legionnaire

Wow. That's all I can say. I just came back from dinner at WD-50. It's my ex-girlfriend's birthday next week, so i took her out for dinner since I won't be around for her party (see - perks of being a legionnaire ex-girlfriend. Not bad, huh?)

I've been reading about this place since they opened up last year - supposedly they've taken the good aspects of late 80's nouvelle cuisine and added some class and style, while, toning things down just the right amount. And it works. They've got combinations on the menu that would never occur to you in your wildest dreams. For an appetizer I had rabbit sausage (with rabbit ribs on the side) in an avocado puree sauce and a little piece of mustard seed naan bread on top. It was amazingly good (although, to be honest, I wanted to try the venison tartare with edamame ice cream - but my ex- wanted to share and she doens't eat venison.) Washed down with a tasty glass of Spanish priorat - just the right wine for the dish.

The entree was roasted duck breast served with pomelo and sunchoke - and in a roquefort... foam, i guess would be the best way to put it. It was slices of duck breast around the outside of the palte with the sunchoke and pomelo in the middle, and what honestly looked like dish soap foam on top. I asked the waiter what the foam was and he told me "That's the roquefort." Wow. I have no idea how they do that, but it's just the right amount of that flavor (which in any larger quantity would be overpowering) to offset the creaminess of the pomelo and richness of the duck in just the right amount. She had the short ribs with flatiron beef, lily bulb puree and black olive consomme which was also very tasty, cooked to perfection.

The dessert blew my mind. The menu was really wild, so I decided I would try the oddest sounding thing on there and just see what it's like. I had beet cake with choclate sorbet and beet caramel. I like beets regardless (if you don't like them, go to Prune and have the sauteed beet side and you will) but this was amazing. The cake was almost like a carrot cake, it was just as moist, but not with the typically cloying sweetness of your everyday carrot cake. The sorbet was very nice but a little bit strong - I felt like it overpowered the cake flavor as well. The caramel had an intense beet flavor that was sweetened just enough to cut some of the bite. The whole thing was delicious, and just enough of what I was looking for.

The service was a mixed bag. When we got there we started off with a waitress who I didn't particularly care for - she seemed a bit condescending and corrected both of us at least once while we were talking - which I thought was unnecessary. Fortunately she probably figured we weren't going to tip (I was going to give her a crappy tip if she kept it up) so she passed us off to another waiter who turned out to be really cool, some dude with a big frizzy pony tail and a bunch of earrings.

And I guess the two of us will be on British TV, who were filming something as we were eating in the place, and they seemed to focus on our table a few times. Whatever. The restaurant ending up comping our drinks because we had had a big light shined in our faces a bunch of times from the camera, so it all worked out.

So I highly recommend this place (although it certainly wasn't cheap.)

And here, you can check this out and watch me successfully gamble against someone who doesn't know what they're doing in a chess game. yay.