Imagine a world where your bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich comes in one surprising multitextured bite of  Essence of BLT. Where Death of Elvis is a completely bizarre and completely delectable mouthful of  solid yet somehow softly melting banana, peanut butter, nutella and jam.  Where the cheese never seems to end and where the wine flows like the water dripping from the ceiling…

It sounds like Wonderland, but don’t be fooled by the 7 foot tall cross-dressing Alice in spectacularly tall heels opening the door. It’s 99, a pop-up restaurant run by friends Whetham and Dave, who have combined their impressive and inventive artistic, hosting, and culinary talents to create a spectacular and stomach-busting evening of performance, gastronomy and often a topsy-turvy combination of the two.

I was honored to be invited along to help out in the kitchen on the final night of 99′s first run. Donning pristine chef’s whites in the kitchen of their Victorian mansion in Hackney, I joined chefs Dave and Hugo to whip, dip, bread,  layer, chop, and see the magic happen behind the scenes.

I sailed into the kitchen late in the afternoon with much of the prep and difficult work already done so I jumped straight in  helping to prepare some venison scotch eggs. Dave had already made a venison sausage mixture and soft-boiled eggs and my job was to dip and encase in bread crumbs, dip and encase. All the better to deep fry with. Mmm. I’m quite excited to make these on my own sometime soon.

Here’s a glimpse of Hugo’s pop art plated version, with a shockingly green wild garlic sauce, sliced radishes, and some sort of tasty mayonnaise.

And now sliced open to reveal the precisely timed, perfectly joyfully oozy soft-boiled egg within…

I also did a bit of whipping. Specifically, I beat some cream into shape and talked some sense into some egg whites as well for a gorgeous layered syllabub of rhubarb essence, ginger biscuit, chocolate shavings, and other colorful delights.  A saucy dessert combined with a saucy faced waiter, post-Alice costume change.

Some amazing dishes I had absolutely nothing to do with – the aforementioned Essence of BLT, made up of a stack of secret ingredients in all sorts of flavors and textures.  I’ll give you a hint: there was lots of bacon fat involved. The pictures just don’t do this surprising mouthful justice, so we’ll move onto the third dish (after the BLT amuse bouche and the meal-in-itself Scotch egg)  the sweetcorn veloute with chorizo foam: a steaming hot shot of creaminess with a rich meaty plop of chorizo infusion on top.

Lest you think the diners were anywhere close to done, up next came the squid ink risotto made from a deep reddish and minerally seafood stock, stirred lovingly by Hugo…

…and served up with a smile by a mysterious man clad in pink and green.

He wasn’t the only one waiter in a fabulous outfit – I enjoyed chatting with the stunningly talented costumier Nicholas Immaculate in pink puffs and pads and pleats below.

Things got a little unexpected with the next dish: a cold celery sorbet topped with a spritz of walnut foam. Being a bit of a celery detester, I figured I wouldn’t particularly like a cold mouthful of celery flavor, but tried it anyway out of curiousity. Verdict: icy cold celery is only marginally better than regular terrible celery. But even my least favorite vegetable is improved with a blanket of walnut foam and a pretty tile to rest upon.

As if everyone wasn’t already stuffed full of food, then came…the main course. I’m not even kidding. Smoked breast of pigeon, a square of sinfully rich celeriac dauphinoise, and black salt-sprinkled, butter-bathed baby turnips with a stripe of red wine reduction and an accompanying squeeze of garlic sauce.

The twenty-odd diners all seemed ecstatically happy, although I’m surprised they could even move out of their chairs. I didn’t take this picture, but I think it captures the general celebratory atmosphere of the 99 dining room, deluged with a gastronomic tidal wave. 

Of course, this epicurean adventure (with matched wines!) wouldn’t be complete without sweets. And not just one, or two, but THREE desserts were to be had, including the lovely layered syllabubs from the beginning and the homemade Jaffa cakes below.

And then came the insanely addictive little morsels of mini heart attacks on a plate – Dave’s Death of Elvis creation featuring an unidentified powder that isn’t an illegal addictive substance but might as well be.  Here he is holding a tray of his dangerous weapons of culinary delight, a single bite of structurally composed banana, nutella, peanut butter, and jam. I do honestly think he might have been trying to kill everyone with the gluttonous orgy of food.

Because then…then came the cheese. Not just any cheese. A theatrically displayed, rope-and-pulley-raised, antique cupboard-housed, ceremonially lowered array of Neal’s Yard masterpieces including some of the most enormous hunks of Colston Bassett Stilton, Montgomery Cheddar, Stichelton, and Waterloo I’ve ever seen outside a cheese shop.  One might call these cheeses the pride of Britain and rightly so.

