Restaurant Week, Pt. 3, or, "Finishing Well"

NOTE: I promise this is the last you'll hear about Restaurant week. I'm starting to feel like that one chick in a bar who goes on and on about her theater company for two hours; sure, guys will listen to her, but it's only because she's hot and they're trying to coax her into the sack. What I'm trying to say is, I know you all want to sleep with me. Sadly (for you), listening to me blather on about restaurants is the price of admission.

After last night's disasterpiece of an evening, I was a tad hesitant to jump right back into the Restaurant Week fray in much the same way that Police Chief Brody wasn't totally cool with boats after he watched Quint get turned into chum. But seventies-blockbuster references aside, there was as good a chance as any that we were in store for another night of lousy food, ass-y service, and the general malaise that comes with having a bad time in a crappy place.

But, rather than meekly head home to our apartment and feast on the bitter salad of our collective cowardice, we decided to seize the moment... to roll the dice, consequences be dammed!

Turns out, kids, it's true what they say. Fortune does in fact favor the bold (hi, that's us).

Our meal last night was fantastic and right now, I'd like to tell you just a little bit about why it was so kick-ass. Hey, where are you going? Get back here, motherfucker... we're talking about fancy food, here! It's a subject we should all be interested in. If you can sit there and listen to me yammer about roast beef spread, you can handle a few minutes on duck breast "sous-vide." Not that I know what that means, of course, but still.

2ND NOTE: I just looked up "sous-vide" cooking. It's weird, but awesome, and I wished I known what it was last night while I was chowing down.

So we ended up going to this place called Icon, which is located in the super-fancy-in-a-Blade-Runner-nightclub-sorta-way "W" Hotel over by Grand Central. When we arrived, we were the only people in the entire restaurant who weren't being paid to be there. Eating in an empty dining room is way strange; it just feels like a mistake, like it's the photo negative of eating by yourself in a restaurant that's crowded. Fortunately, our waiter didn't make us feel like total farmers for being there so early, or for ordering off the Restaurant Week menu. He was ultra-slick; one of those dudes that you can tell has been a waiter all his life and could probably do it with one hand trapped in a sous-vide machine if he had to. The dining room, too, was that perfect balance of comfortable and classy that only the best joints get exactly right. Certainly preferable to freezing your ass off next to an open door all night, you hear me, Marseille?!?!

Anyway, the food... the reason we'd picked Icon was because it's a place that dabbles in molecular gastronomy, which is basically the adding of techno-science to food. Lots of powders, foams, and ice creams made from things that even Ben & Jerry would shirk at. But, seeing as how we're adventurous little soldiers, we were up to the bizarro challenge. Now, let me just say for the record that while my food was delicious, Girlfriend's was a couple of notches above that. I chose well; she chose wisely (which I guess means that I'm rapidly aging with an knight in a cave somewhere in the Middle East, at least metaphorically speaking). Let me walk you through the wonderland:

Appetizers

I had a "Deconstructed Cobb Salad," which basically meant that it was a salad where all the ingredients were stacked up like a tower, as opposed to mixed as per tradition. It was quite tasty, with big hunks of bleu cheese that were probably more expensive than my first car in High School, and it had a powder on the top of it that tasted exactly like a hard-boiled egg. So that was cool.

Girlfriend had a sweet corn soup with a "crab puff;" I put it in quotes because it was basically just seasoned crab meat that had been... for lack of a better word... puffed up, somehow. There was also a popcorn powder as a garnish, much like my egg powder. Girlfriend says that this soup was the best she'd ever had in a restaurant and believe me when I say that she's not prone to hyperbole. I tasted it; it was like distilled Nebraskan sunshine, so she's not far off.

Mains

I had the aforementioned duck breast, cooked sous-vide style, with roasted figs, carrots, and... here's the kicker... sweet corn ice cream. Oh yeah! Sounds gross, right? It was awesome. Particularly... and this is going to sound gross too... because they had it resting on a these little crunchy nibs of puffed up unsweetened cocoa. Corn and dark chocolate, together at last in a creamy, frozen ball of dreams. Also, the dish itself was laid out to look like the floor of a forest in Autumn; scattered leaves and such. Quite pretty.

Girlfriend had a red snapper with a pepperade (a kind of pepper sauce), black olive puree, and marinated, roasted eggplant. Again... mine was quite tasty. However, I honestly considered cold-cocking her with the pepper grinder and stealing her plate. The flavor of her fish, with it's accoutrements, went above and beyond mere deliciousness and out into the ether. It was like being dragged through the Mediterranean by your tastebuds, but in a good way.

Dessert

I had some sort of chocolate ganache with house-made pralines and a vanilla ice cream that could get you drunk if you ate a pint of it. Everything was tasty, but it wasn't...

A deconstructed Snickers bar, which was what Girlfriend ordered. We're talking the deepest, darkest chocolate ice cream known to man, coupled with a block of frozen, whipped nougat with peanuts, a mound of ground cocoa, caramel sauce, and a wafer of pure, unsweetened chocolate to top it all off. It was dessert from a place beyond the stars, made by hyper-intelligent beings that make Gordon Ramsay look like a college freshman making Kraft Mac n' Cheese on a hot plate in a dorm. I, as you may have noticed, am prone to hyperbole. Still, though... excellent.

And there you have it. Restaurant Week, for us at least, has ended with a bang. I will now officially shut up about it. Until next time.