Fine Dining – Dessert Landscape

The Grand Tier at Lincoln Center

admin — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 04:56:45 +0000

Does life get any better (or convenient) than eating dinner in the concert hall right before seeing the show? The Grand Tier, in the Metropolitan Opera House, has the pre-theater formula down pat. Make a reservation for 6pm, dine in relative ease for the first hour and a half, then see how the vibe of the restaurant changes as the crowd starts pouring in and the 8pm curtain time draws near. Ladies scamper to wait on long bathroom lines; your waiter, in his haste to quickly jot down your dessert order and move on to the next table, accidentally drops his pen in your lap; and all of a sudden, that big pot of tea and second glass of wine don’t sound like such good ideas anymore. But the food is excellent and most of the desserts, divine. Regard:

The Chocolate Peanut Butter Ganache Tart with caramel crema, chocolate mousse, and huckleberry jam was heavy and decadent, just like it sounds. It was like eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a candy bar at once. Sadly, because of its richness, this one will be the first one to get left behind as the bells genteelly call you to your seat. Since wasting a perfectly good dessert because of a silly thing like time is a sin to me, I wrapped our two leftover bits in an ancient purse Kleenex. This necessitated a good bit of industrious Kleenex removal with my digits when we went to eat them the next day, but we prevailed!

The Key Lime Parfait with spicebread crumble, key lime curd, and compressed pineapples wasn’t quite as delicious. The “spicebread” tasted like cheap ground-up Graham crackers and I couldn’t figure out why the white cream on top had l’air de Cool Whip. But the key lime curd was solid and I’d never heard of “compressed” fruit before. This apparently is a technique that utilizes a vacuum sealer and liquid to infuse the fruit with its own cooked juices and sometimes an external flavor like vanilla, kind of like sous-vide.

The Passion Fruit CrÃ¨me BrÃ»lÃ©e with black sesame seed and coconut macaroons was wonderful.Â The tangy fruit and nutty seed flavors worked perfectly in the custard, and the macaroons were a delightful little cookie bonus for added texture.

I might have gotten the old-school-sounding Chocolate SoufflÃ©, but since it requires serving just after it’s baked and therefore requires planning, it was only available at intermission. How do you scarf down your dessert in 15 minutes and use the facilities? Well, my boyfriend’s dad informed me that the system works quite well, actually. You place your dessert order, then come back to your table at intermission, where your dessert will be magically waiting for you. If you have time for the toilet afterward, then you can give yourself a gold star.

Grand Tier
150 W. 65th St
New York, NY 10184
(212) 799-3400
www.grandtierny.com

WD-50 – A Dessert Blogger’s Paradise

admin — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:17:58 +0000

At the suggestion of Pastry Chef Chavigny of Daniel and a generous birthday gift from my brother, the next stop on my explorations was WD-50, a restaurant known for its use of weirdo ingredients andÂ au courant culinary tools like liquid nitrogenÂ (for flash freezing), hydrocolloids (or various “gums” for changing the consistencies of liquids), and dehydrators.Â Leading the charge in the pastry kitchen isÂ Chef Alex Stupak, formerly of Alinea in Chicago,Â another majorÂ player in theÂ world of cutting-edge cookery.

For just $38, you can get your own 3-course dessert tasting.Â Since I was with a friend, I asked our waiter whether Chef Stupak would condescend to give us 3 different desserts each, so that we could try a total of 6.Â We waited on tenterhooks for him to return from the kitchen with the verdict… which was Yes– huzzah!

Every plate was like a playground for the senses and also a puzzle… for my mind.Â I hardly knew where to start with each one.Â Some dishes had delicious elements all around– you could enjoy each one alone, or combine them with others.Â Other dishes were truly deconstructed desserts, where each element alone tasted either bland or downright nasty, but when combined with others created a perfect balance of sweet, bitter, salty, etc.Â Here are some observations, which you should follow along with the fine pics above, as this can get a mite complicated.

Vanilla ice cream and raspberry streusel w/ balsamic vinegar middle (amuse bouche) – the streusel tasted like those dehydrated raspberries they’ve been putting in cereals a lot these days, very dusty and tart; the balsamic sauce that I almost forgot about from the description came bursting out when I reached the middle– I wanted to run away and hide from it, and the ice cream was too unobtrusive to protect me from its bracing vinegary-ness; I would not want an entire dessert of this, but it was effective in setting the stage for the UN-dessert desserts that were coming up.

