So my second year of going to Next is now in the books. 2013 concluded with a menu that I knew nothing about when I first heard what it was. Bocuse d'Or turns out is a biennial cooking competition that was started by French Chef Paul Bocuse in 1987. The competition includes 24 countries represented by two chefs who get five hours and thirty-five minutes to prepare and present a fish course and a meat course to 24 judges.
The owner of Next, Grant Achatz has been a coach for the Bocuse d'Or USA Foundation who also holds a competition to select the two chefs that will represent the USA at the world competition. Grant Achatz also got a chance to be a coach for Team USA at Boocuse d'Or 2013 along with Daniel Boulud and Thomas Freaking Keller.
Anyway, the true competition format is impossible to recreate into a restaurant concept, so the chefs created a menu inspired by the competition with a few cool added bonuses for fun.
The first two pictures were the center pieces when we got to the table. Knowing Next I knew something fun would happen with the rose later on. Little did I know that in the casserole dish was our first course. Just to the right of the casserole is two little containers of cippolini marmalade and creole mustard and just to the left was a bit of sourdough bread. Both were to be used with the first course.
First course was terrine of veal with frisee salad. The terrine was a combination of veal and pork meat cooked into a sort of meatloaf. The waitress said when we started to dig in that we shouldn't feel obligated to eat it all because it was incredibly rich for the first course. It definitely was, almost like the terrine was raw, but I know it wasn't. The first course was served with a little shot glass that they filled with a cocktail called Sazerac which is a New Orleans cocktail made with Rye Whiskey, Sugar, bitters and a splash of absinthe which in this case was served to us in a little atomizer bottle which looked like a perfume dispenser.
One of the little features the added to the restaurant for this menu were tvs. These TVs were showing a continuous loop of video from the 2013 Bocuse d'Or competition.
Then twice a night the wait staff hands out cowbells and encourages the diners to make as much noise as possible as three platters are paraded through the dining room. These are the types of presentations that are made at the actual competition and each platter represents a course that is coming later in the meal.
The next five courses were part of the hors d'oeuvres portion of the meal.
This dish includes osetra caviar served over a whipped beurre blanc and pine nuts. A single bite that was an interesting play between the rich saltiness of the caviar and the richness of the beurre blanc and the fattiness of the pinenuts.
Course #3 was a mousse of darden ham that was surrounded by a ham aspic that was fortified by madeira wine. Aspic is just a fancy word for jello. The salad included baby arugula and fried sourdough chips. The salad was delicious, the mousse was a decidedly unique flavor and texture combination.
Course #4, Souffle of prawns. This was probably one of my favorites of the night. A well made souffle spiked with delicious shrimp on the inside. Rich and the perfect combination of flavors.
The beginning of course #5, cauliflower custard mixed with foie gras and verjus rouge. The final component of the dish comes from the centerpiece, the rose.
The waiter takes the rose out of the vase and dips it into a vat of liquid nitrogen. He then broke the petals into little pieces and garnished the plate with them.
This was what was left of the rose after the waiter was done. This dish was good, but again a very unique texture versus flavor combination. The custard was very rich thanks to the foie gras but the flavor was very tart because of the verjus (unripened grapes that are pressed into juice).
The final hors d'oeuvres was a billed as a transitional plate to move into a round of more savory courses. This dish was a slice of charred baby romaine lettuce served with bottarga, bonito and peanut. The sauce was cut with a little kafir lime juice for acidity.
The five hors d'oeuvres courses were served with two different white wines the first was the 2011 Beckmen Le Bec Blanc and the second was a white out of Walla Walla Washington a 2001 a Maurice Viognier.
The second grouping of courses which included courses 7 and 8 were poissons or fish.
The first fish dish was a combination of Bocuse style with midwestern flavors. This is Ivory Char from the Great Lakes with coddled eggs, celeriac and cranberry. A good dish but a bit overpowering on the fishy flavor. The chefs at Next really enjoy to use ingredients that highlight their midwestern roots, but I feel like this dish would have been better served with a milder saltwater fish.
Course number 8 was Quinault River salmon that was served with beets, browned butter and parsley. Overall, this dish was pretty good, the biggest downfall was what you see in the upper left corner it was charred vegetable of some sort. I wasn't a huge fan of the flavor that it brought to the dish.
