Eleven Madison Park, New York

Posted on January 4, 2011 by Grace

Eleven Madison Park (wikipedia discloses that owner Danny Meyer also counts Shake Shack in his stable!) entered this year’s S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants in the world at #50 but in my opinion deserves a ranking much higher and it also deserves more than just its one Michelin Star.

Since we had been splurging a bit on our meals this past week we thought we should dial it back some and opt for having lunch at Eleven Madison Park which, at four courses for $74, may seem pricey for a lunch was a bit more economical for us than what I presume was a similar menu at dinner for $125! Having said that every $ we spent at lunch today was worth it and more.

The restaurant has a very cool concept for its menu, designed by the winner of this year’s James Beard “Best Chef: NYC”, Daniel Humm. The menu (hidden within our serviette) consists of sixteen ingredients from which you choose three or four to form your tasting menu but the cooking is left up to the chefs. So, this allows you to indulge in a surprise tasting menu but still with some measure of control. The menu changes on a regular basis and for today’s lunch our menu was thus:

In theory you can choose any three or four ingredients you want for your meal, so if you really wanted you could order all dessert type ingredients (such as the chevre, coconut, lemon and chocolate) or all meat (chicken, pork, lamb and beef.) In reality you’re more likely to choose something from each grouping (cold, hot, meat, dessert) to ensure you have a balanced meal. If this really confuses you the wait-staff are very friendly and not at all condescending when explaining the menu – and they can offer you advice on which ingredients work well together if you’re stuck for inspiration.

Where the menu for Eleven Madison Park is minimalist you could hardly have said the same for the décor of the restaurant, the involvement of the staff, the drinks and, most importantly, the food. I absolutely loved the fact that everything was branded with the Eleven Madison Park logo which consist of cute outlines of various leaves from the menu, to the panels along the wall, to the etchings in the revolving door entrance. Oh and the butters too (one was from goat’s milk – odd tasting – and the other cow’s milk)! As an added bonus, even though there only two of us, they sat us at a table fit for four with both of us facing into the room so that neither of us had our back to the room – super like!

So, I’ve written over 400 words and I haven’t even started talking about the food. That’s how excited I was about my visit to the restaurant today. Everything about the experience was just so fun and enjoyable! But fear not, the food porn is about to begin!

Whilst deciding on drinks and the menu the first items to be brought out were some melt-in-your-mouth incredible delicate cheese puffs. Jenny – you would have adored these!

Drinks were interesting propositions. Our drink waiter was so enthusiastic about the Hot Buttered Rum that Pat couldn’t resist going for that whilst my drink of choice was the Orange Julius (kind of like a liquid version of orange ice cream!). Interesting and delicious as our drinks were, we soon pushed these to the side when our meal started in earnest.

The Amuse Bouche

Chicken veloute with toasted brioches and black truffle butter was first up. The veloute was served in a tea cup and poured out of a tea pot (for entertainment one presumes). Both items balanced each other well and I was pleased that the veloute was perfectly seasoned.

Smoked sturgeon sabayon hot chive oil was served in a egg shell with its top cut off perfectly straight and whilst this was good the item that followed next was just trufflicious, a slow poached egg, poached in truffle in an air tight container, and then covered in white truffle foam. A group of four people arrived to have lunch a little later than we did and one or two of them must have had some fussiness/food dislikes over the ingredients they could have and we saw that they missed out on this particular treat and other wonders. Such a shame when you go to a restaurant as explorative as Eleven Madison Park and you can’t indulge in absolutely everything or anything the chef throws at you!

After our trio of amuse bouche had been served we were then given some bread and butter (the aforementioned goat’s milk and cow’s milk butters, the fussy table got olive oil instead …) Bread was satisfyingly served warm.

Then we were on to our meal proper.

The Meal Proper

Undeniably the best dish of the lunch had to have been Pat’s Foie Gras (first two pictures) served two ways: in a terrine served with pearl onions and pineapple and then, in a twist of brilliance, as a crème brulee with toasted brioche. The terrine was good with the tartness of the pineapple cutting through the richness but the crème brulee was just stunning. Pat was nice enough to let me have a taste, not sure I would have been so generous! Ha ha! Something about the crusty burnt sugar flavour really did something to emphasise but contrast with the creaminess of the foie gras custard underneath.

My Turbot served fairly simply with sundried tomatoes, beans and fennel was lovely and fresh.

