35 @ wd~50

Hello again. I celebrated my birthday at wd~50 last night. It was an experience that exceeded my expectations. Dewey Dufresne got the party started with a bottle of the house champagne. He assigned the excellent Evan as our front waiter, and hosted/officiated/sommiered for a while before leaving. He decanted the excellent '86 that my dad brought with us, and chilled the abysmal '73 after opening and smelling it. His efforts were much appreciated but the '73 still tasted like vinegar and cherry. Oh well, non-vintage year. In approximately 17 years of recent memory, we've had good a '73 on half a dozen occasions at most. And they, like me, are not getting any younger. But hey, I'm not much of a complainer. I only make note of these events as reportage. Dewey made me feel at ease. I may have picked the destination, but he set the course to the end of the dinner when he told me to relax and enjoy myself... only after making several jokes including one cute one about me being 21 this year. He inhabited several modes of Shakespearean clown that evening, enough said.

The wine cellar at wd~50 is a cozy space that worked perfectly for our party of eight. It was quiet and private so we could focus on each other, but I didn't feel isolated. The music was an unobtrusive mix of latin and jazz. Evan spieled as well as the best, answered all questions and hosted graciously. The runners were also charming, especially the hilarious Salamia. Everyone at my favorite restaurant is bubbling with controlled humor. Before Dewey left, my dad told him something to the effect of, "your son is very creative, a really great chef." My dad's always taken me to great restaurants and always been uncompromising and frank about his impressions. I observed, indeed I checked in with, his steady, growing pleasure with the kitchen's balance between presentation and great flavors and textures. In recent years, our tastes have differed somewhat on service and food in fine dining--so it was great to see him in accord with the environment.

Now, the food... I looked more to my companions than myself to gauge responses, expectations, reactions to flavor, technique, texture and portion size. I think on the whole a bunch of conservative eaters were very suprised. I have always said, in trying to sell the dining-out experience to skeptics, that Wylie is first and foremost an excellent chef. My dad's immediate first impression of "shrimp noodle, carrot, cumin, peanut" confirmed that an avant-garde construct is irrelevant if the old-school gourmet keeps an open mind. And, let me say, the "shrimp noodle" first course was probably my favorite. It had an odd, familiar scent. Then I dipped my fork into the carrot, cumin, peanut gel and tasted it. Real pleasure. Combined it with the "shrimp noodle" (apparently a kind of shrimp scallopini or carpacchio, if you will...) and I was on an astral plane. I stayed there through "grilled corn pebbles, lime mayo, scallion," "Knot foie," "Hamachi tartare, wakame, sake lees tahini, grapefruit-shallot," "Eggs benedict," "Crab tail, soybean noodles, cinnamon dashi," "Chicken liver spaetzle, pine needle, radish, cocoa nib," and "Beef tongue, cherry-miso, fried quinoa, palm seeds."

Let me take a break from transcribing to reflect, before I move on to dessert. Family faves were the corn pebbles, knot foie, bennies, crab-in-'noodle' (broth, noodle and meat all getting high marks), and the beef tongue. I liked them all and was so very happy to have an almost totally new menu. The highlight for me, though I loved the rich, almost pungent beef tongue paired with the very subtle cherry miso, was the "spaetzle." I cannot express how excited my palate was to wipe amazing, perfectly sauteed (or fried) little pieces of chicken liver along the side of the bowl and then taste liver and pine needles. Pine needle emulsion. (Though I didn't cry midway through dinner like I did when I had the five course dessert tasting menu a couple of months ago, I definitely hit an esctatic plane when the pine needle scent travelled to the top of my palate and beyond.) The crab tail had a lovely charred taste inside the soybean noodle and the 'pasta' rested in a tasty, hot, cinnamon infused consumme. And working backwards, I am crazy about the grapefruit shallot component of the hamachi dish and the little dots of kim chee on the duck knot foie. The corn pebbles were strange, but incredible (and paired wonderfully with the lime mayo), and I kept picturing them throughout the meal and during the drive home. While we ate that course, my aunt commented that the texture and the smoke of the dish reminded her of smoked oysters.

My rotten teeth are evidence of either a long standing obsession with sugar cereal (only recently curtailed due to a less tolerant stomach) or poor dental hygiene. So really, it's impossible for me to say, "I don't like sweets." I like sweets. I like Coffee Nips. I ate ice cream all winter long. Now that I make a point of eating in better restaurants or ordering tasting menus, I've tried some great creations... What I don't like are boring desserts. Cheesecake is to a restaurant as hack comedy is to every city and town. In other words, pervasive and unimpressive. Ergo I don't tend to order cheesecake or boring desserts even if it's the best cheesecake in the History of the World Part Two. Looking for something new.

Dessert @ wd~50 is an experience on par with the hot food. The pre-dessert, reportedly created by sous chef Sanchez, "Yogurt, olive oil jam, rhubarb" got high marks from the whole table. My enthusiasm for this dish was tempered only because I'd had it before, and because of some nostalgic sense that it isn't fair to be able to have rhubarb in late July, even if cryo-vac technology extends seasonality or renders it somewhat obsolete. It's wonderful to be able to experience the texture of raw rhubarb without having to taste raw rhubarb. And the rhubarb shoe leather was neat too.

Then, possibly the best dessert I've ever had, the "Jasmine custard, black tea, banana." This course and the next course, I was watching my dad's girlfriend Kyra poke at and leave the food on the plate. Thankfully her son Boris snapped up whatever she left on the plate. The next course, "Toasted coconut cake, carob, smoked cashew, brown butter sorbet," he did the same thing: she left behind a mostly untouched quenelle of brown butter sorbet which Boris eagerly fork-speared and ate whole. The cake had a really nice balance between moisture and firm dryness that encouraged combining the decadent sorbet and restrained cake. Whenever I could, I tried to combine all the components of the desserts into single bites; indeed throughout the evening rather than permutate component effects I tried to have whole experiences. (Was that a properly rendered sentence?)

Ex-gf Tara wanted to sing happy birthday. Evan accomodated by bringing down the house idea of "birthday cake," which was exceptional. Cold dessert, dark chocolate encased in white chocolate. I'm pictured setting fire to the edible lampshade, the flavor of which I forget (my fault for obscuring my senses while indulging a latent pyromania). And everyone got to sing happy birthday to me. I tried to stay present and in the moment for that song.

By the time the petit-fours or mignardise arrived (again, thanks to the staff for letting us have eight chocolate envelopes for free along with the "yuzu ice cream-marcona almond"), my senses were pretty well sated.

At this point my "role" as "food blogger" becomes blurred, because I want to thank the staff for such a great evening. The front of house staff, the smile of the hostess, the focus of the manager, the bartenders who make me cocktails that aren't on the menu, the exceptional chefs... I feel lucky, no reference intended. Thank you again.

I was invited to see the kitchen (customary gesture) right when they were pretty well weeded. So I stayed at the entrance and watched Wylie on hot apps, all focus. The quiet and observant Heston, mustachioed guy, intense, precise Sanchez, dapper genius pastry chef Stupak... what a night. What a show, I could watch from behind the expediter's station for as long as they allowed. Especially at that pace. Full dining room, and every station producing, at 10:40pm.