Scoops du Jour: Blue Hill at Stone Barns

Adam Miller is back with another review of a really great restaurant. This time he reviews Blue Hill at Stone Barns while also chipping in a little about Blue Hill here in New York City. Before we get to the review I'd like to mention that Blue Hill is one of my favorite NYC restaurants and is more affordable than other restaurants in its ilk. I also appreciate the restaurant as a true embodiment of the farm to table ideal, serving meat and produce coming from its farm in upstate New York (where Blue Hill at Stone Barns is located.)

Now I challenge Adam to write a review of a restaurant that he doesn't like at all.



Simple Fare Warrants Extraordinary Praise

By

Adam Miller

New Yorker v. B&T. Questions arise when a faux New Yorker claims to be from New York. Where do you live in the City? What high school did you go to? What are your favorite restaurants? Where do you go out to bars? If any of these are met with a glimmer of hesitation or the answer “Meatpacking and Chelsea,” chances are you’re not a New Yorker. Usually, said people are from Westchester or Long Island. However, these suburban areas do win in some regards…. Long Island has beautiful beaches. Westchester has… ummm… well, Westchester seemed to have nothing until this last weekend.

This past weekend, I ventured up to Tarrytown for Sarah’s birthday (for those of you that don’t know me, Sarah is my girlfriend). Since we both love food, I thought it would be best to take her to a restaurant where you can have a truly “foodie” experience. I went to Blue Hill at Stone Barns with very high expectations although I had been told that Blue Hill in the City is the more highly regarded restaurant. I came away with a truly incredible experience and the acknowledgement that Westchester had one-upped NYC in at least one aspect.

Blue Hill in the City is a simple restaurant in the vein of Gotham, JoJo, or Gramercy Tavern. It serves very strong food (at somewhat reasonable prices for NYC) and accentuates its strong suits (vegetables, fruit, game, etc.). Stone Barns, on the other hand, takes it further; it bends your mind (and taste buds), offering new and exciting fare in an original manner.

During the Summer months, Stone Barns shies away from a traditional menu and offers two tasting menus. This is the first thing that gets noticed when seated at the table. On the right side of the menu, Chef/Owner Dan Barber has listed all the main ingredients which could be featured in a given dish (asparagus, scallops, lobster, oysters, Berkshire pork, duck, lamb, etc.). On the left side there are four rows:

- Five course tasting menu $95
- Farmer’s feast $125
- Charcuterie plate $28
- Cheese $17

That’s it. That’s your choice. The charcuterie plate is designed for two people and is meant to start your meal while the cheese course (for one) is intended to conclude your meal. We avoided both while electing the Farmer’s feast over the smaller meal, deciding this was the true way to dine at Stone Barns.

While our choice ended there, the interaction with our waiter did not. He (along with the chef) was looking to design a meal which would flow easily but still meet all our gastronomical desires. He asked me if there was anything I did not want to see as well as anything I definitely wanted to see. “No oysters or Spanish mackerel. Definitely a pork dish. Otherwise, I’ll eat anything you serve me.” Sarah obviously told the waiter that she didn’t want any seafood.

The waiter also strongly recommended an excellent white burgundy to accompany the meal instead of a wine pairing. The 2005 Meursault recommended by the sommelier was an incredible bottle and half the price of a wine pairing for two. The thought process was that I could get a much better bottle for $100-150 than I would ever try during a wine pairing, and a great white burgundy would really develop throughout the meal. This recommendation was a huge success and really hit home.

The food was no slouch either. In fact, several courses were some of the best dishes I’ve ever had. The amuse bouches woke up my palate in a startling way. The lemongrass spritzer with mint and a cherry ice cube was followed by fresh snap peas sprinkled with yuzu. The face bacon (paper thin slices of bacon taken from the jowl of a pig) was followed by pancetta wrapped asparagus with sesame seeds. We also had pea burgers (surprisingly good) and “bread and butter” – little squares of bread served with ricotta (a la A Voce) and butter as well as arugula and carrot flavored salts, which were good but not necessary.

