Docsconz- The Blog

Top 5 Dishes of 2010

I already posted my Top Pasta Dishes of the Year here. At this point, I'm pretty much done dining out for the year, so I think it is reasonable to post this now, even though the year is not quite over yet. I ate extremely well in 2010 with a number of exceptional dishes. Here are the most memorable. I did not select more than one dish from any particular meal.

1. Mackerel Pickled in Hay with Green Tomatoes - Restaurant AOC - Copenhagen, DK - this dish was simply stunning on every level. Mackerel is not my favorite fish, in general, but this was made with perfect specimens and treated in such a way that it achieved perfect balance, deep rich and wonderful flavor. In addition, the plating was spectacular, using a limited but pure color spectrum and subtle, but supremely beautiful plating.
2. Chilled Vegetable Minestrone - Town House - Chilhowie, Virginia: Another extraordinarily beautiful dish, Chef John Shields provided deep and total flavor, coaxing every last bit of wonderfulness from these gorgeous, multicolored vegetables. I wrote, "Consisting of 19 different vegetables sliced into thin ribbons, rolled into cylinders and stood on end in a bowl with a vegetable consommé poured around it table side, the dish was equally impressive on the palate combining a myriad of flavors playing off each other. This was a home run on the first pitch, one of the more spectacular courses I've had anywhere."
3. Beet Salad - The Oval Room - Washington, D.C.: How can a beet salad make my top 5 dishes of the year? When it is this beautiful, colorful, original and absolutely delicious it can. I wrote, Chef Tony "Conte's salad, 'roasted organic baby beets, passion fruit gelee, horseradish, Minus 8 (vinegar) shallot dressing & micro arugula,' blended brilliant color with brilliant flavor. The passion fruit and minus 8 provided a nice acid kick, while the horseradish added a bit of spice."
4. Walnut and Blackberries, Cream and Powder - noma/Corton- Copenhagen, DK/NY, NY: I had a slew of wonderful dishes at noma, but this one stood out the most for me, taking ingredients that I could normally not care less about and turning them into one of the most delicious desserts that I have ever had. I wrote, "I'm not sure that I have ever tasted a better dessert than Walnut and Blackberries, Cream and Powder, despite the fact that I am generally not terribly enthusiastic about either walnuts or blackberries. Walnut is incorporated into an ice cream and a powder. The powder is made using walnut oil and maltodextrin. The dish includes frozen cream and dried blackberry. Minimalist in appearance, the flavors are anything but, achieving great depth and perfect balance. I loved this when I had it in NY at the Corton dinner and I loved it no less here."
5. Roasted Parsnip - Blue Hill at Stone Barns - Pocantico Hills, N.Y. Sometimes, apparent simplicity can be deceptive. This dish was simply delicious, but all the more mind-boggling to come from an ordinarily non-descript parsnip. I wrote, "We were presented with an item that appeared to be some sort of meat or ham, though it was unlike any meat or ham I had ever seen before. Flattened and slightly elongated, clearly roasted with beautiful exterior browning, we were told that it was a parsnip, a very, very large parsnip that had just been harvested after having been planted the previous March. Almost one year in the ground, this massive parsnip was left in the cold ground to encourage the root to convert its natural starches into sugar to help prevent freezing. To assist even further development of the root's sugars and their caramelization, Barber roasted the parsnips under the weight of bricks. Once presented to us, the roasted parsnips were returned to the kitchen to emerge just a short time later fully transformed. Furthering their pork-like impression, the parsnips re-emerged in a form that, to me, resembled a strip of suckling pig meat under a rich porcine gravy. Served alongside the parsnip was a red cabbage ketchup. As sweet as the parsnip was, the dish, thanks largely to the "gravy" was very much a savory dish. Unfortunately, I never did get what the "gravy" was comprised of. It tasted of pork or even turkey, rich and meaty with plenty of umami, but could this dish really have been served with anything but vegetable components? To me, this dish was a sterling example of a trompe l'oiel style of cooking. It was a veritable faux pork dish. This parsnip was superlative in every way - delicious, beautiful and down right mind-boggling and fun. It was Barber at his absolute best, taking an ordinarily mundane ingredient and without any overt tricks transforming it into something truly remarkable. I could not imagine a parsnip being presented as a parsnip being any more enjoyable than this was." 

Next week, I'll be coming out with a listing of my Top 25 Restaurant Meals of 2010.

