Also, food
Right before the mental squickfest of Sleep No More, we hit WD50 for the tasting menu.
This is the bread. Light sesame crackers, basically.
First course. Rock shrimp with olives and a horseradish/lima bean goo. Decent. Not spectacular, but decent.
Second course was probably the most interesting. The everything bagel there's made from ice cream. The cream cheese has been freeze-dried or had something else done to it that renders it really similar to the astronaut ice cream you could get in the foil pouch when you were a kid and went to a science museum. The salmon's been pulverized and dried into these short little fibers. Not quite powder, but not long enough to be threads. You eat all of these at once and...it tastes like a goddamn bagel with lox and cream cheese.
This was one of the best: foie-lafel. Foie-gras goo breaded in crushed chickpeas and fried, along with some hummus and a fava bean tabooli.
Another neat one. Just a really good poached egg (if the whole molecular gastronomy thing has done one beneficial thing, it's made perfect eggs a total no-brainer), with some pumpernickel crisps, inside an edible shell (which turned out to be composed of egg white, edible clay, and some other stuff):
This one was my favorite of the night. King oyster (mushroom, not bivalve) udon, with a banana molasses and the best sweetbreads I've ever eaten:
Tai snapper, asian pear, little chunks of solid coffee, and an excellent smoky tomato goo:
I'm back and forth between this and the foielafel as the #2 of the night. Sous-vide quail, confit turnips, and some nasturtium yogurt. The quail and the turnips were the best example of each I've ever had.
Lamb. Really rare, insanely tender lamb. The accompaniment's a mix of sushi rice and pine nuts that tasted like it was cooked directly in lamb demiglace. Incredibly rich and awesome.
On to the desserts. Black sesame sorbet, popcorn, mango puree, yuzu. The popcorn meant that you kept getting these little salty nuggets as you ate this. Very good.
This one was spectacular. Buckwheat sorbet, buckwheat strusel, green tea foam, and rhubarb. I'd never had buckwheat in a non-savory form and this was excellent.
This was the dessert winner. Ricotta ice cream, crumbled-up hot long pepper shortbread, and a beet sauce, and a big ribbon of a perfect genache. The red crumblies are more of the beet sauce, probably liquid-nitrogen-frozen like Dipping Dots, they eventually melted. The plating was also really fitting for the later Macbeth thing.
It was Jason's birthday; we didn't mention this to the staff but they must have overheard because this little freebie came out. The candle's just a tube of frozen coconut milk, it had a real birthday candle inside so there was something to set on fire, and the cake's a coconut cheesecake with a bit of chocolate inside. Nice. Nice. Not thrilling, but nice.
And this was the wrap-up. Frozen rice crispy balls (vanilla ice cream inside) and fried rice pudding balls (with some sugar goo inside).
Yeah, I'd do this again.
This is the bread. Light sesame crackers, basically.
First course. Rock shrimp with olives and a horseradish/lima bean goo. Decent. Not spectacular, but decent.
Second course was probably the most interesting. The everything bagel there's made from ice cream. The cream cheese has been freeze-dried or had something else done to it that renders it really similar to the astronaut ice cream you could get in the foil pouch when you were a kid and went to a science museum. The salmon's been pulverized and dried into these short little fibers. Not quite powder, but not long enough to be threads. You eat all of these at once and...it tastes like a goddamn bagel with lox and cream cheese.
This was one of the best: foie-lafel. Foie-gras goo breaded in crushed chickpeas and fried, along with some hummus and a fava bean tabooli.
Another neat one. Just a really good poached egg (if the whole molecular gastronomy thing has done one beneficial thing, it's made perfect eggs a total no-brainer), with some pumpernickel crisps, inside an edible shell (which turned out to be composed of egg white, edible clay, and some other stuff):
This one was my favorite of the night. King oyster (mushroom, not bivalve) udon, with a banana molasses and the best sweetbreads I've ever eaten:
Tai snapper, asian pear, little chunks of solid coffee, and an excellent smoky tomato goo:
I'm back and forth between this and the foielafel as the #2 of the night. Sous-vide quail, confit turnips, and some nasturtium yogurt. The quail and the turnips were the best example of each I've ever had.
Lamb. Really rare, insanely tender lamb. The accompaniment's a mix of sushi rice and pine nuts that tasted like it was cooked directly in lamb demiglace. Incredibly rich and awesome.
On to the desserts. Black sesame sorbet, popcorn, mango puree, yuzu. The popcorn meant that you kept getting these little salty nuggets as you ate this. Very good.
This one was spectacular. Buckwheat sorbet, buckwheat strusel, green tea foam, and rhubarb. I'd never had buckwheat in a non-savory form and this was excellent.
This was the dessert winner. Ricotta ice cream, crumbled-up hot long pepper shortbread, and a beet sauce, and a big ribbon of a perfect genache. The red crumblies are more of the beet sauce, probably liquid-nitrogen-frozen like Dipping Dots, they eventually melted. The plating was also really fitting for the later Macbeth thing.
It was Jason's birthday; we didn't mention this to the staff but they must have overheard because this little freebie came out. The candle's just a tube of frozen coconut milk, it had a real birthday candle inside so there was something to set on fire, and the cake's a coconut cheesecake with a bit of chocolate inside. Nice. Nice. Not thrilling, but nice.
And this was the wrap-up. Frozen rice crispy balls (vanilla ice cream inside) and fried rice pudding balls (with some sugar goo inside).
Yeah, I'd do this again.