I stuck to the seafood theme for my next course with Nova Scotia Lobster served with roasted and candied chestnuts and spiced squash sauce. Pat had a crab with lemon juice and fresh tagliatelle pasta. Pat reports that the pasta couldn’t have been fresher and there was certainly a lot of crab (the only neg being two spots of very small crab shell!)

I can never go past a pork dish on most menus and it was no exception. Pork was served three ways, as a sausage, roasted pork belly and a kind of braised loin (I think!) This dish was served with mustard seeds, interestingly pear, and also sauerkraut and baby onions. Crackling on the pork belly was cooked to perfection.

Pat had a lamb dish served strangely with apple. Apparently it worked well!

Before moving on to our dessert we had a pre-dessert which was the restaurant’s take on the Kir royal with cassis sorbet champagne foam and meringue. It was served on this plate which looked like a pillow so it kind of highlighted the lightness and frothiness of the pre-dessert.

Coconut was the ingredient and inspiration for my dessert and consisted of toasted coconut flakes, coconut ice cream (divine), pineapple ice cream and caramelised chunks of pineapple. Did anyone say pina colada? Very refreshing and an ideal way to round off the meal.

Pat had an equally refreshing Lemon dessert. Pat considered this the weakest of the dishes but I thought he’d love it for the lemon curd, lemon sorbet, lemon cake crumbs and poppy seed shortbread. Perhaps there was too much lemon going on.

I don’t know if you’d consider them petit fours but immediately after our desserts were cleared we were presented with an almond peanut tulle but more fun a peanut banana sorbet lollipop! At this stage we were winding down and had asked for the bill (which came was delivered in a beautifully hand written form) but our waitress had a surprise for us! Don’t think she was expecting us to ask for the bill quite so quickly!

The Special Treat

Just to set the scene a little – all during our lunch service the service was attentive and friendly. Even when the wait-staff weren’t serving us drinks or checking on us they would walk by and on occasion make light conversation – but they did it in a manner that seemed entirely natural and not at all forced. I think our food was also delivered by chefs – but chefs or wait staff alike they all certainly knew their food, always a sign of an excellent restaurant. At any rate the staff must have seen how excited we were about dining at the restaurant because our surprise was … a tour of the kitchen! We were brought to stand behind what appeared to be a table laid out – it was at chest height and had a white tablecloth over it and two spoons.

I wasn’t really thinking about the table whilst the various aspects of the kitchen and the chefs were explained to us. I couldn’t believe how many chefs there were – there must have been at least ten hovering around the dessert area alone! Despite this it was an oasis of calm it seemed – no shouting and rushing around, all very neat and calm and organised.

And then, to top this all off, one of the dessert chefs then came over to make us a surprise extra item – a meringue, popping candy and sorbet dish made with the aid of liquid nitrogen (of course). This really was a fantastic personal touch (though they must do it sufficiently regularly if they had a table in the kitchen) and this left us on a definite high when we left the restaurant nearly three hours after we first sat down. I can’t say enough good things about the restaurant I certainly hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

Momofuku Ssäm Bar and Milk Bar, New York

Posted on December 30, 2010 by Grace

Penny nicely offered to treat us to a meal at Momofuku Ssäm Bar, one of the hottest venues in the restaurant scenes in New York. With only a small amount of covers it can prove difficult at the best of times to get a seat immediately, especially as the restaurant won’t seat your table until the entire party is present and it operates a no reservation policy … unless you are a party of 6 or more and are interested in the bo ssäm ($200!), a whole slow cooked pork shoulder with a dozen oysters, white rice, bibb lettuce, ssäm sauce, kimchi and ginger scallion sauce. Let’s just say that you’ve got to like your meat cause it’s apparently a whole lot of pork-ola! Anyway, I guess I could understand the no reservation’s policy in such a small venue (about 5-6 tables and seats at the bar.)

We hadn’t made a reservation as we hadn’t thought there would be 6 of us but Audrey’s boyfriend Andres joined us to make a party of 6 anyway. In the end we probably waited about 20-30 minutes to be seated, which wasn’t too bad I guess in the scheme of things. We waited next door in the Momofuku Milk Bar – a really smart idea as it serves as a holding pen for those waiting to have a sit down meal at the Ssäm Bar, or as a dessert venue for the post Ssäm Bar meal (Ssäm Bar itself doesn’t actually do desserts) or even just as a stopping by point for those who simply can’t wait to sit down for a meal at Ssäm Bar and simply want to indulge in pie, cake or, more likely, Ssäm Bar’s famous pork buns.

