The Alex & The Eleanor + 1

Sorry the posts have been so absent since…well…let’s just say a while. Lots of big doings since our honeymoon. We bought an apartment in Park Slope (so expect a lot more brooklyn based blogging to come down the pike in the near future), and just got back from a trip to Napa Valley where we had an exceptional time with Mac (father in law), Alison (sister-in-law) and Rob (brother-in-law-in-law?). Let me just say thank you again to Mac for the incredible trip, and expect a write up of that shortly, along with (thanks to Eleanor’s notebook) our notes on the over 70 wines we tasted there.

But this post is about food. Exceptional food. Divine food. As it just so happens we had the good fortune to dine at both one of the established great restaurants (French Laundry) and the hottest up-and-coming great restaurants (Momofuku Ko) in the short span of two weeks.

For those of you who haven’t read about Ko, it’s the latest restaurant by David Chang, who is the IT chef in NY right now, with his first restaurant, Momofuku, and his second restaurant Saam Bar both being huge successes. One’s an upscale noodle bar, the other an upscale burrito bar. For his anticipated third restaurant, Chang opened up a 12 bar seat high end, tasting menu only restaurant that showcases his creative cuisine taken up a notch on the fancy scale.

It’s $85 for the 9 course meal, and they have several wine pairing options, as well as a fair selection of interesting bottles and half bottles.  Expensive, but not compared to comparable tasting menus in the city where you’d be more likely to expect to pay upwards of $150 per person. But to go with the reduced price, there’s reduced ambiance. Rather than your normal high end restaurant, you sit on wooden stools at a bar surrounding the open kitchen where you watch the chefs hard at work preparing your meal before you. It’s a foodie dream, but not the same white glove experience normally associated with this type of food.

Also innovative is the reservation system for getting into Ko. Chang has a website that accepts reservations at 10am, a week ahead of time. The only way to get a reservation (whether your Frank Bruni, Bono, Donald Trump or me) is to create an account, log in right before 10am, and pray. Oh, and they check your ID at the door to make sure it matches the reservation, so no scalping allowed.

Thankfully Eleanor  has fast fingers, and managed to get us a table to celebrate our big move. So we left our apartment full of boxes in Brooklyn and headed back to the lower east side.

Our seats at the bar weren’t empty yet when we got there, so they poured us some sparkling lambrusco, which was quite tasty, and after two glasses of that it was time to sit down.

The meal started with an amuse duo of pork rind and a mini english muffin with melted lardo (pork fat). The pork rind was distinctly more delicate than your standard stuff, but I don’t know that it’s all that wonderful. The mini-muffin however was a decadent delight, the first time I’ve actually enjoyed lardo. Quite glad for the tiny size of it however.

Our first dish was an interesting one. Thinly sliced giant scallop (and wow are those scalops giant!) in a buttermilk cream with some sriracha(thai hot sauce) and sesame seeds. The sesame seeds were a really interesting touch, and the scallop was quite fresh and tender, but I’d definitely describe this dish as more intriguing rather than inspiring.

Next up were a duo of soups. A kimchi consommé with an oyster and a piece of pork belly, and a spring pea soup with crayfish and a morel pastry.  The pea soup was delicious, a delightful meld of flavors, but it paled in comparison to the kimchi consommé , which was fairly transcendent. The broth was exquisite and light, melding perfectly with both the oyster and the pork belly. This is a dish worth traveling for, and an exciting step forward from the first.

On a roll, the next dish was the most attractive and playful of the night. A small soft poached egg, with caviar, red onions and micro potato chips. It was almost as fun to look at as eat. The flavors were intense, salty and creamy and tangy. It actually tasted to me like a bizarrely deconstructed lox egg and onions, bringing me back to my childhood.

Next, the most complex flavors of the night came in the form of a escargot ravioli. topped with seared ricotta,spring peas, mushrooms a ricotta foam and squash blossoms, it was a fantastical mix of flavor and texture, each chew brought on a different burst of sweet, savory, refreshing. Another amazing dish.

Continuing the whimsical theme was a soft shell crab with old bay seasoning and paired with a Budweiser (sorry, I didn’t take any notes on the wine pairings, other than to say they were excellent, and there’s no need to go up from the basic one at $55) in a whimsical play to the dish. It was good, but I can’t remember much about it, which given my strong recollections of all the other dishes says everything that needs be said.

And now the most unique preparation of fois gras I’ve ever seen. They place in a bowl some cut up lychee, along with pieces of pineapple jelly. Then the chef takes out brick of frozen fois grais and grates a large snowy pile of it on top of the dish. The cold melty fat blends wonderfully with the crisp sweet fruit to be both refreshing and rich at the same time.

One last savory course. Again a duo. First a mushroom stuffed chicken roulade, which was good, but nothing exceptional. The other dish however was something else. A deep fried marinated short rib that may have been the best piece of meat I’ve ever eaten. I think I almost cried. Amazingly succulent and intensely flavorful, the whole mustard seeds in honey that accompanied it made a nice textural contrast and added a high note as well that elevated the dish even further.

Sadly, the alcohol must have gotten the better of me, and I failed to take any pictures of the duo of deserts. One was a deep fried apple pie, an homage to the McDonald’s pie of old, I thought it overly sweet and cinnamony. The other dessert, a cereal milk (exactly what it sounds like) panna cotta with an avocado paste, was much more subtle and refreshing, and a delightful end to the meal.

A+

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Up next, part 2 of glutton fest: French Laundry and some comparisons between the two.