crowd. Picture old money men all suited up and combed back, sitting with Mrs. Refinement.
The meal began with a very unusual and downright ceremonial «presentation» of the star of the evening… some lumps of white truffles presented on top of raw rice in a fancy wood box. Picture the nicest portable litter box ever. Check my posted pic of this. Has anyone seen this before?
And our waiter was really quite wierd. PIcture an effeminate Ken doll with some bad plastic surgery, a detached attitude, and a provider of consistently subpar service which even other waiters notice and compensated for. But beyond these somewhat humorous distractions our meal was sheer perfection.
Octopus on a bed of purued almonds (among other things) and an EPIC jamon iberco got us off to an impressive start, then a downright sublime pan-​poasted halibut and exquisite and exotic chicken taurine as our mains. More points for the spicy broccoli rabe, although the assorted dessert plate wasn’t my cup of tea.
All in all Boulud has done VERY well here, although I’d rather see this restaurant move into the space currently occupied by Rana at the Chelsea Market. And loose Ken.

Upscale and somewhat pretentious, Boulud Sud delivers high quality food in a somewhat odd setup. Tables are very close to each other! To the point where I didn’t want to visit the restroom for fear that I’d side swipe my neighbor’s dishes to the floor as I squeezed my way through the crack.
The food, however, was incredibly delicious. We had the octopus, which was cooked perfectly. Arabic lamb flatbread was tasty and the steak was also well done. As others have noted, this place is pricey and portions are small so don’t expect to come here leaving full.

I enjoyed a Friday lunch w/​my sister for the RW menu.
Since we have Summer Fridays at the office, I booked a weekday lunch away from my usual lunch break of 20 mins gourmet cuisine called eating at my desk. Having an actual weekday lunch is a real and rare treat (esp a walk in Central Park after!!)
Picking between the Boulud restaurants was difficult but we ultimately narrowed down our search to the one with more options as we are picky eaters. I made last minute reservations to Boulud Sud the night before since their menu seemed better than the other DB restaurants on RW. Boulud Sud is the Mediterranean brother to Bar Boulud next door. The RW menu is very similar, with the same ingredients but Boulud Sud had more interesting sounding options in my part.
I made 2:15 reservations for lunch (they stop serving their lunch menu at 2:30) and I was running 5 minutes late but they were able to hold my table. The entrance is kind of tricky because you have multiple Boulud locations within the same corner of Lincoln Center. The entrance is to the side and has doors like some sort of stainless steel submarine. Interesting and quirky at the same time. The dining area was spacious and well lit. The dress code is advise to be smart casual but you may want to go a little more «smart» than casual. In other words you shouldn’t wear sneakers and ripped jeans.
The space is very big yet the tables felt very crowded. I could hear my neighbors better than I could hear my sister. I was literally about 6″ away from my neighbor and could hear her entire conversation with her mother/​grandmother. It was a little awkward. I could even hear the conversation of the couple next to us, two tables down and how uncomfortable it felt because they were probably on their first few dates and they didn’t know what to talk about so they spent their entire meal taking pictures and talking about what they’re eating. I’m pretty sure both sides of the tables heard about my upcoming vacation and work trip too because if I hear your business you’re bound to hear mine. UGH pet peeves. –1 star because of that.
Anyways, the menu looked pretty darn great, as expected with no surprises. I ordered the Andalusian tomato watermelon gazpacho w/​croutons and the sister got the Lebanese fattoush salad. The gazpacho was a great starter as it was light and refreshing. The unexpected watermelon bites added a hint of sweetness that complimented so well with the tartness of the tomatoes. The fattoush salad was a little boring. It is basically a side salad with pita chips and hummus. The hummus was very fresh and delicious though, but the rest of the salad was a little drab and extremely watery from being not well drained + the sumac vinaigrette. But the bread was pretty delicious with the olive oil. I believe the bread is rosemary, which is a little nontraditional to the basic bread and oil service but load up on your carbs here and work our later because the bread is so soft, unlike any bread I’ve had before.
For the entrée I got ratatouille et ouefs mollet and sister got the buffalo milk ricotta cavatelli. Assuming it is Daniel’s own French grandma’s recipe I had extremely high expectations for. The ouefs mollet (soft boiled egg) was perfect. Cracking the yoke is the most satisfying part if you’re into any of that food porn stuff. It was served with two pieces of the same rosemary bread as before. The presentation is interesting, on a wooden serving plate. Very cute and rustic touch to a «homemade» dish. From what I can tell from eating ratatouille just about every day in Paris for dinner, this is a very authentic recipe. It’s seasoned really well, and not too salty which is perfect the way I like it. The only difference I would say is the French get their food locally in the market or they grow it themselves. The difference is you can taste the life in the food that you cannot find in the States. Call me picky but the quality of the ingredients really makes a difference. Boulud Sud was very close.
My sisters cavatelli was just OK. The buffalo ricotta was a nice flavor but it really needed to stand out more instead of being mixed into the pesto.
For dessert I had the house made ice creams, the flavors that day were Rose, Strawberry and Apricot. Sister had the Gianduja and it was amazing, it almost tasted like a deconstructed Ferrero Rocher with gelato. I enjoyed the sampling of the house made ice creams, it changes daily but I had to jump on it when I heard they had Rose (anything rose flavored I LOVE.) The apricot was a little too tart and overwhelming for me, but the strawberry was fresh and the rose was phenomenal (do they have this stuff for sale to go???) I would ¹⁰⁄₁₀ have the rose again. Absolutely love it.
I’ll leave you with a word of advice: make reservations, order dessert, take a date here to impress them, but don’t sit in the 2-​seat tables parallel to one other, or risk your conversations being the highlight of the next person’s Unilocal review ;)

