eGullet dinner at Enoteca Vin: 10/3/04

[ashleyc]

The menu and wine pairings sound wonderful!  And of course, being a Canadian, I'm thrilled you're using Oysters from Canada.  I'm still doing my darnedest to figure out how to get down there for this event. 

In the meantime, could you tell me a bit more about the techique you use for the Waygu short ribs?  Short Ribs have been long on my list of things to try, and I can't say I'm an expert braiser, but I'm willing to give it a try!

Thank you so much for taking the time and attention you are putting into this event for the benefit of our members, Chef.  We really do appreciate it!

←

Hi Marlene,

The technique I use for braising the ribs is simple but wonderful. In fact, i'm scheduled to teach a few classes in the upcoming months and this is one of the techniques I will be teaching. First, we use this particular beef because it is so well marbled. The prized Waygu quick cooking cuts (flllet, strip, ribeye) are quite decadent, but almost a little too decadent. The high level of marbling makes the meat really rich (I have heard people draw the richness parallel between the ribeye and foie) and I feel that it shows best in the braising cuts. I season and sear the meat, position it over caramelized mirepoix, and cover it in red wine. I then braise it for several hours, until the meat is fork tender. I rest the meat in the braising jus overnight, and then serve it with the braising jus as a sauce. It's pot roast at the next level.

[ashleyc]

Ashley, could you discuss with us your general approach to sourcing? You've already mentioned that you're getting the oysters from Canada, and Chrish has told me that beef is also shipped in from out of state.  How do learn of the artisinal producers upon which Vin prides itself?

←

Hi Dean...

This is a long answer and a big part of my job. If it's cool with you, I'd like to spend some time on this at the dinner.

Ashley

[Varmint]

Hi Dean...

This is a long answer and a big part of my job.  If it's cool with you, I'd  like to spend some time on this at the dinner. 

Ashley

←

No problem. Looking forward to a good discussion of this.

[ashleyc]

This sounds like a fantastic meal. I'd drive down from New York for it if I though the Plymouth would survive the trip!

I was wondering about those Wagyu short ribs too. Is there an advantage to using a Wagyu source for a braising cut like short ribs? I understand that with something like a filet or strip the marbling and tenderness of Wagyu are advantageous, but for a tough, slow-cooked, collagen-rich cut like short ribs is there a noticeable difference?

Save me some!

←

Fat Guy,

I sort of answered your question with Marlene's. The quality of this beef totally shows in the braising cuts. I enjoy it more here than in the more prized cuts. If you think about it, you have this high fat content running through the grain the meat. As you braise it, it slowly cooks out through the meat, tenderizing the grain and flavoring the meat. The final product is rich in flavor, silky in texture, and maybe even worth a trip down south.

Ashley

[LoveToEatATL]

Oh Ashley!!!!!!!!!!! I was reading all about you in my newest Food & Wine during a recent stint at jury duty in Atlanta.

I am dying to get up there!!!

Congrats, my dear! It is your time to be feted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Patti

Edited September 25, 2004 by LoveToEatATL (log)

[Varmint]

Spaces are filling up, and the dinner will be sold to Vin's special customers on Monday or Tuesday, so I suggest you book your reservations today if you want to join us. I met with Ashley on Friday, and I'm just wishing the dinner were today, rather than a week from today, as I don't want to wait that long!

[DonRocks]

I was sent a pre-announcment that will be going out to Enoteca Vin's customers shortly:

---

We've been fans of eGullet.org, an international food organization and website, for some time now. Of course, we were particularly pleased when eGullet's forum host from DC gave us such a glowing review, asking aloud whether we might be the most important restaurant south of New York City: (go here for the story: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=47464). Our interest in eGullet was further piqued when they recently announced their re-organizing to become a non-profit, tax-exempt organization known as the eGullet Society for Culinary Arts & Letters. The mission of eGullet is to increase "awareness and knowledge of the arts of cooking, eating and drinking, as well as the literature of food and drink." We're impressed how the folks at eGullet have taken a small bulletin board service to the next level to become the go-to place for discussions about gastronomy.

When we were asked if Vin would be willing to host a dinner for the eGullet community to celebrate this important step in their development, we couldn't pass up the chance, and now we'd like to share this opportunity with you. On Sunday, October 3 at 7:00, we will be hosting an eGullet dinner with a focus on Burgundies, and we have a handful of spots remaining for this special dinner. Chef Ashley has posted her menu on eGullet and has answered several questions about the dinner, so feel free to go here for the discussion: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=51364.

The cost of the event is $75 plus tax and gratuity for a total of $97.20 per person (which will be collected in full by credit card at the time you make your reservation). To make reservations, please contact our reservationist at 919.834.3070 between 1pm and 5pm, Tuesday-Saturday. Ask for Julie. You may also reach us at reservations@enotecavin.com.

