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!)