Eating New York…and Deconstructing Dufresne
Yes food fans, this entry finds me eating my way through the Big Apple. And last weekend I was eating my way through Vancouver - a town that’s as serious about food as any I’ve ever come across - but more on British Columbia later.
For now, I thought I’d give you a taste of the effort and stress and work that yours truly goes through to keep up his street cred as the world’s greatest restaurant critic.*
My New York summer day began late with lunch at La Goulue (746 Madison Ave., 212.988.8169). We were feeling fashionable - decked out as we were in a fetching ensemble of faded Chuck Taylor’s, RL jeans, and a Brooks Brothers seersucker jacket - so we ducked into the most fashionable restaurant we know on the Upper East Side. There we tucked into a superb steak tartare with equally good frites and a demi-bouteille of Gilbert Picque Ses et Filles Chablis.
All seemed right with the world as we strolled down Fifth Avenue (working up a sweat in the process in the 88% humidity and 85 degree heat), and found an outside table at Brasserie Ruhlmann (45 Rockefeller Center, 212.974.2020, www.brasserieruhlman.com) for yet another glass of Premier Cru Chablis (Robert Vocoret ‘06) before heading to a business appointment. This being New York, showing up for a meeting with a decent Bourgogne blanc on your breath is quite acceptable.**
La Goulue and Brasserie Ruhlmann provide some of the best people watching in the city, along with a smattering of celebrities and recognizable faces to intrigue all but the most jaded tourist. Was that Glenn Close in the corner? Beckoning to me with the insouciance one only shows to a fellow celebrity? Possibly, but I had bigger fish to fry, so there was no time for canoodling with washed up actresses…
After some tedious-but-necessary-for-the-IRS business was dispensed with, it was off to the lower East Side for my third meal in as many years at wd-50 (50 Clinton St., 212.477.2900, www.wd-50.com). Now I’ve never met Wylie Dufrense. All I know about the guy is that I’m fascinated by his food. That doesn’t mean I always like it, but it does make me think.
Dufresne (pronounced Du-frane, as in Andy Dufresne, the protagonist in The Shawshank Redemption), first popped up on my radar screen as the first head chef at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Prime in the Bellagio - way back in 1998. For the past five+ years he’s been the chef/owner of this 50-seat place on Clinton Street - an area that law abiding citizens avoided like the plague as recently as 2002. Since then this former den of iniquity and illegal immigration (the neighborhood not the restaurant) has become a hipster haven. Of course, having Moby move into the neighborhood after “Play” went platinum in 2000 didn’t hurt - and now - thanks to Dufresne et al, the area has also become something of a foodie destination, and the perfect petri dish for him to engage in his flights of molecular food fantasy.
My meal here last night was the most elaborate of the three and the least satisfying. But there were still plenty of jaw-dropping (and jaw-closing/masticating) moments that provided pure bliss. The meal began with two clear losers: a snapper/cilantro/okra/chinese sausage amuse that tasted of none of those ingredients. It could’ve been put out by dozens of mediocre restaurants (and often is) throughout Las Vegas. Next came pizza “pebbles” that may be the worst idea in the (short) history of molecular gastronomy - tasting like tiny marbles of dried out, sandy, pepperoni-flavored pizza dough.
From there things improved considerably. Dufresne is justifiably famous for his Knot Foie - a thin ribbon of liver mousse sprinkled with tiny balls of kimchi and white raisin puree and even tinier balls of puffed rice - that tastes greater than the sum of its parts. Hamachi tartare with sticks of Asian pears also highlighted the pure clean flavors of yellowtail tuna and the crisp, apple-like pear. But the real winner was another Dufresne classic: the deceptively simple eggs benedict - a deconstructed assemblage of a squarely-shaped, barely cooked egg yolks, sitting beside deep-fried squares of hollandaise, against which lean “tuiles” of re-composed Canadian bacon. Slice or poke one of those squares and a small flood of perfect hollandaise sauce streams onto your plate. The whole thing looked as far from eggs Benedict as you could get, yet tasted just like it. Genius.
Perhaps genius is too strong an accolade, but Dufresnes’ food begs to be intellectualized, since that’s what he’s does in dreaming up this stuff; so we must give the molecular devil his due. Next came crabtail loosely encased in soybean, ravioli-like noodles, and sitting in a cinnamon-infused dashi that I could’ve sipped on all night, followed by another atrocity: chicken liver “spaetzle” sprinkled with pine needles (I tasted no pine) and cocoa nibs (to zero effect). It looked like something the cat leaves behind and had no smell or flavor whatsoever. All I could do is shake my head and wonder if Wylie and his kitchen crew ever actually taste their concoctions, or just play with their avant-garde gadgets with no regard for the customer.
The last savory course - thinly shaved beef tongue accented with a hoisin-like cherry-miso glaze - and four stunning desserts - saved the day. Words don’t do justice to Pastry Chef Alex Stupak’s yogurt with olive oil jam with yet another olive oil tuile - a thin, yellow white tube of congealed oil that tasted much better than that sounds; jasmine custard dusted with black tea powder and banana sorbet; a small log of toasted coconut cake sharing a plate with smoky, brown butter sorbet; and the innocent-sounding yuzu ice cream with marcona almond. The ice cream was sublime, and those almonds were encased in an edible chocolate pouch that was al dente to the bite and seemingly impervious to melting…until it hit the tongue. Stupak should be given a raise for (nightly) saving Dufresne’s symbolic bacon.
Ever since receiving a Michelin Star and three more from the New York Times*** this year, wd-50 has become as hip as its neighborhood. One wonders if such experimentation would find an audience even some fifty-odd blocks north in the Big Apple, but for the time being, his kitchen-kid-with-a-chemistry-set act is playing to a full house every night.
The day after my meal, I asked a well-known restaurant writer in New York what he thought of wd-50. His response was to compare Dufresne to Ferran Adria, the godfather of molecular gastronomy. “At El Bulli,” he said, “Adria constructs and de-constructs his wacky food out of a quest for personal actualization, scientific curiousity, and an abiding passion about the components of food and flavor. Compared to that, Dufresne just seems to be a guy playing in a kitchen.”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
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* self-proclaimed
** Lesser wines and vintages have been known to raise eyebrows, however.
*** Whose critic, Frank Bruni, also found fault with the gritty, unappetizing pizza pebbles (top right picture below) - a criticism that Dufresne has heeded not one bit.****
**** Of course, when you’re getting fawning articles written about you like the one Tom Junod wrote for Esquire three years ago, who needs critics?
Restaurant reviews, quips, picks and pans-with some seriously salivating history-from the man who eats his way through Sin City every day.