We'd like you to meet some of the people from eGullet, learn what their organization is all about, and while you're at it, have a great meal. And if you can't make it, please check out eGullet at www.egullet.org. These people are serious about their food, just like us.

Sincerely,

Ashley Christensen and the Enoteca Vin Crew

[tanabutler]

"Everybody Loves Vin": eight-page spread on Enoteca Vin in the new "Food and Wine" magazine. And yum, three recipes.

[Varmint]

Thanks, Tana. We had posted about this great article on the 5th post of this thread, but it's worth repeating. I think there's quite a few more than 3 recipes in the print edition. See y'all tomorrow!

[Mayhaw Man]

Well? Anybody out there sober enough to report?

[Varmint]

Well? Anybody out there sober enough to report?

←

Not yet. DonRocks will post a detailed report some time after he flies back to DC. The meal was extraordinary, with Ashley's incredible purity of flavor being the focus. Don's a far better writer than I, so be on the lookout for his take. I'll post lots of photos tonight.

[Mayhaw Man]

If someone HAD been able to do this last night I would have known that the evening was a failure. Glad everyone had fun and I look forward to hearing about it.

[Fat Guy]

Hey! What's a guy got to do to get a report around here?

[jdanton]

My wife (who attended, I was on a plane back from California) said the short ribs and tacos were unreal...but it was like 11:30 EDT when I talked to her and she wanted to go to bed...

[Zeb A]

Varmint was spotted stumbling around Glenwood Avenue, mumbling about the Pack and Brett Favre's concussion, so I think that is a good sign.

Edited October 4, 2004 by Zeb A (log)

[Varmint]

I believe DonRocks is still recovering from last night, so I'll go ahead and post some photos of last night's dinner. My descriptions will be very, very cryptic, but they should allow Don to work off the photos to give you great details about the meal.

One can't forget that Enoteca Vin is a wine bar. They offer over 35 wines by the glass, with 3 different pour sizes for each.

The menu.

Table setting before dinner.

Co-owner and sommelier Chrish Peel. Chrish also is an owner of Carolina Wine Company. He was generous enough to donate some of the older wines from his personal collection. Thanks, Chrish!

Oysters. These beausoleil oysters are a small variety, and for those who are not overly familiar with raw oysters, they make a great introduction.

Oyster close up.

Wasabi and ginger mignonette to go with the oysters.

Chef Ashley Christensen and crew plating the scallop.

Crappy picture of Maine scallop with sweet corn-truffle emulsion. What a dish!

This was described as raviolo with chanterelle mushrooms. Heh, heh, heh. Cut into it and you get this:

a flow of egg yolk into the sauce. This dish was brilliant, and I look forward to Don's description.

Heirloom Black Krim tomatoes from my farmer friend Jim Currin of Oxford, NC. Simply served with Spanish olive oil and fleur de sel. Perfect.

Tea smoked pork shoulder tacos with marinated cabbage and chive oil. This worked very well, particularly with the wine. Mrs. Varmint had a smoked duck taco that I would gladly eat 7 days a week.

Chef Ashley Christensen in control of the kitchen.

Braised Wagyu beef shortribs with Swiss chard and melted shallot.

Chambertin!

At Vin, the chef even plates the cheese!

Great color!

Originally, we weren't going to have dessert, so I just asked Ashley if she could make some simple petit fors to take home or some other small sweet. She came up with this instead, a roasted banana panna cotta with El Rey bittersweet chocolate. DonRocks said that he didn't like strong banana flavors, so this was his least satisfying dish. He ate two of them!

Thanks so much to Ashley, Chrish, Julie and the rest of the Vin crew. It was a fantastic dinner, the wine was extraordinary, and the night was festive. Now we need Don to get on the ball!

[ronnie_suburban]

*speechless*

...well, except to say thanks Dean, for providing those awesome pictures and descriptions.

=R=

[KatieLoeb]

Oh. My. God.

Envy, envy, envy....

The food is absolutely gorgeous and the wine pairings are sublime. Should I ever be anywhere in the vicinity of Enoteco Vin I will make a beeline to their front door in the hopes of having such a delightful meal. It makes me want to weep with joy when I see folks that take such pride in their work and work together so well. Bravo to the staff!!!

[spaghetttti]

Absolutely fabulous! Thanks very much, Dean, et al.

[DonRocks]

Dean, Dean, Dean,

Certain things take their own time to foment – I couldn’t write about the meal last night because the time and energy to do it properly never came to the surface. For the sake of timeliness, lemme try and wing this now and rattle it off as best I can.

There was angst that Enoteca Vin would not live up to itself - for whatever reason, the original posting got publicized, took on a life of its own, and made me cringe with doubt whenever I read it. But last night was as-good-or-better than my other two meals there, and now I remember what I was raving about.

