Occasion: Dinner with Edward at one of my bucket list New York restaurants.
Location: WD-50 on Clinton between Stanton and Rivington (wd-50.com)
Edibles: The 9th anniversary 12-course tasting menu, fully described below.
Musings: The first thing that surprised me was the décor. The furniture is made of thick wood and the walls are painted in these saturated jewel tones. There's a vibrant emerald green wall, a rusty red one and a purple one. The light fixtures look like lava lamps. I was expecting it to look more cold and modern and surgical.
Another surprise - Wylie Dufresne is actually in the kitchen. He's there five nights a week, we're told.
I waffled for the longest time over which menu to order. The $75 5-course "best of" menu or the full $155 tasting menu? My brother supplied the winning argument of "If you're only going to come here once..." We got a very modest bottle of white to nurse throughout the meal.
First course was nigiri sushi with salsify (kneaded with hazelnut oil into a rice-like substance), trout roe, seaweed "roe" and sesame. I loved this. What a great start to the meal. Except for the piece of fish, all of the ingredients were non-standard, but together gave the strong message of sushi.
Next, lobster roe ribbons, lobster meat, charred lemon, green grapes, coriander brown butter. Really delicious and harmonious. The grapes were a nice touch and really brought out the sweetness of the lobster.
Faux pho (or pho gras). Beef and foie broth, terrine of foie gras and a puffed piece of beef tendon. My favorite course of the night. As soon as the waiter poured the broth in and the heat hit the herbs, it was like a flashing neon sign that said "PHO." The broth was insanely rich and concentrated. My own quibble about this course was that the noodles were too slippery to eat with a spoon and fork - it really need chopsticks. The puffed beef tendon, I fancifully thought, tasted like an alien cocoon.
Amaro-cured yolk, chicken confit, "peas" and carrots. The carrot was in ribbons and the "peas" were actually little spheres of cooked carrot, coated in pea powder. Ingenious. It absolutely had the texture and taste of a regular pea. I think this was supposed to be a deconstructed roast chicken dinner. The egg was a revelation. We surreptitiously checked it up on Wikipedia and it turns out that amaro is an herbaceous liqueur. The curing gave the egg yolk a very thick, velvety texture and slightly grassy flavor notes. I ate my dish with the egg smeared on everything and it was great, but my brother thought the carrot was a little bitter on its own.
Veal brisket, za'atar, plum, mustard. I thought the brisket tasted like bologna and the mustard overpowered everything. Couldn't taste the za'atar or the plum at all. Edward got more plum than I did but he also thought the mustard was too strong.
Peekytoe crab toast with saffron and kaffir lime yogurt and arare. My portion had way too much lime; my brother thought his could use more. We both thought the saffron was too strong and overpowered the crab.
Sole, black licorice pil-pil, fried green tomato and pickled fennel. The sole was made into a roulade, steamed and then flash fried. However they cooked it, it was overdone. Mine tasted very mealy. I also hated the licorice sauce - SO strong. I actually scraped it off the fish. Edward liked the sauce more than I did; he thought the different elements came together nicely but didn't stand alone very well.
Lamb sweetbreads, nasturtium buttermilk, zucchini and pistachio. This was one of those dishes that I thought was absolutely well conceived but just didn't appeal to my palate. One of my sweetbreads was way overcooked and rubbery. Edward loved it - he likes sweetbreads in general - but didn't understand why the pistachio brittle was on the plate.
Root beer ribs, caraway spaetzle, apricot chutney. The pork was marinated in root beer, deboned, formed into a roll, and then cooked sous-vide for almost 20 hours. It was pretty tasty, but here's my problem with the preparation: ribs are delicious because they're on the bone. If you cook it off the bone, you've kind of missed the point of eating ribs, no? I also hated the caraway spaetzle - it was the first thing I left on the plate entirely uneaten. Edward liked the apricot.
Jasmine custard, cucumber sorbet, honeydew and chartreuse. I put a spoonful in my mouth and immediately blurted out, "That tastes like shampoo!" The jasmine was too pungent. Edward like the sorbet a lot.
Yuzu milk ice, hazelnut crumble, strawberries and basil. This dessert was a lot of fun. The "ice-cream" was puffed in a vacuum and so it was the ice-cream equivalent of cotton candy. Very light and airy and melted as soon as it hit your tongue. My pretentious comment about this course: "It tastes like dessert you'd get on a hydroponic farm on Neptune."
S'mores with bitter cocoa ganache, frozen meringue filled with marshmallow fluff, black currant. I thought this dessert was badly balanced. The "marshmallow" was too solidly cold, there was too much of the fudge ganache and the blackcurrant brought out the bitterness of the chocolate and made it taste chemical-y. Edward disagreed with me on this one, and thought it worked overall.
Finally, there was a white chocolate truffle with goat cheese, covered with freeze-dried raspberries. Edward and I both agreed that it was tasty and unusual.
So there it is - the full tasting menu at WD-50. It was not exactly what I expected. The use of the science-y stuff was actually pretty restrained. I did feel like taste and flavor were his first priorities. I thought the seasoning got a little bit aggressive in the later courses. It wasn't all to my taste, but I was challenged and surprised.
