CS Mo

A surprisingly gem tucked away in the shopping center. They have a very comprehensive menu and are happy to make standard dishes (vindaloo for example) that are not on the menu. Portion sizes are generous and the food is very good. Everything is made to order and they're very willing to adjust spice levels to whatever your preference is.

Service tends to be a bit slow - this is definitely not fast food! But they are very friendly and accommodating. In my opinion, they're the best in the area - not that there is a lot of competition!

We visited Akrame on a Thursday evening. The restaurant is a bit hard to find because it is down a small alley and there was no signage that we could see.

The restaurant is quite small and very intimate and cozy. I have never been in a restaurant with such a high ratio of wait-staff to patrons before and the service is really superb. Many of the items were assembled at table-side which added to the 'experience'.

There is no menu, just, "The Experience." I do not know how often the menu changes, but our waiter kept telling us that the next item would be a surprise... And I was like, "It is all a surprise!" But maybe it is less surprising if you're able to go there regularly.

During the meal, we had fresh, crusty sourdough bread with two flavors of excellent home made butter.

I won't go over the entire meal, but a few highlights - the Egg. This was one of the appetizers, the egg itself was perfect, but the real star was the broth which was like the penultimate dream of chicken soup.

The John Dory cheek. This was presented by the Chef himself, and it was sublime. One of the very best instances of cooked fish I've ever had.

We had sweetbreads for a main course. They were presented with a beef reduction topped with orange, with tahini and fresh herbs on the side. The meat was tender and moist without the weird spongy texture that you sometimes find with sweetbreads. However what really made this dish spectacular was the reduction and the fresh spices. In particular, the fresh mint.

All of the desserts were standouts. The Chef's signature dessert of custard with a chocolate crumbles was a high point as well as the cubes, presented on an actual granite stone, filled with chocolate and Grand Marnier.

The one discordant note was the scallops with seaweed consomme. The dish was presented with a raw, thinly sliced scallop which was married with hit seaweed consomme at the table. Unfortunately the consomme was not hot enough to actually overcome the coldness of the bowl, so the dish ended up being luke warm. The consomme had an excellent flavor, like the essence of shellfish with notes of seaweed, but it was brought down by the coldness and texture of the scallop.

Overall I thought this restaurant was fabulous. The wait-staff was amazing and the food was excellent with many novel combinations. If we come back to Paris, I hope to eat here again.

Fantastic pastry shop. I don't know the names of everything we got, but it was all very delicious to and the total price was much lower than I expected. The staff was super friendly. I especially liked the small sizes of the pastries - I love lobster claws but they are normally so large that you'd need six people to eat one! The mini ones are just the right size!

The pear tartlet was sublime. I expect that we will have to go back soon!

While this is not really traditional dim sum - there are no carts and many of the items are what I would consider Fusion, it is really fantastic.

We went on a Friday night - it was busy but not ridiculously so. Which is a good thing because the restaurant is quite small. When we were there, there was a children's birthday party in the hibachi restaurant upstairs which was extremely loud. I don't know if that is normal or was just a special occasion.

We started with a couple soups - the Tom Yum is really great and does not skimp on the seafood ingredients. The wanton noodle soup was good but there are better places in the area.

Then we had a wide variety of dim sum items. The only thing I found disappointing was the lotus leaf rice, which was quite small and did not have the variety of ingredients that I would expect. Everything else was phenomenal.

Our daughter loved the Hello Kitty dessert buns!

For a more traditional, but also cart-less experience I would recommend Tim Ho Wan, but as a modern version of dim sum, with more slicker presentation, flavoring and style, Dynasty Dim Sum is a fantastic choice.

This is a pretty small park, but my daughter enjoyed it. There appears to be a small kid section and a big kid section. It is very clean and wasn't too busy the two times we were there. It does not have nearly as much stuff to do as Union Square Park, but it isn't a zoo either!