Steph C.'s Profile

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We returned to playing with our food with the hot potato, cold potato.  This was a wax bowl of cold potato truffle soup, pierced with a needle bearing a sphere of hot Yukon gold potato, and butter, chive, and parmesan.  Instructions: pull the needle, let everything drop, and take the whole thing in one gulp.  The contrasting temperatures frolicked across my palate, and the rich flavors of buttered potato and truffle pleased every taste bud.  Next, we received pillows of vaporized hollywood juniper.  These offered a subtle background for a plate of roasted mushrooms - white beech, maitake, and chanterelle - with crispy shallot rings and miner's lettuce, nestled in pine-infused cream, topped by thyme foam and an aged balsamic vinaigrette.  This was a beautiful glimpse of an enchanted forest where mushrooms taste like heaven and never poison.  Then came our first taste of red meat, with an interactive presentation.  We got healthy leaves of red cabbage, hung from little beams, and our plate turned into a contraption that held it suspended like a hammock.  These became the vessels for venison wraps with the silkiest most tender cubes of deer I've ever tasted.  We got tiny pinches of condiments to add to our wraps - oven-dried tomato, pickled garlic, bell pepper salad, pearl onion, mustard, potato custard, paprika, beer, and an inverted meniscus of bacon vinaigrette.  Only the mustard seeds and bacon came through, but the medley was delicious.

Cue now the black truffle explosion - a raviolo soup dumpling of liquid black truffle, topped with parmigiano, wilted romaine, and diced black truffle.  Close your mouth to keep it all in, and note how the intense truffle center is further magnified by the actual chew of truffle from that little dice.  This was one of the highlights of the meal, and the easiest one to lose all over the table.  Poor Frances spewed a precious stream.

After the table got a wipedown, it became the canvas for a clutter of cutlery inspired by Miró, bearing our next course in fragments.  The utensils crossed in artful controlled chaos, and we were instructed to take each bite in quick succession in any order we chose.  We dropped used utensils into canisters filled with warm lavender salt, which provided a thick aromatic backdrop.  We were told what we had eaten after we were done - a beautiful cut of velvety squab, an unctuous hunk of foie gras, and spoonfuls of olive, lavender, pomegranate, prune jelly, pumpernickel with celeriac, fresh crunchy plum with pansy, and duck fat with thyme leaf and aged sherry vinegar.  Our last meat course brought rich, toothsome confit veal heart with poached quince and a brunoise of root vegetables.  This came over a sweet and hot chestnut soup with Thai long pepper foam.

The savory portion of the meal wound down with a luxurious bite of brie, caramelized onion, and Granny Smith apple, all tempura fried and served at the safe end of a torched cinnamon stick.  Five tastes of ginger cleansed our palates - mild clean galangal, spicy soft blue-ringed, smokey turmeric, licorice yellow, and sweet and hot white ginger, all almost direct from the ground.

Dessert was an extended affair, with two of the biggest showcases of the night.  First there was "Winter in New Hampshire," a scene built on fir leaves and cold river rocks with persimmon, honey gel, cherry pudding, and a gingerbread marshmallow nestled in peppermint snow.  The jellies and marshmallow got unfortunately hard, but I loved the snow itself, which was so cold and refreshing it numbed my tongue.  The dessert also featured a cup of distilled hot chocolate, clear and colorless, but packed with pure chocolate flavor.  This was followed by a shot of lemongrass liquid tinged with mint, cilantro, Thai basil, cucumber, and amaranth, contained between finger lime gel and a chunk of mango inside a tube.  It was light and surprising, vanishing on inhalation.

Then dinner at Alinea ended, with a ton of fanfare and table theatrics.  Two chefs laid a canvas on the table and painted it with lingonberry, Bourbon County Stout, and citrus sweet potato reduction.  They then sprinkled marigold petals and poured liquid nitrogen over two dark chocolate bowls, which they broke open to reveal a bonanza of sweets - frozen hunks of butternut squash and graham cracker crust, oatmeal granola, French toast, lingonberry cream cheese, beer pinwheels, walnut-covered caramels, and lingonberry and squash chips.  Not the most cohesive dessert I've had, but easily the most entertaining.

