We enjoyed a great vegetarian tasting at Dirt Candy in NYC. A really strong value with a 7 course dinner for $105 and one of my favorite wine pairings I’ve ever had for $55.
Carrots in a sambal sauce. Technically a snack from the kitchen rather than an official course, but a great start. Light and acidic. A food palate prep.
Onion chawanmushi. This is the only course we didn’t like. The creamy sweet custard didn’t play as well with the savory flavors as it should have on paper.
Mushroom croissant. Perfectly flaky pastry stuffed with mushrooms and served with a “mushroom coffee” that was a great dipping liquid for the croissant.
Flash fried collard greens with buffalo seasoning. Very fun and very tasty! The scissors were to cut the leaf from the stem.
Butternut squash noodles with butternut squash. The texture difference between the noodles and squash was fun, but this wasn’t the most memorable dish.
Deep fried pickled cabbage. This was awesome and completely unlike anything I’ve ever had in my life.
Flourless chocolate cake with apricot. I think this is my favorite dessert I’ve ever had. Nothing out of the ordinary here, just a flawlessly executed piece of cake. The dessert wine it was paired with sent it to the moon.
The Good: Wonderfully creative dishes that, even as a meat eater, did not make me miss meat at all. The wine pairings were also exceptional and a very good value. For the money, this was a great experience.
The Bad: Service felt a bit rushed. I didn’t feel that we got an adequate explanation of every course and it felt like the servers were just trying to get to the next guest.
Overall a very good meal that was well worth our time.
by parker472
1 Comment
Their cocktail program is soooooo underrated! One of the cocktails we had was a California Roll …. Which tasted so similar to its namesake but was completely vegan. I started sending local bartender friends after our visit. Cool spot.