WD-50

I haven’t had the best luck with restaurant visits on holidays, such as New Year’s Eve. Restaurants tend to simplify and reduce the scope of their menus, while charging more—in some cases a ton more—than they normally would. Our dinner last year at Picholine was a particularly egregious example of this: $800 for two, for a menu that wasn’t worth half that.

Perhaps the common-sense solution this year would have been to stay home, and save the blow-out meal for another evening. But I reasoned there must be a New Year’s Eve dinner in New York that isn’t a rip-off, and I was determined to find it. At WD-50, we hit pay dirt. It was my first holiday meal at a fine dining restaurant that was worth every penny. I reasoned that the eccentric avant-garde chef Wylie Dufresne wouldn’t suddenly start serving airline food just because he has a captive holiday audience. Dufresne did not disappoint.

At WD-50, the nine-course tasting menu normally sells for $105 [since increased to $125]. I don’t mind a reasonable premium, and the cost on New Year’s Eve was $145. That included a champagne toast, and a free disposable camera and party favors on every table, so the price was fairly close to what you’d pay anyway. The optional wine pairings were $85, again a reasonable cost for 9 half-glasses apiece.

This was the menu, with wine pairings shown in italics:

Crispy carmelized cauliflower, bone marrow, wild American caviar
Cava, Avinyo Brut, NV (Penedes, Spain)

Oyster, salsify, fried lentils, kimchee puree
Cava, Avinyo Brut, NV (Penedes, Spain)

Foie gras in the round
Viognier “Sanford and Benedict” Cold Heaven 2005 (Santa Barbara, CA)

Smoked eel, blood orange “zest,” black radish, chicken skin
Pouilly-Fuisse “La Croix” VV Robert-Denogent 2004 (Burgundy, France)

Melted cheddar, black truffle, crispy potato, powdered toast
Pink Wine Pax 2005 (Sonoma, CA)

Mediterranean bass, edamame-rye bread, chive mashed
Valpolicella Classico Superiore TB Bussola 2003 (Veneto, Italy)

Lamb loin, cucumber, pickled tongue, spicy pear, sorrel
Shiraz “Lloyd Reserve” Coriale Vinyards 2001 (McLaren Vale, South Australia)

Banana puree, hazelnut, coffee, parsnip
Commanderia St. John NV (Lemesos, Cyprus)

“Creamsicle,” rooibos, squash, orange blossom
Commanderia St. John NV (Lemesos, Cyprus)

Mango jelly-mastic; Milk chocolate-menthol

Champagne toast
Guy Charlemagne Rose Brut NV (Champagne, France)

Many of the dishes are really indescribable. Dufresne and pastry chef Alex Stupak create combinations of ingredients that you’d never imagine together. How, for instance, does one think of smoked eel, blood orange, black radish, and chicken skin? Just to ask the question is to realize how bizarre it is. And how successful. My friend, who said she normally hates eel, loved this dish.

“Foie gras in the round” was another really odd concoction. Somehow, Dufresne managed to produce little pellets of foie gras, each about half the size of a small pea. Incredulous, we asked the server how it was done. He replied that it’s a trade secret, but it involves liquefying foie gras and combining it with another liquid, an explanation that only adds to the mystery.

Each dish is rather small, and sometimes an ingredient is just a dash of crumbs, such as the powdered toast that came with the melted cheddar, or the light dusting of ground coffee that came with the banana puree. Dufresne’s gimmickry does not stand in the way of good solid cooking. The Mediterranean bass was impeccably prepared, as was the lamb loin.

With so many wacky experiments on the menu, not all could be hits. The gooey oyster (our second course) was dull and not very appetizing. But that was really the only course that I could have done without.

The restaurant was full, and service was a bit variable. Several times we were served food before the associated wine pairing arrived. When I asked our server to slow down the parade of courses, he replied, “Sorry, I don’t control the kitchen.” Our reservation was at 9:00, and we didn’t leave till past midnight, so I wouldn’t say we were pushed out the door. Still, it wasn’t an acceptable answer at a restaurant of WD-50’s calibre.

WD-50 is one of the more casual fine-dining restaurants in town, although on the Lower East Side it’s hard to imagine anything more formal. There were guests in sport coats and fancy dresses, and there were guests in t-shirts and jeans. Most were on the young side, although one table was taken by two older ladies.

