A wonderfully relaxing evening.

• October 2, 2004
• Food porn  

It was an incredibly busy and stressful week, so by the time I took the

train down to New York City today, I was in some definite need for some

pampering. So first, a visit to [

John Allan’s]1, for the full service treatment (a scalp massage, hair cut and styled, a hot

towel treatment, a manicure, and a shoe shining). Then Stacey and I

went to Aquavit.

The last time we had gone to Aquavit was for my birthday, where we had

the 17 course “tiny bites” tasting menu. We were stuffed to the gills

after that, so this time, we opted for the 7 course chef’s tasting

menu. It was supposedly a smaller amount of food, but we were still rolling

out the door by the time we were done.

The food there was incredible. Unfortunately, I didn’t take notes, so

I can’t do the [

]3 porn descriptions that does so well. But

some of the dishes that stood out in mind included:

• Fennel and raisin bread, with herbed butter. Yum!

• A kobe beef ravioli — where the cube of raw kobe beef was used

  as the “pasta”, which was filled with mashed taro root as the

  stuffing. A truffle tea broth was poured over the whole concoction.

• Mackerel, lightly broiled and coated with ground pepper paired

  with a rich oxtail stewed in red wine, topped with a small piece of

  octopus. The soft, incredibly rich beef was a great contrast with the

  firmer (although not chewy) octopus.

• For the cheese course, a trio consisting of a strong, soft

  cheese, olive flan, and a salty rosemary bread. Each of the trio had

  their own, very strong flavor, but you could put them together in

  arbitrary combinations, and they all tasted really good, combining in

  different ways to draw out different aspects of their flavor.

  We particularly enjoyed pairing the olive flan with

  the cheese, and with the rosemary bread.

• A bottle of viognier wine from the Miner Family vinyards in the Napa Valley. It’s a white wine which is fruity, but well-balanced with enough crisp acidity

  that went well with pretty much all of the dishes on the tasting menu.

There were a lot more very yummy dishes, but unfortunately I can’t

remember them all. I guess next time I’m going to have to bring a

notepad along and take notes….