best of the best
So, I’ve skipped a week already… due to some unforeseen technical difficulties. A few weeks ago, the culinary school I’m currently attending upped and moved downtown to a sweet new location and we’ve been waiting for it to reopen ever since. I say “we” because all of this free time has R in a total frenzy!! Our weeknights went from mostly boring dindins while watching GOT, to: “one more drink!! ONE MORE DRINK!! I don’t have anywhere to be tomorrow!!” ~Me, to a terrified Roberto. After a Tuesday night that quickly faded to black, “we” decided that I needed to find something real to fill my days during this hiatus and a regularly scheduled post was just the thing. It was the perfect solution until the reality of my tech prowess came crashing down and I, for the life of me, could not retrieve the photos that I needed for last week’s post. Turns out, wasn’t all my fault. After more than 6 hours of internet research on the Eyefi Mobi card, SD card readers, and lots of little rabbit trails in between, I was told that I would have to just sit and wait until the company could mail me the appropriate card reader to retrieve the aforementioned photos. Hence, a Thursday night that quickly faded to black… So, this week, to avoid another one of R’s terrified post-dinner facial expressions while I wait for the USPS to deliver the goods, I’m skipping ahead and sharing one of our top big nights of the year (so far… I do have a birthday coming up…)!
A little over a week ago, a list of the 50 Best Restaurants in the World was released and foodies everywhere have been clamoring to get into any and/or all of the spots that made the cut. This list is a BFD in the food world. Think: FIFA World Cup (minus the current scandal) but restaurants instead of a bunch of boys and balls (although, the list is noticeably lacking a strong female presence…).
I prepared for the grand unveiling like any other unemployed foodie, by reading lots of articles on Eater and flying through the Netflix Original Series, “Chef’s Table”. (Btw, TOTES OBSESSED with Massimo Bottura, Episode 1!! Must watch!!) This year, the top spot went to El Celler de Can Roca in Girona, Spain. I have yet to visit Spain and have not had the pleasure of dining at this leading establishment, but I have had the opportunity to explore the #5 spot on the list. Dropping one spot from the #4 ranking last year, ELEVEN MADISON PARK played host to R and myself on our actual anniversary. Yes, lots of anniversary celebrations this year. We earned it.
As I mentioned in my previous post, our schedules didn’t permit us to leave the city on our anniversary weekend so we settled for a “NY themed” weekend together. I could go off on a tangent here about the significance of having a typical southern wedding (wedding theme: tradish; wedding dress: big. wedding location: the old north state (a.k.a. the south)) and following it up with a city themed anniversary weekend (weekend theme: all things Big Apple; weekend dress: also big… to fit my ever growing flABs; weekend location: all over Manhattan (but mostly downtown because duh…)). Oh, the connections you can draw between those events and the theme of this blog! However, I will skip the tangent for now and get back to the food!
Our main focus of the weekend was food, obvi. As I did my research on where to go, it became abundantly clear that 11Mad was the perfect choice. Having been to Per Se and loved it, we wanted to try something equally adventurous but a little less formal. Being the perfectionist that I am, I really wanted to push the “Big Apple theme” as far as I could and with 11Madison’s New York focused tasting menu, it was the obvious choice. After a month of stressful hits and misses with our reservation service, we were thrilled (and R was more than relieved) when our good friend, Pedro Goodwin, came through with the Hail Mary and got us into 11Mad last minute. We donned our finest loose fitting tops and Ubered uptown to the fourth (now fifth) best restaurant in the world. Needless to say, we were not disappointed. The service: first class! The food: delicious, inspiring and even entertaining! The WINE!! Oh, the wine!! We were in heaven. Also needless to say, I will never be able to describe every detail of the meal in one blog post and I’m sure you’re already sick of reading this. Therefore, I’ll stop while I’m ahead and let you see for yourself what we experienced while dining on the tasting menu at ELEVEN MADISION PARK. Tangent over. Enjoy the photos!
As you can see, Chef Daniel Humm does an excellent job presenting the best that New York has to offer in a beautiful and entertaining way. Not only was each plate painstakingly researched and prepared, but each was served in a manner that encapsulates the diner, much like seeing a great Broadway show. Not to be outdone, the wine service at 11Mad was equally as impressive as the dining experience. We discovered two unbelievable bottles with the help of Dev, the surprisingly young and knowledgeable somm. In continuing with the "dinner and a show" motif, older bottles of wine are opened with heated tongs. The tongs are heated with a torch, placed around the neck of the bottle, below the cork, which then pops right off. Both the aged wine and the cork are preserved and Robert and I were totally blown away. A YouTube video from Business Insider demonstrating this process can be viewed here.
***Note on the quality of these photos: It was pretty dark in there, you know, to set the mood and all… So, I’ve photoshopped some light into these shots to give you a better understanding of what we had for dinner. In other words, apologies for the poor quality here.