94. Eat at WD-50 Restaurant

Sitting at our booth for dinner

I'm not a foodie, but I like watching Top Chef.   And it introduced me to lots of amazing cooking techniques, restaurants, and food presentations.  Cliche, right?  But in all seriousness, I don't think I had a full understanding of everything a meal could be until I started watching gourmet food television.

And since we moved to NYC, I've wanted to eat at WD-50, Wylie Dufraine's restaurant.  Why?  Because his dishes look amazing.  And because the more I learned about molecular gastronomy, the more curious I became.

I tried to convince Nate to go to WD-50 a long time ago, but he was utterly uninterested in paying way too much money for an artfully designed bite-sized dish.  I understood where he was coming from, but he just wasn't getting the full picture.  So we watched Top Chef together, and I showed him some molecular gastronomy stuff, and sure enough, a couple of years later he was excited about the possibility.  Of course, we decide it's time to make a reservation and set aside some serious moolah, and lo and behold, we find out I'm pregnant!  And no, I'm not going to a fancy restaurant when I have dietary restrictions and everything makes me nauseous.  No way.

our drinks

It took until last month to go.  My mom was in town and offered to take care of LP, and we called the restaurant the required month ahead of time and got a table.  We went all out, with drinks, appetizers, entrees, dessert and coffee.

They have a tasting menu, but it's $140 per person, and though we were planning on ordering well, it still seemed a bit extreme.  I'm not sure if I regret it, as it might have been nice to get a sample of everything.  On the other hand, there were too many "offensive" ingredients in the tasting menu.  I'm not a big fan of nuts, or shellfish, etc.

eggs benedict

No matter, the table next to us got the tasting menu, and since this is one of those restaurants where tables are ridiculously close together, we were able to see every plate they got.   And they were beautiful.

Surprisingly, the portions were normal sized.  I was expecting minuscule dots on the plate. Instead, we got a hearty meal, and by the time is was time to order dessert we were both pretty full.  We ended up splitting dessert and getting hot tea to settle our stomachs.

cold fried chicken

Veredict?  Everyone should go.  I honestly expected to not like the dishes.  However, the flavors were also very interesting, though some plates were some successful than others.  The best was Eggs Benedict, the worse was probably the tabasco caviar component in Nate's Cold Fried Chicken (and I have no idea what technique was used to make that)


Ultimately, for me it comes down to a unique restaurant experience.  When I go to an Italian restaurant (just to give an example), I know I *could* cook this at home if I had enough time, patience and access to fresh ingredients.  However, no matter how much I cook, I will never have at home liquid nitrogen, sous vide cooking stuff, the ability to make foams, and the other gadgets that molecular gastronomists use.

duck breast

fish

chamomile dessert