Somehow the diners remained upright and chatting rather than bursting at the seams. I’m not quite sure how, given the mammoth proportions of food served at 99 that evening. And in fact, something did in fact burst at the seams – the kitchen ceiling at about 3am in the morning, due to a bit of a watery incident from earlier in the day. Thank god it didn’t happen during service. But I do think it’s only appropriate, and yes it has to be said – it’s one of the few home-cooked meals I’ve ever eaten that actually deserved to bring the house down. Congrats Dave, Whetham, and Hugo on a job well done.

For more information, visit the 99delights website.

]]> http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/04/15/almost-99-bottles-of-wine-on-the-wall-and-nearly-99-courses-to-follow/feed/ 3 http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/03/03/butternut-squash-polenta-and-other-mayhems-deadpan-restaurants-opening-night/ http://eatfamilystyles.com/2010/03/03/butternut-squash-polenta-and-other-mayhems-deadpan-restaurants-opening-night/#comments Wed, 03 Mar 2010 02:00:32 +0000 irene http://eatfamilystyles.com/?p=2965 So much has happened in the last few weeks. Amin is now gallivanting in Dresden, and Judy has proven a valuable addition to our kitchen cohort. We at Deadpan Restaurant had our opening debut a few weeks ago, and then a repeat event this past weekend. It was, in a word, insane. Five dishes, 12 guests per event, hours upon hours in the kitchen, and I don’t think I’ll ever look a pot of polenta in the eye again.

Let’s talk about the menu. Since we’re new at this whole restaurant thing, we haven’t really figured out how to simultaneously serve a secret supper and photodocument it, so bear with us on the pictures!

We started with a red wine oxtail and beef tongue stew, served as chilled, jelly hemispheres, with a layer of homemade Momofuku pickles on a toasted baguette round.

Probably the most challenging dish of the evening, our tongue-and-tail amuse bouche was cast in a mold designed and cut by Amin. Pretty cool, huh? We value the use of all parts of the animals we eat, and wanted our guests to do the same. To our surprise and delight, nobody tried to escape the event while we described this dish, and everyone cleaned their plate! On a side note, those pickles are so addictive and delicious – definitely at the top of my these-are-so-easy-to-make-i’ll-never-buy-them-again list.

For our starter, we served the dish that has been our pride, joy, and near-undoing for the last several months: pork belly with butternut squash polenta. Cured for two days in a mix of brown sugar, sea salt, cinnamon, cloves, star anise and black pepper, and then braised for upwards of three hours in a pot of chicken stock and Delirium Tremens (famed as the best beer in the world), this local pork from Autumn’s Harvest Farm is tender, buttery, and melts in your mouth. The butternut squash polenta is cooked on the stovetop and then baked (or is it fried?) on cast iron with a lot of butter. We made our sauce out of a reduction of the braising liquid and some Cornell Orchards cider. This isn’t actually the pork belly we served, but an earlier incarnation that looks mostly alike:

We also served some cider mulled with the same spice mix that we cured the belly with. Still with us, even through the bad flash photography? Our other three dishes, after the jump…

Our third dish was a palate cleanser: quenelles (a.k.a. football shaped lumps, originally and traditionally made of meats or fish, but now just any mushy substance) of fresh grape sorbet. We seeded, peeled, and pureed the grapes, then added lemon juice and simple syrup, and stirred in crushed dry ice. Voila! Sorbet. Pretty cool. Sadly, no pictures this time around, but we’ll do a recipe post soon enough!

Our main was a wilted arugula salad with walnuts and figs, surrounded by brined, pan-fried chicken breast, graced by a quenelle of goat cheese whipped with shallots. I’m never eating normal, non-whipped, no-shallot goat cheese again.

That green puree you see is a mixture of spinach and arugula, and has a wonderful, tangy bite. Did we competitively squeezee-bottle it into our mouths in the kitchen after the dinner was over? Maybe. Here’s a closeup of the entree.

Finally, we served a dessert of chocolate torte over crisp madeleine biscuit with chocolate ganache, raspberry coulis, and earl grey-infused whipped cream. Best at room temperature, torte is flourless and crazy-rich. The photos speak for themselves.

All in all, it was a beautiful two nights. Our guests were gracious and generous, we didn’t have any major disasters in the kitchen, we didn’t break any dishes, and dinner-table conversation didn’t lull once (lulz). Thank you to everyone who joined us. Here are some final action shots!

Irene, interrupted while considering a bed of very green and flavorful arugula while trying to pretend she’s not drinking a milkshake during dinner preparations.

Daniel and Amin, straining cider through a cheesecloth.