The first course was a green tomato gazpacho with yogurt cream. I am not a fan of cold soups, but this dish was an incredible way to start the meal. The slight texture of the cream was a great counter to the refreshingly light gazpacho. This dish was followed by crispino lettuce with spring vegetables and Barber’s patented lettuce broth. Although it may sound (and look) like rodent food, it was a surprisingly deep and meaty dish. I am not one to order salads or vegetarian dishes and I am generally disappointed when an expensive tasting menu is littered with vegetables rather than foie gras or lobster, but these starters were phenomenal.

I followed the vegetarian plates with a a perfectly cooked scallop with minty peas and pistachios while Sarah had saltouse, a leafy green vegetable from Southeast Asia with some flavors resembling sesame or peanut butter, accompanied by shitakes and morels. We also had the renowned soft poached egg over crushed zucchini and morels. However, this time the soft poached egg was flash fried to give it a crispy, slightly “breaded” coating.

Finally, the meat courses arrived. First, we had a braised pork belly dish (as requested) with spaetzle. If not for the sauce which was drizzled next to the pork, I thought this dish lacked a bit of flavor. But the spaetzle and the sauce really brought out the strong flavors in the fatty pork. This dish was followed by a neck and loin of lamb with fava beans; the lamb was perfectly cooked and delicious, but at this point, I was really rather full.

This concluded our savory portion of the meal and was followed by two desserts: steamed strawberries with sour cream sorbet and honey gelee, and rhubarb meringue with farmer’s cheese ice cream. Both were outstanding.

After finishing the meal, I was truly blown away by the experience and the flavors. Having followed the methodology of Alice Waters and other fine California chefs, Dan Barber has outdone himself (and his NYC restaurant). This was an unforgettable meal that will change the way you view food.

Restaurant Review: Blue Hill

For the past year or so a couple of friends and I have been getting together for quarterly blowout dinners. Whenever my friend Josh is in from London, we get together with my friend Lee and attempt to find a really nice restaurant that we haven’t yet been to (between the three of us, these places are getting harder and harder to find) and we try to sample as much of the restaurant’s food as we can. Because this is an infrequent and celebratory venture, cost isn’t nearly as important as it would normally be and we are able to really let loose (in a civilized adult sort of way)and have a good time.

Our most recent destination restaurant was Blue Hill, Dan Barber’s haute farm-to-table restaurant that has been a trend setter in the greenmarket movement that is currently overtaking the New York Culinary scene and a recent recipient of three stars from the New York Times. Along with restaurants such as Gramercy Tavern, Telepan, Craft, Cookshop and Tasting Room, Blue Hill is one of the spots to go if you prize fresh ingredients prepared in an expert way. The restaurant is actually able to source a large share of its ingredients from The Rockefeller Farms in upstate New York. Despite the fact that Blue Hill has been around since 2000, it is a restaurant that the three of us hadn’t been to and one we were all eagerly anticipating.

The restaurant asserts itself as a champion of seasonal ingredients with it’s amuse bouche, a skewer piercing two perfect little pieces of…you guessed it—cauliflower. I was a little put off by a piece of cauliflower as an amuse but I suppose if the kitchen really wanted to drive home the simple ingredient aspect, caulilflower with a little lemon was certainly the way to do it. Despite having second thoughts about choice at this point we drank some wine and forged ahead.

Appetizers started with sweet shreds of Maine crabmeat atop thin slices of green apple, fennel, and earthy panther soybeans soaking in a sweet and tangy apple mustard broth, a light and refreshing start to a meal. We then split an enormously satisfying sweet potato tortelloni which was hearty, meaty and resonant of the winter season.

While good, none of the previous two appetizers lived up to what I thought was the best dish of the night, and what appears to be a constant on the Blue Hill menu—a 45 minute slow poached egg with pan roasted oyster mushrooms swimming in an herb broth. Upon piercing with the fork, the egg melted into the broth creating a rich, creamy and delightfully green tasting coating to the earthy oyster mushrooms. I liked the egg infused broth so much I even broke my self imposed ban on bread (so as not to fill up) to soak up every last bit.

Our entrées proved to be satisfying as well and just as much of a testament to local producers and seasonal ingredients as the appetizers. We sampled some Hudson Valley Venison, Stone Barns pork loin and belly and Veal grown by none other than the man they call Rabbi Bob. When we asked if he was an actual rabbi, our waitress who was incredibly knowledgeable and immensely helpful in every way, told us that he was rabbiesque in appearance and was great with veal.

