Union Pacific: Ten Years Ago

[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid:  June 18, 2012]

After the quick round-trip to London, a quiet week at home in New York.  The main event, unquestionably, was an extended dinner at Union Pacific -- a restaurant which should have had a much longer life.

Something here about supping with the devil.

Always a pleasure to enter Union Pacific on East 22nd, passing over a little bridge into a quiet oasis of a dining space.  This must have been a tasting menu, I suppose -- perhaps the impeccably seasonal market menu the restaurant always offered:

Aparagus with morels and caviar

Smoked salmon

Blue fin sashimi with fresh fruit

Sautéed foie gras with rhubarb

Soft shell crab with dried shrimp sauce

Poached Copper River salmon with rhubarb

Rack of lamb, eggplant, lovage purée

Desserts

The wines included a Blanc de Blancs champagne, a Meursault,  a Riesling, a Chambolle-Musigny, and something sweet with the desserts.

We can tell from that menu that rhubarb was in the market.  The season for wild salmon too, and I was buying plenty of it from Wild Edibles at Grand Central Market.  I ate it lightly baked, I ate it poached with mangú de platano, and raw with a raspberry-blacberry vinaigrette.

The latter was the first course of a home-cooked dinner which then proceeded through my version of tripes à la mode de Caen, to a cheese course featuring Pechegos from the Languedoc, Pau from Spain, and Lancashire from...well, Lancashire.  Oh, and a bottle of Greysac. 

Why doesn't there seem to be time for this kind of dining any more?  Time to put the world on pause?