My Top Five Restaurant Pasta Dishes of 2010

It's in my blood that I love pasta. To me, pasta is one of the most satisfying dishes that I can have. I cook it a lot and I eat it a lot in restaurants. I had plenty of outstanding pasta in restaurants this year, traditional and creative. The three most memorable and most sensationally delicious pasta dishes I had in 2010 were:

1. Trofie, Squab & White Truffle - Roberta's - Brooklyn, N.Y. Pure decadence. Forget the freshly shaved white truffles for just a moment. This dish would have been killer without them. Carlo Mirarchi takes squab that he ages himself and minces the meat and the organs using the whole squab and then makes a Bolognese type sauce, which he uses to flavor immaculately cooked, perfectly al dente trofie to create an umami rich, textural tour de force of pasta. Now add an intoxicating, freshly shaved snow of white Alba truffle and the transport to heaven is complete. (No post yet).
2. Roasted Potato and Parmesan Gnocchi with Iberico Bellota Ham, Morel Mushrooms, Fava Beans and Local Scallions - Stella! - New Orleans, LA.  More decadence. Perfect, light and fluffy gnocchi, some of the finest ham in the world, fresh favas, Parmiggiano and incredible morels all executed without a flaw by Scott Boswell and his crack kitchen team - this dish simply rocked.(see here for the whole dinner)
3. Baby Goat Agnolotti, sweet carrot and spicy paprika - Brooks Headley (Del Posto) - Pastry Chefs at Aldea Dinner - NY, NY. If the pastry chef at Del Posto is making pasta this wonderful, what must the Chef Mark Ladner be doing? I must find out! (see here for the whole dinner)
4. Whole Wheat Pici, Shaved Matsutakes, Toasted Hazelnut & Rosemary - The Oval Room - Washington, D.C. Tony Conte's perfectly cooked and seasoned pasta supported the terrific, savory sweetness of the shaved mushrooms leaving the rosemary and hazelnut to play accent notes. (see here for the whole dinner)
5. Miso & Yuzu Kosho Casarecce with Crab - Alex Talbot & Aki Kamozawa (Ideas in Food) - The Alchemy of Taste and Smell Dinner at The Astor Center - N.Y., N.Y. Served with chopsticks that had been twice sprayed with a scent of coffee, black pepper and nutmeg, the combination of the perfectly ala-minute-cooked, bright tasting pasta, the lusciously rich crab and the pepper-rich scent made for an impeccably balanced, deeply delicious and soulfully satisfying dish. (see here for the whole dinner)

The Magic of minibar

Magic. Fun, awe-inspiring and belief-defying, magic delights the soul. The experience at Jose Andres' minibar, currently a restaurant within a restaurant with-in the Pan-Latin themed Cafe Atlantico, offers a magical experience that indeed delights the soul, but it also delights the palate, something few good magic shows provide. Though much magic is based on illusion, the food at minibar is quite real and quite good.

I'd been to minibar twice before (sort of) and each time had a wonderful experience. A recounting of my first minibar experience can be found here. Our second time wasn't a pure minibar experience, though it incorporated a lot of minibar dishes into a special anniversary meal at Cafe Atlantico at a table adjacent to the minibar and was just about as amgical.The food, the closest thing to an elBulli experience available outside of Spain, is playful and creative, but with more of an American reference point than one would find at elBulli or the other creative restaurants of Spain. When I saw a dinner for 6 - inclusive of wine pairings, tax and gratuity - pop up on an online auction to benefit the Culinary Institute of America last spring, I bid to win and succeeded.

The perfect opportunity to use my auction win presented itself this past September to celebrate my good friend, Tom Person's 50th birthday. We decided to celebrate with a weekend in DC along with our wives and our mutual good friends, Alex Talbot and Aki Kamozawa of Ideas in Food. We arrived on Friday in time for a fantastic lunch at Bread Line, followed by a truly inspiring dinner at The Oval Room. On Saturday, we visited another Jose Andres restaurant, the impressive Oyamel for a superb Mexican lunch, eating early enough so as to not spoil our appetites for our 8PM seating at minibar.

The auction was for 6 seats at minibar, which meant that we had that entire seating of minibar (there are two seatings per evening - at 6 and at 8:30PM) to ourselves since the restaurant only has 6 seats. Of course the upper parts of Cafe Atlantico blanket the small corner that is minibar, but the feeling is of a totally separate restaurant.

Hail to The Oval Room!

Chef Tony Conte of The Oval Room

Washington D.C.'s The Oval Room isn't really oval, nor does it house the Office of the President of the United States. No, that is the nearby Oval Office, perhaps a bit more well known than the Oval Room, which in some sense is a pity. It's not that the Oval Room is as important as the Oval Office in the grand scheme of things (though some might argue that it is). Rather, it is just that The Oval Room under Chef Tony Conte, really deserves much more attention than it appears to get. The Oval Room setting itself is nice and it is comfortable, though, as a restaurant space, it is nothing extraordinary. It neither accentuates nor detracts from the main reason for being there - the food. Conte's food, which somehow seems to fly under the critical radar, can be truly extraordinary. A recent meal hosted by my good friend, Amy Persons to celebrate her fabulous husband's 50th birthday provides an excellent illustration of just how special his cooking can be.