NYCReview
Agern
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Put the names of all the restaurants near Grand Central into a hat, and there’s a decent chance the one you pick will fit the following description: it’s a big space filled with people continuing conversations they started in nearby offices, who don’t mind that they’re about to spend a lot of money on dinner because it’s going on the corporate card anyway. On the surface, Agern falls into this category as well. But what makes this Nordic spot different from the others is pretty simple - it just serves better food.
In order to eat that food, you’ll need to head inside Grand Central itself. Push past the tourists who think entranceways are good places to consult their Fodor’s Guides, veer off from the crowds who are about to decide between a middle seat and standing in the aisle on Metro-North, and you’ll find Agern behind a set of doors a few steps from the Main Concourse. The big, windowless dining room definitely feels like it’s in a train station, but more so one in Copenhagen than Midtown. This makes sense because the owner was a founder at Noma, the famous Copenhagen restaurant - and the food here is similarly “New Nordic,” which basically means they use local, sustainable ingredients (like edible flowers and fermented berries) to create flavors you’d typically find in places where it’s dark for 20 hours a day in the winter.
You can do a tasting menu here, but the better option is to order a la carte. Dishes range from sunchokes with rye porridge and sprouts to dry-aged duck with cabbage and hay, and even though many sound like the outcome of a Mad Lib about foraging, they mostly just taste like really well-prepared versions of their main ingredients. So the beef tartare, made with oysters and caramelized onions, just tastes like a buttery, slightly peppery, and very good plate of raw meat. The bone marrow isn’t noticeable on the plate with the monkfish, but it doesn’t matter because the thinly sliced medallions of fish have a ton of their own flavor, and the rich, nutty brown butter foam on the side makes the whole thing taste almost like a dessert. No matter what else you order, make sure to load up on the fresh-baked sourdough bread, which comes with salted butter as soft as frozen yogurt.
The tasting menu is a much longer, stuffier, and more expensive experience. You get seven courses for $155, and while dishes like poached lobster in custard and scallops with butter sauce are enjoyable, there are plenty of other places in this price range with better food (Benno), a better atmosphere (Gramercy Tavern), or both (The Grill). Dinner also lasts around three hours, with long periods in between courses, and it’s presented so seriously that you’ll feel like you’re sitting through a lecture about ingredients and cooking techniques. There’s not much in terms of music or people-watching to distract you from the waits between courses, but you could entertain yourself by exploring the long, almost completely American wine list - use dinner here as an opportunity to try things you don’t see every day, like a nebbiolo from Santa Barbara, or a wine from Long Island made using a rare varietal usually grown in northern Italy.
Even if you do Agern the right way by loading up on bread, ordering a la carte, and trying to find value in an overlooked part of the wine list, you’re going to spend quite a bit of money here. But you’re also going to eat some excellent food that’s a whole lot better than the Cobb salads and $65 filets at other places in the area. It’s an obvious choice when you need to plan a business meal in Midtown, or anytime you’re looking to eat something memorable before getting stuck in the middle seat on your commute home from Grand Central.