In 2003, William Grimes of the Times awarded two stars to WD-50, noting Dufresne’s undeniable talent, but also that “diners are more likely to respond with respect than love.” Three years into the experiment, Dufresne is as sure of his palate as an adoring public is sure of him. This was my second visit to WD-50, so I’m fairly confident that this New Year’s Eve performance was no fluke. WD-50 isn’t for everyone, but for those open-minded souls willing to to think broadly, it’s as good a restaurant as there is.

[Update: In March 2007, Frank Bruni of The Times upgraded WD-50 to three stars.]

WD-50 (50 Clinton Street between Stanton and Rivington Streets, Lower East Side)

Food: ***½
Service: **
Ambiance: **
Overall: ***

Room 4 Dessert

Note: Room 4 Dessert closed in June 2007, after a spat between Will Goldfarb and his investors. Goldfarb originally stated that he would re-open elsewhere, but for now he seems to be content with consulting engagements without having a place of his own.

*

Will Goldfarb has made a name as the mad scientist of desserts, cooking up kooky but delightful sugar rushes at such restaurants as Papillon and Cru. Neither the Times nor the Post liked his creations at Cru, but he took some time off, had a baby, and resurfaced with his own dessert bar in SoHo, Room 4 Dessert. And this time, the Times was smitten.

The wonderful thing about it is that Goldfarb doesn’t have to subsume his vision to somebody else’s concept. The drawback is that diners have to get there from someplace else. So far, it seems to be working. My friend and I dropped by after dinner Friday night at nearby Peasant, only to be told there was a 40-minute wait at 10:00 p.m. The next night, after a dismal meal at the much-farther-away Trestle on Tenth, we gave it one more try, and luckily there were a couple of seats free.

The restaurant occupies a long, narrow storefront. Signage is subtle, and you could easily miss it. Inside, it’s probably 100 feet deep, but so narrow that an NBA player could stretch his arms and touch both side walls. All seating is at the bar. On the menu, which changes regularly, every category begins with “Room 4,” as in “Room 4 Dessert Glass,” “Room 4 Alcohol,” “Room 4 Sweet Wine,” and so forth. 

Desserts at R4D have funky names like “indecent proposal” and “laissez pear.” Individual desserts are $10 each, while tasting plates of four selections are $14 each.  My friend tried “choc ’n’ awe,” a four-dessert tasting of white chocolate cake, cacau mousse, sucree safranee with chocolate cream, and chocolate ice cream. I had bites of each; the mousse and the cake were particularly decadent.

I had “virtual mauritius,” which came with a brown sugar creamy, little pieces of green mango, a iogurt biscuit, and whipped frozen carrot puree. (I am using Goldfarb’s spellings in each case.) The connection to Mauritius was lost on me, but the “iogurt biscuit” was the best of the bunch, closely followed by the creamy brown sugar. The pieces of green mango were cut too small and were rather annoying.

There’s a variety of wine and hard liquor pairings recommended for every dessert. I had a drink called mar.ti.ni ($15), which is what it sounds like, and my friend had champagne ($14). Other drinks have names like “who says cali can’t age” and “hey man, nice priorat.”

Goldfarb prepares most of the desserts himself. When he came over to serve us, I introduced myself by my eGullet handle, and we had a nice chat about the restaurant. When I told him we were turned away the night before, he replied wryly, “You should have complained to the owner.” We talked about his baby girl too, and he brought over a stack of photos. Later, he comped us  a “tootsie roll” (warm chcolate praline mousse, truffled streusel ‘sex panther’, raisins, and tequilla fluid), which was terrific. You couldn’t make this stuff up.

Room 4 Dessert is an expensive indulgence. With two tasting plates at $14 each, and drinks at $14–15, the bill was $57 before tax and tip. For the record, individual desserts have gone up by $1, and tasting plates $2, since the Times review came out in February. The liquor is particularly expensive. We found it a luxury well worth it—but a luxury nonetheless.

Room 4 Dessert (17 Cleveland Place between Spring and Kenmare Streets, SoHo)

Dessert: **
Service: **
Ambiance: *½
Overall: **

Toqué

A friend and I spent the long weekend in Montreal. That gave us two dinners to splurge on. We chose Au Pied de Cochon (reviewed in the last post) and Toqué (pronounced “to-KAY”), which seems to be the dean of Montreal’s fine dining restaurants. We hadn’t reserved in advance, and our hotel concierge was skeptical of our chances on a Saturday night at short notice. However, he managed to secure a 9:30pm reservation, which was just fine for us.

