Blitzkrieg of photos coming up! I was going to try and post my vacation photos chronologically, but I could not resist. I'll post highlights throughout the week. As you probably already know. Cafe Atlantico in DC blew me away with the dining experience they call their minibar. The restaurant itself is on several split levels connected by open staircases. To get to the six-seat minibar, you have to walk through one dining room, up one staircase past the open kitchen, up another staircase through a second dining room, and up to a sushi bar style counter. They do two seatings of six a night, and seats fill up about a month in advance. $120 for the tasting, $40 or so for wine pairings, and a nice list of wines by the glass, split, or bottle. Now, put on your bibs and prepare to drool!
CAVEAT: half the fun of dining at the minibar is watching the cooks at work. These guys are masters of molecular gastronomy, deconstructing dishes and reconstructing them in unexpected and exciting new ways. The point of their artistry is not to introduce new and exotic flavors. Instead, they excel at harnessing familiar flavors, pumping up the intensity, and presenting them to you in sometimes unrecognizeable forms. It really is the most showy and interactive meal I've ever had, and well worth the price.
PARMESAN PRINGLE. A nice starter to keep us busy while the kitchen acrobatics began. We munched on these while watching the three cooks lay out all kinds of dishes, garnishes, and equipment.
CAIPIRINHA "NITRO." A classic caiprinha is mixed with liquid nitrogen and pumped through a whipped cream canister, then topped off with dry ice and liquid caipirinha. I didn't capture the effect of six of these all spilling smoke all over the counters, but it was beautiful.
"TUMBLEWEED" OF BEET. Cute, crispy, and fresh tasting. It was like the best Terra chip ever. We joked about how we all wanted to go out and buy some wire mesh napkins after seeing this presentation.
OLIVE OIL BON BON. The next wow of the night came int he form of this tiny bon bon, which had to be carefully picked up by the bulb and eaten in one bite. the outside is a pipette of crispy sugar, and the olive oil itself was a fresh grassy Spanish variety. There was also a slight hint of salt in the bon bon, which made the whole bite very nicely balanced.
"MOJITO." Carbonated mojito center, gelatinous exterior made of agar agar jelly. We were amazed. This was one of my top three favorites of the night for both intensity of flavor and creativity of presentation. Imagine biting into a large grape or tiny water balloon and having a concentrated mojito explode in your mouth!
"BAGELS & LOX." As you can tell by now, the guys at minibar are fond of deconstructing simple foods, pumping up the level of flavor intensity, creating an elaborate, excruciatingly detail focused version of the original, and then keeping the simple name. This wasn't the most exciting dish, but the flavors were clean and the tobiko was great.
We were treated to a split of Gruet bubbly by the sommelier, who is a friend of a friend who dined with us. I thought the rich blanc de noirs (?) we had was the perfect pairing for the wide array of dishes we had.
"CORNBREAD." It was simple but incredible! The only time I've ever tasted such an intense corn flavor is in the polenta at Oliveto in Oakland. The bread part was light as air, the mousse was rich and creamy, and the toasted corn on top was a nice contrast that called to mind the harder corn bits in homemade cornbread.
COTTON CANDY FOIE GRAS. Self explanatory, and a relatively simple take on the classic pairing of foie gras terrine with something sweet. Usually the something sweet is reduced red wine sauce or gelee, caramelized sugar, or something else haute. The cotton candy is a fun twist on a grown up dish.
CONCH FRITTER. With liquid center! They take conch chowder, freeze it until it's gelatinous, roll it into balls, freeze the balls solid, and then batter and fry the fritters. So the center of this is actually a liquid. Of course, delicious. I was so self-satisfied when I said "Hey, like a Shanghai dumpling!" and one of the cooks said "
Exaaaactly!" in a knowing tone.
CURRIED CHICKEN WING. Yum. I don't know how many dozen ingredients went into this, but it tasted like a perfectly crisped, completely deboned, yummy piece of curried fried chicken.
SALMON-PINEAPPLE "RAVIOLI" WITH CRISPY QUINOA. I feel awful, but I really dont' remember eating this. I mean, I do, but nto really. With most of these dishes I can recall the textures and flavors, and how much I liked them on a scale of one to five. I just really dont' remember this. It wasn't my favorite or my least favorite, just forgettable. But check out the world's coolest spork! We were each given two of these and nothing else to eat with the whole night. It was fun.
SUN-DRIED TOMATO SALAD. I'm not usually a fan of sun-dried tomatoes, but these were of course a step above the usual. What I really enjoyed was the little tomato heart they scooped out and put at the end.
ZUCCHINI IN TEXTURES. The bottom layer is zucchini puree, the center is hand picked zucchini seeds, and the top is zucchini water gelee.
"CAESAR SALAD." Cute, huh? The foam is the dressing, the romaine is rolled up in thin wafers, and the two cylinders are topped with quail egg yolk and grated Parmesan. There are also two crispy hollow croutons. The flavors weren't the most exciting, but the presentation was adorable. I still don't know how they balanced that yolk on the lettuce without any of the yolks bursting or rolling off. Every diner was able to pick his/hers up and eat it without incident.