Max, performing some classic gesticulations while describing a dish.

Daniel, laughing at the sheer volume of dishes to be done.

Can’t wait for the next event!

Salt, pepper, and reckless abandon? Sounds just like my kind of evening.

The adorable setting above, complete with handmade British napkin, comes courtesy of Lex of LexEat, the kitchen mistress of a brand new London underground restaurant. I love underground restaurants/ secret suppers because you never know what you’re going to get. It’s a bit of the surprising and unexpected from the culinary and creative mind of someone who cares enough to prepare a whole meal, or rather, a whole dining experience for you and your new friends for the evening.  This secret supper from a few weeks ago was a secret supper done right, an excellent meal with great company and all sorts of additional little touches to make a fantastic evening.

A perfect example is this lovely little plate below. Not only is it pretty, but it’s accompanied by an charmingly handwritten menu and even more importantly, topped with homemade orange pepper tortelli.

Casual yet well-designed, carefully thought out yet seemingly effortless – that’s pretty much how the whole night went.  We sat next to some great people and chatted food, games, and travel over multiple bottles of wine.

What else did we eat? I’ll let the tablecloth (tablepaper?) tell you.

Yum. I can certainly take on an organic roast loin of lamb with reckless abandon. Here’s what it looked like, in some romantic (i.e. overly dark) lighting.

Classic, well-executed, and mighty tasty. But the real excitement came after even more wine and discussion, when the desserts came out. Yes, that’s dessertS as in plural: first, a Chinese soup spoon of lemongrass coconut sorbet which you can see below alongside my individually patterned cloth napkin (I’ll be honest, I was sad I didn’t get the pirate one, but I was quite impressed by the effort all the same).

You can tell by the state of the tablepaper that I did some splopping during the evening. And then, an assiette of desserts:  a bite of fudgy chocolate brownie, a square of luscious lemon tart, and best of all, a fantastic rosewater Turkish Delight cheesecake topped with pomegranate candy floss.

I felt like some poor fuzzy Jim Henson creation or Sesame Street character was shaved from head to toe for this tray of pale pink explosions.

But fret not, my dear muppet friend.  The loss of your fluffy pastel pelt was not in vain. The pomegranate threads dissolved in a sugary sweetness on a cushion of rosewater creaminess in an unusual and highly addictive combination.

The beautiful apartment, an open multi-level loft with criss-crossing M.C. Escher staircases in an old brick school building, was an ideal setting for a long, wine-soaked dinner. From the upstairs loft, a photo of our table complete with a well-timed embrace.

Fantastic decor – colorful posters from the London Transport Museum that I now plan to purchase, an old-fashioned record player spinning in the corner, shelves of well-designed and highly covetable objects, windowsills filled with interior flower boxes, vintage ladders stacked with cookbooks and plants  – it was so lovely I hated to leave.  But alas, the night finally ended and we all poured out the door.

Thanks to Lex and our fabulous, funny, warm and welcoming waitress and co-hostess Yohanna for a wonderful night. If you have any muppet fur left over, send it my way…

welcome to the third edition of the rambling restaurant, brought to you by chef foodrambler, michelle the poet, and me. for the first time, i remembered to take photos of all three courses, so this post is all about the food. get ready for some serious food porn.

course one: pissaladière (best pronounced with a throaty french accent like you’re trying to clear something out of your sinuses). it’s a french tart made with slow-cooked onions, anchovies, and olives on a puff pastry, served with roasted cherry tomatoes and fresh basil.

course two: harissa-spiced chicken with roasted potatoes and eggplant on a lentil, mint, and feta salad, topped with a thin strip of marinated red pepper.

course three: meringues filled with almond cream, topped with raspberries, strawberries, and a thin shard of almond bark.

this dessert blew me away – just a day after waxing rhapsodically about the pavlova from frizzante, the talented miss foodrambler concocts her very own equally spectacular version. crunchy almond bark, sweet and juicy fruit, smooth and buttery cream, soft-yet-also-with-structural-integrity meringue – it was a beautifully complex symphony of contrasting tastes and textures in a single bite.  luckily there were many bites to go around…

i managed to take so many pictures tonight because, miraculously, we had the most stress-free, easygoing, is-this-as-simple-as-it-seems?, unchaotic rambling restaurant so far. we seem to be getting the hang of this whole secret supper thing (knock on wood). no frenzied moments of plating, no stacks of dishes piled precariously, just delicious food from chef foodrambler and some really lovely people. i chatted with some people from finland who also speak swedish and english and we chilled late night with some awesome south londoners. i even learned how to say ‘that’s delicious’ just in time for my trip to southern sweden this week! bring on the meatballs sweden, i’m ready to eat.