A Song of Fire & Ice

The tale of Smyth & Feld

High-end fixed menu dining is either art that creates delight or a capital reallocation scheme. Over a couple of meals in two very different restaurants, I have encountered both ideas. One of those meals somehow straddled both extremes.

My experience has been that even when a fancy restaurant imbued with deep thought and devotion to craft has a few missteps, it’s still usually great, maybe the difference between say four stars and three in a traditional rating model. What usually suffers, if anything is that the high expectations one has for something like this aren’t totally met.

Smyth

This is what I felt when I dined at the Michelin-3 starred Smyth a few weeks ago for my birthday. I went into it believing I was going to see and taste things I never saw before. I believed it was going to be relaxing, enlivening, and ultimately rewarding. Given that it’s already achieved a rating that only 153 restaurants hold globally, I assumed I’d be receiving an experience that was one of the very best in the world.