When I realized I’d have a free evening in Manhattan Friday night, as Irene would be busy attending the New Jersey Romance Writers conference, I decided it was long past time to check out Wylie Dufresne’s Lower East Side restaurant wd-50. I’d heard a great deal about it over the years, both from those who absolutely loved it and from those whose reactions were far more … mixed. But whether people responded positively or negatively to the experience, their reactions always seemed passionate. Which meant—time to find out for myself!

And so I used social media to put out a call for a friend who was enough of a foodie to also be willing to pay $155 for the restaurant’s twelve-course tasting menu. Fellow zombie author Kris Dikeman was the first to respond, and so at 7:00 p.m. we met at wd-50 for what turned out to be a mind-blowing meal. Amazingly, there was only a single dish we were not absolutely in love with … and it was the same dish for both of us.

The first thing to come to the table was a wooden box of extremely thin baked sesame crisps. They proved so light that in addition to enjoying them before the courses began arriving, I also used them as a palate cleanser of sorts between each course.

First up was a tiny sandwich of saffron-coconut ice cream, caviar, and poppy seed. A surprising way to begin a meal, but the mix of sweet and salty was a major wake-up call for my taste buds. You wouldn’t think the flavors would work so with each other, but they did. It was like eating ice cream by the ocean! (more…)