Cheesecake, pineapple, raisin, saffron, lime – my favorite of all; each little cheesecake morsel melted into wonderful creaminess in my mouth; there were 4 different forms of pineapple on the plate: pineapple itself in delightful twists, cheesecake, foam, and pineapple “shards” (or little window pane-like candies that reminded my friend ofÂ breath strips); such fun!

Sicilian pistachio cake, meyer lemon, chartreuse, honeydew ice cream – I always feel wicked eating green dessert– and so many hues were presented here; the honeydew was refreshing and sweet; the chartreuse foam was luxurious; there was a hidden flavor I couldn’t make out that the waiter informed me was lemon balm purÃ©e; WHEW!

Coffee ice cream, pecan, cocoa, argan oil – you better like coffee for this one, because it basically took all the different pungent flavors of the Bean and broke them down; the ice cream must’ve had one of those “gums” working at it, because it had a pock-marked appearance, like a light-brown moonrock; the argan oil dollops were slightly bitter. Quick aside about argan oil – It comes from the nuts of the argan tree, which is native to Morocco.Â It’s probably best known in these parts as an ingredient in beauty products, as it’s rich is vitamin E, fatty acids, and such, but many Berbers and Chef Stupak like to eat it, as it has a nice nutty taste.Â Since the nuts’ shells are so hard to crack, one method is to wait for the goats to eat them so that they soften in their digestive tracts, then collect them from their feces.Â But that’s not done as often because (surprisingly) the seeds tend to pick up a bad odor this way.Â Check out these argan-eatin’ goats! How did they get up in those trees?!

Caramelized brioche, apricot, buttercream, lemon thyme – the most forgettable; the brioche was a-ite; it was strange having what is normally cake frosting (the buttercream) presented as a separate element striped across the plate; the apricot flavor, though present in multiple elements, was too faint to be noticed.

Soft chocolate, peppermint ice cream, black cardamom,Â toffee -Â as is my custom,Â IÂ had been eagerly awaiting the first official chocolate dessert of the evening; the soft chocolate came in the form of “plugs” (their word, not mine) that looked so lovely, but were actually almost sugarless; the bizarre cocoa scribbles that reminded me of alien antennae (such as the Sesame Street variety) were really just plain cocoa; that toffee pool in the middle was my savior– supremely sweet, I realized it should be used as a wading pool for the bland elements; one spoon with all the elements together = what is chocolate.

Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate, chicory – a return to the safer waters of everything tastingÂ scrumptious on its own.

Birthday brown butter ice cream, tuile, & streusel w/ passion fruit middle – there was a birthday candle inside the tuile chimney, but it took me so long to try to get a decent picture of it, it started burning the tuile; after putting out the fire, I enjoyed another wonder in contrasts with the sweet brown butter cream and tart fruit middle.

Chocolate shortbread-covered ice cream balls (amuse bouche) – I guess they must’ve had some ingredients left over from the other dishes, but I’m not complaining.

Cocoa packets (amuse bouche) – such a fun way to “wrap up” the evening; these tasted like chocolate Fruit Roll-Ups filled with crunchy chocolate streusel bits.

You can see some beautiful photos on WD-50’s website of most of these, but I wanted to document them myself to see if the plating was as precise and artistic, which of course it was.

Overall, I had a soaring learning experience that forced me to closely examine the components that make up the foundation of Dessert (yes, with a capital “D”).Â I can’t wait to go back and see what else Chef Stupak conjures up within the unassuming brick walls of WD-50.

WD-50

50 Clinton St.

New York, NYÂ 10002

212-477-2900

http://www.wd-50.com/

For further reading on “avant-garde” pastry making (or whatever you want to call it), check out this article from the March ’08 issue of Vogue: “Cold Comfort,” by Jeffrey Steingarten.

UPDATE (3/8/11): Malcolm Livingston II, former pastry sous chef, is now the head pastry chef at WD-50.Â Alex Stupak has moved on to open his own Mexican restaurant, Empellon, in the West Village.Â Good luck to him!

