Alain Ducasse is probably the most celebrated chef in the world, on the strength of his Paris and Monte Carlo restaurants. He had just ventured into New York with his third restaurant prior to our trip, which was getting alot of negative attention due to its being the most expensive in the city. For us masochists, of course, that's like a red cape to a bull, so we quickly booked dinner here as soon as we planned our trip. Weirdly, his luxe restaurant is in the Essex House, which is a perfectly ok, if frumpy, hotel on Central Park South. Its main problem is that for a decade, every episode of Saturday Night Live ended with a plug for the hotel, along the lines of "guests of SNL stayed at the beautiful Essex House" and it always seemed like one of SNL's jokes rather than a real ad. Anyway, the restaurant itself is very impressive, one of the nicest spaces in the city. We both ordered a special white truffle tasting menu since they were in season, which consisted of eight dishes covered with very expensive white truffle shavings. Due to my cursory journaling during this trip I don't have many details, except the overall memory of excellent food served by fairly stiff, overly formal service. New York restaurants generally suffer from too informal, or too harried service, but the top restaurants overcompensate for this by going overboard on the formality. You would think Ducasse would get this spot on since France has really mastered the perfect mix of formality and friendliness at its top restaurants, but Ducasse's New York outpost hasn't figured this out yet. And I also remember the restaurant had the most impressive wine list I've ever seen, bigger than the phone book and full of rare and obscure offerings. But we made the mistake of opting for matching wines with our tasting menu, which had the usual effect of overintoxicating us. Midmeal, Somchai gave up trying to finish his wines in time with each course, and ended up with about six glasses surrounding his plate. Also, it was an odd choice of wines, mostly from places like Slovenia, which isn't really what I'd expected. (Food: 19, Decor: 19, Service: 15).