Airy vs. Dense

Extreme chefs are often mad scientists, reinventing the consistency of food with bizarre kitchen equipment and chemicals as if the kitchen was their laboratory. Chef Wylie Dufresne, who trailblazed the experimental cooking style known as molecular gastronomy at wd~50 (50 Clinton St., 1-212-477-2900), makes an aerated foie gras appetizer. “We use a vacuum pump to introduce air bubbles into a traditional foie gras terrine, creating a new texture that’s light and airy, yet creamy and rich, ethereal and completely unique.”

Mass and volume are also manipulated in the kitchen at Commerce (50 Commerce St., 1-212-524-2301), where Chef Harold Moore marinates spring lamb for a full day, then slowly braises it overnight to intensify its tenderness. The next day, it’s deboned, pressed into a solid brick and herb-crusted. “The finished lamb is dense to the touch, but dissolves deliciously in your mouth,” he notes.

Ebony-and-ivory edibles call for the subtle, exacting skills of an architect. Enter Jansen Chan, who studied architecture at the University of California at Berkeley and culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris, and is now executive pastry chef at the contemporary seafood house Oceana (1221 Sixth Ave., 1-212-759-5941). His signature dessert at the seafood-centric restaurant, which recently relocated to Rockefeller Center, is the chocolate custard brownie. He layers a Valrhona chocolate brownie with chocolate pot de crème, snowy, cinnamon-infused whipped cream and a sheet of dark Valrhona chocolate flaked with gold leaf. Finally, it’s sauced with white shortbread sablé, “a liquid cookie,” explains Chef Chan. “The dark-and-light palette spotlights the flavor contrasts. It’s a very Rock Center Art Deco dessert.”

Technicolor dramas emerge from the modern French kitchen at Corton (239 West Broadway, 1-212-219-2777). “We build dishes to tell a story, and the ingredients are the characters,” says Chef/owner Paul Liebrandt. On the menu is “From the Garden,” a seasonal salad intended to maximize every component’s color, flavor and texture. All ingredients, prepared individually before plating, are an edible rainbow—orange kabocha squash, red kuri squash and shiso leaves, white parsley root and bean shoots, yellow crosnes and quince, green baby Brussels sprouts, cabbage and spinach, black trumpet mushrooms and purple eggplant miso chutney.

Chef Daniel Boulud and his quintet of Manhattan eateries can take the credit for New York’s evergreen romance with French bistros. The strong suit at Bar Boulud (1900 Broadway, 1-212-595-0303) is charcuterie—hams, sausages, pâtés, terrines—such as the tourte de gibiers (game), a hand-built meat mosaic. “Very few restaurants would attempt something this involved,” says Chef Boulud. “You need an in-house charcutier, like our Sébastien Loyzance, and rare wild ingredients.” The tart’s strata—foie gras, Canadian elk, wood pigeon, wild boar and pheasant—are tightly layered and encased in savory pastry.

French chefs have their simple side, too, and celebrity Chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s minimalist urges get the upper chopstick at Matsugen (241 Church St., 1-212-925-0202). Under the supervision of Chef Vongerichten, the restaurant is run by three brothers from Tokyo (Yoshi, Masa and Taka Matsushita), whose authentic Japanese cuisine is as uncluttered as the dining room’s spare décor. “Many Matsugen dishes have only two or three ingredients, like our grapefruit jelly dessert—grapefruit is scooped out, mixed with sugar and gelatin and served back in the skin. It’s sweet, yet slightly tart, and very refreshing,” says Chef Vongerichten. “Our cuisine shows off the beauty of its components. Luxury is in its purity.”

Angularity is evident at Brasserie 8½ (9 W. 57th St., 1-212-829-0812), where Chef Julian Alonzo cooks French with Latin and Asian influences. He grew up on Manhattan island, crisscrossed by canyons and grids, and his food has real New York contours and rhythm. Chef Alonzo’s deconstructed portobello mushroom tart with goat cheese and roasted baby beets is a study in rectangles, cylinders and little dots, while the most dazzling ingredient is a hunk of hexagonal honeycomb, nature’s stop-and-taste sign.

