Things that are making you happy*******food and drink edition****** - Page 6

Awesome.

Just landed a 21# case of fresh frozen duck legs for $81. I love Sysco.

Tasting menu at Blackbird tonight.

Three layers deep. More duck leg/thighs than I can shake a stick at. Thanks to Sysco, I paid about 1/5th retail. Duck confit this weekend

Very nice!

Incredible tasting menu. And one of the best desserts of my life. Unfortunately, those bastards poured me full glasses on the wine pairings and so all i can do now is watchin a movie with my gf and goin to sleepz. update on the morrow.

Expecting a full write up. Of the dinner.

yup, bastards.

Will do. Although "incredible" is not the right way to put it. It was very interesting, however we both found tha tmost of the courses didn't relaly "work" that well together. I cannot think of a single item on the entire menu that was prepped incorrectly or wrong in and of itself, but the savory courses as a whole seemed dischordant.
Still, a dessert that in my mind is the desser closest to perfect ive ever had.
anyway i'm not making sense now. going to go to bed and watch a movie and full write up tomorrow night once the babe is gone.

MMMMkay, here's the tasting menu

bouche- smoked sturgeon with green almonds

Peanut gazpacho with cured hiramasa, rhubarb, pine, brittle peanut and green peppercorn

Crispy maryland soft shell crab with honey custard, edamame, yuba and soy caramel

Seared ahi with green garbanzos, picholine olives, smoked buttermilk and candied wild rice

Hudson valley foie gras torchon with black garlic, green strawberries and shrimp salt

Crispy walleye with green papaya, dandelion greens, walnuts and charred beef vinaigrette

Stuffed bobwhite quail with black cumin sausage, charred avocado and house-made giardiniera

Grilled wagyu flat iron and warm bone marrow with pickled cippolini onions, caraway crumble, chickweed and pomegranate molasses

Intermezzo of cherry sorbet with cherries and cocoa nibs

White honey parfait with coconut sponge, passion fruit, rum and caramelized white chocolate

Hazelnut dacquoise with espresso, crispy chicory caramel and apricot kernel sherbet



Menu sounded delicious, I was excited to try it. Tasting was $100, wine pairings were $50. They poured a champagne with the bouche and the first course (sorry guys, don't remember any exact wines). The gazpacho was interesting, and it tasted good, but the peanut flavor overpowered everything else, w hich was sad for the fish and the rhubarb.
Second course was the softshell and was served with a vouvray. The softshell was fantastic. I'm not especially a big fan of deep fried softshell-- much prefer panfried, but this was a good course. Perfectly cooked edamame.
Third course was tuna and they poured an Adelsheim Pinot Gris. Tuna was perfectly cooked, and the rice was a great little sweet, crunchy bite. But the smoked buttermilk just made very little sense and tasted strange. Still a good course though.
Fourth course-- Torchon. They poured a late harvest gewurtz from OR. The wine was great, BTW. And the torchon was great. Very well made torchon. However, black garlic is a VERY forward flavor to serve with foie. It overpowered it. That, and they garnished with whole cilantro leaves (full size, not micro) which also overpowered it a bit.
Oh, and Lish doesn't like foie, so they subbed her a sweetbread dish. (Glazed veal sweetbreads with with lime onions, tamarind, bee pollen and fried chocolate ) This course was wonderful. I actually wish I had the sweetbreads instead of torchon. So good.
Course 5- walleye. Probably my favorite savory of the night. The walleye had about a quarter inch thick layer of crisp on the presentation side, and the rest was just so silky smooth. I asked the waiter if the fish had been sous vide (it wasn't), that is how beautiful the texture on this fish was. Just masterfully cooked. The papaya was sweet, the dandelion greens bitter, and the charred beef vin was acidic. The charred beef vinaigrette was paper thin slices of beef shaped into cylinders and dehydrated. They tasted great, and were crunchy, but afterward they were very chewy and took a while to get down. So that is a minus. Oh, Provencal rose with this.
Course 6 was the quail and was rather forgettable. The homemade black cumin sausage was interesting, but the rest of the course was rather blah. They poured a 04 Gigondas with this. Paired very well.
7- Wagyu. With this they poured an 07 Ridge Lytton Springs. This course was very well done. The wagyu was understated, and integrated into the course rather than just being some "prize protein" like a lot of America tasting menus seem to treat it as. The whole course worked together very well and the wine pairing was spot on.
Mezzo-- beautiful cherry sorbet, with quite honestly the best cherries i've ever tasted. Very sweet and fruity, complemented by the bitter cocoa nibs. Good mezzo.
course 8- The most perfect dessert I've ever had in my life. Seriously, I give this dessert a 9.9 out of 10. The ONLY problem with this dessert were the little rum "caviar." It was just unecessary. It didn't add anything to the dish, so in a way it detracted. But still, the warm coconut sponge was incredible, the whit ehoney parfait was so delicately and subtly sweet that it was beautiful. The passionfruit fluid gel was a revelation . I love passionfruit when it is used well. So wonderfully bright and sweet but also acidic and slightly sour. It was used perfectly here. And the caramelized white chocolate added just the perfect note of a heft to an otherwise very light dessert. It complemented so well. This was paired with a sweet grenache that was okay.
Final course: Hazelnut dacquoise. Very well done, but at this point, it would have been impossible to beat the previous course. Flavors and textures were spot on, though. They poured a brandy with this.

Overall thoughts: new chef de cuisine is doing things very well. I think a little bit of the menu was too "intellectualized" and made for the chef rather than for the customers. But it all still tasted good. Some courses had certain parts that stand out as "why is this really here" which is too bad, because every component of every course was prepared very well, so that detracts from the plate.
I havce and will continue to recommend it to anyone in town. The wine pairings were FULL glasses, not even joking. By the end of the night, I had downed 8 glasses of wine and a pour of brandy. For $50, that is pretty damn insane. And the wines were all quite good, and the pairings all worked.
Also, I would recommend going in for lunch, since they're currently doing the 3 course prix fixe deal. And no matter when you go, please make sure to get the white honey parfait. I would honestly go in to blackbird again just for that dessert. I cannot honestly capture in words how perfect it was.

I thought it was a nice write up, but when I look at a menu like that, my first thought is "why the fuck are they torturing food like this?" Every item seems to have too many tastes, and at least one is something "off," or "new," or whatever. Why does everybody need five, six, seven things on a plate? The best dishes are generally two or three tastes in harmony.

That was my first thought too, after each course. Lish didn't enjoy it all that well. It was way too overdone for her. She prefers much simpler food, like you describe. I don't mind food like this, but there was just too much. It just felt like the Chef was cooking for himself and not for the person eating his plate, if that makes sense. But I imagine that it makes perfect sense to you.

Plain old vanilla semifreddo.