WD-50 (October 1, 2005)New York, NY For us, it's a time of celebration, and a time of transition. We have sold our house in Pittsburgh, quit our jobs and taken new ones in New Jersey and NYC, and I'm starting a new career to boot. On top of that, we are overdue for a celebration of our 9th wedding anniversary. On top of that, I am finally living in close proximity to one of the major food meccas of the world. As a consequence, the meal we will use to mark all of these events has taken on additional significance. I thought an appropriate choice to mark all of this would be a restaurant that is pushing the envelope in terms of cuisine. A restaurant that, no offense intended, couldn't be found in Pittsburgh under any circumstances. Is it fair to ask WD-50 to live up to these heightened expectations? Undoubtedly not. Nevertheless, expectations remain high. As fans of tasting menus and wine pairings, there really wasn't much decision making that needed to be done, and our waiter assured us we were "in for a fun ride." Bring it! Paper-thin sesame flatbreads are produced, and we crunch away. King mackerel, green olive, granny smith, sake soubise At first glance, a conventional visual presentation of fish on a bed of vegetables and a pool of sauce. However, the fish is smoked, and the olives and apples are dehydrated, causing their texture to become noticeably firmer, and concentrating their flavor. On paper, this combination of flavors looks like it can't possibly work, but amazingly, it does. But it's a high wire act right from the get-go; trying nibbles of subsets of these components, the flavor balance is off. You need a bite of everything at once to achieve balance on the palate. The champagne is an appropriate, slightly yeasty and flinty complement to the dish. Foie gras, candied olives, green peas, beet juice Best dish of the meal, and not just because it has foie gras. A slice of terrine is standing on its side in what looks like large crystals of green sea salt. We are told that the chef suggests "cutting the terrine down the middle before eating." Following the advice, we use our knives to slice through the terrine, and upon doing so, a slightly thickened beet juice spills from a cavity in the center of the terrine, coating the foie gras and the crystals, which are actually crystallized pea shoots. A few candied olives sit in the puddle. Again, this seems at first to be a waste of a perfectly good foie, but once again, the flavors work. It's all about complementary texture; the pea crystals provide crunch to highlight the creaminess of the foie gras, prepared to perfection. The beet juice and the candied olives provide slightly sweet complements, layering bold flavors. A remarkable dish. Shrimp cannelloni, chorizo, thai basil This looks like a rice paper spring roll sitting in a pool of creamy orange sauce. In fact, the contents of the roll, and the roll itself, are shrimp. No rice involved. The chorizo is actually the sauce, perfectly smooth but redolent of spicy, smoky sausage, and to my palate more interesting than the shrimp roll. The white burgundy is heavy with mineral flavor, and is a reasonable match for this dish. Beef tongue, fried mayo, tomato molasses The first misstep on the high wire, although not due to taste. Slices of beef tongue are accompanied by a dark smear of tomato molasses on the plate, along with a line of crystallized lettuce and onion. Two golden-brown cubes sit next to the pile of beef. Put it all together, and you have a corned beef sandwich, with all of the textural elements you'd expect from the sandwich coming here unexpected sources. Technically, a tour de force, but I don't see the point of going to this level of effort to achieve essentially a visual effect on the plate, rather than any new or improved taste. The white wine from the previous course was also a jarring contrast with this dish; a Chateauneuf-du-Pape would have been a much better match. Carrot-coconut "sunnyside up" Looked for all the world like a sunnyside up egg, and behaved exactly like one in terms of texture (slight resistance to the fork in the whites, and a gooey ooze from the yolk), but this was no egg. The whites were a strongly flavored cardamom custard, and the yolk was a carrot-coconut mixture. My closest point of reference would be an Indian kulfi in terms of flavor profile. The sweet wine was a nice complement to this dish, which was much closer to a dessert than a savory course. Hamachi, plantain gnocchi, nasturtium, coffee Probably the only dish I just couldn't understand. It tasted exactly like the list of ingredients reads, a jumble of uncoordinated flavors and textures. The rose, a riesling/pinot noir blend, seemed equally disjointed. Carrot confit, hibiscus sorbet, crispy lamb belly We're in strange territory here. In addition to the carrot and hibiscus combo, which doesn't appear on your plate everyday, the crispy lamb belly turned out to be a perfectly flat and crisp piece of lamb bacon. The ingredients here were a better combination than the previous dish, with the carrots meeting the lamb and hibiscus halfway, in a stewpot and herbal kind of way, respectively. Any jarring element here came from the coldness of the sorbet, but I freely admit I'm not a fan of cold savory dishes, and I suspect that cultural bias is here to stay. Squab breast, encrusted golden beets, sweet potato juice Great dish. The squab was cooked to perfection, easily the best squab I've had. The encrusted golden beets were actually little "cigars" of dehydrated golden beet coated in dehydrated red beet, which visually looked like coffee-crusted lozenges on the plate. These provided a nice semi-sweet and crisp counterpoint to the squab. The wine was a good match as well, a robust Cabernet being exactly what was needed to pair with the squab. Tomato sorbet, olive oil powder, toast More technical games. This palate cleanser looked like tomato sorbet with tiny croutons, sitting on a bed of baking soda. However, the powder melted on your tongue and within a couple of seconds, transmuted into pure olive oil. No graininess, no change in texture, just pure olive oil. At the end of the day, this still seems like nothing more than a 21st-century bruschetta, but I have to admit that the powdered olive oil was intriguing. Roasted corn, coffee soil A scoop of corn ice cream sits on a bed of dirt. At least that's what it looks like. The corn ice cream is creamy, smooth, and delivers just enough of a sweet corn flavor to be interesting. The dirt tastes like espresso, with a blend of crumbly and chewy textures. I'm not convinced by the dirt, but corn ice cream is enjoyable, and I find myself wishing that this flavor was available in stores. The wine is interesting; it has the taste and aromatic profile of a cognac, without the harsh alcoholic burn of a cognac, and it goes well with the coffee flavors in the dish. Milk chocolate-hazelnut parfait, orange reduction Probably the most traditional dish of the night, in terms of recognizable flavor combinations, but there's still a WD-50 touch, the chocolate "paper", an impossibly thin translucent strip of chocolate that crunches like a sugar cone when bitten. Curried chocolate almonds Provided with the check, these are addictive. Curry and chocolate actually go well together; we've had them before in the form of curry-coated chocolate truffles, and these are equally nice and equally exotic. Our waiter noticed our level of engagement with the meal, and when I asked him to send my compliments to the chef, he invited (and we accepted) the opportunity to visit the kitchen and meet the chef. Wylie Dufresne is a graduate of the Jean-Georges stable, and seemed genuinely happy to hear that we enjoyed the meal. I asked how the olive oil powder was achieved, and he laughed for a moment, but I wasn't sure I was going to get an answer. However, either I read the pause incorrectly, or he decided I wasn't a likely candidate to steal recipes, so he explained that the olive oil was infused with starch and dehydrated. When placed on the tongue, your saliva reconstitutes the olive oil, and the starch melts away, leaving olive oil. As we say goodbye and leave the kitchen, I'm once again left to wonder how many chefs end up with scoliosis; so many people, bent so rigidly over plates positioning food with surgical precision. Did the meal live up to expectations? Of course not. In retrospect, I'm not sure if any one meal can be asked to serve as a milestone for so many life changes. But at the same time, the meal was thought-provoking and engaging, and a fun experience that I'd recommend to any foodie. My feeling is that if the obvious technical facility in the kitchen can be better tempered to achieve consistently coherent flavor combinations and texture profiles, the sky is the limit. We'll be back.
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