My father treated a group of us at wd~50, a restaurant in the lower East of Manhattan. I chose the restaurant from Adam Platt’s Where To Eat In 2007 feature in New York Magazine. That led to me discovering Wylie Dufresne and his notoriety on the culinary scene.
Appropriately, the next evening during the finale of Bravo’s Top Chef, Wylie Dufresne shows up as a judge. I had been loosely following the season but knew of one contestant’s (Marcel) fan-boy admiration for Dufresne’s skills in molecular gastronomy. Anthony Bourdain wrote a classic commentary on the contestants in which he describes Marcel as “is there anything this guy won’t foam” and “he’s no Wylie Dufresne“.
I agree with the general consensus that Marcel was a chump and was happy to see New York’s Ilan Hall take the prize. The irony couldn’t be much sweeter than Marcel’s final dinner failing while trying a gastro-trick of encapsulating vinaigrette inside a bubble of sodium alginate for a salad — clearly designed to impress Dufresne. But at the end of the day, Marcel served up a salad which is, as the judges remarked, amateur hour. Apparently paprika and saffron is enough to win.
Enough on that tangent.
While studying the wd~50 menu, I had decided early on that I would be ordering one of Dufresne’s signature dishes: pickled beef tongue. It’s not my first time eating lengua as anyone who has ventured into a dive-taqueria with me (wait, is there a such thing as a non-dive taqueria?) knows. But pickled beef tongue? Absolutely. And paired with the strange cubes of fried mayonaise and crumbles of onion marmalade, it was an absolute hit. The tongue itself was shaved ultra thin and served much like an antipasta course.
The clear winner for the first course was not the tongue, however. Two others at our table ordered an appetizer consisting of pinenuts with smoked octopus and rabbit sausage. It tastes like none of those ingredients yet all of them at the same time. It’s a divine culinary experience that could only come from a mad scientist like Dufresne.
I followed my tongue appetizer with belly — pork belly. I had never had pork belly before and I can’t wait to have it again. It is everything there is to love about bacon but in a piece of pork. The portion was spot on so the richness was not overpowering, especially paired with the root vegetables.
Finally, the desserts were some of the more original platings and presentations I have experienced in a restaurant. My order can be best described as a chocolate ganoush ribbon stretched across the right 1/4 of the plate with puddles of avocado foam, chocolate cookie crumbs and licorish intersecting and orbiting. I was too mezmorized with the design to even concern myself with what the others at our table were eating. Also as a special treat, the server brought a small passion fruit sorbet cake with a lit candle. The servers failed to sing happy birthday, however.
wd~50 turned out to be everything I was looking for; a unique culinary experience with great food that I would never prepare for myself or anyone else in a million years. This is my favorite restaurant in New York.
I was just listening to The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible
