Dinner at Restaurants I Can't Afford Dinner: WD-50

One of my oldest college buddy, Paris, was in town for the New Year and we decided to treat ourselves to the tasting menu at WD-50. I know, you're thinking we're like 5 years too late on this, but whatevs, Wylie was in the kitchen cooking our food!

Our bread basket turned out to be a wooden container of super thin sesame crisps that I'm sure were created using some sort of dehydrating machine with numbers in its name. Deliciously crunchy and plentiful! I was able to snack on these throughout the entire meal. Thank you servers for not removing this from our table. I hate when the bread basket is taken away. Hey you, I'm not done with that!

Amuse time! Peekytoe crab, celery root, golden raisin and miso. So tasty, I didn't even mind the raisin.

This is the bottle of wine we had. The restaurant is running a recession special of 50% off a bottle with the tasting menu, so this turned into a very good deal.

Everything bagel ice cream with smoked salmon threads and crispy cream cheese. This was brilliant - probably my favorite course of the night when take inventiveness into consideration with flavor. The cream cheese had the texture of a thin sheet of white chocolate. I made each bite a combo bite with a shard of cream cheese, sprinkling of smoked salmon and portion of ice cream.

Foie gras, passion fruit and Chinese celery two ways (thin shavings atop and crunchified at the base) . This is view one.

View two to show you the passion fruit innards. I loved the crunch of the celery crumbles but I think I'm just not a huge fan of passion fruit. Too sweet for my tastes. Still, a good accompaniment to the richness and unctuousness of the foie.

Scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, seared kampachi and tiny, tiny home fries. I love the way the chef balances textures. Without the crispy potato bits, texture wise, this would have been too one dimensional a dish.

Cold fried chicken with buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco reduction and caviar. The ricotta was a great stand-in for rustic, mashed potatoes.

Langoustine, red pepper threads, black sesame and shiso.

Beef and bearnaise turned out to be nothing like what I was anticipating. These were crazy rich but light as a feather bearnaise dumplings in a very beefy broth. Silly me expected a piece of steak!

Lamb loin, black garlic romesco, soybeans and pickled garlic chive. This may have been my least favorite course of the evening. The lamb was a bit undercooked for my tastes. The silvery bit was left on the meat, making the chewy bites even chewier, nearly impossible to break down.

"Caramel apple" was apple ice cream with caramel on the inside.

Caramel apple insides.

Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate and chicory foam.

That's not a scallop! It's a caramelized brioche with dried apricot, buttercream ribbon and lemon thyme foam dollops.

To finish the evening, cocoa packets which reminded me of the old sample packs from Kiehl's and chocolate shortbread covered milk ice cream.

Dear Dairy

After dropping off some stuff for work at the Hotel on Rivington earlier in the week, I headed to the Essex Street Market in search of breakfast. I entered the market on the northern side and made my way past vendors selling fish and fruit and myriad cuts of meat and poultry until I got to Saxelby Cheesemongers. I had only previously tasted Saxelby's cheese curds - in an enormous order of poutine at their neighbor stand, Shopsin's General Store (formerly of Carmine Street in the West Village). Anyway, the morning's cheesemonger turned out to be someone I knew and he proceeded to impress me with his knowledge of cheese. I first picked my bread - mini ciabatta - and he gave me a couple suggestions. His second offering, Pleasant Ridge Reserve, turned out to be the winner. Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a nutty, cow's milk cheese from Wisconsin. I liked its pliable texture - not soft and not overall crumbly. A little pour of Frankie's olive oil on the bread completed this fantastic sandwich.

I also picked up a container of Siggi's Skyr yogurt in pear & mint flavor. I had been seeing these in a couple shops - the Murray's outpost in Grand Central and also at Stinky Cheese in Carroll Gardens - over the past few months. The packaging is very clean and the writing on the label is made to look hand-written. Siggi is apparently an Iceland native now living in New York. His yogurt is super thick, like the good Greek stuff and not very sweet. I found the mint a little overwhelming and the yogurt maybe a little too thick overall until I added some honey. Not only did it thin it out slightly, but it added the touch of sweetness it was lacking.

Park Slope Gastronome #10 - Give me something good to eat

Hey, the PSG is back! Believe me, it's not that PSG hasn't been eating, PSG has just been lazy. My belly overhang will attest to that. Last night, Margie J, Barf and I visited Little Giant on the L.E.S., where Barf's friend Eric is the chef. Little Giant is relatively new restaurant serving cheeky takes on American food, using market available ingredients. It's small, but cozy. I never got the sense of feeling overcrowded and having my personal space violated, something that can happen often in any restaurant. The inside decor is minimal, but not cold - the ceiling is brick, the chairs and table were made of the same blonde wood and the wall behind where we were seated housed shelves constructed out of trapezoidal pieces of wood that held everything from astute looking wooden trays to kitschy, authentic fondue pots. To start, we were treated to some free house nibbles courtesy of Chef Eric - tangy red piquillo (I think...I should have snagged a menu) peppers stuffed with goat cheese and herbs, tiny avocado salads served with bacon and shallot dressing and piece of crisped speck and some unbelieveable deviled eggs. Boy, do I love me some deviled eggs and it turned out my two dining partners love them too. I really don't think you can ruin deviled eggs, but there are ways to elevate them to new heights. In Little Giants' case, the eggs were dusted with flakes of salt (um, fluer de sel?) with such intense saline flavor. It also provided a nice contrast in texture to the mushy yolk filling. I could have easily eaten another half dozen, no problem. I wish I had some right now!

Most people would consider that to be their appetizers, but all three of us brought very healthy appetites to the restaurant. So for the next phase of our meal, we shared a portion of white and wild asparagus served with a truffled omelet as was as the graze plate. I wasn't too thrilled with the wild asparagus, the tips had a gumminess to them, not unlike that of fiddleheads (which PSG had first tried at Carroll Garden's Crave and immediately disliked), but the white asparagus was out of this world! I don't know what made them so yummy, but they definitely had more flavor than you standard green variety. The graze plate was nothing overral fancy, but it was a solid mix of such deliciousness as chorizo, manchego, proscuitto, cornichons, Marcona albums, and quince paste. I love quince paste and I think I was the only one who ate it. It was my first time trying Tête De Moine, a Swiss cheese that requires a special cutter that scrapes out little ruffles that look like oyster mushrooms. It was nutty and earthy, but since we got such a small quantity to share, it was a little difficult to really grasp the full flavor of it.




For our main course Barf and I opted for the Berkshire pork chop, while Margie J ordered the dayboat scallops served with hazelnuts and declious pea puree. Talk about baby food for adults! The pork was served bone in, and also with a large piece of fat attached. Having never had Berkshire pork before I don't know if that's one of its selling points. It certainly injects a lot of flavor into the meat as it is cooking. I have to say nibbling on the rib was the tastiest part since that's where the meat was most caramelized. Our dishes were served with sweet and sour caramelized baby onions, a cinnamon and apple smash and awesome cracklins on top! They were so crisp but not so much that it would disintegrate when you bit down on a piece.



Sadly, our double fisted attack on the appetizers left no room for desserts, which ranged from spiked egg creams and adult milk and cookies. Next time, for sure.

Oh, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the lovely house cocktails of Little Giant. I had one of the most delicious gin and tonics ever - the tonic was infused with meyer lemon and the glass served with a sprig of tarragon. Barf had a couple dark and stormys, complete with a piece of candied ginger.