On a whole different plane are the painterly dishes of Chef Missy Robbins at A Voce Columbus (The Restaurant and Bar Collection at The Shops at Columbus Circle, Time Warner Center, 10 Columbus Circle, 3rd fl., 1-212-823-2523). An appetizer simply called “pancetta,” for example, captures Robbins’ gift for Italian flavor with timeless flair. It’s made from pork belly cured in-house with spices, such as orange zest and fennel seed, garnished with sliced figs, pistachios and balsamic vinegar, and served flat as the pre-Columbus world. “Pork belly is usually so rich,” says Robbins. “When it’s sliced like pancetta, you get all the taste without the heaviness.”

Daringly assembled vertical cuisine is the signature style of esteemed Chef Alfred Portale, whose architectural food towers at Gotham Bar & Grill (12 E. 12th St., 1-212-620-4020). Before constructing a new dish, he sketches it on paper to ensure it will deliver what he calls “a high wow factor.” Among the peak plates on his Modern American menu is roasted Maine lobster: a mound of orange butternut squash, ruby-red braised cabbage, purple salsify root, whole roasted garlic cloves and butter-poached, lightly roasted lobster meat. The colossal crustacean is flavor-smacked with spiced lobster butter and rich, frothy lobster reduction, served with tail sassily aloft.

At the other end of the height spectrum is Chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa’s plate-level scallop tiradito, a trademark dish at Nobu (105 Hudson St., 1-212-219-0500). Purity on a plate, it intrigues the eye with graceful circular symmetry and jolts of color, while it gratifies the palate with scallops fanned out like a flower, red chili paste, baby cilantro leaves and zesty yuzu citrus juice. Chef Matsuhisa invented new-style Japanese fusion cooking, marrying the exacting traditions of his native Japan with an eye-opening stint in tropical Peru, and dining at his restaurant is a rite of passage for all.

Call it peasant food, call it gastropub fare, call it “nose to tail” eating. By any name, pork mania has definitely taken Manhattan. Chef April Bloomfield’s full-flavored repertoire at The Spotted Pig (314 W. 11th St., 1-212-620-0393) doesn’t get any piggier than her rolled pork belly with cotechino sausage. “The belly is Hampshire pork from an Amish farm, where pigs are fed on honey, corn and molasses,” says Head Chef Nate Smith. “The accompanying cotechino is house-made from buttery pork shoulder, a bit of velvety liver and unctuous pork skin. It really sticks to your ribs.”

Earthier delicacies—mushrooms, to be exact—sprout from the menu at Montenapo Ristorante della Moda (250 W. 41st St., 1-212-764-7663). Argentinean-born Chef German Lucarelli’s modern Italian food flaunts an organic twist, and all-natural pasta made daily in-house is a point of pride. “Fettuccine al ragu di fungi is inspired by the forests of Northern Italy,” says Chef Lucarelli. “Portobello, porcini, morel, shiitake and oyster mushrooms are slow-cooked with white wine, veal stock, garlic and herbs, then sprinkled with Parmigiano-Reggiano, tossed with the pasta and served. Diners think they’re in a country house in Piemonte.”

If the steak house is the ultimate New York restaurant, then the porterhouse steak for two is the ultimate New York dish. A gargantuan rendition at Café Centro (200 Park Ave., 1-212-818-1222) is a carnivore’s carnival—three pounds of Colorado Black Angus beef (a filet mignon and sirloin) served sliced, with the bone, in a cast-iron pan heaped with house-made fries, along with a trio of steak sauces, fresh baguette and French butter. “Diners say ‘no way’ when the porterhouse arrives,” says Chef Franck Deletrain, a native of Paris. “But they finish it down to the bone.”

Jewel-like pre-meal bites prepared by Chef Justin Bogle begin the meal at GILT (New York Palace, 455 Madison Ave., 1-212-891-8100), a destination for cutting-edge cuisine. The one-bite “amuse bouches,” gifts from the chef to prepare the palate for tastes to come, change every few days, but they’re always “adventurous in technique, intricate in construction and luxurious in taste,” says Chef Bogle. Beads of red beet sorbet and horseradish crème fraîche, frozen by liquid nitrogen, are perched on pumpernickel crumble and capped with caviar. “Encountering the unexpected is part of the pleasure at GILT,” promises Bogle. Pastry Chef David Carmichael agrees. His Knickerbocker Glory ice-cream sundae looks like it was constructed by a dessert-maker from Mars.

No matter which end of the spectrum they're on, New York City's culinary artists strike a most satisfying balance.