WD-50: Delicious, Enjoyable, and Avant-Garde

By Ed Levine Eats   Mar 05, 2008

Photographs of bone marrow, chestnuts, tonburi, pickled honshemeji and soft white chocolate, potato, malt, white beer ice cream courtesy of Tina Wong Frank Bruni's 3-star review of Wylie Dufresne's molecular gastronomy temple WD-50 may in fact reflect Dufresne and... FULL REVIEW

Happy New Year! And my dinner at WD-50

By The Wandering Eater   Dec 31, 2007

I wish everyone HAPPY NEW YEAR!! Jeebus, time flew so quickly… I’ll probably write a review of the past year soon, say, on the day of the new year? I’m not too sure on that. If not, I have a more personal post to write about anyways. Going back to Friday night, I went [...] FULL REVIEW

WD-50 Makes a Comeback

By Opinionated About Dining   Dec 12, 2007

Wylie Dufresne, the chef-owner of the highly acclaimed restaurant WD-50, and I, have sort of a love/hate relationship. How our relationship came to be that way is rather complicated. You see I have a love/hate relationship with his food, and... FULL REVIEW

WD 50

By Gotham Gal   Nov 25, 2007

I am stumped on this one. We have all read about WD-50. Wylie Dufresne is brilliant, taking food to another level, winning major awards, a must foodie place, etc. Lower East Side. So, after all, we all went. Here is... FULL REVIEW

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WD-50

By New York Journal   Jan 03, 2007

I haven’t had the best luck with restaurant visits on holidays, such as New Year’s Eve. Restaurants tend to simplify and reduce the scope of their menus, while charging more—in some cases a ton more—than they normally would. Our dinner last year at Picholine was a particularly egregious example of this: $800 for two, for a menu that wasn’t worth half that. FULL REVIEW

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WD-50 Tasting Menu recap

By Crumbs NYC   Dec 28, 2006

It's been a while since I did the tasting menu at WD-50 so this won't be a full fledged blog posting but more a recap in photos: FULL REVIEW

wd-50

By Salli Vates   Dec 26, 2006

Has the sight of all those Christmas trees made you hungry? If so, you might want to head over to wd-50, where the current menu features sly hints of the season. This weekend, there were pine needle beans, spruce yogurt and a pine nut casserole. My companion and I celebrated Christmas Eve doing what we love most: dining out. Many others had the same idea, as wd-50 was packed even though chef Wylie Dufresne had the night off. FULL REVIEW

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By Foodite   Dec 13, 2006

I was honored to be invited to dinner at wd-50 by one of the founders of the website Food for Design, a food and design blog based out of Belgium, who was in town on business.  You can read more about our dinner here. FULL REVIEW

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Mad Scientist

By ChuckEats   Dec 05, 2006

WD-50 is a restaurant that polarizes eaters. Chef Wylie is a mad scientist who takes the water baths of molecular gastronomy and applies them to the “eastern” cooking and ingredients he learned under Jean Georges. The result is love or hate - more difficult taste profiles for a western palette exasperated by his pyrotechnics. FULL REVIEW

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WD-50

By Sweet Napa   Sep 03, 2006

In a perfect world, my plane would have landed in Newark at 4:30, and we would have had enough time to drop off my bags before making our way to our 7:00 reservation at Wylie Dufresne’s WD-50. Instead, my plane was 40 minutes late, and the deadlock of the Holland Tunnel and utterly Bangkok-esque jams of people and cars in the city brought us to our table at about 7:40. Luckily, my brother got there early and held the table, the staff were extremely gracious about the lateness, and I was able to check my suitcase in the coat check room… with at least 3 other pieces of baggage. Ah, home again in New York. FULL REVIEW

You Aren't This Creative

By ChuckEats   Jul 28, 2006

WD-50 was my designated “fancy” meal for this NY trip.WD-50 was the most famous experimental cook in the US before the Alinea & Moto PR machines kicked into gear. Wylie (the chef) cooked for Jean Georges (my favorite US restaurant) and used that fusion experience as his point of departure into the netherworld of experimental food. The fusion aesthetic is still very much a part of his cuisine, but it’s been put through blenders, dehydrators, and countless other devices whose original purpose was probably chemistry or medicine. FULL REVIEW

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By Hungry Hedonist   May 21, 2006

I am curently blogging from the 415. School has finally ended, so I'll be in the Bay Area this summer for my internship. It starts Monday, and so do power lunches in the Financial District. But before I start on Bay Area posts, I'll finish my winter break eats. Gosh, I'm so bad with updating. FULL REVIEW

