[Pigging by Wilfrid: January 18 2010]
I dropped by DBGB on da Bowery several times in the months after it first opened and gave it, I thought, a good review, particularly liking the specialty sausages.
Due for a return, I thought I should take the opportunity to sample the boudin, singled out in more than one end-of-year "best of" list.
Easier said than done, without a reservation. Not planning an extended meal, I thought I'd venture the spacious bar midweek, confident in finding a first-come-first-served perch. It took a while. This bar is slammed, and with drinkers as much as eaters. Indeed, one of the drawbacks for the restaurant of the laissez-faire seating policy is that groups can chill indefinitely in the appealing (if loud) atmosphere, toying with a glass of water and a small white wine, while would-be diners have nowhere to sit.
I did learn one interesting fact, though. I had thought the long (two or even three-seater) bar-stools were a gesture toward communal dining. In fact, some foolish rule restricts the number of seats the bar can have to seven - so Daniel just made them bigger.
The craft beer list here can be faulted neither for ambition nor expense. I zeroed in on something within the reasonable bounds of exoticism, a local Freshchester IPA, and then was diverted from my boudin quest by squab en croûte. A sucker for meat pie, I had to try it. I've previously expressed my reservations about the charcuterie program at Bar Boulud uptown, not because it's so awful, but because the claims made for it are so ringing that one might expect pristine execution. Which could lead to disappointment.
Here again, the squab pie looked pretty - squab breast surrounded by forcemeat in pastry. Whether in the making or in the storage of the finished dish, however, the pastry had gone damp and flabby. It had a paste-like mouthfeel. The filling, while pleasant, was - like terrines I've eaten at Bar Boulud - somewhat bland. A nice huckleberry relish on the side.
The boudin was kind of interesting. On presentation, I assumed this was a bar menu portion - in fact, it's priced the same ($14) as the dinner menu, so it's just considerably smaller than other sausage dishes I've tried at DBGB. The one slice of blood pudding presented here would be laughed out the door of a Brussels bistro - after all, this is hardly treated as a delicacy in most countries - but never mind.
This dish has been described as a "masterpiece." In fact, it's a fairly conventional slice of blood pudding (or black sausage, or morcilla, or blutwurst or boudin noir) - creamy but thankfully not runny in texture - well peppered, as is correct, if a little under-salted. This dish, made throughout Europe, the Caribbean, and elsewhere, as a way to use up pig's blood, can vary in its additional ingredients. A black pudding from the north of England, and most French boudins, are studded with cubes of white pork fat. In Spain, morcilla often features rice; in Italy, budino can be fruit-studded. Dominican morcilla, readily available around town, tends to be blood and blood only.
DBGB's boudin stakes a menu claim to being Basquaise. My limited research suggests that the Basque will indeed poke bits of intestine and tripe into their pudding, and so I am happy to accept DBGB's use of pig's head as authentic. For me, it interrupts the texture of the sausage somewhat, but the little chunks of meat are nice enough. The mashed potatoes are smoothly done.
Pleasant, but I'll reserve "masterpiece" for another occasion.
