A New Mountain Cookery

Corton

Had the pleasure of eating at Corton while Tucker and I were in NYC for the Starchefs ICC.  It was one of the best meals I've had by far, and an insane bargain for the price. 

Pea sponge cake and bagel with egg yolk amuse.  Really tasty.

Uni with dashi gelee, caviar, smoked tomato water, oyster leaf.  The uni was unreal. 

"Vegetable garden".  Unbelivable.  We counted at least 21 components on this dish and weren't even close to getting everything.  Felt sorry for the person picking this up on a busy night...

Foie gras cherries with beets, Catalana spice.  This came with a smoked beet and blackberry sorbet which was, like most of the meal, awesome. 

Turbot with green pistachios and red pepper.  This was really good, although probably my least favorite dish of the night.  The servers came out before the course was dropped and presented the whole turbot plated on a bed of green pistachios, it was a very nice touch. 

 Duck with fondant potato, fennel, onion, coconut, cambava jus.  The sides were the highlight of this dish, the duck was awesome, but the vegetables on the plate were unreal.  All throughout the dinner, the vegetables on each plate were so delicious that they often overshadowed the proteins.

I can't remember the name of this cheese, and my menu is packed up at the moment, but it was a nice rich cheddar with purslane and figs.  Nice transition to dessert.

I really enjoyed this, Tucker wasn't crazy about it.  Fennel sable cookie with almond butter and grapes.  Underneath the cookie was a fennel cream.  Really simple, straightforward, and tasty.

White chocolate palette with cardamom ice cream, mango, pistachios.  This was a beautiful looking plate, and the palette itself was awesome.  I really enjoyed this.

"From the Orchard", we ordered this as a supplement and were extremely glad we did so.  Simple, delicious fruit, some herbs, pink peppercorns.  Awesome.

So in short-and I've probably used the word several times in the past few paragraphs, the meal was awesome.  Clean, flavorful, and focused on ingredients.  I can't wait to go back.

"You guys should really get some more space"

Fresh

From the summer.  Not many things smell better than this.

Cocktails

Chicago's Violet Hour made a huge impression on me, not just for the fact that they make amazing cocktails in a beautiful setting, but for their dedication and attention to detail.  I've never seen a bar with a staff that was so knowledgeable and excited about the product that they were serving to their customers.   All of the bartenders were more than willing to talk to me about bitters, the various spirits I had never heard of before, and all the good places to go eat around Chicago, and for that I was extremely thankful.  Really good bar snack food as well. 

I'm trying to set up a cocktail program at the restaurant, and it's turning out to be an interesting challenge where I'm learning more and more about the nuances of flavors and aromas.  We're not set up to have a "bar" per se, but I really like the idea of having tasty, well-sourced, and thoughtful drinks to go along with our food, which follows the same philosophy.   We'll see how it goes.

Two types of Amaro, bourbon, raisin-cinnamon bitters.  Delicious.

Brown Butter Stock

Doesn't look that pretty, but tastes pretty darn good.  Gonna cook some corn in it tomorrow.

Paw Paw!!!

I love this fruit, and the fact that it's native to Virginia is awesome considering it tastes like a cross between a mango and a banana.  It's also pretty great that all it takes to harvest them is a couple of shakes of a tree and six little hands running around picking them up. 

Avenues

Sat up at the kitchen counter of this beautiful restaurant and had an amazing meal. 

Caviar with traditional, nontraditional flavors.  Delicious one-bite amuse with dill, sour cream, yolk.

Parmigiano tapioca, chives, black truffles. 

King crab with roe, cucumber, tangerine lace.  This dish was really awesome, probably my favorite.  The sugar tuille was perfect with this, adding some sweetness to the saltiness of the roe.

Pea soup, melon, mint, lemon.  Another killer dish.  Fresh, clean flavors, great contrast in temperatures with the nitro-frozen puree. 

Salmon belly, snail caviar, whipped chlorophyll, apple milk.  Snail caviar is really weird.  Good, but weird.  Like briny dirt. 

Frozen foie gras, plums, corn, hay.  I love any parfait-type dish, and this was no exception, the corn pudding at the bottom was really delicious.  The hay cracker didn't do much for me, however.  We need to get a hay purveyor in VA.

Hato Mugi in the style of risotto, red wine, manchego, sorrel.  I've never had hato mugi before, it was interesting and definitely enhanced by the manchego.  Cheesy rice when you break it all down to its core.

I forgot to take a picture of the Iberico pork belly course, but it was awesome.  They put lardo on top of pork belly!  The smoked paprika/cocoa/bread combination was perfect.  Here's a picture of it on Chef Duffy's blog.

Wagyu beef cheeks and ribeye, sesame, kalamansi.  Very full at this point, I liked it a lot, though not as much as the pork belly.

This was a tasty little pre-dessert amuse of grapefruit and tarragon.  I liked the jar.

Yogurt sponge, blackberries, nasturtium, cashews. 

Chocolate sorbet, huckleberries, malt.  The sorbet was delicious, it had a great mouthfeel.  The flavors were all good together, I've never had huckleberries before.  The cylindrical custards were set with something that gave it a strange texture which I wasn't crazy about.

Overall, an amazing meal with great service and hospitality.  You can definitely see the Alinea influence, but everything had a more natural, organic feel to it, and it was really impressive to see the level of food that comes out of the size of their kitchen.  The intimacy of the kitchen counter added greatly to the experience as well.  The king crab dish was one of the best things I ate while I was in Chicago.  I'm excited to go back at some point.

Chicago

I recently had the good fortune to spend the majority of August in Chicago working at Alinea and eating and drinking all over town.  It was an awesome experience, with meals at Alinea (thanks Chef!),Schwa, Avenues, Avec, Publican, Topolobampo, Mado, and perhaps most importantly, Hot Doug's. 

Thanks to Judy at Terra Spice for hooking it up all over town.

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

More to come later..Chicago is awesome. 

Big shout out to Ted Coffey and Kevin Parks at UVa for the greater appreciation of this bathroom mural at Hot Doug's.

Late season tomatoes

Summer's almost over...squeezing in a few more tomato dishes.  Peach puree, ricotta, basil, spring onion confit, mizuna, Mexican cucumbers.