I have so many old food photos in my queue that I’m drowning, so please excuse me while I just plop some of these pictures of my meal at Buttermilk Channel in Brooklyn with my friend Beth down without much explanation.

maple- and bacon-roasted almonds

These are still on the menu seven months later, because they’re so crunchy, sweet, and bacony that you kind of just want to keep ordering them and forget about the rest of the meal. See the way the sugar is cracking off of them in some places? COME ON! It’s almost unfair.

sweet potato and goat cheese croquettes

scallops

duck meatloaf, creamy parsnips, onion ring

This is the dish everyone talks about, and for good reason. It’s intensely rich and intensely comforting.

peanut-chocolate tart

Evidently finally seeing my review of our first dinner at wd~50 made my boyfriend crave some foams and powders, so before we left for Christmas vacation in our respective home states, we made a reservation to return. The only time we could get on Saturday night, even with a few weeks notice, was 6 p.m. Which means that despite the terrible economy, New Yorkers are still lining up to pay $200 each for dinner.

We were oddly seated in the same exact table as last time, which happens to have a straight view into the kitchen, where we saw chef/owner Wylie Dufresne talking to Chef de Cuisine Jon Bignelli (who we recently saw on an episode of “Chopped” on the Food Network) all night. We started off with a couple of their inventive cocktails to give me the courage to eat the many fish courses (CAVIAR?!) that were coming our way, and then we ate:

Red snapper, pickled taro, wakame (seaweed), dandelion coulis

All of these things on their own–meh. All of these things together in one bite–harmony.

Everything bagel ice cream, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese

That’s right–the second dish was ice cream. Perfectly flavored and made to look like a tiny everything bagel. The salmon had the consistency of a Brillo pad, but I didn’t find that to be entirely unpleasurable. The crunchy cream cheese shard really excited me but was sadly entirely lacking in flavor. Next time, I’m asking for a warm cream cheese drizzle over my bagel.

Foie gras with passion fruit center, chinese celery

We just loved the way the passion fruit spilled out like an egg yolk. This was so rich it was almost hard to eat, which is exactly how I like my food. The passion fruit overpowered everything else, which was good for someone like me who isn’t completely sold on organ meats but probably bad for a foie gras connoisseur.

Scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, kindai kampachi

I somehow expected the egg cube to be cold, but the firm outside shell held a warm, almost custard-like eggy inside. Egg and avocado, it turns out, are wonderful bedmates.

Cold fried chicken, buttermilk ricotta, Tabasco and honey, American sturgeon caviar

Why is there caviar in my comfort food?! I didn’t think it necessarily added anything, and the dish sure didn’t need anything. The chicken appeared to be a terrine of dark and white meat, and the buttermilk ricotta was studded with the crispiest chicken skin.

Langoustine, licorice-style red pepper, black sesame, shiso

We both loved the way this tasted like it was poached in butter, but we agreed that it need some spice. The carpet of black sesame really made the dish.

Beef consommé and Bearnaise gnocchi

The menu simply said “beef and Bearnaise”, so I was looking forward to a hunk of flesh and some sauce to dip it in, but things are never that simple at wd~50. Despite the initial weirdness, this turned out to be the favourite savory dish for both of us.

Lamb loin, black garlic romesco, dried soybeans, basil

Dried soybeans should be in every dish. The crunch of them was so perfect with the melt-in-your-mouth lamb.

Spruce yogurt, shattered vanilla-mango ice cream, vanilla bean olive oil, mango

Yogurt that tastes like the forest? Yes, please! The spruce taste was so delicate–not nauseatingly pine-y, as we were expecting–that we needed to taste the yogurt on its own to catch it. I could’ve definitely gone for more of it, but I’m glad it didn’t slap me in the face.

Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate, chicory foam

Chicory is about as bitter as it comes on its own, but spread on top of the mousse-filled chocolate skin, it provided a great balance to all of the sweetness. And the salt on top! To think there was a time before salted chocolate. This was definitely my favourite dessert of the night.

Caramelized brioche, apricot seed shards, buttercream, lemon thyme sorbet

This was delicious, but the Degustation caramelized brioche has ruined me for all other caramelized brioches. Sorry, Wylie.

Cocoa packets, chocolate-shortbread-covered milk ice cream

The idea of milk ice cream is hilarious to us. So, um, you basically mean ice cream without any added flavorings, right? Thought so. It’s too bad that the cookie overpowered the ice cream, because I’d love to see what that tastes like. The classic chocolate packets–like Fruit Roll-Ups made out of chocolate–were actually better than we remembered them, even after I spilled half of the crunchy chocolate crumbs inside all over my lap.

The thing we think is funny about wd~50 is that the plate in front of you is generally full of familiar flavors, yet you know that the food on it went through several transformations involving plenty of chemicals. You have to ask yourself at some point, “Is it worth it?” I can understand why people who aren’t into novelty would make fun of this sort of food–expensive, tiny, laborious–but I just love the sort of deconstructionism of it. Beef consommé and Bearnaise gnocchi look and feel nothing like a steak with Bearnaise sauce, but they taste nearly identical, and you have to appreciate the craft that goes into that.

