Chevalier

We went for lunch and it was spectacular! Started with the crab salad and had the lobster ricotta gnudi as the main course. Also had the toffee pudding for dessert. All three courses were spectacular. Not to mention the bread was phenomenal. One of the best meals I have had recently and will definitely be back!!!

It’s a gold sticker on all counts — it’s our new special occasion tradition to go there — amazing service food and décor — everything a restaurant should be!

Great food, great atmosphere. Food is worth the price since it is extraordinary… but a martini at $ 23…really…vodka is vodka.

If you think of a fancy restaurant this place will not disappoint. The food was excellent and the service up to par. The only drawback is the portion sizes, for some things on the menu is just ridiculously small. I get it, this is not supposed to be the type of place you go to stuff your face but c’mon one extra piece wouldn’t hurt or lower whatever standards this place is trying to meet. If you want to wine and dine expect to pay at least around $ 200 p/​p. All in all, I recommend this restaurant for the sake of the fine culinary life experience! Go and enjoy each tiny bite!

Great ambiance, awesome staff, wonderful food. Had drinks and grilled octopus, which was really tender and had good charring and flavor. Also enjoyed the bar nuts (glazed almonds) that came with our drinks.
Will definitely come here again!

Beautiful décor and five star service.
Then we eat the food and it’s a home run.
Ordered the prefixed three course.
Appetizer I had was the scallops. The portion was surprisingly large. Three perfect scallops seared to perfection. On a bed of turnip mush. Really yummy and oh so fresh
Entrée was the duck breast. And seriously one of the best duck breast I have had. Only Eleven Madison produced a yummier duck breast. But theirs of course was so small I needed a microscope to eat. :). The portion again was very generous as you can see from the pictures posted.
Dessert was not noteworthy. I had some kind of chocolate cake.
Their baguette at the beginning of the meal is dangerously crispy. And their butter is served room temp! One of my favorite parts of the meal.
Like I said home run! Will be returning for many meals to come.

An absolutely amazing restaurant with incredible service and wonderful food presentation. Food was very well portioned. I’m not sure why so many reviewers complained about the food portion — this place isn’t the Cheesecake Factory. Absolutely the best restaurant I’ve been to. Beautiful location and dramatic interior design. The Duck Breast and Lamb were out of this world. Great job!

9 course chef’s tasting menu!!! Amazing! From the start, this restaurant is amazing. The Baccarat Hotel is a triumph! So chic, so glamorous! The bar, The salon, The restaurant… Outstanding! I can’t wait to come back!

This incredibly fancy restaurant, that has an honor of having a Michelin star, was something that I was really looking forward to try. Located right across of MOMA, this restaurant’s interior definitely matches it’s elite location.
The service was obsequious and careful, just how it should be in a place of such status.
I must say, that the main courses were truly exquisite. Lamb and Duck were cooked perfectly, without losing any flavor of the meat. The appetizers were on the same level– I ordered octopus ravioli, and was very satisfied with the texture and flavor of this dish.
However, what strongly disappointed me were the hors d’oeuvres (tiny little appetizers in the beginning of a meal). One of them, a little triangle made of beat was absolutely disgusting. The other ones lacked flavor and little lobster piece with black caviar tasted like something that should not be eaten in the first place. Same goes to the little after-​meal deserts. They also lacked flavor and originality.
Overall, however, this place was really enjoyable and high class. Would I come back here? Probably not, but it was a good and partially tasteful experience.

Excellent dining experience. A few mistakes, easily forgiven (a couple of crab crust pieces in the homemade ragitoni pasta with spicy Dungeness crab). There is craft and there is creativity that makes the place worthy of future visits. We opted for the Chef’s menu and it was worth it. So many textures and flavors throughout the menu keeps you wanting more, but yet satisfied. Service is warm and attentive.

Delicious food, great service, and celebrity sightings to boot! They have a pre-​fixe lunch menu (any two courses). I had the poussin and the caramel mousse (?) with crème brûlée. The chicken was very good. Moist and well-​seasoned. But the star of lunch was the lobster risotto that my coworker ordered. I’m not a huge fan of lobster, but this was fantastic. So many flavors. If I return, I’m definitely getting the risotto.
The dessert was also very good, though a bit rich for my taste. The berry dessert was a refreshing option.
The Baccarat water glasses were a nice touch, as were the celebrity diners (a fashion designer and a rapper– any guesses?).

