Casual-feel fine dining option in New York from Markus Glocker

Batard is a 1 Michelin starred restaurant in New York serving modern cuisine. The venue was recommended by a friend and I was glad to come based on the recommendation. The evening meal is broken into three choices: 2 courses for $59, 3 courses for $79 and 4 courses for $95 at time of visiting. The three courses I opted for turned out to be 8 courses with all interludes that were included and when done at this good standard, this was particularly good value when considering it is New York and not the same value as London for fine dining for example. I was very pleased with this meal and is a good steer if you have no others.

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The brioche was very well done and made on-site with lemon butter that was nice and subtle. Yellowfin tuna crudo with spicy avocado purée, crispy quinoa for texture and black lime was a pleasing amuse bouche and gave a sense of the efforts made by this kitchen on their non-advertised dishes. Soft tuna and all came together well with a little heat and nicely balanced oil.

Salmon rillettes, market greens, French breakfast radish was marvellous. The made crisps were approaching too much salt for comfort, but altogether it was beautiful and came with Fresno chilli purée, tuile crisp, bagel, poppy seeds, pepper & salt. Beautifully crisp and all worked really well. The only issue being it was approaching maximum hull crush depth for saltiness.

Foie gras was beautifully done. The seared component was great as it was swimming and leaking fat everywhere and actually felt quite light and the terrine with black mushroom with the pickled gooseberries, tomatoes and blackberry jus was knock out. The fried sourdough was up there with Dinner by Blumenthal and this was a gorgeous dish.

There were no issues on the trout and actually the olive worked really well with flavours. This was a colourful, course, light and softened flavours for the harsher elements of olive and pepper which was really good and this dish basically had it all. The fact I was scraping every last molecule of sauce off the plate and annoying other guests with the sound by doing so says something here.

Parsley, basil and a salsa verde purée decorated a spinach based tortellini filled with lamb with corn purée confit potato and rye tuile. This had a bit of heat in the tortellini and the corn velouté was gorgeous. Duck with onion ring, came with Australian truffle, yam (an onion herb) on top with cherry compote and soya bean purée. All these elements worked beautifully with each other. A gorgeous duck came with gorgeously done supporting acts with perfect sweetness of the cherry compote to go with the warmth of the onion ring. Just bravo!

It was a little odd to have the coffee given before the dessert but effectively this was the petit four and I was a-ok with everything. A light and sweet cream cheese ice cream akin to Simon Rogan’s GBM dish of 2012 was enjoyed to round things off and that concluded was essentially a superb meal, well recommended.

The bill itself came to $179 including four glasses of wine and considering what I had, this was not only reasonable, it was a great meal. Apart from one waiter wanting to get away from the table as quickly as possible in the beginning, the service was very good with wiping of the table and topping up of water done throughout the meal. Well worthy of its star which I was pleased to see and well recommended to me and hopefully from me to you now if you want to try – it’s worth a go!

Food Grade: 86%