fauren: Dinner at Blue Hill, or: How I Learned What It Must Be Like To Be A Famous Person

It used to be I was just a glutton and that was that, but now I'm a glutton with a web site. Writing a food blog is a funny thing... all is well and good when I've got my foodie hat on, but when I'm wearing my "it's 10pm, I haven't eaten dinner, and all I have in my kitchen is some coffee ice cream, a packet of garam masala spices, and that jar of sugar-free candies my dentist gave me for my birthday" hat, I can't help but feel like a bit of a fraud when I get on the phone to the local Chinese place and order up some of those pork dumplings drenched in sesame sauce. Especially because that sesame sauce is probably just melted Skippy peanut butter.

Blogging about food also breeds the compulsion to photograph whatever I eat - if people can't taste what I'm talking about, they should at least be able to look at it, right? But this can be problematic, too. For one, most of my family and friends think it's weird. Also, there's no way to be subtle about taking photographs of my plate in the middle of a restaurant (and consequently, strangers also think it's weird).

Deciding to leave the camera at home can be hard sometimes, especially when it means that it'll take me more than a week to find just the right words to describe a particularly stellar meal, but that's exactly what's happened since Dan and I were lucky enough to enjoy a seven-course tasting menu at Blue Hill last Tuesday night.

I have to preface all this by thanking Dan Barber and the folks at Blue Hill ten times over for ruining the both of us for all future dining experiences in the best way possible. This includes our masterful and friendly server Neal, for humoring us while we played at being fancy people; sommelier Claire Paparazzo, whose use of plain English in no way compromised her vast knowledge of wine; and general manager Franco Serafin, who was so debonair I thought he might break into a rendition of "'S Wonderful" at any moment. Also the guy at the table next to us who looked like - but was not - Julian Schnabel, whose presence let me believe for a minute that I'd completed my evening with a celebrity sighting.

Now, the menu (with pairings):

Trio of house-made butter, ricotta cheese, and lardo with warm bread
Beet and almond burgers with dried kale
Salad of Stone Barns beets with goat cheese and greens (Nigl Freiheit Gruner Veltliner - Kremstal, Austria 2007)
This Morning's Farm Egg, poached and served over beluga lentils and cracked wheat (Melipal Reserve Malbec - Mendoza, Argentina 2004)
Sweet potato ravioli and guanciale with kale (Les Cretes Pinot Noir - Valle D'Aosta, Italy 2005)
Grass-fed lamb belly with Stone Barns carrots (Domaine Lignères Pièce de Roche Carignan - Languedoc, France 2002)
Citrus salad with mint jam and grilled spice bread
Passion fruit soufflé with passion fruit sorbet (Macari Block E Chardonnay, Viognier & Sauvignon Blanc - Long Island, NY 2004)

All topped off with a delicious cappuccino. My only regret that night was attempting to go to bed almost as soon as I got home. Between the 5 glasses of wine (plus a glass of Cava on the way in), the caffeine, and all that rich, delicious food, I woke up at 4 in the morning in some kind of food delirium. You know when you have a fever, and you have all kinds of weird waking half-dreams? Yeah. I couldn't stop thinking about pork fat.

It felt kind of amazing.

The thing I really appreciated about this menu was how well balanced it was, both overall and within each dish. The sweet potato in the ravioli was just right to offset the salty guanciale, and the carrots did the same for the lamb belly (which also had a great fresh herb crust). Those carrots, in fact, were one of my very favorite things in this meal. They were so sweet and tender, fresh from the Stone Barns greenhouse.

My pick from all the wine we tried would definitely be the Les Cretes Pinot Noir. At first, I didn't even want to drink it; I just sat there with my nose over my glass, inhaling until I felt dizzy. The aroma was smoky, almost exactly the smell of our family friends' house in Vermont when the wood-burning stove in the living room is going. Its flavor was fruity, but the fruitiness was dark (think black currants). If something could be rich and light at the same time, this was it.

I don't know that I've ever taken three hours to enjoy an extravagant meal in my life, but I tell you what - I sure wouldn't mind doing it again. Lucky for me, I should be able to do so in about... 12 years. Sure, that might seem far off, but I couldn't have asked for a better evening to last me until then.

Dinner at Blue Hill, or: How I Learned What It Must Be Like To Be A Famous Person

April 02, 2008 | Permalink

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