We chose chef Normand Laprise’s seven-course degustation menu ($88). The printed menu doesn’t tell you what you’ll be getting — it’s “an elaborate mystery menu of seven inspired courses.” To the best of my recollection, this is what we had:

• Amuse bouche of cold tomato soup with a cucumber foam, and a crisp mozzarella stick with a chive running up its spine.
• Scallop with strawberry foam. This was the one unsuccessful dish, as the strawberry foam totally overwhelmed the scallop. My friend, who doesn’t eat scallops, was given a seafood ceviche instead, which she enjoyed.
• Tuna tartare on a tortilla, with an avocado puree. This combination of tastes was the second most successful course, after the bass (see below)
• Grilled striped bass, which my friend and I considered the most successful course
• Pork belly, served in a sealed glass jar. This presentation was amusing, but frankly the taste of the pork was completely forgettable.
• Duck breast in a mild pepper sauce, which we noted was an ample sized portion for a tasting menu
• Goat cheese sorbet, which was excellent
• Dessert, which I have entirely forgotten

I apologize for the Spartan descriptions, but that’s about as much as I remember after a long and exhausting day. Service was terrific. The restaurant has a strange affectation of laying all the silverware at a 45-degree angle to the diner, and laying knives on their edge. It presents no inconvenience, and it is even a bit witty, but we wondered about the point of it. The restaurant is enormous and well appointed. Tables are both large and very generously spaced.

This was a very strong degustation menu, and for the $88 price a very compelling dining choice for the visitor to Montreal.

Toqué (900, place Jean-Paul-Riopelle, Montréal, Québec)

Food: ***
Service: ***
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

Gilt

Note: This is a review of Gilt under Chef Paul Liebrandt, who left the restaurant later in 2006. Click here for a review of Gilt under Chef Chris Lee. Those who were as impressed with Liebrandt’s cooking as I was can rejoice: in late 2008, he opened Corton in the former Montrachet space.

*

My friend and I had dinner at Gilt last night. Located in what was once the Villiard Mansion (and is now the Palace Hotel), in the space that was formerly Le Cirque, it is an opulent restaurant that is clearly trying to shoot for the moon. It doesn’t always get there. Chef Paul Liebrandt’s cuisine is adventurous, colorful, thoughtful, and frequently excellent. But there are too many dishes that fail to live up to their promise.

The menu at Gilt changes frequently, and is still clearly undergoing some refinement. Frank Bruni complained that practically half the dishes carried supplements on top of a $92 prix fixe. On last night’s version, I noted a supplement only on the Dover Sole ($12).

We chose the seven-course tasting menu, which is $160 on the website, but was $145 last night. There were, in fact, something closer to eleven courses, including two flights of amuses bouches, white asparagus, foie gras, skate, lobster, a palate cleanser, Berkshire pork belly, cheese course, another palate cleanser, and a degustation of chocolate. Every plating was a work of art.

I’m not adept at remembering ingredients, and Liebrandt puts more into each dish than any chef in town. We found the foie gras, the pork belly, and the cheese course spectacular. Especially notable was a decadent truffle butter that was brought to the table with the foie gras. But both fish courses disappointed. The skate was only about the size of a silver dollar, and it failed to make any impression at all. And there were just two popcorn-sized lumps of lobster. The white asparagus wasn’t as impressive as what Geoffrey Zakarian’s performance of it at Country. The chocolate degustation was terrific if you’re a choc-a-holic, but I think there should have been other options for dessert.

Gilt is clearly trying to offer four-star service, and at times it succeeds. For instance, Gilt was just the third restaurant I’ve been to (along with Alain Ducasse and Per Se) that has your coat ready when you leave, without the attendant even asking your name. But there were peculiar glitches. The wrong wine glasses were delivered to the table: a captain whispered, “No, the bordeaux glasses,” and the right stemware was quickly substituted. When you leave your table, the staff brings a fresh napkin. Or they’re supposed to. On one occasion, a new napkin wasn’t there immediately; on another, I had to ask for it.

