Restaurants

[DJ FC]

Move this from the TV thread.

A thread for reviews of restaurants you've eaten at and general discussion of all things foodie. I'm a fatass at heart (and in every other way) so I do love a good restaurant.

[DJ FC]

For Pliedes, my first review.

It's been a while (the better half of a year) since I went, but the experience was profound enough to leave some memories. In fact I would say it was the single finest dining experience I've ever had: The Fat Duck.

The Fat Duck was once known to be the best restaurant in the world, and is still damn near the top and retains 3 Michelin stars. It's in a tiny little village called Bray maybe an hour outside of London.



It doesn't look like anything special it all. And for being as exclusive as it is, it's really just a cozy house.

Now the Fat Duck is a very poor example of a restaurant for restaurant's sake. What it is is an exceptional dining experience. The food is highly experimental and hardly food in the way we think about what we eat every day. Instead it's an event of entertainment. You couldn't eat this food every day. But you can experience it to realize what is possible with food.

Here's a selection of dishes we enjoyed:



A Green Tea Mousse palate cleanser. Unbelieveably light and fluffy. Like eating a cloud. The only purpose of this dish was to give us something light and airy to prepare us for what was to follow. It was served chilled. Incredibly refreshing.



This dish tasted like bark and trees and moss. It was intended that way. It composed of little cracker things and some stuff on them. Sorry that's all I have for you, I don't remember the delivery mechanism. What I do remember is the flavour. It was delicious and tasted so earthy. They brought it out w/ some gaseous mixture which spread out all over the table to create some mystic forrest/elvish feel. Pretty cool.



Jelly of Quail, Crayfish Cream, Chicken Liver Parfait, and Truffle toast. Everything here tasted awesome.



Roast Foie Gras, Rhubarb, Braised Konbu and Crab Biscuit. Of all the dishes this was the most common and cliche. It was also the one you'd probably like to eat on a more common basis - it was fucking delicious.


What's this?
They handed us these kick ass book marks with a passage from Alice in Wonderland. Something is certainly not normal with this dinner, we are going on a trip.

Next they handed us gold "pocket watches" which were actually gold leaf covering a soup base. To this the poured hot water on our "watch" which was in a "cup of tea" and turned it into this:





Mock Turtle Soup.

Next they handed us these:



What the hell? Ipods inside conch shells? We put the ear buds on and heard relaxing sounds of waves and birds. As we were presented with another course: "The Sound of the Sea."



It's basically primo sushi on a bed of edible sand. So fresh and tasty. You eat it while listening to the ipod.

Time for some main courses:



Salmon Poached in Liquorice, Artichokes, Vanilla Mayonnaise, Golden Trout Roe and Manni Olive Oil



Powdered Anjou Pigeon, Blood Pudding and Confit of Umbles



Taffety Tart, Caramelized Apple, Fennel, Rose and Candied Lemon

At this point the staff informed us that the night was over. And we were now ready for breakfast. We were probably 3 hours into dinner at this point. They then brought out a 2 course "English Breakfast" with "Tea".



Parsnip cereal which came in in't own little box. We ate it with milk in a bowl.



Egg and Bacon "Ice Cream" which is made by subjecting eggs to liquid nitrogen. They do it right in front of you. Such an awesome dish.



Hot and Cold tea. It was hot and cold. The two liquids didn't mix so you got to experience them simultaneously in your mouth. So fucking cool. This was the course that surprised me the most. I had no idea this was possible.



Gummy candies made out of whiskeys from different parts of Scotland. Sounds cool but I'd rather just drink the Scotch.



Cheeses. While being awesome cheeses, they are merely cheeses. At any other restaurant it would be saying a lot to have such an impressive cheese plate. Not here.



At the end they gave us some candies to take home. The coolest of which was this playing card. It's actually white chocolate with a raspberry jelly inside. So freaking cool!

In summary: The Fat Duck isn't the best food I've ever had. But it was BY FAR the best dining experience. The courses I've described may sound corny, but the staff are pros and make everything seem so appropriate. If you EVER have the chance to go to The Fat Duck I would recommend it - you only need to go once and any other restaurant will not give you the same lasting experience.

[Pliedes]

Holy shit my stomach has a boner! Thank you for that. I love that you took pictures to commemorate the food (not expecting to post about it, i'm assume, just cause the food was amazing). May i ask the per person cost of this meal?

The older i get the more i seem to appreciate simplistic food. Not fancy "haute" cuisine, but rather simple ingredients that make your taste buds explode. The first time i ever had homemade truffle-butter on fresh baked bread comes to mind.

