Daniel

On our recent trip to NYC, we made a reservation at Daniel for dinner. It was a flurry of excitement one month prior, since NYC restaurants open reservations exactly one month in advance.

We prefer to do very early reservations, usually the first one open. It reserves your night for dinner, allows us to move at a very leisurely pace, and also, most people tend to shy away from the first res.

So we arrived early for our 5.30pm reservation even and were the first table to be seated. I wanted to take a picture of the room at that point, but Josh said no so... here's the room near the end of our meal when it was relatively filled up. It was decorated poshly for the holidays.

The service is superb. You have your main guy -- and I hesitate to call him a server really -- but he led the meal as it came out and poured and presented the wines as they came out. There was the guy who cleared our plates and kept our water glasses full. And then there is the guy I would think of as the maitre'd but I am not sure what his role really was.

We eased into the meal with a drink. What better to start off a meal than with bubbles? I opted for a glass of the Billicart-Salmon rose and Josh had a glass of Krug. Yes, indulgent.

We started off with this amuse. I have trouble remembering what was in these three dishes, but I recall that each one had parsnips and the one on the far left had smoked salmon. The brunoise in the far left dish was an amazing collection of perfect tiny cubes.

For my first course,duck terrine with marcona almond, honeycrisp apple confit, sauternes glazed date, mache salad, hazelnut-cider vinaigrette. It came with a divine Dr. F Weins-Prum-Reisling Kabinett "Graacher Himmelreich", Mosel, Germany 2008.

When I ordered this, I wasn't sure if it would be a duck terrine or a duck foie gras terrine so I was thrilled when it turned out to be foie gras. It came with some thin brioche toasts, which I tried just because I was at a French restaurant, but I prefer to eat my foie gras solo. Oh, this was a great dish.

Josh had the mosaic of Griggstown Farm mallard and parsnip, apple cider poached quince, pickled champagne grapes, and peppercress salad.

The mosaic was so beautiful and some of the cubes were fois gras, so I was able to keep all of my terrine to myself. :)

For the second course, I had the tasting of yellowfin tuna which was "en tartare" with Northern Lights caviar (C), cured with compressed celery (R), and confit with anchovy dressing (L). It paired with a Domaine Bailly Sancerre "Cuvee Chavignol", Loire Valley 2010.

This was a pretty delicate dish with a nice balance of different flavors. Overall, I preferred the tartare, probably in no small part to the generous pile of caviar on it.

Josh had the wasabi cured fluke with shiso bavarois, roasted beets, edamame coulis, and seaweed bread tuile.

I think I was so obsessed with my dish that I never asked him about his. Oops.

For course three, we both got the artichoke and squid ink raviolini, little neck clams, ruby red shrimp, razor clams, sea beans, saffron cream, and opal basil. It came paired with Domaine Monpertuis, Chateauneuf de Pape, Rhone 2008.

This was a luscious dish. The pasta was silky smooth and thin. The filling of each raviolini was divinely silky smooth. This was a dish where I savored every delicious bite.

For our fourth course, we also got the same thing, the slow poached monkfish tail, green cabbage-sesame fricassee, parsnip mousselini, and toasted cashew. It came paired with Copain pinot noir "Tout Ensemble", Anderson Valley 2009.

I know that if you are paying attention, you will say, wow, a Californian pinot! Indeed. But it was very good.

How often can you get monkfish, not to mention slow poached? So of course we both had to get it. It was very good. The monkfish was wrapped in ... kale? spinach? The parsnip puree was so luxuriously smooth. This must be why they invented food mills.

On to course... five? Duo of beef: black angus short ribs with cauliflower mousseline. Seared wagyu tenderloin, chanterelles. Crispy potato and poached bone marrow. Served with a Chateau Robin Cotes de Castillon, Bordeaux 2005.

This was a really good dish and each piece was so good, but I have to admit that my favorite was the short rib. It was braised until meltingly tender. There was a bit of that tendony-fatty goodness in there that just makes me weak at the knees when you have braised beef. I know I keep saying silky, but this mousseline was so smooth and good.