Bravo! Standing OVATION. Chevalier is an exquisite dining experience encompassing all aspects of fine dining. The moment you enter this beautiful space with it’s serene décor and magnificent floral arrangements you think… this is VERY special.
Everything during our dinner was perfect. The sommelier was very helpful offering choices in all price ranges. The waitstaff was as caring as could be. The food. From appetizers to soufflé, each outstanding dish with its fresh ingredients and delicious taste made me think… can’t wait to return!
Chevalier, can be a prototype for fine dining. We are lucky to have this new open and considering it is an infant I cannot imagine how it can get better with growth as it is as close to perfection as a dining experience can be. I hope to celebrate many special meals here.
Ellie C

Three of us had dinner last Thursday night. It was a full house at 7pm. The space is beautiful, and looking around the dining rooms, there were a quite a few power houses across industries.
The food was excellent. We started out with caviar service, then a crudo appetizer.
For my main, I had the lamb. My boss ordered the Entrecôte, and my colleague the duck breast.
The duck breast was absolutely delicious!
The service was spotty at times which may be attributed to them being new.
Overall good experience and definitely worth checking out.

Having decided to celebrate our birthdays these days when we feel like it, and just forgetting about the formalities, (with winters-​bitter cold, and summers-​infernal,) it leaves us with the best NYC seasons… Spring and Fall. We were psyched for
a festive afternoon of leisurely partying.
Across from MOMA, at the old Donnell Library address, is a new hotel… Lots of cold, grey walls, evocative of
Louis Khan’s Brutalist architectural style, adorned with one too many, suited, gendarme-​looking, French speaking alpha males, surveying us to the point of perhaps wondering if the cameras tucked in each flower arrangement were working. No smiles, just stares. We’re not pocketing the flatware, guys, and no Bar exam is being given here today, is it?
White table linens, and gorgeous, massive arrangements of white lilies and hydrangea softened up the corporate ambiance a bit. I kept thinking that it would make an excellent squash and racquet ball space, minus the flowers.
But, back to the seasons we actually love in New York, that make living here bearable… What became apparent is that this space is so austere and lacking in natural light, much like the attitude of the managers, you couldn’t be aware of one season versus another. Kind of a fortress. Wine prices off the grey wall… Many in the thousands that you can get for hundreds at Morrell Wines on Park Avenue. $ 42.00 prix-​fixe lunch… two courses. A tiny charcuterie plate, a diminutive helping of finely sliced beets and greens, with a sprinkling of pistachios, a vegetable quiche the size of a hockey puck.
The wine pouring was done with precision and pure strategy… i.e. the server ceremoniously poured the final 10 drops of the bottle’s remains out so slowly into one, then two, of our glasses, as if to stress her sense of indignation over our failure to quickly purchase one more mediocre bottle of a 20 Euro red. from Provence, for the bargain price of $ 65.00 U.S. dollars. Clearly, she was miffed at our transgression.
Entrees: Forgettable. Were these tapas-​size portions,
I thought to myself? Maybe I missed some other course while I was out, powdering my nose, or…
perhaps some part of each portion fell off the plate while the cart was being rolled to the table? Should we have stopped for a pizza on the way here, I mused?
MOMA Kitchen is right across the street. Can we make a mad dash for it, unnoticed?
These are only a few of the queries of recent, Midtown dining experiences I have persisted in trying to deconstruct. Other sections of the city, for the most part, are attempting to become chummier, cozier, more familiar, thus appealing to that nostalgic part in all of us which yearns for real neighborhoods again, from whence we migrated, on this very same island, only a few subway stops away, now 2 hours by taxi, as the crow flies.
The warm bread on our table from Kayser actually added a touch of familiarity and neighborhood charm, being that the Kayser across from the Flatiron is open for three meals per day, and one would just never have to cook again if one’s apt. was within walking distance of it.
(My office is on the next block and I fantasize about just moving into it.)