I'll add my own dining experiences soon. Thanks again DJFC.

[DJ FC]

Originally Posted by Pliedes

Holy shit my stomach has a boner! Thank you for that. I love that you took pictures to commemorate the food (not expecting to post about it, i'm assume, just cause the food was amazing). May i ask the per person cost of this meal?

The older i get the more i seem to appreciate simplistic food. Not fancy "haute" cuisine, but rather simple ingredients that make your taste buds explode. The first time i ever had homemade truffle-butter on fresh baked bread comes to mind.

I'll add my own dining experiences soon. Thanks again DJFC.

Well those aren't technically my pictures. We nominated a single picture-taker, Jason Lu, and I didn't feel the need to keep them, but luckily he posted them all on Facebook. His dishes were exactly the same as mine - I swear.

We paired the meal with a wine tasting menu, which I completely forgot to mention. Every course (and you will note - there were many) came with it's own glass of wine specifically selected for the dish. We were drunk by the end of the meal. That added a bit to the cost.

Once it was all said and done the per-person cost was something like 475 pounds. Not cheap at all.

[Cocktooth]

Did they not have burgers?

[angry pancake]

They would take a burger, process the fuck out of it, reconstruct it to look like a burger. I don't get this molecular gastronomy thing. Went to El Bulli a few years ago in Barcelona and didn't get the fuss then. Cheese foam in the shape of cheese? Why the fuck would anybody do that? They also had a course you didn't eat. Just there for the scent.

Alinea in Chicago is in the same vein. I've heard good thing about it, but I'm going to pass. The genre doesn't make sense to me. For that kind of jack, I'm sticking to Charlie Trotter or the French Laundry.

Awesome idea for a thread.

[SittinOnDubsWGW]

I can't fathom dropping over 700 bucks on a meal, for myself. I think the most I've ever spent is ~130/person.

I don't say that there is anything wrong with it, nor judge anyone that spends outlandish amounts of money on a meal. As you said, it's an experience. It does indeed look/sound pretty cool. I just would prefer to spend my money a little differently.

Awesome thread idea, and I'll try to post some reviews of some much lower-end eateries, but much more attainable for the average folks.

[Mr. Blonde]

This shit is so unbelievably faggy. Maybe i'm just a poor corn-fed country boy, but honestly these small portions and ridiculous prices seem like the epitome of human retardedness. There's no fucking way the shit tastes THAT GOOD.

[Saint DH]

I couldn't help but notice he said one of the courses tasted like bark, trees, and moss, but it tasted good. This confuses me.

[Mr. Blonde]

Psychological justification of spending, i'm sure. It's like the placebo effect for food.

[ninjaface]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

This shit is so unbelievably faggy. Maybe i'm just a poor corn-fed country boy, but honestly these small portions and ridiculous prices seem like the epitome of human retardedness. There's no fucking way the shit tastes THAT GOOD.

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

Psychological justification of spending, i'm sure. It's like the placebo effect for food.

Or is it Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs rearing it's head?

Maybe he's just at the top of the pyramid and you are at the bottom.

[Mr. Blonde]

[ninjaface]

Its only to be expected when you're in a foreign land. You're just trying to survive. I understand... and its ok. I don't think less of you because of this.

[Mr. Blonde]

Ninja's spunky tonight!

[DJ FC]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

Psychological justification of spending, i'm sure. It's like the placebo effect for food.

Yes and No I'm sure. We wouldn't have gone to The Fat Duck had it never been rated the best restaurant in the world. But I also know a thing of quality when I see one Blonde, and this food was pure quality. Like I mentioned before, it wasn't a steak, it wasn't food you'd even want to eat every day - but it was flavors and consistencies you can't replicate anywhere else.

[DJ FC]

Originally Posted by Dirty Harry

I couldn't help but notice he said one of the courses tasted like bark, trees, and moss, but it tasted good. This confuses me.

It was truly bizarre. It tasted earthy and delicious at the same time.

[DJ FC]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

This shit is so unbelievably faggy. Maybe i'm just a poor corn-fed country boy, but honestly these small portions and ridiculous prices seem like the epitome of human retardedness. There's no fucking way the shit tastes THAT GOOD.

The best in the world. As for the portions, by the end of the meal we were stuffed and drunk - there were several courses I didn't even mention.

[Mr. Blonde]

Originally Posted by DJ FC

The best in the world. As for the portions, by the end of the meal we were stuffed and drunk - there were several courses I didn't even mention.

