Another A Razor, A Shiny Knife dinner

(Hey, remember that last one I wrote about in LA? Here's an article in the LA Times about it!)

This one was a joint effort among five underground supper clubs/restaurants: A Razor, A Shiny Knife, Studiofeast, City Grit, Forking Tasty, and Highlands Dinner Club. Rather than a traditional multi-course sit-down dinner, this was a buffet-type event, with passed hors d'oeuvres and food stations with different dishes. Each organization put forth a different dish (or two). There were also cocktails and wine pairings.

I prefer the multi-course, sit-down dinners, but this was fun as well, and I liked getting the exposure to some new underground restaurants.

Here were the cocktails, provided by Whisk & Ladle:

We had all of them, and I liked the Catherine Slip the best. It was similar to our Paris Manhattan (bourbon with St. Germain). The wines, provided by The Noble Rot, were a Cline Viognier 2009 and a Bodan Roan Cabernet Sauvingnon 2008 (see more about the wines here).

The hors d'oeuvres, which I'm told were all provided by Whisk & Ladle, were: 1. a ring of braised carrot with parsnip puree, pesto and half a cherry tomato on top, 2. foie gras on something called "duck fat toast," and 3. smoked salmon wrapped around goat cheese, coriander and a piece of chocolate. I know what you're thinking: smoked salmon, goat cheese and chocolate? Oh my, yes. That was an inspired combination, one I'll be trying again. (Perhaps goat cheese ice cream with chocolate swirls? Hmmmm.)

City Grit's dish was shrimp n' grits:

Forking Tasty had a chicken cacciatore sandwich:

Studiofeast's dish was described as "Lamb, Matsutake, Brussel Sprout" and looked like this:

Highlands Dinner Club had "Smoked Trout, Local Mangalista Ham, Greens, Membrillo":

And A Razor, A Shiny Knife had two dishes. One was the infamous duck confit/slow-poached egg salad with foie vinaigrette from the dinner in LA:

This was a duck yolk cooked sous vide, over a cake of duck confit, with greens and a foie gras vinaigrette. Two things: it was RICH. Good thing I saved it for last, because I was full after that. Also: The greens, vinaigrette and duck yolk would have been plenty. The confit was almost too much, as it was so rich.

They also offered this: "Celeriac Veloute, White Truffle, Veal Cheek, Crouton":

which was my favorite of the night. I'll be trying my hand at celeriac veloute in the future. (Translation: celeriac, a root vegetable; and veloute, a kind of creamy soup.)

After dinner, we rolled ourselves away to cocktails at Death + Company (see yesterday's post), combining two of the things I loved most about New York: creative food and creative cocktails. Why spend $80 at Applebee's when you could spend it on a meal like the one above?