It kind of bothers me, actually, thinking that someone couldn’t like this meal. Once you get past the fact that nothing you’re eating looks like its original form, you have to admit that everything tastes great, and taste is obviously the most important attribute. When it comes to molecular gastronomy, I guess, an open mind is a prerequisite to an open mouth.

It was more than a year ago that I announced my impending trip to wd~50 on my personal blog and got a load of comments from my mostly-Ohioan readership that mostly talked about how ridiculously small and not-at-all-like-real-food the dish in the picture I posted was. I was skeptical, too, to be honest, but it turned out that the meal was fantastic–really, really fantastic–surprising, playful, and memorable.

It must have overwhelmed me so much, though, that I failed to write about it, and my boyfriend has been bothering me about it ever since. Now that we have a January reservation to try the current tasting menu, I figured I owed it to him to at least post my photos from the evening. Here’s all I can remember from September 13th, 2008:

I started out the night with a peanut butter and jelly cocktail that was more peanut than peanut butter, but the bold flavor really prepared me for what was to come. We ordered one appetizer, two entrees, and the three-course dessert tasting menu, but the waiter brought us the five-course dessert tasting on the house. (Which makes this review entirely biased, naturally.)

Fried quail, banana tartar, peppercress

Sweetbreads, peanut, beet-pomegranate sauce, pickled sweet potato

Wagyu flat iron, coffee gnocchi, coconut, cipollini, sylvetta

Something foamy and possibly celery-y that I can’t recall

Grapefruit curd, pine nut, meringue, nasturtium ice cream

Jasmine custard, black tea, banana

Toasted coconut cake, carob, smoked cashew, brown butter sorbet

Yuzu ice cream, marcona almond, chocolate packets

The service was great, and the waiter didn’t mind repeating the word nasturtium for me about a hundred times until my boyfriend said he’d explain later. Like everyone else, we were impressed that chef Wylie Dufresne was actually in the kitchen, although my boyfriend happened to be directly in his line of sight and felt a little uncomfortable with the way Wylie was making eyes at him all night.

The decor was dark and simple, which made for a lovely contrast with the bright and complex food being served. Plus, there seemed to be a spotlight pointed directly at each table, which is why you basically never see a bad wd~50 photo.

I understand that looking at the menu alone, the dishes are a little intimidating, and the flavor combinations aren’t immediately complimentary (sweetbreads and beets?!). After my first meal there, though, I’m convinced that Wylie can do no wrong, and I’m excited to eat more ridiculous food (and less ridiculous ones, like the caramel apple) next month when we try the new tasting menu.

Fun things to do after hours at the office when you’re hungry:

1) Grab two space heaters and place them on the floor, facing one another.

2) Find a random metal rod on a nearby desk that may or may not be used to itch someone’s butt.

3) Procure leftover ghost-shaped Halloween marshmallows from the candy bowl at the reception desk. (Note that though marshmallows are orange and brown and may appear to be flavored, they are, in fact, just like white marshmallows.)

4) Stab the leftover ghost-shaped Halloween marshmallows with the random metal rod.

5) Hold the marshmallows between the opposing heaters for ten minutes.

6) Grow anxious and pop the metal grate off of one heater so as to get the marshmallows closer to the heat source.

7) Rejoice as the marshmallows actually brown within moments.

8.) Steal a package of totally-savory-and-not-at-all-appropriate-for-s’mores Melba toast off of a co-worker’s desk in the absence of graham crackers.

9) Melt a Tootsie Roll in the microwave in the absence of a chocolate bar.

10) Top Melta toast with Tootsie Roll and heater-browned marshmallow.

11) Savor your fake s’more like nobody’s ever savored a fake s’more before.

12) Feel a little bit bad about yourself for being pathetic.

13) But mostly just feel awesome.

It’s an Auntie Anne’s pretzel wrapped around a Nathan’s hot dog, and I ate it at the airport, which is really the only place you should be able to find a hot dog wrapped in a pretzel. This one only had 310 calories and 20 grams of fat, so I can’t wait to find a place that sells the JUMBO pretzel dog so I can get the full 600-calorie experience.

I will be dipping that one in cheese sauce and wrapping a slice of pizza around each bite, justyouwaitandsee.

I ate sardines prepared three ways tonight.

Please don’t let this change the way you feel about me. Even if it changes the way I feel about myself.

My boyfriend has been visiting his family in California all week, and I was thinking this morning about how much I missed him. But then I found this photo:

It may be pronounced OO-glee, but this grapefruit/orange/tangerine hybrid from Jamaica is about as pretty as Kamran’s face right there. We didn’t buy the fruit that night in Whole Foods, and honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t leave him there with it.

(xoxo, Kam.)

The New York magazine review of Otafuku says, “It’s very rare to find this stuff in New York. Consider yourself lucky.” Similarly, my boyfriend has been going on about this place for the entire nearly-three years I’ve known him. He went there on a date with a girl before my time and claims that while the date sucked, the food was life-changing. I don’t actually believe him about the date, but I was at least interested in the food.