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Wd-50

By Pabulum   May 05, 2006

1. Pickled beef tongue with fried mayonnaise and onion streusel. I loved the beef tongue sliced carpaccio style, you can barely remember it was pickled. And fried mayonnaise? It was worth ordering just to find out how the hell they would do it. FULL REVIEW

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WD-50: 772 contemplativillian stars

By AugieLand   Mar 27, 2006

New York does have its own, locally-grown practitioner of the new cuisine and his name is Wylie Dufresne. Wylie's restaurant is WD-50 on the Lower East Side, and he first gained notoriety as the chef at 71 Clinton Fresh Food, the restaurant credited as the progenitor of the "serious restaurants on the LES" movement. FULL REVIEW

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wd-50: The Gastronomie Perspective

By Gastronomie   Mar 13, 2006

When I read Derrick's account of dinner at wd-50, I knew it was a place we needed to try. As I read C the description of the "carrot-coconut sunnyside up" and the "Deep friend mayonnaise cube", his eyes lit up and he asked, "we're going there, right?" FULL REVIEW

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Wd-50: it totally pwnz

By The Girl Who Ate Everything   Mar 12, 2006

While I would usually sum up a few restaurants in one entry, some restaurants aren't the, "Ooh, just gonna shove it in with the others like a miss-shelved grocery item that I'm too lazy to put in the right place," type of restaurants. Sometimes they're the, "OMG, THIS IS AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME I NEED A LARGER VOCABULARY" type of restaurant. FULL REVIEW

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WD-50

By Potatomato   Jan 30, 2006

Remember I said I would compensate all those bad deli food I had with one last BIG dinner at NY before I left? We finished our project on the very last day and we were ready to celebrate at night. Initially we booked a fine dinning place at Brooklyn but then we found out it's 'jacket required' (+ piano playing + mink coat old rich people + anniversary couples arrived in limo, etc). Hell no! To avoid all the 'business casual' places at midtown, we found this trendy experimental restaurant WD-50 at Lower East side. I've read about this place often, famous for its celeb chef and the $105 nine course tasting menu, and won awards like Best Inventive Dish, Best Weird Food That Actually Tastes Good...etc. FULL REVIEW

WD Redux New York City Entry #34

By Veal Cheeks   Nov 13, 2005

What kind of art is culinary art? Is cookery performance art or plastic art? Is a chef a musician or composer? Do we judge the process or the product? Both views have appeal. Any chef who oversees a staff had better develop, if not recipes, at least procedures, so that dishes night to night will taste similar. Yet, diners who return to a restaurant often discover that what is lovely one night is loopy the second and lost it the next. FULL REVIEW

Just Desserts New York City Entry #22

By Veal Cheeks   Oct 13, 2005

The relationship between a head chef and a pastry chef is rarely between equals. That we speak of "chef" and "pastry chef" displays a hierarchy by virtue of the extra descriptor alone. Virtuous diners skip dessert, seeing the denouement as a needless excrescence, and because desserts are typically served cold, they are often seen as less a performance than the hot dishes they follow. In my observations, pastry chefs, even if they prepare far more than pastries, pies, and cakes, do not work during the evening, preparing their morsels earlier in the day, home to sup quietly with the family. Not laboring in the kitchen inferno, they are not truly part of the trade. All too many restaurants, even some who advertise their stars, outsource the production of sweets. Made in Bangalore. FULL REVIEW

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WD-50

By Mona's Apple   Aug 08, 2005

WD-50 One of the funkiest restaurants I've eaten in EVER...not sure I'll be rushing back. Kind of the once-in-a-lifetime thing to say you did it, but not really needing to do it again. FULL REVIEW

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WD~50

By Big Apple Dining Guide   May 04, 2005

Getting to WD~50 via subway is easy from work, but getting out of there to go home is no small feat, at least to where I live...but who cares... FULL REVIEW

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Saturday, April 02, 2005

By A Year In Food   Apr 02, 2005

Hamachi, freeze-dried corn, marjoram (paired with Cava Brut, FULL REVIEW

Wd50

By The Strong Buzz   Jul 01, 2003

Anticipation. A word classically used to describe the turtle-slow release of that lava-like ketchup known as Heinz, and more recently, the opening of wonder-chef Wylie Dufresne’s WD50—a spacious restaurant filled with a mix of foodies, LES locals, and curious chefs on the prowl for inspiration. Mr. Dufresne’s spare menu provides plenty of it, offering provocative combinations of perfectly executed morsels on foam-and froth-swathed plates. If you crave simple, approachable comfort food, go somewhere else. Mr. Dufresne’s vision does not encompass such populist banality. FULL REVIEW

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