Had an excellent restaurant week lunch at Boulud Sud, a French/​Mediterranean restaurant close to Lincoln Center. Three courses for $ 25 and the menu had so many fantastic sounding options (sometimes restaurant week menus can be a bit weak but not this one!).
We started with the gazpacho and the salmon crudo. Both appetizers were delicious, light, and very fresh. The salmon crudo was on a bed of dill yogurt that was perfect for a hot summer day.
For entrees we had the merlu (fish) that came a top pea purée and sea beans. I had the lamb burger which was truly excellent — perfectly cooked lamb with grilled eggplant, grilled onions, a piece of fried saganaki cheese, Harissa sauce, some greens, and a yogurt sauce. It came with polenta fries which were out of this world!
For dessert, don’t miss the grapefruit givre that comes inside a brûléed grapefruit topped with halva. It was decedent, tart, refreshing and gorgeous!!!

We usually love Daniel’s places… Everyone we have been to are beautiful experiences for dining. I always enjoy the intricate favors and how they can whip up a special restricted diet preference…
Not today.
Though:
Reception
Always gracious and prompt as well as super accommodating.
Seating & Children
Temp wise, it’s colder in winter in the back, temps are better up front.
By way of a rant…
I have come to realize what I do not like is how crowded the seating is some such as this fine dining restaurants. You are literally closer to your neighbor than your dining companion with the lengthy table between you. Meaning you make fast friends or bust.
Also … I always fear the waiter will spill something on me, my partner or the guys next to us as they squeeze through the seats and tables or literally reach over the head of the person facing the bench seat. It literally has me stressed during a meal and I become the verbal beacon «Careful, Waiter 2 o’clock with hot soup» or to that affect…
So this leads me to my Tip número uno.
If you can avoid it, do not eat here on a Sunday brunch. It’s packed and the service is terrible. You are ignored your plate is served not as you requested, and you eat alone as your partner waits excessively for scrambled eggs and locks?
Another pet peeve disguised as Tip number 2:
Preamble quickly, I have 3 beautiful girls who behaved swimmingly when dining out with us at child «appropriate» eateries.
This is not a place for strollers and children who are fidgety. That’s right. You ruin it for me and more important you ruin it for them as they are forced to behave. I don’t care if you ruin it for you, when you know better you’ll do better. Now ya know!
However. All said Daniel and his staff, I’ve had great lunches and dinners here… In the past but seems like the issues you have with overcrowding like some economy class lounge have got to be fixed.

Came for restaurant week in winter 2015 and had an awesome experience! First, be sure to take advantage of the coat check.
The potato and sunchoke soup is creamy, delicious and GIANT. I chose the pork shank for my entrée, which was perfectly cooked and swimming in an absolutely fantastic polenta. The crowning glory was the mocha cube with hazelnut gelato — chocolate mousse, a chocolate ladyfinger and an edible arch with gold leaf made this dessert one for the books. Or should I say dessART?
As an aside, the bread they give you is also great, especially if you save some to dip in soup or sauce.
Service is good, though our first two courses seemed a little rushed — our waiter checked in literally three minutes after we received our dishes. Otherwise, no complaints!

Ja, nicht schlecht, wenn man eine gehobene Business-​Atmosphäre mag. Für mich ist dies ein Restaurant, wie ich es manchmal durchaus schätze, wenn ich die Semi-​Reichen und die Schönen erleben möchte.
Das Essen ist gut, keine Frage, wenn auch nicht überragend. Wir hatten das prix fixe menue für um die 60 US$ und mit etwas Wohlwollen stimmt das Preisleistungsverhältnis durchaus.
Guter Service !