I wasn't going to write about it since you've heard it all before, but I have to give it up to Blue Hill at Stone Barns, where I had another swoonworthy meal. (Disclaimer: I know the chef from my Greenmarket days. He knew we were there and asked us if we wanted the tasting menu. But I will also say that I have had the tasting menu anonymously, and we were treated just as well then.)
I'm dying to visit in summer, when nature is just giving it away for free, but there's still plenty to celebrate in Stone Barns' greenhouses, root cellars and henhouses. I was crazy for the morning egg this time -- a soft-boiled egg is dredged in panko and fried, then laid in a shallow bowl strewn with a pretty bedding of just-snipped micro herbs and lettuces. The waiter pours a steaming, deeply earthy mushroom broth from a glass teapot around the egg. The whole thing is so yin -- warm, fortifying broth of foraged mushrooms from damp, shady woods, the crisp, maiden panko that has to be pierced with knife and fork so the yolk can run free. It exemplifies what I appreciate most about Dan Barber's cooking -- no macho gimmicks, just understated magic and a subtle alchemy that never upstages the food.
La Doug thought it quite daring to end the savory segment of the meal with the succulent sous vide chicken -- moist, luscious breast and a swath of dark meat with crisped skin, all reclining on the sweetest wedges of yellow carrot. My favorite dish: a shot glass with rich, tangy buttermilk panna cotta, punctured by shards of fennel and tart apple with a spoonful of green apple sorbet floating on top. Di. vine. Gush gush gush.
But I digress. The real reason I wanted to talk about dinner was that our dining companion Jon turned us on to his latest obsession, sagrantino. The sagrantino grape is native to Montefalco, a small town in Perugia, Umbria. It's a sort of Cinderella story -- local guys do good by overlooked indigenous grape, nationalists and bacchanalians alike raise their glasses to the new prom queen. The 2001 Paolo Bea Montefalco Sagrantino Secco we drank was full of dusty, raisin-y tannins, gloriously swishy and staining. As Food & Wine suggests, it'd make a great gift for the oenophile in-laws you're trying to impress. Looks like Italian Wine Merchants has the 2003 for $94.05; you can also get it at Crush Wine Co. for $89.95. (It ain't cheap, I know, but you get what you pay for.)
