dresese

wd~50

Yesterday I went with Adam and ate at wd~50 a restaurant that has been getting a lot of attention. It was recently on a list of the best restaurants in world, at a rank of 34.

wd~50 has a reputation for being wildly inventive. I knew this was true when I walked in, and went to the restroom. I saw some nice sinks, with some tiny fluffy towels. Delightful. But where were the stalls? All I could see was the sink, and a nice looking wall of wooden paneling. Then I saw a small sign saying to push on the panels to use the bathroom. When I did, the panel moved on a very well hidden hinge to reveal the actual stall with an actual toilet. This was the first time that my life imitated nethack, and I had to search for secret doors. If that didn't work I might have to just quaff from a sink and see what happened.

But wait! The story doesn't end there. I had to figure out how to flush. There was no button to be seen. I put down the toilet seat. Nope, not there either. And it wasn't an automatic flushing system. Wait, I thought to myself, maybe it's so advanced, that when I unlock the stall, it will flush. I unlocked the door and opened it a crack. No flush. Stupid idea, what was I thinking? Then in desperation I pressed what looked to be a little metal door to a trash receptacle, and finally with a soft and gentle noise, it flushed! I was very happy, but at the same time I felt that for all the cleverness, these guys really needed to read their Don Norman. Oh yes, and did I mention that the stall played me some music? It did!

After that bit of brain-stretching business, I was eager to see if the food was so perplexing. It wasn't perplexing, but it was really original, and had many new ideas and techniques. Adam and I got the tasting menu, so we tried quite a few of their dishes. Each dish had 1 or 2 main elements, and 2 or 3 supplemental elements, plus a sauce. The fun came in trying each of these things in combination, to see how they pair up. For example, one dish I had a substantial round of foie gras, inside of which was a caramel sauce. On the foie gras was a piece of crisp seaweed. There was slightly dehydrated grapefruit (which seemed more like pomelo to me) with tiny little basil leaves. So one bite I just try the foie gras (wonderful, of course). Then I try the foie gras with the caramel, and it goes fairly well together, bringing out the rich taste of the foie. Next, I have to taste the foie gras with some caramel and some grapefruit and basil. That works better than I would have expected, the acidity of the grapefruit cuts the rich foie gras, but the sweetness of the grapefruit doesn't overwhelm everything. And the basil added a unique little touch.

Each course was like that. The standout dishes was a lamb belly with grated chocolate and other items, an egg poached at exactly 153 (if I recall correctly) degrees for an hour, and combined with sev (Indian dried noodles used in chaat), and a shrimp cannelloni, where the cannelloni was actually made out of a shrimp somehow pounded flat and used as wrapping, with a chipotle emulsion. So many of the dishes had some element that was so original. Besides the shrimp wrapper, there was tiny cubes of translucent lettuce, dehydrated onion cubes, deep fried mayonnaise, a grapefruit sorbet somehow inside a grapefruit meringue and many more things I'm forgetting right now.

All in all, it was a great experience. The food was delicious and not only artistically interesting, but also interesting as "food science". I kept asking how on earth they did this stuff. As far as taste, I thought the French Laundy and Jean-Georges was more delicious, while still being fairly inventive. This food I think trades off pure taste for experimentation, which is something I welcome as a change. These things are experiments, and some of them work better than others, although none failed to be delightful. I look forward to seeing what these guys some up with next.