Next: Vegan

So I did something that I didn't think I could successfully do.  Ate a meal at a fancy restaurant without meat.  Of course its Next so they were probably going to pull it off successfully, but I was still scared.  I love a bleeding piece of beef and it generally makes everything taste better, so I certainly had my trepidations.  Add in what was supposed to be a surprise trip with my girlfriend and it being the first full week of service of this menu and I was a nervous wreck before this meal.

  It's not a very good photo, but in typical Next fashion they have a centerpiece that is involved in the meal.  In this instance it was apple wood that held in its branches, the opening note (which Next has always done) and one other little surprise.

The second part of the centerpiece.  This is a glass box full of water and flowers and a candle.  I wasn't sure why this was on the table, but it did come into play early on in the meal. 

The first course was served to us on a rock, and utlized something else that was hidden in the tree, a sourdough starter cracker.  The cracker was use to scoop up a charred avocado puree that was studded with raw avocado, edible flowers, sorrell, kale, and sprinkled with Chinese five spice.  I'm not a big fan of avocados but this was a real winner for me.

Two more courses.  The left is called autumn leaf and its a roasted radicchio chip, good, but radicchio is always bitter and this was no different.  The right is called sprouted tempeh, I'm not entirely sure what this consisted of except there was a lot of soy involved.  Very salty and a jelly like texture that was probably also soy based.

This one is called frozen baked potato.  It's a roasted potato skin cup that is filled with frozen purple potato basically ice cream that was likely made with liquid nitrogen.  The cup also includes other flavors that one would find in a baked potato.  Of the first courses this was one of my favorites.

The next three bites.  Starting in the middle and working towards the bottom of the picture we have leek and banana.  The cup was a roasted leek leaf that was filled with a banana puree, the green bite is a nori dumpling and the third bite is a rambutan shell that was been filed with a rambutan jelly.  I enjoyed the rambutan and the leek and banana.  Nori has always been a tough flavor for me so I struggled a bit with the dumpling.

The final of the small bites to start the meal, baby artichoke.  You can't really see it, but there's a heavily roasted baby artichoke that has had its heart hollowed out and filled with an artichoke puree and served with the same basil pesto that was on the swordfish dish of the sicily menu.

 The first of the larger courses of the night.  This dish is called Fermented Apples with Lichen.  This includes granny smith apples, granny smith apple ice and lichen which is a fungus that grows naturally on apple trees.  

 In addition to the sparkling wine that was served with the first courses, t his course had a sipping vinegar that was served with it.  This was a red wine vinegar that was spiked with some other flavors.

 

This is the dish where the pond that was in the center of the table came into play.  This is a dish called LillyPond and I honestly don't know what was in it.  But the waiter fished the herbal garnish you see in the plate out of the pond and we ate it.  I enjoyed the dish, but for the life of me I can't identify the ingredients, though it's possible there were water chestnuts involved. 

The next dish was served with a sparkling cider which is sort of becoming a Next tradition.  I believe Sicily and Kaiseki are the only two menus that I've been to that they haven't served one.  I thoroughly enjoyed this glass.

 One of the more fun dishes of the night, White Asparagus and Rice Yogurt.  The top is a rice cracker that is served over the top of sliced white asparagus and a yogurt made from rice water.  The kicker with this dish is that a second sauce is brought out, licorice that was frozen in LIQUID NITROGEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (Yes I'm a nerd) They spoon the frozen sauce over the plate and as it melts it forms a licorice syrup that went really well with the dish.

The first red wine of the night for the next two courses.  This is unlike any wine I've ever heard of.  The vineyard completely rejects all modern wine making techniques.  They don't use yeast cultures, they don't use climate control.  I hate to say it, but it's all natural.  This is a wine that is very similar to what would have been drank throughout the Roman Empire.  (By the way, this wine is made on Sicily on the slopes of Mt. Etna).  The result, is actually a natural carbonation that makes this wine almost sparkling, it was fantastic.

 This dish is called, Salsifies with Oyster and Dandelions.  Salsify is a root vegetable that is said to be very similar to both dandelion and oyster, so the restaurant played off of that and served it with both.  The right is the oyster version, it's a salsify (the with thing in the middle, served with oyster leafs (leaves that are supposed to taste like oysters) and a dandelion green puree.  The left is a roasted salsify served with a dandelion green.  The idea with this dish was to eat the right side first and then the left which was to give the diner the sense that they were eating an oyster course followed by a salad.

