I recently made the pilgrimage to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a farm-to-table restaurant located in Pocantico Hills, New York. The Chef, Dan Barber, is a bit of a media darling, with gushing reviews in the New York Times and every major food magazine. Ed Levine over at Serious Eats calls Blue Hill “one of the most important restaurants in America.” Well, well. How does a food nerd respond to a review like that?
Gather girlfriends, hop in the car, and drive to New York.
We had a 5:00 pm reservation, so it was pitch dark by the time we got to Blue Hill. According to the website, flash photography is not allowed in the dining room. A food blog without photos is like a cookbook without photos—boring. So, I gathered up some photos on the Internets to give you a sense of what we ate.
There is no menu at Blue Hill, just a list of ingredients and a few questions from the server.
Q: Do you eat pork?
A: Is Britney Spears crazy?
Q: Do you eat baby goat?
A: Yes, but please stop emphasizing the baby part.
Q: Do you eat soft-boiled eggs?
A: Listen, you tell Mr. Barber that if I don’t get one of those fresh hen house eggs everyone is talking about I’ll have a freak-out right in the dining room.
Q: How about organ meat?
A: NO.
That was it. The waiter was off to pass on our preferences to the chef, and the rest was up to him. As a side note, I think they should add, "do you eat foam" to the list of questions. Foam is revolting.
We started with a few cocktails. My friend B had an Elderflower Royale (elderflower syrup and sparkling wine), which she said tasted like “high end Fresca.” I had a black current cosmopolitan, which tasted like black current with a bump of lime. The best thing about my drink: I didn't taste the vodka, but I could feel it in my knees.
It wasn’t long before little bites started rolling out to our table. I know this sounds absurd, but I felt a dash of excitement as they brought out every dish; it was like unwrapping presents on Christmas. Presents that you eat.
This is all from memory, so I might not have it exactly right:
- A hearty shot of banana squash soup topped with lime marshmallow
- Beet sliders with goat cheese on a sweet roll
- Salsify wrapped in prosciutto on a stick
- Homemade ricotta and butter with arugula salt (tasted like pepper to me!) and carrot salt
- Charcuturie pork shoulder and loin
- Panther soybeans with lavender salt
- Cheddar and purple cauliflower on the fence
About 30 minutes into it, our first course came. Before telling you what it was, let me stop and talk a little bit about the service. I initially felt it was a little stuffy in the dining room, and our waiter was a soft talker, which made me feel like a brontosaurus as I kept asking him to repeat everything. Huh? After ordering, though, the servers floated off to the background anticipating our every need—my definition of perfect service. The only time I noticed the wait staff was during the presentation of each course, which came with five servers, serving our five plates at exactly the same time. We called it synchronized serving, and it was, um, AWESOME.
Our first course was a diver scallop with a pumpkin seed balsamic reduction with brussels sprouts. The scallop was sweet, but a little overpowered by the balsamic reduction. It was served with a wine from Long Island, which tasted of tin. Thank God the rest of the wines were from somewhere outside of New York.
Next came the soft-boiled hen house egg served with smoked pancetta vinaigrette on a bed of bloomsdale spinach (the photo to the left features dandelion greens so use your imagination). It was the creamiest egg I’ve ever tasted, perfectly married with the salty pancetta. This dish was the stand out of the evening. It was paired with a Chardonnay from Santa Barbara County.
The egg was followed by a root vegetable and fruit salad (cauliflower, potato, radish, grape, apple) and a tender, moist chicken wing, which, I think, was sous vide. I really enjoyed this dish too because it was unique and something I don’t think I could create at home. The dish was paired with a Cote de Rhone pinot noir.
The last dinner course was baby goat with spicy goat sausage, purple brussels sprouts and fingerling potatoes with what seemed like a light maple or vanilla dressing. This dish was paired with a 1995 Rioja, the best wine of the night. The meat was cooked perfectly and the spicy sausage added another dimension.
Finally, came dessert. Though we tried two different desserts, the consensus at the table was that they were disappointing, at best. The plates included chocolate, pistachio, tasteless foam, and some random beets. Not good. I liked the concord grapes they served better than the dessert.
Overall, our visit to Blue Hill at Stone Barns was tasty and enjoyable. The most memorable and delicious plate we ate was the hen house egg. Because of the drive (five hours from DC), I probably won’t go back to Blue Hill, but I’ll food dream® about that egg forever.
Photos: Ulterior Epicure, Alexander Moss