Pickles, Pork Buns (two varieties), a Short Rib Sandwich and Veal Sweetbreads formed our starters. The pork buns lived up to their reputation and more. Incredibly juicy, incredibly tasty, incredibly more-ish, incredibly tender, they were gone all too soon sadly! We shared two serves of steamed buns – pork belly, hoisin, cucumbers, scallions – and one serve of bar bun – crispy pork belly, avocado, basil, smoked mayo – between us, but I think I could have quite easily had all the buns on the table to myself they were that delicious and worth going into a food coma for. The Short Rib Sandwich wasn’t too bad though the bread it was served in was curiously super tough. Veal Sweetbreads were interesting but not exactly what you come to the Ssäm Bar for …

For our main we had the Grilled dry aged ribeye (niman ranch) – shallot confit, served with some parcels of ravioli. In hindsight, though this dish was good, it may have been a better option to try a few more dishes on the menu – but that is purely to sample the menu as much as possible for us out of towners 😉 The beef was cooked perfectly but was missing any true standout wow in your mouth flavours.

Portions at the Ssäm Bar are not the American portions that I’m used to, especially for the price you pay but the food is certainly up there in taste. It reached #26 in this year’s Top 50 S.Pellegrino Best Restaurant in the World – looking at the restaurants surrounding it (e.g. it’s higher than restaurants such as French Laundry and Tetsuya in Australia) I’m not sure its so good that it justifies such a high entry but then again, I’m just an ordinary punter who doesn’t really know better.

After our meal we had enough space to head back next door for dessert at the Milk Bar. You can have soft serve (flavours include cereal milk, the flavour of milk after you’ve finished your cereal, old fashion donut, red velvet cake and horchata), milk, or mix the two up in a milkshake. Plus you can have interesting cookies including the compost cookie – so-named for its unusual ingredients pretzels, potato chips, coffee, oats, butterscotch, chocolate chips (surprisingly works with the sweet and salty balancing each other) and chocolate-chocolate cookie, or pies including crack pie (toasted oat crust, gooey butter filling) or the grasshopper pie (graham crust, mint cheesecake & brownie filling), or cake (including a very cute looking “birthday” cake.) I had both a milkshake and the grasshopper pie … and am now in a sugar coma. 😉 Good but very rich and very sweet.

WD-50

Posted on December 27, 2010 by Grace

We were all set to head out to Daniel for dinner tonight. Daniel is chef Daniel Boulud’s first and flagship restaurant, recipient of 3-Michelin stars, currently New York’s number 1 restaurant according to the 2010 S.Pellegrino Best Restaurant in the World awards, etc. etc. (I could go on forever.) But then, the snows came. What started with small flurries yesterday afternoon:

ended up being a pretty serious snow dump and by the time we got up this morning (we had been planning on heading into to town to do a tour of Brooklyn) we weren’t even sure we’d be able to leave the house to get into the Big City at all.

Constantly checking the metro and the roads outside (we had to rely on houses clearing their front paths) we knew we’d be stuck indoors for the day but still held out hope for making our dinner plans. Dinner plans which changed slightly … Daniel, though open, had not been able to receive their latest food delivery and therefore were operating a very limited menu. So we decided instead to head to Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50. Manhattan streets had at least been kind of cleared of some snow but it was still pretty hard work getting around:

WD-50, a slightly different kettle of fish to Daniel’s contemporary French, it’s no slouch in the awards department either with a Michelin-star and currently number #45 on the S.Pellegrino Best Restaurant in the World list. WD-50 serves “New American” food and I was looking forward to see how much of owner Wylie Dufresne’s molecular gastronomy was present in the menu.

The restaurant has a very cool feel to it with cool lights, disco balls, wood mixed in with funky art, Japanese kind of style tatami mat place sets, dark but moving colours on the walls and this kind of sets the mood for the very forward-thinking and innovative menu.

There were so many things I wanted to try that I convinced Pat we should indulge in the 9-course tasting menu. Our amuse-bouche was a Striped bass, gingerbread, plum, and pickled ramp (a kind of wild leek). The freshness of the bass was well offset by the gingerbread (interesting!) and plum. I was liking the colours of our dishes already.

Next up was a very unusual bagel – yes it sounds fairly traditional: “Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese” but the unusual twist comes in the fact that the bagel part was basically like an ice cream. Different!

Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery looked again fairly simple, fairly standard but then you cut open the foie gras and find the passionfruit liquid oozing out from inside. Gorgeous. The passionfruit was a fantastic way to cut through the richness of the foie gras.

Our Scrambled eggs ravioli, charred avocado, kindai kampachi was a really nice an interesting idea but I felt that perhaps the ravioli was slightly under seasoned so it didn’t really convince me.

Some dishes are best served cold but I would have preferred the next one wasn’t. Don’t get me wrong, even with being served cold, the Cold fried chicken, buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco, caviar was actually quite divine but there is just something about eating cold fried chicken that kind of creeps me out. Incredible flavour in this dish though.

Bone marrow has a very strong flavour and having it shaved over our next dish of Bay scallops, parsnip, and black sesame surprisingly worked for the dish. Okay it wasn’t the prettiest dish we had this evening but it was nom nom.

In a total twist on Beef and béarnaise this is what we were served next:

Where is the beef you ask? Where is the béarnaise? The beef was represented by the intense broth and the béarnaise were in the dumpling!

Then our final savoury dish of the night – squab breast, cheese pumpkin, corn bread, pickled cranberries.

For a girl that doesn’t really like beer I really liked our first dessert which was a White beer ice cream, quince, caramel, and caraway mix. It was very refreshing after the richness of the savoury part of our meal.

This was followed by two very pretty dessert plates: Grapefruit curd, camparai, and hisbicus-sorrel

And soft chocolate, beets, long pepper, ricotta ice cream. Really interesting how this last dish used what are traditionally savoury ingredients.

Petit fours to finish our meal – Cocoa packets and a Chocolate shortbread filled with milk ice cream.

Our evening in WD-50 was an experience. I very much enjoyed the restaurant’s take on more traditional dishes. Plating, except for the messy bone marrow dish, was very pretty and delicate. It was clear that great attention and thought had been given to and into each of the dishes. Service was very friendly and attentive, which I would expect in a restaurant in America, and our servers were very knowledgeable about the food. I’m not sure if some of the time we were actually being served by chefs from the kitchen?

I definitely would recommend WD-50 for something a little different (look out too for their Dessert Tasting menu!)

Era Ora

Posted on November 14, 2010 by Grace

Era Ora, About Time, is a concept Italian restaurant with ingredients purportedly flown in from Italy (makes me question slightly the green agenda.) The main influence is Umbrian and Tuscany but the restaurant is not afraid to go beyond those borders. The restaurant first earned its Michelin Star in 1996 which it has kept until now.

The exterior of the restaurant, located in Christianshavn, is very subtle. We walked by it a couple of times before realising it was the restaurant. Perhaps this was because it was fairly early on and the restaurant wasn’t quite so busy. The restaurant is filled with warm colours and fairly engaging interior decoration.

The menu consists of a tasting menu – it is up to you to choose how many courses. Bottled water is charged on a per person charge, rather than by bottle, which is both a plus and a negative. They certainly ticked my box for making sure our glasses were constantly topped up – still for me and sparkling for Pat.

For about £110 including service this is the food that we got:

An amuse bouche of Fried scallops with leeks, green apple and chilli sauce. This dish looked as good as it tasted.

Then our trio of starters. The first trio included:

Lobster salad with filo pastry and Cicerchia beans;
Pumpkin lasagna over fried Monte Veronese cheese,
Plaice rolled on swiss chard, potato, sun dried tomato and Jerusalem artichoke

The pumpkin lasagna was easily my favourite of these trios but that could be because it was warm where the other two dishes were cool. All three were very prettily presented though and involved an incredible detail in both the ingredients and the cooking.

Next up was a trio of

Veal tartar in love with crunchy cracker and foam of soya,
Castagnaccio with orange ricotta, banana chip and honey caramel,
Meat ball of venison in beans sauce with deep fried spring onion

These were really fun to eat. The castagnaccio (the middle item that looks like a cake) was an interesting addition to the trio.

A gorgeous Herbal risotto in scent of liquorice topped with roasted quail was up next for us. Incredibly delicate I wished that this dish would go on forever.

Next, another of my favourites was the home made trofie pasta rolled in venison ragout and red onion. It sounds like a fairly simple dish but the taste. Simply exquisite.

Then, sadly, we were on to our final savoury dish. I wasn’t sure I would enjoy it as involved lamb but I was quite surprised. Roasted lamb filet with eggplant composition and fried tomato was nice and not overwhelmingly lambish in flavour.

