Gabe Q

While I didn't say this in a way to make sound wd-50 sound bad, maybe it could have sent the wrong message. I am definitely an advocate for this type of cooking, and so I want to see places like this triumph. I just thought I'd share the experience of other people from the industry whom I know, that don't even know about egullet. But not to use it in a negative way, but as an unviased opinion.

While I have not been to wd-50 myself to eat I have also heard a lot of mixed reviews about it. I do plan to visit soon, but maybe will opt for a la carte. I recently talked to a friend of mine from Spain who is a chef de partie at elbulli. And he told me that the day before thansgiving, he along with another chef de partie from elbulli and friends from mini-bar in DC went there and they did not like the food at all. And these are obviously people that are used to working with and tasting all sort of cutting edge cuisine. He felt that the food didn't have any depth of flavor and was maybe trying too hard to be "out there" instead of putting the flavor factor first. But I think food like this is very personal and it will affect everyone differently. I will probably go try out a few dishes soon and see what I think.

I recently bought the Angelo Corvitto book in Spain "Los secretos del helado" (The secrets of ice-cream) and it is excellent. From what I've seen it is the most professional ice cream book out there. Because there are a lot of ice cream books out there which only use typical home ingredients which are basically eggs, cream, etc. But in his book it is more focused for the ice cream business and also for fine dining restaurants so it includes the use off important additives like inverted sugar, dextrose, glucose, stabilizers, etc which gives you a trully professional result. The book is very pricey, 150 euros and I have not seen it outside of Spain. Spanish only but I think it's worth it.

For those that were saying they had trouble finding the restaurant, I went by recently and noticed they already put up the "525" numbers on the door and sometime in the near future they will have a sign up.

Letting everyone know that this weekend they introduced several new dishes on the menu on both the salty and sweet side. Salty include an octopus dish, and a monkfish dish. And on the sweet side a french toast dish among others. So definitely worth checking out.

For all of you who were wondering how they did the oil caviar for the dashi dish, I present to you the oil encapsulating machine from elbulli. You can see the machine in action right there. Basically here is how it works. On the left side you see a line with olive oil coming in, and on the right side is the second line with the alginate mixed with squid ink (to make it black obviously). The oil is pumped by a syringe that you charge everytime and it goes into a motorized lever that pumps it. The alginate goes into a bottle where there is an air pump and it forces the liquid out into the line. Inside the machine's central unit where both lines meet, there are 6 pivots and it joins both fluids, and so what comes out are drops which have oil in the center, surrounded by the ink alginate. And that falls into a Calcic bath to create a basic spherification. The thing though is that the machine doesn't just run perfectly by itself, so you have to constantly be observing the drops coming out because sometimes the oil is not "encapsulated" so it just falls into the calcic bath and makes a mess of oil and solidified alginate. So it needs tweaking all the time. Pretty interesting though.

Ordered mine already! Looks amazing. I'm glad this is the first use I give to my new NY address

Hello everyone Well I got a very unusual and interesting report from today. We had our typical meeting before starting the day and there were 5 guys in the kitchen there just watching. And they spent the whole day today walking around and filming everything and the chefs were all explaining to them all the techniques and things we were doing. And they told us the reason they were there. They were all spanish, and the reason they were there was because they are in the process of developing a VIDEO GAME based around elBulli!!!!!!! This is like beyond reason. I have no idea what it will be like or when it'll come out or anything. All Albert Adria told us at the meeting is that those guys are game developers and will be working on making a videogame based on elbulli. They asked everyone in the kitchen who played video games and the people who raised their hands they told them to talk to the guys later to give them some imput. Needless to say we joked all day as to who could play the villain

I am wanting to buy a siphon soon and I have been checking around the internet for different options. Most of the places I have been to use the ISI brand. But I have seen models that are considerably cheaper. I assume they all have a standard size for the charges so you can use them with any siphon brand. So me question is, is there a considerable difference in quality between ISI siphons and cheaper models by other brands????

No problem Baggy. I spent some time there last year and although I don't have exact recipes I remember various elements of the dishes, so ask anytime. I'm sure you've seen it before but this is what the final plated quail jelly dish looks like:

Hey Baggy Yes, the Quail Jelly dish is served cold. The jelly is kept cold in a fridge already set in the serving cups. If I am not mistaken there are also 3 radish cubes and pea mousse at the bottom below the quail jelly. Then when they are ordered they are taken out of the fridge, the langoustine cream is added to cover the jelly, and a quenelle of the froie gras parfait is taken out from the parfait mold from the fridge also. There is some sea salt and freshly ground pepper and chives added to the parfait and then a little square of fig tuile inserted on the quenelle and that is transferred to the middle of the jelly.

Can anyone put up a report with pictures please!

I read on eater.com yesterday that all the plywood in front of Tailor has already been removed. So it may seem that indeed, tomorrow will be the opening date for Tailor as mentioned in Iuzzini's calendar. Anyone has any news regarding this or plan to go there for the opening date???

I might have jumped the gun saying it was trout roe. But what I know is in fact that it is real fish roe bought in a jar.

Nice report Stephen. Just one thing to clarify, not to disappoint anyone, but the roe inside the sea cucumbers is real trout roe that they just buy in a jar. The only caviar being made now (by myself I might add ) is olive oil caviar made with alginate that has been colored black with squid ink. So it looks like real caviar. That is then seasoned with salt and miso paste and goes with the dashi gelatine plate in the little caviar tin. And it's done with a special machine they have to encapsulate oils inside alginate, not in the old fashioned way like the melon caviar.