But why, though? As ninja already pointed out i'm definitely low on the pyramid, but what's the point? Bragging rights?

Out of all the cool things that come with having lots of money (banging gorgeous women, owning awesome cars, being the BOSS, etc.), this is by far the lamest thing to brag about IMO.

EDIT: Is it an FC thing? It is, isn't it?

[angry pancake]

This appears to be a good a place as any for this. I don't get the molecular gastronomy appeal other than it's kinda different. The whole celeb chef thing just pisses me off. Goddamned cooking network.

[thekremlin]

Originally Posted by DJ FC

The best in the world.

Maybe like three years ago sucka!

I ate at Noma a few months ago and I'll post the pictures later today if I get a chance.

As to justifying spending that much money on a meal: it's something you're going to remember for the rest of your life. It's an education in something most people don't even know you can get an education in. Chefs on the cutting edge are trying to make you think about the foods. That's the justification behind the molecular gastronomy. Is it silly? Um, YEAH, it's silly as shit. But it's fun, and food is supposed to be fun. I'm all about the burger, I could talk to you for hours about the burger. (In fact, since this thread is about all restuarants and not just the hoitiest of toitiest, I will probably summarize the excellent Kuma's Corner in Chicago at some point). But if you go through life eating nothing but Burgers and the food necessary to carry your body through the day, you're missing it. People spend 700 bucks on a meal for the same reason they spend 700 bucks on a painting. To appreciate the chef not as a line cook but as an artist.

If this doesn't make sense hopefully it will after I post Noma, which has a lower silliness than Fat Duck or El Bulli due to total lack of molecular gastronomy.

[DJ FC]

Originally Posted by Mr. Blonde

But why, though? As ninja already pointed out i'm definitely low on the pyramid, but what's the point? Bragging rights?

Out of all the cool things that come with having lots of money (banging gorgeous women, owning awesome cars, being the BOSS, etc.), this is by far the lamest thing to brag about IMO.

EDIT: Is it an FC thing? It is, isn't it?

I went to this restaurant almost a year ago. And only posted about it now. I'm clearly not bragging. Genuinely thought people would want a review, Pliedes asked for it. It's also one of, if not the only, thing I can do which is truly "The Best in the World" the rest are far too expensive.

[thekremlin]

OK here we go. WARNING this is going to be a long post. I have 40 pictures. It was a 12-course meal with like 7 amuses-bouches. If you want to just look at the pictures, feel free.

Last May, Noma was rated the #1 restaurant in the world by Food+Wine magazine, so like 10,000 other people, one of my friends called up for a reservation. They told us, yes, we have a table for you. Next October. For four people. For lunch.

Whatever, you take what you can get, and so last October we had an excuse to spend the weekend in Copenhagan (BTW have I mentioned that this is the #1 reason I moved to London, so I could travel on the weekend for silly things like "I have restaurant reservations"?) Copenhagan itself was a great weekend, including a top-notch cocktail bar and an afternoon in Christiania, a hippy commune with an open-air weed market (Freetown Christiania - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).

So Noma. It is a restaurant cheffed by Rene Redzepi, and its cuisine is traditional Nordic cuisine with VERY local, and VERY natural ingredients. Here is an article about the dude http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/07/dining/07chef.html .

The restaurant is next to a dock, pretty simple exterior, I got there a few minutes before my friends so I walked around the art gallery next door. Here is the outside of the restaurant.



And here's the inside.



When we got to the table it was decorated with some flowers. Pretty standard. BUT WAIT. The waitress told us that the flowers were edible. The petals were very soft and sweet, and there was a shrimp in truffle butter inside.



This part of the meal is before we even ordered anything. Amuses-bouches are just little samples, usually more inventive than the main dishes, often just a bite of food. Also usually my favorite part of the meal. One was this leather made out of pickled rose hips, whatever that is.



Another was live shrimp. Still-conscious shrimp. The idea was to dip them in a sauce to confuse them long enough that you could pop them in your mouth and end their life with your teeth. Fuckin A. I ended up with the largest, which kept hopping out of my hand before I chomped him. His last though was "Wow, Kremlin's breath smells like snail and rose hips."



Next were some toasty sandwiches that had some sort of pate in the middle. Oh by the way, at this point we're sipping on some house-brewed beer, was hoppy the way I like it, they also had champagne available but we planned on doing the wine tastings. We're also munching on the bread, which is still warm from the oven and paired with the best butter I've ever had, but this definately qualifies as one of the meals you don't want to spoil your appetite with fucking bread.



