"When people walk in and just order an appetizer and entree and then leave, they're not getting what we really set out to offer. They're not getting the whole experience," says [Marc] Vetri....As you'll see from the current menu, Vetri is a high-end, rustic Italian restaurant that's not afraid to go game-y, and features unique, exceptional pasta dishes. I've had fantastic meals there for a decade, including, yes, one whirl at the tasting menu that traveled through an array of pastas and other specialties before winding up with roast goat which was, indeed, out of this world succulent. (Some of their tasting menus are collected here; you can also get some sense of his style from his Iron Chef appearance.)
"This isn't the place you brought your in-laws to 12 years ago for rib-eye and broccoli rabe and spinach gnocchi," Vetri says. "You can still get that" on the tasting menu dedicated to Vetri classics. "But it's something more than that now. We're allowing evolution to happen."
Aside from the classics-menu option and the more inventive "degustazione," there will also be a pasta tasting and a vegetarian menu to choose from. And with the entire dining room tuned to the rhythm of the multicourse meals, the service, Benjamin says, should flow.
Tasting menus are about trust -- both trust in the restaurant to please you, and trust in your own palate to appreciate whatever's offered. It is weird to spend that much money for a meal yet surrender control over it. A few years ago, we went with the Cosmopolitans to Masa for my birthday, and it was, literally, a once in a lifetime experience. Extraordinary and oddly solemn, yes, but I don't appreciate the intricacies of sushi enough to make that worth it again.
Vetri, I trust. I don't mind being surprised or challenged when I'm in the restaurant's hands; I welcome it. Yes, I'm going to miss having control, but it's not going to stop me from returning.
