Break Out the Ascots, We're Going to Din Din

On Thursday night, five people from my department (including me, gussied up in big boy clothes) got to dine at the four star Avenues Restaurant, located in the decidedly upscale Peninsula Hotel. They do this kind of thing every so often in hopes that we book our clients at The Peninsula as opposed to say, The Four Seasons or Park Hyatt. And after eating a meal fit for Zeus, here's to hoping that they use this type of persuasion more often. They have a new Head Chef, Curtis Duffy, who wanted to strut his stuff. (My brother Cory can be connected to their old chef, Graham Elliot Bowles, through Six Degrees of Separation. Ask him to tell you the story of Graham's brother Bo and the wayward cilantro sometime.) He was formerly second in charge at the world renowned Alinea, one of the top restaurants in the city.

It was a highly pretentious (in a good way), one-of-a-kind dining experience. Like something off of Top Chef, each dish was intricately prepared and presented. It was an 8 course meal, each course like a work of art. But unlike Dogs Playing Poker, you could eat this art without indigestion. I saved a copy of the menu (it even had a 'Welcome Allied Advertising' header on it) so that I could take a picture of it and use it with this post, but it seems that Carmella must have used it to line her litter box, because I can't find the thing anywhere. You can see some semblance of the menu by clicking here, although ours varied slightly.

A few stray observations and highlights:

-The two best things I had were the Morels, a mushroom risotto that would make women swoon and lesser men weep, and the Wagyu, a Japanese Kobe Beef which clocks in at a recession-proof $100 a pound. The slice of beef was only about 3 bites worth but was better than any steak I've ever had. It came with a dried soy sauce crouton. Sounds weird, tastes tremendous.

-There were 2 different deserts, but the best one was this banana-blueberry concoction that looked as if it were flown in from outer space. The blueberry was set like a over easy egg; you poked it, causing the hardened blueberry to explode all over some foam and banana gelato. Ok, that sounds gross and vaguely sexual, but there's no other way to describe it. It was so good that I would have chest bumped someone had that been appropriate in such a setting.

-The meal started out with our choice of 5 different kinds of champagne. After our waiter went through the descriptions and names of all 5, I simply said, "I'll take #3." With the meal we got wine. Pinot Noir; my favorite. Just don't ask me what kind or what year. Much better than church wine.

-Many of the dishes had 'foams'. Not sure that these really added to the taste, but they sure made them look fancy.

-My least favorite dish was a whitefish with cocoa foam. Not bad, and surprisingly the chocolate tasted good with the fish, but the fish itself wasn't all that great. Tasted like it had came straight from the Cedar River. I am looking to replicate the dish here at home by melting a Hersey bar on top of some Gorton's Fish Sticks.

All in all, it was quite the experience. Nothing that I'll probably ever be paying for on my own dime, but one that I'm glad I got to experience none-the-less. As a champion for the blue collar man, I can just as easily appreciate a good burger, but it was fun to see how the other half lives, if for only a day.

Jeeves! Get me my pipe and my slippers! And where is my copy of The New Yorker? Dammit Jeeves. Good help is so hard to come by these days, I swear!

*Look for the wife and I to recap our Air and Water Show weekend in the next couple of days. It will include a videos of monkeys! If that doesn't sell you, I don't know what will.