It wasn’t so much the food here, which was just OK. It was something far more nuanced… A newer, more gaudy self-​consciousness, spawned under the watchful eye of King Bloomberg of Boston, during his 12 year reign in the Apple, which wasn’t his to begin with.
An elevator ride up to the second floor took us to a somewhat more relaxed and
brighter lounge space, filled with astounding numbers of pink roses, as if Queen Elizabeth had been charged with the task of ordering the buds herself. A decent bar menu, lots of good cocktail choices, black sofas, inside and outside, along the narrow veranda, overlooking the museum, felt less confining and relaxed. The staff here is young, understated and obviously well-​trained. It would have been pleasant to spend a few hours here, imbibing, albeit on empty stomachs, from those airline portions.
The onslaught of gargantuan, Baccarat crystal chandeliers everywhere overwhelmed and cheapened this otherwise semi-​serene, lighter lounge space. Yes, I understand… This is some of the most elegant, high quality crystal in the world. But, I really did not need to experience 15,000 pieces of it, hanging over my head, to appreciate its well-​earned status. The Baccarat wine decanters, champagne flutes, and berry bowls, with which most of us, as young brides, adorned our dining tables are all too familiar. Less is definitely more, in this case. It gave a heavy, tacky quality to the space, which could have been vastly improved upon by more sculptural, ethereal, Baccarat lighting fixtures, floating fancifully above. The lounge screamed out in a kind of design dysphoria: «Wait, is this Versaille, Las Vegas, or Liberace’s living room? I don’t know where I am.» Hard to say. Easier to leave. And so we did.

For executives on expense accounts or others who don’t know any better.
Pretentious, uppity, haughty are some of the adjectives that come to mind to describe to staff who seem to think they are doing you a favor by supplying you with a $ 9 cup of tea or a $ 8 espresso. The food is mediocre at best. There is a $ 42 prix fixe lunch. The charcuterie first course consists of microscopic slices of sausages and pâté whose ingredients cost in the 50 cents category. Service is extremely slow, probably intentionally, so that the patrons could be manipulated into ordering that second bottle of wine because, while waiting for their meals they finished the first bottle.
The restaurant décor is beautiful in a chilly funereal way, that does not make up for the long list of shortcomings.

This place has nice ambiance but sadly comes with much attitude. Staffs were arrogant and it seemed like this was a culture coming down from the higher management. How can a restaurant deliver a good dining experience without some sense of hospitality? My dining partner was also annoyed by the attitude of the staffs so that was it for our experience here. The hotel itself was actually prettier than the restaurant so I recommend have a tour there and go to a restaurant outside.

I really wanted to like this restaurant given its location and the fact that its in Baccarat hotel! We tried the 3 course meal and the food was bad.
–Carpentras white asparagus was recommended by our server, but it was nothing special. The dressing was way too strong for me to taste the asparagus itself.
–Entrecôte was also recommended by the server. I asked for medium rare, but it was almost all rare… The beef was thick and chewy, not the quality I would expect from a fine-​dining restaurant. The sauce was tasteless and I could only eat less than half of it. My guest tried it and also hated it…
–Huckleberry cassonade was the only good thing about the course. It was original.
I read a few great reviews on Unilocal,but maybe it was written by insiders… The Modern, or any other restaurant around it would be a way better choice… I dont usually write reviews, but I just had to write this one to warn people against spending hundreds of dollars on bad food…

