The New WD-50 Tasting Menu

It was announced earlier in the week that culinary wizard Wylie Dufresne was overhauling his tasting menu.  He has created an entirely new menu at his 50 Clinton Street restaurant WD-50 and it will become available to the public starting next Thursday, May 10th.

At $155, the tasting runs thirteen courses.  An optional wine pairing is available for $85 and includes booze from France, Germany, Japan, Greece, Italy, and Spain.

The Times has a slideshow featuring some of the new dishes, which include sole with black licorice-pil-pil, lobster roe with charred lemon, root beer ribs, and an amaro soaked egg yolk that comes with peas 'n carrots, kind of.  The 'peas' are tiny balls of carrots that have been rolled in pea powder, obviously.

Reynards is Open in Williamsburg

Andrew Tarlow and Sean Rembold are the duo behind Diner and Marlow & Sons in Williamsburg.  The opening of Reynards last night in the Wythe Hotel marks the beginning of their third endeavor.

The project is the combined efforts of restauranteur Andrew Tarlow and Chef Sean Rembold coupled with Brooklyn developer Two Trees.  Reynards is the largest in Tarlow and Rembold's trio, and due to its hotel location, is open for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  The use of a wood-fired oven and grill will enhance the seasonal, American cuisine that persists at the teams other restaurants.

In an interview with GQ, Tarlow talks about his inspirations and his approach to room service.

"I see the restaurant as being the focal point and the meeting point of the hotel for traveling guests and certainly the local people in the community who live around here. So the notion is that we really want those two worlds to collide and be together and use this big grand bar and this place as the centerpiece for that."

Oh, That's How You Make Le Virtu Soup!

The four-star team over at Del Posto posted this video to Youtube Monday, April 30th, one day before the Pagan tradition calls for the making of Le Virtu soup on May 1st.

It's sort of like spring cleaning... your pantry.

"Le Virtu is a traditional soup from Abruzzo and the city of Teramo. According to the ancient pagan rites (and Waverly Root), on May 1st, seven virgins are to each bring seven ingredients to the city square, at which point those ingredients are combined to create a dish with 49 different elements. The soup marries winter and spring, and allows for the cleaning out of cupboards to welcome the impending bounty of the new season."

Wylie Dufresne is Giving WD-50 a Food Lift

Wylie Dufresne is one of the city's great chefs.  His restaurant WD-50 on the Lower East Side is an atelier for his truly unique, gifted set of culinary ideals.

An article published in The Times yesterday reveals that, "Starting on May 10, every item on the restaurant’s current menu will, as if subjected to a chemistry experiment, evaporate."

There will be an a la carte option available only at the bar.  In the dining room, there will be the option of two tasting menus.  For $75, you can work your way through what Wylie is calling the "From the Vault" menu, which offers past dishes made famous in the nine years WD-50 has operated.  The other choice will be the $155, 12-course menu, featuring entirely new dishes.

"Mr. Dufresne is an intrinsically American pioneer, so it makes sense that, in the language of the menu, many of the new creations sound like stolid heartland fare (crab cakes, brisket, root-beer ribs, fried green tomatoes, Key lime pie, even what you might describe as an elevated twist on a TV dinner). On the plate, though, they psychedelically thwart what your eyes, teeth and taste buds expect."

“I want people to think,” he said. “And it has to be delicious, too. Let’s not forget that.”

Wylie Dufresne's whimsical, experimental approach to life is further explored in this article explaining the bathroom situation at WD-50.

Two Stars for Midtown's Cafe China

Pete Wells awards two stars to Cafe China this week in a review that is just as playful as the heat and tingle experienced from the bounty of sichuan peppercorns that are in Cafe China's food.

"The chile heat and the Sichuan pepper tingle intensify each other until your mouth vibrates the way Wile E. Coyote does when he is hit on the head by an iron beam."

There is a bit of Sichuan 101 throughout the review as we learn "Sichuan cooks call the heat of chile peppers la. Ma is the word for the mouth-numbing zing of their region’s prized peppercorns. Stir them together and you have ma la."  We are directed to Land of Plenty, a cookbook by Fuchsia Dunlop that notes "ma la is one of 23 distinct flavor combinations in Sichuan cooking."

Wells finds the use of sichuan peppers to be controlled and well executed in the robin's-egg-blue room at 13 East 37th Street.  "Even his spiciest recipes hold back from obliterating your palate, so you can taste the other dishes."

Is San Pellegrino's World's Best Restaurants List Sparkling or Flat?

San Pelligrino's list of The World's 50 Best Restaurants 2012 came out earlier this week and Copenhagen's Noma keeps its number one spot.  Noma has made the list for seven out of the nine years that it's been a restaurant, and according to the World's Best website, Noma offer's "a dazzling array of one-bite starters that are alone worth the air fare to Denmark."

Per Se, #6, and Eleven Madison Park, #10, are the two NYC restaurants to make the top ten, EMP doing so for the first time.  Grant Achatz's Alinea in Chicago is the other U.S. resto to make the top ten and falls in the #7 spot.

Mexican Cuisine Mastermind Rick Bayless isn't thrilled about the list and digestny wonders if Brooklyn Fare and Marea feel left out.

Joe B's Restaurant Man Hits Shelves Today

Joe Bastianich is adding another book to his list of accomplishments today with the publication of Restaurant Man.  In his new, cut-to-the-chase memoir, Joe takes us back to his college days and his year on Wall Street, before he set out to work at restaurants and vineyards in Italy.  The book is a personal, candid, curse word-infused account of becoming one of the most successful restauranteurs in the world.

In addition to feuds that have already gone public, the book talks about Del Posto's struggle to land its fourth star and Joe's eventual partnership with Mario Batali that has lead to one of the most signifiant movements in Italian cuisine.

Sandwich, Mile End Sandwich, Opens on Bond

There is a clientele for every idea that comes to fruition in the city and that doesn't exclude lunch-centric restaurants.  The guys at Torrisi realized this and opened Parm, and now serve their takes on classic Italian-American sandwiches in droves on Mulberry Street.  Joe Dobias is the chef at JoeDoe, and he and his wife Jill got in on the action when they opened their second restaurant JoeDough, a sandwich joint, in the East Village.

Husband and wife Noah Bernamoff and Rae Cohen have crossed the river and opened an outpost of their Brooklyn based Mile End Delicatessan at 53 Bond Street.  Mile End Sandwich offers about a dozen sandwiches, breakfast items (they're open from 8am - midnight seven days a week), soups, salads, and sides.  Oh, and poutine, obviously.