The Most Expensive Tasting Menus In NYC, Ranked

Price: $350

Are you a fan of fish? Do you like it when servers anticipate your every need as if they’ve been shadowing you since birth? If you answered yes to both of those questions, or even if you have a mild interest in seafood, plan a special meal at Le Bernardin. Their eight-course tasting consists almost exclusively of impeccably prepared dover sole, langoustine, and other oceanic items swimming in fussy French sauces.

Price: $395

Le Bernardin is for old-school thrills. Atomix is for right now. Located in a Nomad townhouse with a 14-seat counter in the basement, this Korean-ish restaurant serves food that’s luxe and inventive without feeling gimmicky or overproduced. Every dish—such as langoustine with foie gras, or thinly sliced wagyu battered like french toast—comes with a detailed flashcard, and, if you drop your napkin, a server will bring you a fresh one with a pair of tongs. This restaurant provides a level of service that makes other spots look sloppy.

Price: $245

Sort of French, sort of Japanese, L’Abeille is an antidote for tasting menu fatigue. The Tribeca dining room with velvet furniture and sheer curtains is intimate without being stuffy, and the chef's tasting feels imaginative and new, with unexpected items like a foie gras crème brûlée resting under a scoop of onion-flavored ice cream. Reservations aren’t hard to come by, so if you’re looking for a last-minute option for a special birthday or anniversary dinner, pop in for some scallop carpaccio and gazpacho sorbet.

Price: $325

There is a decent chance you’ll be confused by Ilis. You might even laugh during your roughly 12-course tasting and say something like, “Hey, check out that person drinking from a giant clam.” But that’s part of the fun of this Nordic-inspired restaurant in a Greenpoint warehouse. You come here to be surprised and try new things, like antelope tartare wrapped in nasturtium and smoked eel that’s meant to be eaten like corn on the cob. The ingredients are hyper-local and occasionally foraged, and the experience in the huge candlelit room is pretty laid back for a spot with a Noma pedigree.

Price: $235

Noksu, Atomix, Jua—there are so many Korean fine dining options nowadays. But Meju exists in a category of its own. This eight-seat counter in Long Island City is essentially a one-man show, led by a chef who will talk your head off about Korean fermentation techniques. Consisting of around seven courses, the food is more homey than it is modern, with dishes like an ultra-concentrated doenjang jjigae, and fried seaperch served alongside a dab of 128-year-old soy sauce.

Price: $325

Welcome to the Scandinavian seafood show in Williamsburg. Aska first opened in 2012, when every upscale NYC restaurant wanted to be the next Noma. Despite the foraged lichens and all-black decor though, there’s nothing uptight or somber about it. Sit back, relax, and watch some live scallops from Cape Cod wriggle under a pour of a tart, clear broth.

Price: $295

Three decades after it first opened, Daniel Boulud’s flagship fine dining restaurant on the Upper East Side makes a good case for keeping the genre alive. Aside from a gorgeous dining room renovation in 2021, few things have changed—and that’s a good thing. The incredibly competent French cooking, warm service, and venerable cheese cart are well worth the dent in your bank account.

Price: $300

This Japanese-French chef's counter on the edge of McCarren Park in Greenpoint puts a premium on performance. For the most part, the staff's over-the-top attention to detail will only elevate your experience—but sometimes, it gets a little silly. For one thing, the show-stopping signature duck pie has its own theme music. The 13-course tasting menu here costs $300. (A shorter $180 menu is served at the bar.)

Price: $180

This 16th-floor Koreatown restaurant, from the team behind Jua, Moono and Ariari, gives you just about everything you want from pricey, special tasting—with a killer view of the Empire State Building to sweeten the deal. Eleven courses feature a range of unexpected little vegetable and seafood-forward dishes. A tiny bowl of poached lobster is a highlight, but not because of the lobster. That’s just a vehicle for a frothy, sweet, and intensely nutty sauce made from pine nuts grown upstate. The colorful dessert cart is a nice little touch.

Price: $280

The eight playful, loosely Korean-inspired courses served at this West Village restaurant are completely distinctive—they wouldn’t appear on any other tasting menu. You can expect luxury at Joomak, sure, but you can also expect fun: a gochujang tuile envelope full of furikake to crack open and season your kani miso koshikari rice with, Harry Potter-inspired butterbeer ice cream, and otoro camouflaged as a doll-sized cheeseburger.