We were stuffed by the end of the meal, and I have to say - anyone who says otherwise is, like Paul Bunyan and Moby Dick, wholly imaginary.  We left on a cloud, mesmerized by the dinner and show.  Alinea may be part spectacle, but it's spectacle that tastes better than just about anything else you can eat.  There's a reason this restaurant ranks among the best in the world, and if I never make it back, at least I enjoyed one meal I will never forget.

I've been to AOC a couple of times, once with a large group, and on the more recent occasion with the lovely Dee C.  I was seated both times in the upstairs patio, which is pleasant and relaxing and pairs perfect with a glass of wine.

The only things I remember from my first visit in 2008 are the charcuterie board, the cheese board, and the bacon-wrapped dates, all of which were very impressive.  We were a large party and had a set menu so we tried the whole range of meats and cheeses, and everything was tasty and well-presented.  I remember loving the almonds and dried figs that accompanied the cheese.  The bacon-wrapped dates were awesome, as bacon-wrapped dates must be.  The rest of the dishes were, literally, forgettable, but a second visit furnished some truly wonderful food.

We started by attacking the good crusty bread and the tapenade.  The spread was very harsh, almost bitter, with lots of dark olive, but tasty, especially sparkled up with coarse salt.  We then tucked into the goat cheese, dried figs, and saba.  This was the best thing we ate all night.  The goat cheese might've been the best I've ever had, just utterly smooth and tangy, and it tasted like a dream with the dried figs and a drizzle of balsamic.  The salad of little gems, dungeness crab, avocado, and lime was nice and bright but ultimately unmemorable in comparison.

The pork rillettes with pickled onions, on the other hand, were fantastic.  They came with rustic crunchy bread, and with cornichons and frisee in addition to the pickled onions.  The rillettes were well-seasoned and perfectly porky with a nice meaty texture.  The pink pickled onions were superb, with just a little sweetness and a good crunch.  The cornichons were cornichons, which means they were awesome, and even the frisee was noticeably good.  Don't miss these rillettes.

Next came blue sea bass with Indian curry chickpeas and tangy yogurt sauce.  The fish was perfectly cooked, skin-on, and the curry chickpeas and sauce and fish melded together like a harmonious stew.  We also tried the day scallops with pancetta and sunchoke, which was quite nice with a creamy sauce that wasn't too heavy and a good amount of salt, mostly from the pancetta.  The last of our savories was the kabocha squash and wild mushroom persillade which came with a variety of tooth-tender mushrooms and well-roasted chunks of squash.

Naturally, we had room for dessert and went with the frozen chocolate terrine and the ricotta tart.  The terrine came with pistachios, mascarpone, and espresso beans, and was, on the whole, not something I'd order again.  It wasn't bad, but the espresso beans were overpowering.  The bites without them were pretty and balanced, but not amazing.  The ricotta tart blew the terrine out of the water.  It came with a healthy topping of lemon curd and candied peel with huckleberry compote on the side.  The result was a ricotta tart that was more lemony than cheesy, but oh was it beautiful.  The lickable smoothness of the curd, the sugary zest of the peel, the tart berriness of the compote, the mild base of ricotta, and the buttery crumbs of the tart shell - this was a heavenly dessert.

When I met up with Dee, I had a terrible headache that progressed as the night deepened, and after I got home, I was bedridden with an awful cold for a few days.  The point of this little note is that even in pain, I really enjoyed the meal.  The food ranged from good to outstanding, and the setting was mellow and conducive to leisurely chatter.  Our waitress was great as well, very helpful and friendly.  While not everything you get at A.O.C. is perfect, the combination of food and atmosphere is hard to beat, and I'd be happy to go again.