Frank Bruni complained about the $1,000 glass of wine at Gilt. It’s still on the menu (a Screaming Eagle cabernet that’s ridiculously priced everywhere). When he first visited, wines by the glass didn’t come cheaper than $18, but there are now choices as low as $12 (though you’ll more likely pay at least $14). For wines by the bottle, there are plenty of choices under $100, and even a handful under $50. For a restaurant of this calibre, I can’t complain about that. My friend and I chose a Martinelli Reserve Pinot Noir at $122, which was out-of-this-world. It was more than we usually spend, but it was a night to splurge. Gilt does gouge you in other ways. Cocktails are $15 apiece, which is on the high side, and we were charged $9 each for capuccinos.

The room is small, elegant, and comfortable. The door to the kitchen is up a short flight of steps, and open to view, which detracts slightly from the magic of the occasion. The hard polished wood surfaces reflect sound, and when the restaurant fills up it gets a bit noisier than I’d like.

The bill came to just a hair under $500, including tax. We went home happy, and much of the food was as terrific as it should be, but at that price there should be a sustained excellence that was lacking. I can see why Frank Bruni awarded just two stars, but that seems almost punitive for a restaurant that aims as high as Gilt, and often succeeds.

Gilt (455 Madison Avenue at 50th Street, in the Palace Hotel, East Midtown)

Food: ***
Service: ***½
Ambiance: ***
Overall: ***

davidburke & donatella

Note: Click here for a more recent review of this restaurant, which has been renamed David Burke Townhouse.

The restaurant davidburke & donatella is the creation of chef David Burke and colleague Donatella Arpaia, who minds the front-of-house. Burke made his name cooking in other people’s restaurants (Park Avenue Cafe) before opening this restaurant with his friend Donatella late last year. A friend and I visited on Saturday night. It is the best two-star restaurant I’ve been to, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it gunning for three if a re-review comes along.

It’s a beautiful space, decorated with the kind of wit that you find in Burke’s inventive menu. There are two dining rooms, and we were seated in the larger of the two. It seems the owners were determined to use every inch of available space, as there was barely room to navigate between the closely-spaced tables. It was hard to hear over the din.

When we sat down, a folded paper menu was on our plates. This was the day’s tasting menu — five courses, $75. It was a typeset menu, on top of which Burke had scribbled additional daily specials and witty artwork. I was tempted, but my friend was not, so we moved onto the main menu, which our server came by and handed out.

Bread arrives — cooked in its own copper casserole, and steaming hot. The butter comes as a modern art sculpture that you almost regret cutting into. There wasn’t quite enough time to appreciate this before the amuse-bouche, a small confection of salmon ribbons.

To start, I ordered the foie gras and lobster appetizer. It came in two hollowed-out egg shells, each with its own tiny little spoon. My friend had the gazpacho, which came with a shrimp profiterole and a mound of guacamole.

I had read about the origins of Burke’s “Bronx” veal chop on eGullet (it’s a cut Burke invented), and I had to give that a try. The difficulty with this dish is that the chop itself is an awkward shape, and it’s a struggle to find an anchor point for your fork. It was a tasty piece of veal, but I don’t like to fight fight for my food. My friend had the pork chop, which I tasted. It had a wonderful char and was perfectly tender.

The wine list is a confusing jumble. Within the standard categories (red/white), the wines are grouped by degrees — that is, each of the main headings is a number with the little “degree” symbol. Was this the degrees latitude where the grape was grown? The temperature at which the wine is stored? We could not tell. It is also a pricey list, and we struggled to find a good choice in our range. Finally we asked the sommelier for a suitable choice under $60 a bottle, and he produced an off-the-menu shiraz at $55 that we were pleased with.

db&d is known for its desserts. The table next to us were friends of pastry chef James Distefano, and they got a free sample of everything on the menu. You would have to carry me home if I ate that much dessert, but it certainly gave us an idea of the range of creativity on offer here. I had the Coconut Layer Cake, my friend the Dark Chocolate & Praline Torte, which were both winners.

David Burke himself seemed to have a few friends in the house last night, as he came out of the kitchen several times to greet diners. I expected a light turnout, given that it is a holiday weekend, but the restaurant was packed. However, we got an 8:00pm reservation that I called for only on Wednesday, which perhaps wouldn’t be available on an ordinary weekend.

There is much to appreciate at db&d, and on one visit I thought we had barely scratched the surface. I will have to return.

davidburke & donatella (133 E. 61st Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, Upper East Side)