[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: November 9, 2015]
I don't know what was up ten years ago, but it's clear from my diary that I was taking some unused vacation, and also eating up a storm. Trips to Jean-Georges for lunch, to Alto for Michael White's tasting menu, and plenty in between.
Also watching more than one performance of an off-off-Broadway show called Hell Cab, members of the cast of which have reappeared in my life in various circumstances ever since.
But Jean-Georges, and that great value lunch deal. Today, it's two plates for $58, each additional plate $29, but ten years ago it was significantly less. We knocked the bell, as Liebling would say (these were dishes for two).
Egg with caviar
Foie gras brûlée
Turbot, Château-Chalon sauce
Scallop with cauliflower
Pheasant with apple and endive
Veal cheeks
Cheeses
Petits fours, chocolates
Champagne--Chablis--Ogier Côte-Rôtie La Belle Helene, 2000
Some solid classics there: the turbot, of course; the scallop dish which Gordon Ramsey recreated at The London; the egg and foie appetizers, of course.
Casual eating? O.G. on East 6th was a standby for a quiet supper in those days, and I ate duck confit salad, followed by Chilean sea bass, with a bottle of Tavel. I have never been sold on Sichuan cuisine--just me, I know--not because of the heat of the characteristic peppers, but because of their ability to anaesthetize the palate. Still, with friends to Szechuan Gourmet for spicy rabbit, duck tongues, cold beef tendon, and oxtails.
Matt Hamilton's Uovo was another regular haunt, of course: octopus salad, rabbit pot pie with an interesting biscuit top to it, and a bottle of Jumilla. And then the dissonant moment of the week.
I had been dropping by the front bar at Alto with some frequency to have the excellent T.J. Siegal suggest and mix cocktails. I thought it high time I tried the acclaimed Michael White cuisine. This was my first Michael White meal, I believe, and I admit it has somewhat colored my view of his restaurants ever since. I ordered the most expensive tasting on the menu, and received a series of anti-climactic dishes--most of them miniscule, well beyond the editing required for a multi-course menu, and all of them flat in flavor. It was not a great meal; at the price charged, it was barely acceptable.
The best part of the night was Siegal's Casino, a take on an Aviation featuring orange blossom water. Then:
Raw tuna with organic carrots
Maine sea scallop, nage
Skate
Pasta, black truffles
Raviolo with pumpkin and amaretti
Suckling pig
Warm chocolate pudding
Grüner Veltliner--Italian rosato--Lagrein, Terlano-Kellerei 2000
The tableware emphasized the miserliness of the portions: those huge, flying saucer plates with a tiny dent in the middle. A scallop here, a mouthful of pasta there. The meal was one of the main reasons I've never been to Marea.
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