Daniel – The Inaugural Post

admin — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 02:19:35 +0000

What better way to kick-off a dessert blog than to go to one of the best restaurants in all of NYC– Daniel?Â I didn’t know it was even possible to make a reservation for dessert only, since there’s no way I could afford to eat there, but Daniel is very accommodating and lets you sit in the Lounge.Â We decided to eat dinner in the form of sandwiches from Defonte’s new Manhattan outpost, and, enjoying the marked contrast, we sat down to dine in luxury.Â The desserts were delish, and we had a wonderfully unexpected adventure afterwards that made me conclude I may be on-track with this whole food blogging thing.
I adore the way Daniel’s dessert menu is laid out– Fruit on the left, Chocolate on the right. For Fruit, we had the Kaffir Lime Infused Mango with Buddha’s hand Confit and Pink Guava Sorbet, which was a contrast of sweet and tart, and distilled the taste of summer with fresh, not fibrous mangos, decorated with little lime leaves. If you don’t know what a Buddhaâ€™s Hand is, it’s a kind of citron. For Chocolate, we had the Warm Guanaja Chocolate Coulant with Liquid Caramel, Fleur de Sel, and Milk Sorbet. You had to crack into the cake’s crust like an egg, then the caramel flowed out slowly, but not into a big soupy mess that you had to chase around the large plate and scrape up with your spoon– it was thick enough that it obediently stayed close by its cake. The milk sorbet was the perfect balanceâ€”not too heavy or flavorful, and was a nice palate-cleanser. The gold leaf tasted like nothing at all. Afterwards, we were given 8 amuses bouche, and then they (perhaps by mistake?) gave us another round, totaling 16. We had: rhubarb jelly, espresso with praline crunches and white chocolate crÃ¨me, pineapple & coconut marshmallow, hazelnut tartelette, passion fruit cake, coffee & chocolate square, lemon meringue tartelette, and macarons. We yucked these little gems up and were then presented with warm, buttery madeleines nestled sweetly in a napkin blanketâ€”you almost didnâ€™t want to disturb them.

Somewhere along the way, as I was snapping pics and jotting down notes under the table, a waiter/concierge suddenly swooped in like a specter, making my friend, whose back was turned, jump in his seat. “Are you in the food industry?” he said. “Well, I’m starting a dessert blog so that pastry chefs and bakeries finally get their due in the world of food criticism,” I replied. Waiter: “Would you like to see the kitchen?” Me: “Um, yes.” Waiter: “I’ll see you when you’re done eating, then.” And soon began our hour and a half-long tour of the kitchens of Daniel and interviews with both the Sous Pastry Chef and the Executive Chef. Of Daniel. 2 Michelin stars. 4 NY Times Frank Bruni stars. Serious. Scary. Exciting.

Once we were safely deposited into the kitchen, we observed the frenzied hands of the pastry chefs as they spooned lovely egg-shaped sorbets onto plates, took gold leaf out of little booklets and quickly swiped it onto the chocolate cakes, and constructed beautiful dessert creations, many with large, long stick-like protrusions made out of chocolate and candy, making many of the finished plates look like the hats worn at the Royal Ascot Races. There was a poster at the pick up station that showed what each dessert looked like once it was fully prepared, presumably to help the waiters know when things were ready to be whisked away. Then Pastry Sous Chef Arnaud Chavigny came out of his kitchen to talk to us and show us around. He works under Chef Dominique Ansel. He feels very free being a pastry chef, because it’s so separate from the rest of the kitchen. He’s able to experiment. He sees pastry preparation as being more technical, scientific, and delicate than cooking. He suggested Financier & Payard as good go-to patisseries for French desserts, and he feels that Alex Stupak of WD-50 is doing some of the most interesting work with pastry.

He then took us downstairs to show us the large prep kitchen and small pastry kitchen. We could immediately smell the meat and garlic that go into making the large vats of fond that were steaming away in the corner. Upon entering the pastry kitchen, the savory fond smell immediately gave way to an intoxicating aroma of butter, sugar, and fruit. This kitchen was so small, that when Chef Chavingy proudly told us that it produces baked goods for all of Daniel Boulud’s restaurants (Daniel, CafÃ© Boulud, DB Bistro Moderne, & Bar Boulud), I could hardly believe it. Just four hard-working pastry chefs do it all. I asked him where to get the best fruit and vegetables, expecting him to say Union Square Greenmarket or something, but he surprised us by saying that the best stuff in the city often comes from the little fruit carts on the street.

More tour, more pics, then it was time to talk to Executive Chef Jean-Francois Bruel. It was close to midnight at this point, so his evening’s work was wrapping up. He looked so young, I had to ask him his age– 36, it turns out. He’s been at Daniel for almost six years, has been working with Daniel for 13 years, and was at CafÃ© Boulud before Daniel. He described all the food stations to us and said his favorite kind of cooking is new takes on classics, with an emphasis on seasonal ingredients. He suggested Blue Hill as a next stop for great food. When we went to Blue Hill a month later, we agreed. And I think the Obamas enjoyed their time there as well!

Daniel

60 E. 65th St.

New York, NYÂ 10065

212-288-0033

http://www.danielnyc.com