With the rebound in the stock market since the financial crisis of 2008, there has been resurgence in glitzy, 80s decadence style restaurants in Manhattan. Chevalier, recently opened in the glamorous new Baccarat Hotel, embodies all that was once Lutece, Le Caravelle, La Côte Basque. This is confirmed by the clientele that Chevalier appears to be attracting. Dining Friday evening with my friend from high school and his lovely wife, we couldn’t help noticing a sea of nips and tucks, the aroma of hair spray, numerous pant suits and the monolithic toupee sitting atop one gentleman that could have been used as a football helmet. Yes. don’t expect to see Rihanna, Matthew McConaughey or Kim Kardashian here anytime soon. and that’s fine with me. they have The Polo Bar. After a family rift, iconic house manager Charles Masson parted ways after decades at Le Grenouille and has teamed up with Chef Shea Gallante (Cru/​Ciano/​Bouley) in an effort to dazzle the Midtown masses. Masson’s hands are all over the vaulted dining room with his signature floral arrangements at either end. His attention to detail is worthy of imitation in all regards. The modern décor bar in the front salon offers a perfectly crafted classic Aviation Cocktail ($ 20) by request which we enjoyed thoroughly. I found the dining room design to lack 21^st century creativity. There were the typical plush tan leather banquettes to frame the much better designed walls blandly paired with the usual white linen tables. Ceiling to floor curtains remind me of my days at Geoffrey Zakarian’s Town. The Baccarat Group is said to have 15,000 examples of their crystal ware in rotation on the premises. Masson has polished and fine tuned the waitstaff to serve the single purpose of making you feel welcome and ensuring the guest an enjoyable pampered experience. The restaurant offers a two course prix fixe at a startling $ 74 and a three course prix fixe at a slightly less startling $ 96. Fresh baked mini baguettes arrived first with delicious house churned butter. A shot glass amuse of white asparagus mousse with granny apple foam left us dismissive and unimpressed. I treated the table to the house made charcuterie platter ($ 24).the offerings were tiny. but artfully done. The duck prosciutto and smoked mortadella were the standouts. Starters included a silky and luscious Ramps Veloute, Gruyère Gratinee and Truffle-​Soubise. My ramps were fork tender. A competently prepared Cavatelli, Ramps, Baby Heirloom Tomatoes, Smoked Pecorino faired well. We all agreed the Diver Scallops, Morel, Comte and Shallot Marmelade was Michelin worthy. a great dish. The service is attentive but not intrusive. utensils were replaced with every course. Baccarat water glasses were refilled the entire time. The noise level is very comfortable. not once did I have to speak up or lean in during the bustling conversation. The wine list as expected is gargantuan with hundred of varietals to peruse. My friend and I opted for the adequate and reliable 2011 Bordeaux by the glass ($ 19). We were pleasantly surprised when Chef Gallante sent out a second starter on the house. the Marseille Bouillabaisse with Braised Vegetables. The seafood mix just smacked of the ocean and the braised vegetables were a perfect al dente. a wonderful treat, albeit slightly under seasoned. On to the main courses. the Black Sea Bass, Warm Asparagus Salad and Sauce Ravigote left my friend’s wife quiet but smiling. Her husband’s Duck Breast, Baby Turnip and Lavender were brilliant even if it was served without mesmerizing Medjool Date Purée. My Colorado Rack of Lamb, Petits Pois a la Francaise and Lamb Bacon was masterfully presented but lacked the «wow factor».the flavors seemed to muddle together neutralizing its impact. And then came dessert! Award winning pastry chef David Carmichael (Gilt/​Oceana/​Daniel) is a virtuoso. His Chocolate Hazelnut Millefeuille, Hazelnut Crunch, Caramel Cremeux and Espresso Ice Cream just melted joyfully on my palate. A Vahlrona Chocolate Soufflé with Grand Marnier Crème Anglaise was classically produced and vanished quickly into my friend’s mouth. The star of the night was the lady’s choice. A Huckelberry Cassonade, Vanilla Crème Brulee, Caramelized Muscavado and Glazed Huckleberries was absolutely hands-​to-​your-​face breathtaking. Two stars for the cuisine, two for the refined French service, minus one star for the uninventive, retro décor and prohibitive cost. Dinner for three with multiple drinks, tax and tip was a wallet-​busting $ 625.

Yes, Chevalier Restaurant is as great as we expected.
Food was amazing, wine list was elaborate, and the service/​management is extremely professional and hospitable. On par with the very top restaurants in town.
The setting is beautiful, luxurious, and just welcoming enough not to feel pretentious despite the Baccarat «Bling» everywhere!
The chef, management, and the service staff were also extremely accommodating to my wife’s dietary restrictions as a vegan. We always give our dietary restrictions ahead of time when we reserve, but in this case reservation had not shared that note with the team (probably due to very minor growing pains: it’s only been open for two weeks). Regardless, the chef and his team managed to turn things around and create a beautiful and impeccable culinary experience for her.
A definite repeat, and thank you Chevalier team!

I wasn’t sure what to expect from the Baccarat Hotel Group, but Chevalier exceeded my expectations. This beautiful restaurant complete with Baccarat glasses (no chandeliers though), high ceilings and a large dining space, is more akin to the space at 11 Madison Park or the Four Seasons Pool Room. The restaurant is run by Charles Masson of La Grenouille fame, and like his former family residence it is run to precision. The service you receive at Chevalier is unmatched with every detail with a smile handled by the restaurant’s very capable staff.
The food is excellent. Shea Gallante of Cru fame is the Chief, and if you’ve been to Cru you know what to expect. This is not over the top complex cooking, rather it is excellently prepared dishes with simple sauces and not a lot of vegetables and nuts as is common these days in some of the better restaurants in NY. The prices are not outrageous, but they are high: $ 90 for three courses, $ 60 for two.
The best part of the meal was the dessert. Don’t depend on lots of extra sweets complements of the house at the end of the meal, you only get a small macaroon.
Beautiful, grand, terrific service with excellent food, this is a perfect place for a celebration or just for a great meal.