Dean and I talked about my love of this restaurant – maybe it’s because when someone dines out so often, they begin to yearn for simplicity, clarity and perfect execution rather than some sort of soap opera on a plate.

You know, there are places that are “better” than this, and anyone in their right mind would say so (quail eggs at Marc Veyrat, duh), but this is where I want to have dinner, night-after-night, week-in and week-out - this is food to crave for its cleanliness and transparency, and for such amazing value. And the wines are soooo goood and soooo fairly priced.

That platter of wasabi was fresh-grated, not powdered. When you scroll up and look at the picture of the truffle emulsion with the scallop, you'll see that in the middle is a faint dividing line of olive oil, and on the right side of the line was a white-truffle emulsion; on the left side was a black-truffle emulsion. They were both noteworthy not because they were so different from each other (they were), but because truffle oil is a terribly overused and abused condiment, often overwhelming a dish, but this was an example of how to use it correctly and with subtlety, the corn being far-and-away the primary flavor in the emulsion, and the black/white truffle being a secondary backdrop to the astounding freshness of the corn.

The pork shoulder taco was something else, wasn’t it? The wine came out beforehand, and it was a 93 Volnay 1er Cru Les Champans from Voillot (the label didn’t say Voillot, but that’s who made the wine). The wine by itself came off as rigid and olive-y, and I was thinking Chrish had something up his sleeve for serving this. Sure enough, the spicy taco and the marinated cabbage took the wine, and sent it up on the express elevator fourteen floors, turning it into a Grand Cru, and then the wine countered the spice in the taco, and then the taco made the wine better still, and this little fist-on-top game rose into the skies and made seemingly everyone in the restaurant rant and froth, wanting more and more.

But then there was that damned egg bursting from the pasta. When I cut into the raviolo and the egg yolk started flowing out, I felt like a 15-year-old in my bed who just opened a Playboy and the centerfold popped out and came to life. And the shortribs, cooked at low heat for hours. Ashley loves low-temperature cooking, and both the pork (taco) and shortribs were just melto bone-slide essence. And the cheese, L’Ami du Chambertin, served with a 93 Perrot-Minot Charmes-Chambertin. Man. The details at this restaurant are amazing: tins of tea sitting on the side from Upton Tea Imports, cheese from Formaggio Kitchen. These places are the best sources in the country, and I fear that they go unnoticed. Did you see what was in the wine cooler?

I could go on, and on, and on about this place. The time to catch Enoteca Vin is now, while Ashley is young and at the height of her powers. I worry that this cannot be sustained, and that Chrish might scale back, or that someone, somewhere in this incredible equation will burn out or throw in the towel before people get a chance to love this place. Everything is clicking now, everything is firing on all cylinders, and these things tend to have a lifespan, and they don’t last forever. Yes, this was a special meal and no doubt a borderline charity event for the restaurant, but this wasn’t really that different than the last two times I dined here, and so perhaps the heyday of Enoteca Vin is right now, in 2004. Given what’s coming out of the kitchen from Ashley Christensen, given the care and passion of Chrish Peel and the peripherals like the teas, the coffees and the cheeses, given the world-class wine list being offered at clearance prices, given the casual atmosphere and location, given that this combination of things cannot be found anywhere else within five-hundred miles at any price, given all this, let me go back out on a limb and say that Enoteca Vin is the restaurant I cherish above all others right now.

I had previously contacted Ashley and was worried about whether she could pull this off on a large scale, for fifty people at a time. After the meal, she came over and leaned down, and asked me quietly:

"Can I pull it off for fifty?"

Yes, Ashley, you can.

Rocks.

[Varmint]

Excellent, Don. You perfectly described the feel of the evening.

[razzar]

Great description and great pictures of what must have been simply amazing food.

Those of us who have to live vicariously thank you.

[Suzanne F]

Varmint, you have definitely learned how to use that camera!

Wow. Wow. Wow.

[The Hersch]

This was described as raviolo with chanterelle mushrooms.  Heh, heh, heh.  Cut into it and you get this:

a flow of egg yolk into the sauce.  This dish was brilliant, and I look forward to Don's description.

←

I suppose one can't expect a magician to reveal how her tricks work, but as someone who has made a good number of ravioli I sure wish I knew how she did that. How do you get a raw egg yolk inside a raviolo AND have it still runny when the raviolo is finished cooking? That's two bits of magic in one dish. And my god it looks good. Beautiful photographs of beautiful food.

[VaNC]

It was the raviolo that put me over the edge.

The food, the wine, the evening were all incredible, but that raviolo was the thing I thought about after I got in bed, a couple times the next day, and was the first thing I mentioned to my husband when he called in. It was a truly incredible dish. Great on so many levels...taste, food quality, mouthfeel, ingenuity....and, as Hersch mentions, science!

My thanks too to Ashley, Chrish, and Dean for all their work.