Desserts started with a Cream of white chocolate in scent of lemon served with variation of fennel and lemon and

the Coffee cream, cookie crumbs, dark chocolate caviar and milk sorbet.

Both very enjoyable dessert dishes and really showed Era Ora’s commitment to maintaining the presentation and detail to the end.

We finished our meal with tea (which came in this cute teapot which sat on top of my cup – love Danish design!) and petit fours.

I can totally see why Era Ora has received the best Italian in Copenhagen moniker. Food is fantastic quality – I don’t think we could have had more ingredients in each of the dishes (nor plates – I thought they would run out of plates at one stage!) – and also innovative. For those who like their wine Era Ora prides itself on its giant wine cellar containing supposedly 90,000 bottles of vintage Italian wine. Service was for the main part a hit (for example, the constant topping up of water) without being in the way though it did drop off slightly towards the end when the restaurant started filling up. The only negative was that we were promised a copy of the menu on the way out (we asked for it twice) but they never handed one over …

Noma, Copenhagen

Posted on September 18, 2010 by Grace

Recently announced as number 1 in the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant for 2010, Noma is a restaurant delivering its take on Nordic gourmet cuisine. Noma is a combination of two Danish words “nordisk” (Nordic) and “mad” (food). Topping restaurants the likes of El Bulli and The Fat Duck it must have done something pretty significant to reach the pinnacle so I was inspired so much to try and get a booking at the restaurant. Clearly being named number 1 in the world had a giant impact on reservations ability – the old process clearly couldn’t handle the number of requests because over a course of a week of trying to get reservations the method to get a booking must have changed about five times! Eventually, however, perseverance paid off and I managed to get a booking for four of us on a Saturday. I was well chuffed to get a weekend spot!

Its pretty crazy to make a trip to another country literally just to visit a restaurant but that’s what Pat, Laney, Su Yin and I did. To save on accommodation costs we decided to take the first flight out this morning – a relatively early 7.15 plane out of Stansted … though still one of those flights where you might as well not have slept the night before you had to get up so early in the morning!

After arriving and checking into our hostel we took a long leisurely stroll to the restaurant. Its not actually that conveniently located but it does have a nice location near the water. We arrived quite early for our booking but Noma was very accommodating and didn’t even blink an eye that we were nearly an hour early (we were cold!)

Before we even had to make any decisions about what we were eating (turns out you really have two choices anyway – either a 7 course (seasonal) or 12 course (classic) tasting menu!) we were first served with a number, and when I say number I mean something line 9!, amuse bouches.

The first lot included Nasturtiums (edible flowers) and Snails and Sea Buckthorn Leather and Pickled Hip Roses. When the nasturtiums and snails came out in a vase we weren’t sure whether to admire or to eat! The leather and Roses reminded me of these fruit jerky type things we had when I was a kid in Australia.

Next up was this mysterious tin which when opened revealed Cookie with Blackcurrant Paste, “Speck” and a sprig of pine. Served with it was Rye Bread and Chicken Skin sandwiching a smoked cheese type pate and Leek and garlic – the bulb end of the leek had been deep fried and then what seemed like a roasted garlic tucked into the centre.

The Pickled and Smoked Quail Egg which came next was served rather dramatically in a large ceramic egg shaped container. Nestled inside on a bed of hay with smoke drifting up slowly it made for an engaging dish both in its presentation and taste. The eggs had been cooked to perfection and were exactly gooey in the way it should be.

Another conundrum was presented for us with the next dish. Instead of a vase of flowers we were presented with a potted plant. Was this to be admired or eaten? Turns out that what was potted (in edible soil) were baby radish and carrots. Such a cute dish!

Aebleskiver, or basically profiteroles, with a sardine was another cute dish. Though usually I like sweet and salty combinations this one was actually a bit too fishy for me!

The finale of our amuse bouche was another sandwhich – this time consisting of a wavy crispy bread and a crispy duck stock skin. There was lots going on in the middle with herbs (which were to be order of the day) and roe and emulsions galore.

Imagine that this all came before we’d even made our menu selection – a very stimulating start to our meal. Dishes came out at a decent clip though because we were all so busy taking photos it seemed that dishes came out quicker than we were ready for them. Heh heh.

Whilst we were waiting for our “main” meal to start we were given some fresh bread accompanied by butter and, rather interestingly, a lard with pork crisps. We appreciated the fact that the bread was served in a bread bed of sorts to keep it warm. The pork lard was an interest twist to a spread for the bread but the butter was more popular of the two accompaniments.

