Category: Dish of the day

So I couldn't tell you where Paul Liebrandt's restaurant will be or what he has in store for it (won't be Italian food), but I can tell you what I hope winds up on the dessert menu. Liebrandt made a bunch of cocktails for a Ciroc vodka demo I went to, the best being a lemon meringue stinger -- an ice cold (Pacojet-ed) vodka lemonade topped with hot Whip-it lashed egg white foam (egg white with with lemon juice, gin, and simple syrup, heated in the whipping canister to 160 degrees in a water bath). High temp meringue on the upper lip, icy tart alcohol on the tongue. Not the kind of thing you want to drink a whole martini glassful of, but a fun trick that you could recreate it at home as a final dessert palate cleanser.

As for the vodka, I didn't try it straight because, well, I drank a whole martini glassful of the delicious stinger on top of several lethal liquid nitrogen-caipirinha sorbets. I was down for the count by the time the straighter cocktails came out. I'll let you know how it goes when the bottle gets opened.

Full review of Pacificana forthcoming on NYMag.com, but their stew pork with preserved vegetables is my dish of the day -- big, streaky hunks of pork belly are stewed in a sweet soy broth with anise and plenty of preserved cabbagey bits, all poured into a clay casserole atop wilting iceberg. Divine. You could split the dish between two people and still have enough leftover to make pork buns a la Momofuku the next day.