Birdie - December 31, 2015
Like many others I’m sure, I have diametrically opposed feelings when it comes to New Year’s Eve. Some might say it’s just an arbitrary marker that we as a society have agreed upon and that it doesn’t have any real significance, they’re not wrong. Others, being members of said society, choose to impart a significance on it to celebrate ends and beginnings, they’re not wrong either. I find myself partially entrenched in each camp, like some temporary double agent.
While dining at Birdie my second time, Landon mentioned they were going to be doing a special New Year’s Eve dinner with a few more courses. That piqued my interest. The past few years I’ve gone to either Travail or Pig Ate My Pizza’s party, but this year I wanted something a little more low quiet, but just as gustatorily delightful. So I made sure to get a ticket to Birdies New Year’s Eve shindig when they became available.
Looking back on this meal, I feel a tad guilty. I’ve commented how intimate Birdie is with its twelve seats and half as many chefs providing personal service. My ideal New Year’s Eve would have been here with someone romantically special to me, and by buying one ticket, I think I inadvertently robbed a couple of that experience. If you’re a couple that were looking to buy tickets to New Year’s Eve at Birdie, but saw only one ticket available, I deeply apologize, I hope you found another great spot to celebrate the changing of numbers and shared an amazing kiss. But, by leaving that one uncoupled ticket out there in the ether, it did allow my friend Shawn to purchase it and experience Birdie for a second time.
Landon opened the evening with a gracious welcome, and a moving emotional recounting of his year of opening Nighthawks and Birdie.
I’m just going to list the wines up front and the numbered courses they accompanied so I don’t need to figure out how to incorporate in each description.
Wines:
Crement du Jura Brut Comté 1 & 2
Camille Braun Rose Brut 3 & 4
Fausse Piste Viognier 5 & 6
Domaine de la Pinte Poulsard 7 & 8
Jules Taylor Pinot Noir 9 & 10
Boundary Breaks Ice Wine 11
Smith & Wooten Petit Verdot 13 & 14
Argyle Rose Brut 15, 16, & 17
Course 1 Potato Chip & Caviar with sour cream & onion: The amount of prep in this initial dish was bonkers and an excellent primer for what we were to expect for the evening. Siberian Osetra caviar from Black Caviar company, on a homemade “Pringles” potato chip. To make the chip they initially tried to make a chip like a Pringles chip, but apparently that didn’t work great, so they decided to make a chip that tasted like Pringles. How? By crushing up actual Sour Cream and Onion flavored Pringles and using that dust as the coating for the chips they made. It was crispy, cool, salty, and had an amazing amount of onion flavor.
Course 2 Raw Oyster with Bloody Mary Snow & Celery Leaf: Another amazing amount of prep for this one. Deconstructed bloody minus the vodka, gelatin added and then shaved into liquid nitrogen to make the snow, some compressed celery was added as well to give it that note. A good amount of brininess and really succulent.
Course 3 King Crab Leg with Chamomile Butter and Lobster Roe: Lightly steamed crab with a chamomile infused butter buerre blanc, this was great. The meat was plentiful and succulent, with the butter an elevation on crab.
Course 4 Uni ‘Liquid Toast’ with Marmite Milk and Sourdough: Probably my surprise favorite dish of the night. The first time I had Uni at a popular, but recently closed, sushi restaurant years ago the uni I was served had a texture that reminded me of Squand, so I was averse to trying it again. I eventually did try it earlier this year at the open of Monello, but not in this volume and not with whole lobes of it. I saw a bunch of diners trying to eat this with a knife and fork while I was trying to take a picture of it and it seemed like it wasn’t an easy task, so I decided to do it like I would nigiri and one bite it. I’m so glad I did. This thing was an umami bomb. Mushroom stock, milk, and marmite combined to be a soak for the pre-toasted bread, beautiful lobes of uni, a Maldon like sea salt, and a chive baton. So many textures: creamy, bready, soft, crisp. Yeah.
Course 5 Onion Creme Brulee with Charred Onion, French Onion Soup, and Thyme: Seven hours of caramelization on the onions before they’re pureed and made into an not as sweet custard before being cooked a la bain marie. Bruleed and then topped with a charred onion petal and some of the base for Nighthawks popular French Onion Soup. Sounds bizarre but the experience is otherworldly, the textures and looks make you think you’re eating a dessert, but the savoriness with just a touch of sweetness that complements the onion makes it work so well. Shawn had this on his previous Birdie experience and I was jealous, I was very happy to see and experience this one myself.
Course 6 Sunchoke Soup with leaks, lobster, and tonka bean: So good. The leeks were in the form of a custard, most like a savory panna cotta, and the fried bit resting upon it. The sunchoke broth with a small amount of the aforementioned bean was a great accompaniment to the lobster, adding a slight buttery vanilla note that played against the crustacean’s sweetness.