Moving onto that crispy potato, it was a perfect rectangle all crispy and delicious. And on top of it? Damn, it really was little perfect cubes of bone marrow. Who does that? Crazy!

On to the wagyu tenderloin which was delicious, as you would expect. And so was the roasted cauliflower floret over there on the right. Yum yum yum.

And from there, we moved on to dessert. At some point, Josh had gone off to the bathroom, and the guy I call the maitre'd stopped in to chat with me. I must have looked lonely. We talked about being from Atlanta but growing up in Connecticut, snowfall, and the weather. And then he asked if we were there for a special occasion. Well, I tend to associate any decadent meal or trip with an occasion, so I said it was kind of for Josh's birthday, though really it was just dinner. See, I was honest. But when dessert arrived, so did this beauty.

It would be wrong of me to say this was the best dessert, but that espresso ice cream was delicious, and so was the layered chocolate thing. :)

I chose my dessert based solely on its pairing. Caramelized pineapple, tropical mousse, lime, almond crumble, and passion fruit sorbet. Paired with Chateau Pajzos, 5 Puttonyos Aszu, Tokaji 2000.

Well, I love my tokaji and this was one I hadn't had before. It was great. The dessert itself was good, though seemingly odd on the season. It had an underlying coconut flavor throughout it, so a random touch of the tropics. I did eat it all though, so I can't say I didn't enjoy it.

Josh had the warm Guanaja chocolate coulant, liquid caramel, fleur de sel, and milk sorbet. It was paired with Domaine de Rancy, Rivesaltes Ambre, Roussillon, France 1996.

It was very good and impressively molten inside the ... I would call it cake. But not being so crazy for chocolate, I wasn't disappointed that I had my very sweet tropical dish.

It was the dessert course that never ends. Instead of coffee, we opted for after-dinner cocktails which did take a rather long time to arrive, not that we were in a rush. This plate of petit fours arrived. I carefully took half a bite of each one as we moved through them.

Before we even got into the petit fours, our guy brought by this little basket of madeleines which he gave us declaring them "straight from the oven"! Well, how can you not polish these beauties off first? So we demolished the basket so quickly.

Then they come by with a tray filled with chocolates. You choose the ones you want. I got the caramel-filled and the peanut butter, the latter because it was clearly the favorite. I liked the caramel one better.

Madeleines! No, this is not a duplicate picture. When our guy came by, he said, "your madeleines are gone! I will bring another." I love this guy. And so he brought another basket. And you can't look a gift basket in the mouth. We ate all those, too.

Did I say overindulgent? It was about this time (as we were still waiting for our cocktails) that I saw that someone had this cheese cart over by their table. Uh, I like cheese. And so we got the maitre'd over and I said... so I like cheese. Can I add a cheese course? And he said, "now?!" So now you know that I am extreme even by New York standards.

So they brought the cheese cart over. And by over, I mean they had to have two guys carry the cart down the short steps that were near our table.

I asked the guy that I will call the cheese man to write down the names of the cheeses that we got. I'm sure he knows better than I do what we got, but I cannot help but be unsure.

So starting from the left, we got what we asked for as "humboldt fog" because we love humboldt fog. But my cheese list says "Humble Pie" and it's true that I've never seen a humboldt fog run quite like this. So Humble Pie is a mixture of sheep and cow's milk and is made by Woodcock Farms in Vermont. Either way, it was delicious, and my favorite on the plate.

Next to that, we have the Austrian meunster. We had never had an authentic meunster before. It was a little stinky, but still good.

Next to that, we have a cheese from Connecticut, because I mentioned I was from Connecticut. It is called Hooligan and is made by the Cato Corner Farm up in Colchester.

Lastly, we have a comte-like cheese that Josh chose (so I made him eat most of it) called Ossau Vielle which was also tasty.

Along with the cheeses came these stewed fruits. They were quite tasty too.

All in all, a very long and decadent meal. Highly enjoyed. I definitely overdid it when I got there to the end.