A discussion about New York restaurants on the Houston Chowhounds list made me think about my visit to WD-50 last year and a great episode of After Hours filmed in its kitchen.
I expected After Hours to be full of New York food scene elitism. An even more insipid version of Dinner for Five, but with restaurateurs. Instead its just a couple of food geeks screwing around in the kitchen and serving up baby eels (why don’t they ever put that stuff on the menu?) to their friends. Daniel Boulud even seems genuinely interested in Wiley Dufresne ’s food experiments. No hint of superiority one would expect from an traditional French chef.
After Hours is a great show and the WD-50 episode is one of the best. Where else can you watch Daniel Boulud burn the desert and learn how to pronounce “clafouti” all in one scene?
To download the full version visit vuze.com
Like any proper food obsessed fanboy I am fascinated by things that go on in kitchens and After Hours lets you see a kitchen unlike any other. WD-50 is more like a lab than a kitchen, stocked with as many chemicals and Rube Goldberg machines as items humans might actually identify as food.
While the guests seem interesting enough, I had a lot more fun watching Dufresne teach Boulud how to make instant vanilla yogurt by combining pectin, syrup and milk. Prediction - within 5 years the Food Network is going to cancel the nonsense that has become of Good Eats and replace Alton Brown with a food chemist mixing edibles up in a lab. Every kid is going to want the Fisher Price Molecular Gastronomy Set with an optional thermal immersion circulator, which is going to become the biggest selling Christmas toy since the Furbie.
WD-50 is an interesting place. It’s your average neighborhood joint that serves avant-garde food that every red blooded American wants to have close to home. Searching for the address in New York I actually passed it several times because I thought it was a laundromat.
WD-50 does not seem like a restaurant chasing Michelin stars. You come here to eat. All dishes are available ala carte. Prices are downright affordable for the level of R&D that goes into the food. I made reservations, but at 7:30 there were plenty of seats inside. I walked in, grabbed a seat at the bar and never for a minute got the impression that I was at one of the best restaurants in NYC.
Slow poached egg, chorizo, pickled beets, dried black olives
WD-50 is a perfect example of how little molecular gastronomy, for lack of a better term, has to do with the science and chemicals, and how much of it is the art of isolating rare flavors in ways conventional cooking techniques simply do not allow. Foams, emulsions and gels show up on dishes at great restaurants such as Nana in Dallas, but there they seem foreign and forced in less capable hands.
Contrast that with one of the Wiley Dufresne’s creations I tried on my visit there and you walk away with a much better understanding of what he is trying to do. When I first tasted the eel dish at WD-50 I hit that space that only comfort food takes you - the flavor was reminiscent of etheral chopped liver that only Jewish grandmothers unafraid of chicken fat know how to make. I only later figured out that the brown stuff on the side of the eel was chicken skin emulsion.
Smoked eel, blood orange “zest”, black radish, chicken skin
How and why Dufresne choses to go where he does with flavors and textures doesn’t even matter as much as his brilliant ability to successfully combine something that triggers flavor memory with a dish built around eel - which no Jewish grandmother in her right mind would dare touch (is eel even Kosher?).
If food is supposed to take you on a journey, WD-50 does just that. I can’t wait to go back.
thanks for the post misha. i spent 2 hours downloading and watching after hour episodes last night. i can’t believe i’ve never heard of this show until now. i have tremendous respect for daniel boulud, and even met him once when he came by my table at daniel, but i had no idea he was really so personable. i love the format of the show. i can’t wait to add this program to my DVR.
You watched a bunch of these during your hunger strike? That’s pretty hardcore. No way I would have been able to do that.
Unfortunately, I have not seen any episodes beyond the first half of Season 1. I don’t have Mojo and they seemed to have stopped uploading them for some reason. The New Orleans episodes interest me the most. I had some amazing meals at Cochon and Restaurant August last time I was there (not so much at Luke).
Damn, Misha. Great pictures.
What did we do before Mojo? I freaking love that channel. And I love Daniel Boulud. What I wouldn’t give for an evening with him and/or Anthony Bourdain.
