New York: M. Wells Dinette at PS1/MOMA in LIC and WD's Alder on 2nd - Inventive Food - Take That Barcelona, Copenhagen and Paris.

Well, Colette and I found ourselves in deepest Queens (NY) at PS 1, MOMA's latest outreach where a young French Canadian (you'll recall my Mom was a Canuck and my Dad one several generations removed).  Our oldest friends, downstair's neighbors for 20 years in the 18th, have been at M. Wells Dinette 8-9 times and said we just had to come.

The chalkboard menu changes each day although our friends had had several items listed before.  We ordered willy-nilly from what seemed to be firsts and mains and desserts and each was better than the last:

-Honeyed beets with citrus

- Spicy, incredibly spicy (for me OK spicy) corn soup

- A tomato tart (pizza-like)

- Oysters on the half-shell with a Bolognese sauce

- Sweetbreads cassoulet with oven-roasted tomato slices

- Veal brains

- Beef tartare with a soft boiled egg on top

- Escola fish with a ratatouille

- and a Peach Cobbler.

With these 10 dishes, all inventive, different than any such I had ever had, and 2 bottles of wine, 4 coffees and superb service (from a staff of 6-8 in a cantine/school-type setting), plus 4 glasses of Maple Syrup liqueur (offered, not because of my fame but our hosts' custom) our bill per couple was $99.62 before tip.

Go?  An incredible meal, 3 stops from Manhattan, I cannot think of a reason why not.

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For dinner (yes Dear Readers, in NY we "do" dinner for various complicated reasons) we went with two other friends, long associated with my "employment" at the website that cannot be named, to Wylie Dufresne's second place after WD-50, Adler on 2nd.

It was another astonishing meal, consisting of:

- Several pumpernickel crostini (yes with trout roe, kale and carrots)

- Lightly-smoked salmon (like Zabars and Russ & D's don't have) with a pine nut granola, tahini yogurt and nectarine that looked all the world like sliced raddish

- Pickled beets with a "ricotta" made from coconut milk and Thai basil

- Baby tomatoes with peekytoe crab, fried nam and edaname (which was the only weak dish in an evening of joy)

- Foie gras on a Ritz Cracker (yes folks) with watermelon sliced on top,

- Slices of beef tongue with yucca, cippolini and chimichurri dashi,

- Fried quail, which I couldn't fully appreciate because I was winding down at this point

- Bass with a salsa verde - ditto

- And four desserts, among which were two ices from his new shredded ice machine (Tootsie Roll and Grapefruit/chamomile), deconstructed cheesecake with huge cherries and Root-beer Pudding), not to mention the side of chopped spiced, marinated veggies.

So, with all this plus a lot of cocktails consumed by our hosts, a bottle of wine Colette and I had and 2 Sazeracs our bill was $126.30 a couple.

Go?  This is not molecular cooking, this is spectacular cooking.  When Francois Simon and Le Fooding wake up to what's really going on in NY, this is where they'll come, but by then, of course, it'll be too late.