The next two were probably my favorite parts of the whole meal. The first was a salad made of freeze-dried spinach and feta, with chilled urchins (the orange things) and tiny cucumber balls, which I've never seen. It blew my socks off. The greens and feta were so fresh-tasting, and the urchin tasted like the ocean smells, like oysters except super clean and crisp.



The next one represents the restaurant best, I think. The bottom layer is a piece of sesame toast, the top layer is a very fine layer of duck fat. In the middle, various herbs and flowers, all picked this morning. It was perfect.



The next one wasn't super-tasty, but was kind of cool. It was a radish plant in some mixture that looked like dirt but tasted like chicoree.... You didn't eat the green leaves, but there was a radish in the dirt.



So now we're JUST to the part where we ordered. I wonder if we could have walked out right now and been like "Nah we're full." Anyway, we ordered the full tasting menu with wine accompaniment. The wines this day were all from Austria, and with each glass we got a description of the wine and some trivia with it. Was pretty cool. And there was a lot of wine, over the 3 hour meal we probably had 12-15 glasses, plus the beer at the beginning and some fruit liquoer at the end... well it's no wonder I jumped in a canal after the meal. But I'm getting ahead of myself. That was a SPOILER.

So the meal started with a "salad" made of liquid lettuce and almonds. Tasted like, well, lettuce, but more so, because it was much more concentrated. Even f3lix has to admit that's cool.



This dish was the biggest presentation but my least favorite taste. But it's a cool picture.



This one was phenomenal. A piece of lobster tail, so simple, but honestly the best piece of seafood I've ever eaten. Fucking phenomenal.



This one was a piece of beef carpaccio with chives and onions and other cool stuff. Reminded me of my world-favorite food, pho, despite clearly not being soup.



The next dish was a lot of fun, basically they gave us ingredients and a hot pan, and let us fry our own egg. Left you thinking "Wow I can cook like this at home*" (*If I had the world's freshest ingredients and richest truffle butter.) But it was fun. Also the straw underneath the pan is lit, so the whole time you smell smokey hay and it's supposed to give you the sense that you're on a farm. OK.









Next we had some meat-and-potatoes type stuff. Piece of filet, piece of chicken, that type of stuff. Our designated picture-taker kind of dropped the ball on this part I guess....

This was a piece of steak with apples. Notice the badass knife they gave us.



This was the first of the deserts, coins of something that tasted like malt cocoa but was something else (don't remember what) and wafers over some ice cream.



MORE DESSERTS





Fruit liquoer, made on-site



Best dessert right here, bone-marrow caramel. Served in the bone. Incredible.





That was it. We had been there for three hours and consumed a total of 22 different "things", drank an obscene amount of wine, and the funny thing is, we weren't stuffed and sluggish or drunk. Well a little drunk but in a nice way, not stumbling at all. Afterwards we asked to tour the kitchen and they led us around, was slower since the lunch hour was pretty much over, but there people are ALWAYS busy.









Completely unforgettable meal, and while it was extremely expensive, I would do it again. Well not the same meal, but I will be trying similar places (in fact I will def eat at Alinea next time I'm in Chicago). And if I was upset about the price of the meal, I made up for that but QUICK. Copenhagan is a city full of canals, and on this sunny OCTOBER day, my three friends each agreed to pay me 167 pounds (total of 500) if I swam across one.

YouTube - IMG 0111

YouTube - IMG 0111

THATS HOW YOU DO IT NUBBLITES! THATS HOW YOU FUND THE MOST EXPENSIVE MEAL OF YOUR LIFE.

And that's how you summarize a restaurant visit.

[Pliedes]

Originally Posted by DJ FC

...I'm clearly not bragging....Pliedes asked for it.

Word.

I'm genuinely interested in food and methods of prep i haven't encountered before. You ate at a world renown restaurant that I'll probably never eat at.. sounds to me like a perfect opportunity to share your experience, and i thank you for that. Sounds like Blonde is jealous. I didn't even know DJ had "lots of money" until Blonde pointed it out.

[Cocktooth]

It all looks gross to me. I want a salad, Burger and baked potato. I don't give a shit about presentation. Also, it's better if I have a coupon with those items so they are cheaper. That's the way you go out to eat.

[Pliedes]

I like a salad, burger, and baked potato too. But i've eaten 10,000 of them in my life. I've never had delicious tree bark or a whiskey gummy bear.