I hear an evening with Anthony Bourdain is a relative bargain. You can have dinner with him and Kent Rathburn at Jaspers in the Woodlands in October for about $250. Unless you were thinking of a more intimate affair, in which case you are going to have to throw in a couple of packs of Marlboros.
http://www.thewoodlands.net/evps/evitem.cfm?ID=2368
The pictures are actually courtesy of WD-50, but the dishes look almost identical in real life. I should have mentioned that.
I am addicted to After Hours and have probably seen every episode more than once. I ate at WD-50 3-4 years ago and it was one of the most memorable meals I have had. I still remember the tongue with the fried mayo. I got to meet chef Wylie at SOBE Food and Wine this year and he is genuinely a nice guy. I ran into the bartender from the show at Aspen Food and Wine last year and he was surprised to find someone who remembered him from the show. I definately encourage anyone who is in NY to check out WD-50. It is molecular gastronomy done right. I get frustrated when the press says that Houston isn’t ready for such a restaurant. Just because laidback manor failed, doesn’t mean that Houstonians can’t appreciate such food. The concept was forced and overdone at laidback and I think even chef Rucker would admit that he has learned that subtlety is important.
Bhutani - I have a couple of posts about Alinea and several other places you might find interesting coming up soon.
You should try to make it to one of Rucker’s supper club dinners. I never visited laidback manor, but I was very surprised by how much closer his cooking is to that of David Kinch at Manresa than say Moto. There is a definitely a touch of technique present, but it’s used in moderation and ingredients (often grown in his garden) take center stage.
I would actually love to see a few dishes that really push the envelope on his menus once in a while, but he has definitely achieved a sense of balance few technique driven chefs display.
I am definately going to try and make a tenacity dinner once I move back down to Houston next month. I have yet to try Manresa but it is definately on my list. I am a regular reader of his girlfriend’s blog, chez pim.
forced? overdone? jeeeez??? this is coming from the same guy who emailed me saying, “i had the opportunity to dine at laidback manor a few years back and was really excited to see such innovative cuisine in Houston.”
thanks misha.
I apologize if I touched a nerve, Randy. I very much appreciated that a chef was out to bring such innovative cuisine to Houston. Does that necessarily translate to a dining experience without flaws? I won’t elaborate on those flaws as I don’t want to further offend you. Nonetheless, I still very much appreciate any chef that is willing to separate themselves from the culinary conformity that is all too pervasive in this country.
what did you think your statements would do? put a smile on my face? there is always more than meets the eye. there is a million possible excuses for your experience at the manor to have been a negative one…
but one thing im not going to do is use one!
There goes my shot at scoring a seat to your future dinners, I guess.
No soup for you!
not at all. it puts you right at the top! im more than up for the challenge plus, as misha said before, my style of food has become more driven by mother nature than technique alone.
on another note. misha - i too would love to be able to really get down and be a lil more envelope pushing but you have seen the equipment im working with - although the electrolux is fucking nice - i am limited to applications that dont require a lot cool toys. it’s time i take back my circulator from voice and start bidding on ebay for a new LN2 dewar!!! wish me luck…
Can’t we just steal one of these from one of the refineries in Pasadena? This is Houston, after all…
Whew! I look forward to it.
I have been working at the medical school here in Dallas and see those things not too infrequently. I just looked up the cost and I was pretty surprised that such a simple vessel costs so much! Is your circulator the only one that Voice has got? If so, there goes one of their signature dishes.
Very good post, Misha. For a little extra on what molecular gastronomy actually does have to do with science, I recommend looking at the Experimental Cuisine Collective (http://experimentalcuisine.googlepages.com). One of their founders and a biochemist at NYU, Kent Kirschenbaum, and a few of his colleagues, recently talked at the New York Academy of Sciences about molecular gastronomy and their efforts to get the science behind it to the masses in an accessible way.
A podcast of the talk was recorded. You can check it out here: http://www.nyas.org/snc/podcastdetail.asp?id=1832