My Meal at Daniel

Jaime Bissonnette,
 chef at Coppa Enoteca Boston

This past Friday, I got the best news ever.  I had won two VIP tickets to the Blizzard Bash in Boston.  I have been dreaming of getting tickets to this event, but it was a tad out of my price range.  I decided to enter a contest on twitter.  It was a simple name your favorite chef attending and why.  I chose South End local Jaime Bissonnette and the reason was very simple.  The food is good and I can bring my dog in the summer. Who would of thought that would win two tickets to the food event of the year.

Barbara Lynch,
of Menton, No. 9 Park, Boston

Blizzard Bash is an event that benefits the Barbara Lynch Foundation highlighting and features some heavy hitters in the food world as well as some amazing bartenders.  Joanne is making the trek up to Boston next weekend to join me!  I think this would be the only valid reason to visit Boston in February!  I thought I would do a few posts about my dining experiences with some of these chefs in preparation for the big event.

Daniel Boulod,
 chef at Daniel NYC

 

This past year, I had the opportunity to dine at Daniel, a three star Michelin star restaurant. We had received a gift card for Christmas from my dad.  It's always easy to shop for us.  Just get us some gift cards to a restaurant and you have two very happy campers.   Jason and I were heading down to NYC to pick up our marriage license so we'd thought we make a whole weekend out of it. The night of dinner, I got all dressed up  and even broke out the fancy shoes.  We even took a cab to the restaurant, a rare occurrence in NYC as we are typically subway people.  I like the subway - its gritty and cold, but it fuels the entire city.  Plus, I like to look for rats in the tracks.

Exterior of Daniel NYC

I started off my meal with a drink in the salon.  Daniel has a private label of champagne so of course I had to get a glass.  It was delicious.  Lots of tiny streams of bubbles made it crisp and super refreshing.  Our experience ran like clockwork.  As soon as the glass was empty they took us down to our table.  Jason thought we were being ushered to the "cheap seats" in the balcony area, while I thought it was perfect.  I had a birds eye view of all the action.  I had heard rumors that Daniel had cameras in the ceilings to scope out what was going on and to perfectly time your courses.  I spent probably a solid ten minutes looking for these cameras, and confused a lot of smoke detectors for cameras.

Sea Urchin

What exactly we had is a blur, all I remember that every bite was amazing.  I had sea urchin for the first time, which if you haven't had it, go and get it immediately.  One of my favorite parts of this meal was the dessert. Dessert is an entire event on its own.  Our server had overheard us discussing that we got our marriage license that day, so he brought out an additional dessert to celebrate.  You would think our meal would be over since we had already had two amuse bouches, an appetizer  an entree, and three plated desserts, but you'd be wrong.  Next comes the mignardises, little treats such as caramels and chocolates.  Lastly came the fresh out of the oven so unbelievably good madeleines.   Sweet Mary mother of God, I thought I'd died and gone to heaven.  I turned very food aggressive over this little clouds of deliciousness.  When Jason was about to take the last one, he backed down with the stare I gave him.

Daniel's madeleines 

This was definitely a night to remember and a night I hope to relive again.  I know I will probably accost Daniel Bouloud to know his magical ways at Blizzard Bash.  Stay tuned for some more delicious meal adventurous I've had at these Blizzard Bash chef's restaurants.


Happy Eating!
Jen