These two courses were served with the white wine of the night a 2010 glass of Scholium Project Midan Al Tahrir from California. Apparently this wine was created by a former math professor and is a crazy blend of grapes that aren't normally put in wine together.
The third section of the meal, potage or soup contained course #9.
Consomme of roasted mushrooms. This was a heavily flavored mushroom broth that was served in a bowl topped with a puff pastry shell. This dish was a fantastic way to transition from the appetizers and fish courses to the heavier game dishes to come. The first red wine of the night was a pinot noir from the Russian River Valley of California the 2009 vintage from Wild Hog.
Section #4 of the meal had courses #10 and #11 Volaille and Viande or Birds and Meat.
This is pheasant smoked in hay with grilled baby leek, caramelized onion and sauce blanquette. The dish incorporates portions of the whole pheasant and the mixture in the cup on the left includes liver and other organs with I believe ground leg meat. Overall a good dish, I thought the pheasant breast was a bit over cooked.
The "meat" dish was ribeye of beef with boudin vert, roasted carrot, sauce bernaise and potato marrow. The this dish is a twist on steak and potatoes The ribeye was rolled with a soft green sausage and the bernaise which is classically served with steak was transformed into a semi solid chunk. The potato was whipped with with beef bone marrow and put back into the beef bones. The whole dish was sauced table side with a rich beef sauce.
This dish was served with a 2010 Malbec out of the Mendocino Valley in California from Yorkville Cellars
The fifth section of the meal was fromage or the cheese course.
The bowl was brought to the table and included cashews, pear and milk skin. The waiter then cut a floret of tete de moine cheese. The tete de moin is a swiss sheep's milk cheese that my brother and I both thought was overpowering for this dish.
I lied earlier in the post, this is now the final white wine of the night. This is the 2010 Riesling Ice Wine from Milbrandt Estates in the Columbia Valley of Washington State.
Section number 6 was the two dessert courses.
This course was ice cream bombe in the style of apple pie. The ice cream bombe is essentially and ice cream cake that surrounded a little bit of apple flavored filling. The left side of the page is a bruleed marshmallow that was topped with spicy cinnamon puffs, apple and lattice crust from an apple pie. I absolutely loved this dish.
Desert and course #14 a cube of butternut squash with huckleberry, butter pecan ice cream and pecan oatmeal cookie. This dish was good outside of the butternut squash. That's because personally I like to avoid savory elements whenever possible in deserts and butternut squash certainly qualifies.
The two deserts were served with a spiked egg cream. The restaurant spiked it with a pumpkin spiced liquor, which overall made the drink really good.
The final section of the meal, mignardises or small sweet bites. In this case there were three bites that included courses #15 - #17.
On top was a carmel pecan macaroon. The tootsie roll looking thing on the bottom was bitter chocolate taffy and the ball on the bottom was a chocolate hazelnut truffle. Overall all three bites were really good.
So overall, I had minimal expectations going into this meal and even though I had no expectations this meal didn't really exceed or miss. It was just kind of there. It's hard to describe, there were some really good dishes I just think as a cohesive meal it just kind of fell flat. After two years of going to meals at next here is how I rank them.
1. El Bulli
2. The Hunt
3. Kaiseiki
4. Vegan
5. Bocuse d'Or
6. Sicily
The timing of this meal was amazing because earlier this week the restaurant announced the three meals for 2014 and renewals for season ticket holders will begin sometime after the first of the month.
Spring 2014 will be Chicago Steak
Summer 2014 will be Chinese: Modern
Fall 2014 will be Trio: January 20, 2004
I'm already craving the steak menu, Chinese will be incredibly interesting because I have an idea of what Chinese food is and an a strong desire to explore it. The fall menu is one I'm intrigued about but not sure what to expect. Trio was a restaurant located in Evanston where Grant Achatz worked for three years in the early 2000s. Nick Kokakanos and his wife were regulars at the restaurant and for Mrs. Kokakanos' birthday on January 20, 2004 Nick asked Grant to create a special one off meal. So Grant did and that meal spawned the business partnership that would become Alinea, Next and The Aviary.