Course 7 Herbed Semolina Porridge with Creamed Kale, Diced Celery Root, Diced Parmesan, Simple Syrup Cured Egg Yolk, and Shaved Black Winter Truffle: Lots of textures and flavors that played off one another. Funky cheese, loamy truffle, fatty yolk. I was commenting to Shawn that it reminded me of a savory Malt-O-Meal, and then Landon used that as one of the descriptions. I don’t know if he heard me or if that’s just what he thought of the dish too, I hope it was the latter.
Course 8 Savory Croissant filled with Olive Tapenade and Chevre: Really good. Nice laminations and good crumb, not many spots are doing savory filled croissants in town so it’s nice to see it done, and done well.
Course 9 Chicken Oyster ‘Coq au Vin’ with Porcini, Bacon, Pearl Onions, and Brioche Toast: The ‘oyster’ part of the chicken’s back were marinated and braised in the same Pinot Noir that it was served with. The flavors were very reminiscent of the classic dish and it was enjoyable. Great textures.
Course 10 Mushroom Dumpling with Black Garlic, Gai Lan, and Crispy Shallots: I’m a huge fan of mushrooms and when I saw this on one of the previous seatings of Birdie, I thought I’d missed out, but alas it was on the menu. Apparently I’m the only diner that, after that evening, had experienced all three incarnations of dumplings: carrot, celery, and now mushroom. I count myself lucky. Unlike the previous ones, this apparently didn’t use the primary actor as part of the dumpling’s dough, instead relying on black garlic. I was just curious because the creativity in some of these fascinates me. There was a litany of mushrooms involved including shiitake, oyster, button, cremini, and enoki.
Course 11 Seared Foie Gras with Passion Fruit, Macadamia Nut, and Radishes: Unctuous. Crisp. Sweet. Creamy. I haven’t been commenting on the wine much, but the ice wine paired nigh perfect with this one. The sweetness from the passion fruit and the wine helped balance the slight pickle on the radishes and the fat from the nuts and foie. Solid.
(Shawn’s Pic)
Course 12 Fresh Juice of Cabbage, Apple, Lemon Grass, and Meyer Lemon: Clean and a good reset switch.
Course 13 Dry Aged Duck Breast with Cara Cara Orange, Parsnip, and Tarragon: The main “Birdie” course, every menu here has to have one because of its namesake. Dry aged for ten days, orange wedges dropped into nitrogen to allow for separation of the cells. The orange puree was the whole orange, including pith and peel, pureed down, it had a great acid and bitter component. The combination of the puree, the duck jus, and the orange was almost magical.
Course 14 Rush Creek Reserve with Pinecone Syrup, Lingonberry, Rosemary, and Pine Nuts: Wow. This was a creative and tasty dish. Attempting to mimic the appearance of the wheel that the cheese comes in, the chefs baked bread, sliced thinly, placed around a form and continued to bake until crisp. Then it was coated in a mixture of pine and leek ashes. The textures and flavors of this dish are tantamount to indescribable.
Course 15 Mango Sorbet with Candied Yuzu, Wine Gel, and Espelette: Tasty and an excellent turn towards the sweet portion of the meal. The wine gel is an interesting technique I haven’t seen too much of. I like it.
Course 16 Grapefruit Tart with Walnut, Lime, Coconut, and Poppy Seeds: A coconut curd with lime meringue in a walnut crust topped with a poppy seed tuile and candied mint leaf, served with nitrogen separated cells and segments of grapefruit, with a blackberry caramel used to hold the tart in place. Tasty and solid, the tuile was a great textural component. A very tropical respite from the cold night outside.
Course 17 Chocolate Trifle with Pistachio, Avocado, and Salted Caramel: Sounds weird, tastes great. Avocado’s neutral flavors and natural fats lend well to desserts, in this case a pastry cream. This was a playful end to the meal, full of texture and flavor.
Take Home Course Lemon Macarons with Lemon Buttercream Filling: My only complaint, and it’s minor. These didn’t have the texture of macarons, they were more like baked meringue. Still tasty, just lacking that macaron moisture and chew.
Afterwards, I headed home and did my annual tradition of writing up my thoughts on the previous year, and what I hope to accomplish the next. As midnight arrived bringing a new day, month, and year I texted some of the people that mean a lot to me, that I want to have bright and prosperous futures. New friends and old. If I didn’t text you, it wasn’t for lack of good wishes, I hope you have an amazing year too.
(It feels odd knowing this is the last meal I’ll share my feelings about from 2015, in the three or so months since I’ve started writing these up, I’ve eaten a lot of places I’ve really enjoyed. I hope you’ve enjoyed, and will continue to get some enjoyment out of my thoughts on food. There aren’t a lot to catch up on, and next month I’ll be doing my first thoughts on food not in Minnesota. If you know how to contact me and want me to eat somewhere in Minnesota, or want to grab a bite with me, let me know.)