I am writing this on my way back on the LimoLiner from New York City, where the wife and I spent a lovely weekend with a number of relatives. The LimoLiner is a nice mode of transportation in that it is a regular bus that has been customized to convey 20 or so passengers in relative luxury. Amenities include wide leather seats, snacks and a small meal (quite passable sandwiches), movies and TV, and pretty reliable and speedy WiFi. All for about 50-70% of the cost of Amtrak. If it weren’t for the pesky problem of my wife’s car sickness, I think we would both vote thumbs up.
One of the highlights of the trip to NYC, was when Dave and Sue (my wife’s brother and sister-in-law) accompanied us to WD-50, a restaurant we had heard about when Kate took Danny there for his latest birthday. We were determined to order the tasting menu, as the chef, Wylie Dufresne, who sometimes acts as a judge on Top Chef, is known to be an inventive fellow. When we arrived, we were told that all wines were 50% off for those ordering the tasting menu, so the deal was sealed.
I probably shouldn’t have, but I tried to remember to photograph each plate with my iPhone, mostly to jog my memory. I say I shouldn’t have, because 1) I sort of hate being “that guy” who insists on documenting everything, and 2) the iPhone doesn’t work that well in low light, and the pictures were going to turn out pretty crummy.
For most of you, I would recommend that you stop reading here. For those of you brave and/or bored enough to continue on, I will commence to list all the courses in the tasting menu, followed by my comments and a photo-like image of the plate. I had originally thought about annotating the images, but that seemed a little too extreme even for me.
- Lobster legs, serrano ham, dried cherry, cucumber
- Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese
- Scallops, tendon, endive, parsley, hazelnut oil
- Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery
- Eggs benedict
- Crab tail, soybean noodles, cinnamon dashi
- Rabbit, wild rice polenta, cassis, kale black olive
- Squab, butternut noodles, cream soda, carob
- Ricotta, capers, frozen honey
- Jasmine custard, black tea, banana
- Carmelized brioche, gala apple, sage, brown butter
- Concord grape sorbet-black sesame
This was a truly remarkable feat of engineering. The chef apparently is able to extract the entire leg from the lobster using some sort of suction device (the waiter mentioned something about a hyperbaric chamber, but I don’t see how that would work). The dried cherries were were then grated on the side. I’ve forgotten how the Serrano ham was prepared.
This was a truly strange offering. The smoked salmon threads were made, I think, from dehydrated smoked salmon. A very pure flavor. The cream cheese was a single thin slab that was frozen. The “bagel” was made of ice cream, and there were pickled baby pearl onions accompanying the whole thing. I’m sure I’m forgetting something, but that’s the general idea. Very tasty mix of flavors and textures.
This is gifted man’s idea of “surf and turf,” and was by far everyone’s favorite dish of the night. The scallops were served seviche style, and were wrapped in a thin slice of beef tendon. I’ve never had tendon before, and it was….uh….tendonous. But really quite flavorful. All the flavors combined in a sublime way, and the only downside was that they didn’t serve this for dish 4, 5, 6….
As it turns out, I was the only one who liked this dish, It was basically a foie gras terrine, with a smooth center of passion fruit pudding/coulis in the middle. The mix of the two flavors for me was perfect. The chinese celery was, if I remember correctly, baked into a cake, and then dehydrated so that there was this quite crunchy, delectable accompaniment to the smooth as silk terrine and filling.
This was clearly the best mixture of inventive and yumminess—a completely deconstructed eggs benedict. The egg yolks were cooked for 20 minutes at 60 degrees in a cylinder. It had a smooth as silk consistency. The hollandaise sauce was deep-fried into little balls—apparently the hollandaise is put into liquid nitrogen to freeze it, breaded, and then fried, which turns the center creamy again. The prosciutto was fried, I think. This was a big time winner.
This was a ravioli dish filled with crab tails (from king crabs) and black edamame all sitting in a cinnamon dashi broth. I have seen dashi in use on The Iron Chef, but never had it in person. This was light, aromatic, and perfectly flavored.
This was a pretty big disappointment. The rabbit itself was ground up, I think, and put into a cylinder. There was a tasty black garlic sauce to accompany the wild rice polenta (which basically tasted like wild rice). The kale came to the party in a rectangle of pure kale flavor, while the cassis was served as what basically tasted like a really thin fruit roll up. All very interesting flavors (except for the rabbit), that didn’t really go together that well.
The pigeon…excuse me….squab was delicious. It was a litte underone for my wife’s taste, but I liked it. There butternut squash noodles and a cream soda sauce, which all went together well. I have forgotten what the crunchy part at 10 o’clock on the plate was.
This was a big hit for everyone, although I was sort of lukewarm to it. The honey was frozen, which was quite a treat even though I’ve never been a huge fan of honey. The mix of the three flavors together (there were capers in the mix as well as a caper foam) was extraordinarily good.
This was my favorite desert. The banana came in the form of the cannel of ice cream in the center of the plate. There was a black tea caramel sauce (along with a small sprinkling of black tea powder. The jasmine custard next to the ice cream was aromatic and delicious, and the milk foam scattered around the plate was perfect.
A brown butter ice cream sat on a smoked pecan base. And when I say smoked, I mean really smoked. I love my smoke, but this actually turned out to be too much for a dish at the end of the evening. my wife pointed out that it might be better if followed by a single malt scotch, and I think I agree. The “bread pudding” brioche was OK, but nothing too spectacular.
Just what it sounded like. I’m not a big fan of sesame in general, and I was pretty full at this point, so I just gave half of mine away.
All in all, an entertaining and enlightening evening. I doubt I would do this again, but I’m quite glad I got the chance to do it this time.