Otafuku is not a restaurant. It’s a hallway divided in two by a counter, with men cooking on one side and customers ordering on the other. There’s enough room for four people to line up inside to place their orders, and after getting a receipt with a number on it, everyone goes to stand around outside. The pub next door has outdoor garden seating where people are reclining and relaxing, but Otafuku customers get nothing but a single, constantly-full two-seater bench out front. But no one’s complaining.

I don’t like the fruits of the sea, but Kamran tried to sell me on the fact that this is basically junk food, and I’ll admit that I bought it a little bit. There are three things on the menu here:

• Okonomiyaki: a pile of cabbage and batter molded into the shape of a pancake, fried with scallion and ginger, topped with squid, shrimp, pork, beef, or corn, and covered in okonomiyaki sauce, mayonnaise, and seaweed.

• Takoyaki: savory doughnut holes!, covered in okonomiyaki sauce and mayonnaise!, with a chunk of octopus, a squirt of cheese, or nothing inside, and bonito flakes (dried, fermented, and smoked tuna) on top.

• Yakisoba: fried noodles not worth talking about because there’s no batter involved.

I was especially down with the Japanese junk food when I was able to order the okonomiyaki with pork instead of squid, but the cashier told us they were too busy to make anything but the octopus takoyaki, so I let Kamran get that with the promise that I’d try one of the six dough balls. Twenty minutes later, we were standing outside with our friends and a crowd of other hungry customers when the cook yelled our number out the window and everyone else repeated it until we came forward.

We took our treats to the yard of St. Mark’s Church on 10th St. and dug in. The okonomiyaki tastes pretty much exactly how you expect it to–like fried cabbage, ginger, bacon, BBQ sauce, and mayo. Only it’s not like eating heavy American junk food that makes your pores oil up and your stomach bloat; with this stuff, you somehow feel as if you’ve just eaten something healthy. If you like the taste of cabbage, this thing will totally delight you. If you don’t, get it anyway and peel the pork off the top, because you can’t go wrong with bacon and BBQ sauce.

You don’t feel healthy with the takoyaki. It’s seriously a mouthful of soft, chewy doughnut. And not a fluffy doughnut, either, but an extremely dense one. Despite the fact that I’ve had takoyaki before with little squeamishness, I made Kamran eat the chunk of octopus from mine so I could have just the slightly-fishy shell. Back when I had takoyaki the first time, Kamran had been force-feeding me all sorts of fish to try to acclimate me, but he’s let his efforts slacken lately, and I’m back to being weirded out by seafood. I can’t imagine how good that little ball of fried dough would’ve been had it been filled with cheese.

This isn’t anywhere close to American comfort food, but it was a great experience, and I do consider myself lucky for having tried it, as New York magazine said I should. It was lots of interesting food at a great price, and not having a place to sit down with it was half the fun.

While riding the bus down 2nd Ave. a couple of weekends ago, I forced Dr. Boyfriend out the back door and into a shop called Schaller & Weber, thinking it was a cheese store. Because its sign is yellow and red, which everyone knows are the universal colors of cheese. But no, it turned out to be a totally famous and ancient meat shop that we later saw profiled on this Anthony Bourdain special about disappearing Manhattan culture (about two minutes and 45 seconds in).

One wall of the store was taken up by a display case of various sausages and terrines, the other wall was a refrigerated case of smoked whole fishes and cod roe, and the single section of shelves that filled the entire middle of the tiny room was stacked with foreign chocolates. Which is even better than cured meats, obviously. But there was one little shelf hidden around a corner in the back that contained this:

And the question is: how much would I have to pay you to eat fish balls in their own bouillon?

I really hate that loving bacon has become such a trendy thing–i.e. Josea in the Bacon is a Vegetable t-shirt in last season’s “Top Chef”–but I do love that I can now basically find it everywhere and in everything.

Case in point: Mo’s Bacon Bar by Vosges Haute Chocolat, modeled here by my boyfriend and fellow smoked meats fan, Kamran:

We spotted it amongst the coffee-flavored beer and the tofu jerky at Whole Foods, and since my co-worker Tim is always raving about his bacon-flavored gum, we went for it. The website directs you to “rub your thumb over the chocolate bar to release the aromas of smoked applewood bacon flirting with deep milk chocolate” and to “snap off just a tiny piece and place it in your mouth, let the lust of salt and sweet coat your tongue”. (Comma splice and all.)

We, of course, gobbled the thing without savoring a minute of it, but let me tell you–we still felt pretty lusty. It wasn’t just slices of pork dipped in chocolate like I’d feared (and like Kamran had wished) but was a solid bar of dark chocolate with tiny, super-crispy chunks. Initially, it was sort of like biting into a Nestle Crunch, because all I got was texture. But then the saltiness hit. And then the slightest bit of baconness.

So what I’m saying is that if you like red meatstuffs, your reaction will be along the lines of this:

But if you aren’t fond of the idea of flesh in your desserts, Mo’s Bacon Bar will still likely not completely gross you out. At $8 ($7.50 on the website), though, you may just want to throw some salt on your Hershey’s and call it even. Or try out the completely vegan and hilarious-in-a-confusing-way bacolicio.us, which my extra-meaty friend Mike brought to my attention this weekend.