Price: $165

It’s not every day that dinner begins with rhododendron kombucha in the backyard of a Fort Greene townhouse, convincingly retrofitted into a Japanese tea room. Ikigai also stands out for its kaiseki-style dishes with Polish flourishes, like a potato dumpling crossed with sweet mochiko flour, then served over raspberries and sour cream. This 12-seat counter spot, which donates profits from their 12-course tasting to Rescuing Leftover Cuisine, is a great choice for an intimate, relaxing special occasion: like a birthday when your age ends not in a 0 or 5, but maybe a 1, 3, or 7.

Price: $165

Keep your phone handy at Tadhanà, because the food at this Lower East Side restaurant begs to be documented—like when you open a book and discover tiny appetizers hidden in a mini-garden inside. At this 24-seat Filipino spot, you won’t find any lumpia or adobo among the dozen or so courses. Instead, expect takes on regional dishes and some exceptional flavors that'll linger longer than the food pics taking up all your cloud storage. Here's a menu where the inclusion of caviar and truffles feels unnecessary; we’re never upset to be served wagyu, but Tadhanà's house-made vinegar is the more exciting ingredient.

Price: $345

Tucked in the back of a Hell's Kitchen grocery store—the restaurant originally opened in Brooklyn in 2009—Chef's Table still serves some luxurious, beautiful food, but the 14-course menu gets a little boring, because the flavors don’t really explore uncharted territory. And the use of big-ticket ingredients like truffle and wagyu is generous, but sometimes perfunctory, like a brute-force shortcut to deliciousness. For diners whose budget or tolerance for credit-card debt allows them to treat this guide as a to-do list, go ahead and book Chef’s Table—for a milestone wedding anniversary, or to celebrate the kind of promotion that bumps you up into a new tax bracket. But if the price point would make this a once-in-a-lifetime meal for you, have that meal elsewhere.

Price: $265

Inside Marky’s Caviar in Tribeca, Huso rises to the challenge of incorporating roe into several courses without being too gimmicky about it. It’s easy to get drawn in by the details of 12 earnestly tweezered courses: the first bite looks like a micro terrarium with its own gardening staff: flowers and leaves arranged just so, plus a dollop of caviar that resembles the eye of a pollinating insect. Despite a few glimmers of greatness though, the enchantment fades by the time the check arrives. For deep-pocketed tasting enthusiasts only—and don't forget your macro lens.

Price: $225

Yes, this is the subway station tasting menu. To figure out if you’ll like this Korean restaurant, ask yourself this question: How much do I like tweezers? If the answer is a lot, there’s some interesting cooking going on here. Consider the pigeon—a squab head, breast, and leg in a pool of gochujang agrodolce, served with a truffle bao that’s filled with squab gizzard char siu, and puffed duck feet with squab liver parfait.

Price: $365

In 2021, Eleven Madison Park went plant-based. We applaud the Flatiron restaurant’s decision, but, when all you’re serving is interesting (and occasionally delicious) bite-sized portions of beets and celtuce, a several-hundred-dollar check sure does sting. The attentive service, beverage program, and stately dining room are all nice touches, but they aren’t enough to make this place a must-visit.

Price: $255

If you need caviar and truffles, Raon will deliver. The polished, 14-seat spot on the southern border of the Upper East Side is predictable in that way. But the predictability goes a little too far with a 10-course tasting that sticks to a familiar game plan. We're talking little Korean bites with French influence served on impractically large plates. Kimchi, in one form or another, is incorporated into most of the dishes, which adds a fun twist, but there isn't much here to get your heart racing. That said, you're guaranteed to enjoy your foie gras dumpling.

Price: $275

Blanca’s three-hour tasting marathon is impressive, but it’s about as far from crowd-pleasing as you can get. The Bushwick restaurant’s overly intellectual approach to its 18-course menu means that any brilliant moments can give way to deep yawns with the next course, as you try to understand why snails and lavender go together. Even if you manage to stay mentally stimulated, your appetite will be waiting impatiently by the door, intent on taking home a pizza from Roberta’s for later. The price is only worth it if you’re a true food nerd.

Price: $425

At 20 years old, Thomas Keller’s fine dining staple is getting a little tired. Does it check all the boxes of traditional fine dining? Yes. The place seems to have gone over the list several times. But the tasting is only a rung or two above fancy wedding food, and the dining room would feel like an airport lounge if it weren’t atop the Deutsche Bank Center at Columbus Circle.