What I Wore to Eleven Madison Park

When we go out of town, Chris and I always try to schedule one fancy date/meal to a restaurant we've never visited. We asked close friends of ours (who have a much firmer grasp of restaurant culture within and beyond Pittsburgh) where we should go on our trip to New York. They suggested Eleven Madison Park. By the time we went to make the reservation all that remained were lunch spots. But that actually saved us a bit of dough and allowed us the entire evening to bask in the afterglow of afternoon booze and too many courses. This lunch took over three hours! I don't know how people go back to work after something like that.

Because I knew I'd be outside walking around a lot in the cold and slush I packed a bunch of wool dresses. The above is a somewhat recent repeat swapped with one of my multiples.

The food and service were unforgettable, if not a little more formal than what you experience in Pittsburgh-area fine dining. I didn't feel under-dressed but I might have at a dinner hour. Every course was plated beautifully so even though we are not typically food-photo takers, we made some exceptions. I don't have all the courses because some are on Chris's phone.

Above are "crab" and "lamb" respectively. The restaurant's menu text is minimal, featuring only the primary ingredient of each dish. Although our servers were happy to answer questions, we felt pretty confident in just selecting with the information we had and being surprised. We ate a lot of great food on this entire trip, in the home of our friends where we stayed and in restaurants in Brooklyn and elsewhere. I might talk about them in upcoming posts, alongside my shopping/buying reports but I definitely wanted to share since Eleven Madison Park was such an indulgent experience.