Recession Is Your Friend

Jean-Georges’s ‘Gift to You This Season’: $24 Lunches and $35 Dinners Across the Board

Photo: WireImage

Jean-Georges Vongerichten, known to be generous with the prix fixe lunch here and there, has sent out a note to his mailing list announcing that he’s offering $24 prix fixe lunches and $35 dinners at all of his restaurants. The note begins, “I’m sorry I haven’t written in so long, but the past three months have been incredibly busy. I don’t need to tell you how crazy this fall has been, but I do want to help make the best of this crisis. Here in New York, you can feel the anxiety in the air. While a good meal isn’t going to solve the current problems, it certainly makes you feel better. I sincerely believe that great food lifts your spirits, that a beautiful restaurant serves as an escape.” The rest, including a rundown of all of JGV’s specials, follows.

I’ve created my restaurants to be places that offer a gracious welcome, that pamper our guests with delicious food and friendly service. And now I want to extend more generosity to my fellow New Yorkers. I’m offering prix-fixe lunch for $24 and prix-fixe dinner for $35 at my restaurants in the city.

The best deal, by far, is at Matsugen. In this mini-omakase dinner menu, you get six courses, including the black cod with miso and the Kamoseiro duck soup with soba noodles. It’s a deeply satisfying meal that gives you a true taste of Japan. I also love the bento box lunch because one of the four courses is the goma-dare soba, my favorite dish there.

Starting today, we’re going to serve a $35 dinner at Nougatine too. It’s a taste of Jean Georges for a fraction of the price. (And you can enjoy the view of the Christmas lights outside the floor-to-ceiling windows.) We serve our special three-course menu before 6:30 p.m. and after 10:00 p.m., making it the ideal stop before or after a show at Lincoln Center.

Perry St offers their $35 dinner menus during the same hours; JoJo has the same early dinner hours and begins its late-dinner seating at 9:30 p.m. If you go to JoJo on a Sunday, you can enjoy the special prix-fixe all evening. At Vong, the $35 dinner menu is available all the time.

For each of our restaurants, we’ve chosen the best dishes of the season, then it’s up to you to choose an appetizer, entrée, and dessert. (Trust me — it’s not easy. At Perry St, would you rather have the slowly cooked cod with aromatic black beans, sake, and ginger or the grilled hanger steak with smoked paprika butternut squash and caramelized Brussels sprouts? At Mercer Kitchen, would you rather start with the Endive and Frisee Salad with Blue Cheese, Pears, and Pecans or the Chestnut and Celery Root Soup with Pancetta?)

While the restaurants serve the dishes unique to their styles, my signature warm molten chocolate cake is a dessert option on all of the menus. Because, as we all know, nothing can comfort you quite like chocolate.




And there you have it — we’ll add these to our definitive recession-specials guide shortly.

Jean-Georges’s ‘Gift to You This Season’: $24 Lunches and $35