I found the venison, cooked sous vide and accompanied by a stew of carrots to be incredibly competent and tender, but not quite as good as the venison (prepared much the same way) at Gramercy Tavern. My veal, expertly raised by Rabbi Bob was incredibly tender and well complemented and contrasted by the creamy texture and toothy texture of the cracked wheat resting underneath. The rack of pork was flavorful but not nearly as satisfying as the belly that accompanied it. Our best single bite of the night included a forkful of the meltingly fatty belly with red cabbage simmered in red and port wine- a perfect combination of savory, sweet, tart, soft, and crunchy.

The two desserts we tried were slightly uneven, brought down by the cheesecake in a jar (not on the regular menu but on the tasting menu) lacking texture. While the chocolate bread pudding with vanilla ice cream was simple and delicious, it was a perfect ending to a meal that was centered around carefully chosen ingredients, and simple yet elegant preparation.

For all the hype about the nuances of the food I would expect the dining room to be rather hushed and peaceful but I found that on a cold Friday night the exact opposite was true. The bar which is situated in the front third of the restaurant was packed and the energy in the room was palpable making the dining experience a lot more like a night out than I would have originally imagined.

Overall, the service food and general feel of the restaurant were all outstanding, and for the value, five appetizers three entrees, two desserts, one cheese plate, two cockatils, two bottles of wine and three glasses if dessert wine for less than a tasting menu meal at numerous other high end restaurants) I even found the value to be really strong. I can’t wait to go back in the spring or summer to see what Dan Barber can cook up with a bounty of new ingredients.

Things I Like

I’ve had a ton of free time in the past couple of weeks and although I haven’t been writing about food as much as I have been, it doesn’t mean that I haven’t been eating/thinking and talking about/cooking/obsessing over food. There has probably been more food in my life than I have time to write about.

Today, in lieu of writing about any one food subject I thought I’d write down a list of foodish things that I’ve enjoyed in the past week or so.

• Goat Cheese dumplings and summer vegetable pesto. After seeing Dan Barber of Blue Hill's summer menu, I felt the need to figure out how to serve goat cheese dumplings with my own version of his summer vegetable pesto. I served these to some friends last Sunday and saw people giving each other the "holy s%#@! this is good, look" something any chef strives for. Essentially I coarsely grated potatoes with a cheese grater, coated balls of chevre with the shavings and fried them in oil so there was a crispy outside with a soft tangy chevre center.

• Eating raw fish. It's summer and raw fish is delicious, light and refreshing. It's even better with black Hawaiian sea salt.

• In keeping with the fish theme, I've started reading The Zen of Fish. It's a very interesting read if you eat sushi frequently or are interested in social histories or if you simply like food.

• Restaurants. Restaurant week is coming up and my stomach can barely contain it's excitement (that sounds kind of gross but I hope you get the point.) I also went back to Boqueria last night for the first time in a while--it was fantastic as always; and am going to 26 seats tonight. I'm excited about a little pissaladiere and sub $15 dollar entrees, a true rarity in this city.

• The Annotated Dish feature on Grub Street. This is more of a constant like for me, but I thought I'd mention it here anyway for those not in the know. I really enjoy seeing all the components of the featured dishes although I do think that the chefs probably make these dishes seem more complicated than they really are
  

• Old food magazines. My wonderful neighbors recently decided to get rid of all of their old food magazines (there were a lot) and instead of throwing them out, they gave them to me. While the articles in food magazines might be dated, the real meat of the magazines, the ideas and recipes are always fun for me to look at. I never really follow the recipes, but I still find that having access to ideas can help me grow as a cook. It's also fun to see features from 2001 magazines (about 4 years before my food obsession began to take hold) and see features on Giada de Laurentiis as a home chef and Wylie Dufresne of WD-50 (one of my favorites) as a rising star chef.
  

• I'm also excited about cooking a belated father's day dinner (they were in Sweden) for my dad and mom on Sunday and using it as an excuse to drink his very good bottle of Amarone.
  

Hope everyone has a great weekend and is able to take advantage of restaurant week next week!