 This is a dish called Swiss Chard and Douchi.  According to the waiter, this dish was born out of necessity.  Apparently, one of the chefs in preparing for this meal made a call to a local farming probably talking about the farmer's ability to supply a bunch of Swiss Chard.  Evidently, the chef forgot about the call until the farmer called and said I have 12,000 Swiss Chard plants ready for  you.  The mixture on the right is the douchi.  Douchi is a fermented soybean concoction that is native to Japan.  In this case it was deep fried (kinda like a sweatbread) and tossed in a flavorful mixture of who knows what.  The douchi mixture was placed on top of the tempura fried chard leaf and eaten like a toastada.

This next dish was Kombu Atoll.  The atoll comes from the way the dish is plated.  Against the blue bowl that looks like the ocean the dish looks like an atoll.  The dish itself was kombu (seaweed) topped with yuba skin and served with a ponzu sauce and yuzu juice.

Up next was cherry blossom and almond.  Nothing special at all here, the white stuff is an almond milk almost yogurt that had the flavor of goat cheese.  Sam and I both were not fans of this dish. 

This next wine is a 2008 Barolo.

The wait staff then brought out this center piece which they told us was just for us to look at for a while.

A couple courses back the staff brought out a cart, inspired by the French cheese cart,  that had all kinds of mushrooms on it to show us what would be coming later.  The cart consisted of morels, the home grown shiitakes that they are growing, enoki mushrooms, beech mushrooms, and several others.  This dish is titled Mushroom Cart.  It's a mushroom risotto that uses faro instead of arboio rice.  The liquid was probably mushroom stock and the whole dish was topped with various mushrooms. I thoroughly enjoyed this dish though I don't think it was above any other mushroom risotto I've ever had.

Red Onion:  Inspired by Stupak.  This dish includes heavily caramelized red onions that were tossed with mint, cilantro and fresno chiles.  The sauce on the outside was a brussels sprout puree.  The Inspired by Stupak portion of the dish is the quinoa "wire" that is on top.  Alex Stupak is famous for creating these food wires and the chefs consulted him to get this one done with a grain.  I'd be very curious to see  how it was done. 

This is the dish where those earlier test tubes came into play.  This dish is called curry roasted cauliflower.  The orange sauce is a harissa sauce.  Before we ate, we were asked to push the crunchy bits from the test tube on to the dish to create the garnish.  The dish was really good, but a bit too spicy for me.  If a dish is too spicy for me I'm really scared for Sam, but she loved it, might have been her favorite of the night.

The dish was served with grilled nan bread, a quintessential Indian staple.  In funny fashion, that was likely the result of the first week of service, the waiter that brought out the bread flat out told us that he had no idea what it was.

Before we ate this dish we were given a spoon that had a bit of the olive oil jam and Sichuan pepper the idea being that the Sichuan peppers would give your tongue a tingly feeling before eating.  I didn't notice anything.  This dish is called Olive Oil Jame with Biter Chocolate.  The yellow stuff is the olive oil jam sereved with a bitter chocolate almost sponge cake and the red stuff are freeze dried strawberries.  Fun and pretty delicious dish.

The cocktail for the desert courses was lambrusco, Cocchi Roso, Luxardo and Maraschino. 

I never thought I would say this but probably my favorite dish of the night was a desert.  This is hibiscus and pistachio.  There is hibiscus syrup, a hibiscus crusted vanilla ice cream, a couple of sponge cakes, another crusted vanilla ice cream and garnished with crushed pistachios.

The final desert was developed out of little competitions the kitchen staff apparently has on Sunday nights.  These are steamed crepes.  The top level is vanilla brulee flavored.  The bottom has a passion fruit flavored and chocolate flavored crepes.  These were good, but again not mind blowing.

The menu. 

Overall, I really enjoyed this meal.  In none of the courses did I miss the meat, and I left the restaurant very full.  I feel like the long menu is the chefs trying to compensate for not having any meat, which is totally understandable given no meat.  But ultimately, for what it was this meal was entirely too long.  Some of it was due to opening weekend but it was a four hour meal start to finish.  Lots of simple timing issues that I think will be corrected as time goes on.  I'm glad I went, but if I never eat Vegan again it will be too soon.  Looking forward to November and Bocuse d'Or.  I still have no idea what to expect with that menu.