Chef René Redzepi’s focus at this restaurant is in serving food that makes the most of the local environment. So, if you ever see him talking about it, its all about going out into the local forest or seashore to gather what is available and use it in his cooking. As a result of many of the dishes we were served today consisted of a lot of greenage. Something I don’t think Laney was very impressed with – think she’s a meat girl. Ha ha! I must admit the meal is pretty unlike anything I’ve eaten before for its creativity and use of herbs and such and you can tell that an incredible amount of care was given in putting the dishes together and plating the dishes.

I’ll never look at lettuce quite the same again thanks to the first dish of the rank: Roasted lettuce blended and served with blanched flaked almonds was interesting. I couldn’t believe how intense the flavour of the roasted lettuce was. The almonds I could have done without (not really adding much in flavour) but they did give some crunch to the dish.

More greens on the next dish with Dried Scallops, Watercress with Biodynamic Cereals and Hazel Nut. A very strange and unusual dish. I’m not quite sure I liked eating the dried scallops – they were kind of too intense in their fishiness and I felt lost that essence of scallop that I love so much – which I think comes not only from its flavour but the fleshiness of the white meat.

Oyster and the Sea was up next. Rather dramatic presentation with the oyster sitting on a bed of seaweed, seashells, rocks and general sea things. Not a giant fan of oysters but this dish wasn’t too bad.

One of the most gorgeous dishes I’ve had came up next and it mostly consisted of onions! I do like my onion – though it has to be cooked down in some manner as I can’t stand it raw. This dish was ‘Læsø’ onion, onion cress and thyme, tapioca and onion broth. It truly was a lovely dish.

Well, we’d eaten a few things by this stage so it was now time to work for our meal! This could come across as a bit gimmicky trying to get the diner involved in their food but I thought it was a lot of fun. So, first out came some ingredients and equipment.

And then the instruction for The Hen and the Egg. The chef first squirted hay oil on to each of our heated hot plates and then the instruction was to crack the egg, fry to liking before adding thyme butter, lovage and spinach to wilt. This was then finished by herbs, flowers and fried potato curls. Admittedly we were probably a bit too concerned with posing for the relevant action shot than the cooking of our actual eggs … but the result was still pretty tasty!

Maybe there is room for us in the Noma kitchen … 😉

The egg was actually a good transition dish because it was sort of a bridging dish between the seafood and green dishes we had before to the meat dish we had next – the Deer and Wild Thyme, Red Beets and Red Fruit. The dish came with this mega-knife … though in actuality it was more a prop than anything as it wasn’t needed at all. It was a pretty serious knife which even came in its own case! The deer was good and enjoyed the beet that it came with.

You may not think that the next dish we received:

was a dessert but it was! How René managed to include greenage into his dessert and still make it work is a mystery to me! This time it was the Hay which had been blended down, on top of this was a Chamomile Ice with Sorrel and Wild Herbs. Really delicious and an extremely refreshing treat.

The official finale of the tasting menu was something a little special. “Gammel Dansk” (a Danish bitters), Ice Cream, Milk and Woodsorrel. The combination of all the items worked really well together. The wafers of what I think was frozen milk were a treat.

The official official finale to our meal at Noma were the petit fours served with our end of meal teas. A couple of interesting tins and wrapped packages came out for this part of the meal.

They were what was in essence a Danish marshmallow, bitter chocolate covered potato chip sprinkled with fennel seed and finale, my favourite, the Noma classic Bone Marrow Caramel. Kind of like a very extreme meat flavoured salted caramel this one really grew on me.

Aside from the food the meal at Noma was certainly an experience from the first minute. The service was excellent – the waiters make an effort to find out where you are from so that they can send out the chefs who are from your country to speak with you. Out of a full kitchen of about 30 chefs there were about 5 or 6 from Oz and the sommelier was from Oz so they all came out to say hi. In addition to this personalisation of the service, dishes were brought to the table by the chefs themselves who presented them to us. Great care was taken to ensure that our dishes were served at the right time – I remember at one stage that there must have been mis-communication with respect to the timing of our dishes so when they were bringing out our Oyster and Sea dish we saw this line of chefs come out to bring the pot to us … but then when they saw we were still eating our dried scallop dish the chefs did this very smooth and fluid circle around us and back to the kitchen! Towards the end of our meal the fire alarm went off so we were all sent outside whilst it was sorted out. We forgot how absolutely cold it was outside so we were a bit freezing!