Okay, I need a break if I'm going to do the rest of the dishes any justice. More typing later, you're just going to have to wonder what the following are for now!
Back to typing. ASPARAGUS "EGG." The "egg" is actually a quail egg yolk surrounded by white asparagus puree and encased in a gelatin shell. It actually tasted soft and gooey just like a lightly poached egg. The white asparagus in foam was less exciting, since I'm not a white asparagus lover in general.
SEA URCHIN CEVICHE WITH HIBISCUS FOAM: Claire did not like the foam at all. This was not a popular dish in general. Too adventurous, maybe? I have to say, hibiscus (the stuff used to make the Mexican drink Jamaica) is pretty darned sour without any sugar. Not something everyone likes, though I do. And sea urchin is just hit or miss. Their Catalina sea urchins were a little fishier than I like. I think Santa Barbara ones are milder. I couldn't capture the color of the bright pink foam because the copper countertop reflected light like crazy!
CORN ON THE COB: a relatively straightforward take on a classic. I thought the little black bits of smoked sea salt were huitlacoche (corn fungus). That would be one way for them to take the corn theme further! The sauce, of course, was corn puree.
"GUACAMOLE." Very interesting! Thin slices of avocado rolled around tomato sorbet. Light and refreshing best describes this dish. Most amazing machine of the evening? The
PACOJET. I saw one in Manhattan too, and I'm completely smitten. You freeze whatever you want in the canister, and when you're ready you insert the canister and the blades churn the frozen block into scoopable ice cream/sorbet/sherbert/etc. The cooks said they have a lot of fun with theirs. Sadly, it's about $3,000.
SMOKED OYSTERS AND APPLES: I loved the smoked oyster! They cold smoke them for several hours, and pair one with a Granny Smith apple cube and a bit of crispy fennel. I practically licked the plate clean.
NEW NEW ENGLAND CLAM CHOWDER. Yes, that's two news. Raw clams, potato puree, cream foam, and garnishes.
BREADED CIGALA WITH SEA SALAD. Cigala is a close kin to lobsters and langoustines, but is softer and perhaps milder. I liked that it was familiar but different. Does that make sense? And the puree of shrimp head innards was just fantastic.
"PHILLY CHEESESTEAK." We were trying to guess what this was, and I guessed French Dip. I was close! I had to eat this in a hurry so there are no photos of the inside, but the bread was a hollow cornet of dough filled with a cheesy foam, then topped with slices of rare beef that had been slightly rubbed (or was it topped?) with Oregon black truffles.
PISTACHIO-BEETS AND MIXED BERRIES. Perhaps the most stunningly colorful dish of the night. The photo does not do justice to the brightness of the colors or how high the contrast was between the red and green. Beet meringues were a clever way to add a contrast in texture to the perfectly smooth beet sorbet and pistachio sorbet.
THAI DESSERT. Look! It's that peanut paper we recreated. Underneath is a very light, almost loose, coconut sorbet. The black swirl is tamarind, and there's some chili powder at the end.
MATCHA BALL. Cotton candy rolled in matcha. Sorry for the fuzziness!
PINA COLADA INJECTION, PASSIONFRUIT MARSHMALLOW, SAFFRON GUMDROP IN AN EDIBLE WRAPPER. The star of this show was the pina colada injection, which required biting off the pineapple and candied ginger and then squirting the pina colada into one's mouth. I ate this last, and it left a great refreshing aftertaste after all that food. The other two were tasty confections, and the edible rice paper was clever, but after so many incredible things it was hard to be impressed by old tricks. :) I mean that in the most complimentary way.
Last trick of the night: an egg was brought to the table and smashed before our eyes. Turns out it was hollow, and our bill was rolled up inside. Ha ha, guys.
In my own wedding news: my bridal party is dressed! Phew. My sisters have their dresses, and our groomsmens' tuxes arrived yesterday. They're really snazzy! Much higher quality than rentals, and the same price as they would have paid had they rented anywhere in West LA. Plus, I think everyone's more comfortable in their own clothes than rentals, and this way no one has to be in charge of picking up and returning tuxes or risking last minute fitting problems.
More summer treats. It seems extravagent to buy all this seafood in one day, but the alternative of going out to eat was even more expensive so I figured why not. Everyone deserves a treat some times. And the Fanny Bay oysters at Santa Monica Seafood today were divinely creamy, and sweet enough to eat with nothing but two drops of lemon juice. 
For ceviche:
Disclaimer: I've never made gazpacho before, and I did not follow a recipe this time. I just looked around the farmers' market for stuff I thought would taste good with tomatoes. The following recipe resulted. Pardon the pinkness of the photo, I froze a few cubes of soup and ran it through our snow cone machine. The resulting ice bits really reflected the light off what should be a red soup. 
To eat with the soup, I got a loaf of Rockenwagner pretzel bread.
And because I found the most beautiful, perfectly ripe melon at the farmers' market, I stopped by Bay Cities Deli for some Prosciutto d'Parma. A perfectly filling, well-rounded, cool meal was just the ticket tonight.
