Rumors of an exciting new chef from Santander, Spain brought me last week to a white truffle and wine dinner at Meigas in Norwalk.
Those rumors were certainly not exaggerated. Check out my photographs to see some of the most interesting and picturesque food to come down the pike in a long time.
Meigas is principally owned by veteran Guatemalan restaurateur Carlos Hernandez,
shown here with partner Mario Aguilar
and here with speaker Anish Ajoomal of Classic Wines.
Hernandez took over the prestigious Spanish eatery a couple of years ago when Ignacio Blanco gave it up to focus on opening a line of Ibiza Tapas & Wine Bars. Foodies have watched with interest to see what direction Hernandez would take the restaurant. Judging by the white truffle and wine dinner I enjoyed a few days ago, Hernandez and his Cantabrian chef, Miguel Rebolledo,
who reportedly worked with the renowned Ferran Adrià at El Bulli in Roses, Spain earlier in the decade, have taken the cutting-edge molecular gastronomy path.
Molecular gastronomy is a high-risk-high-reward strategy. Molecular gastronomers like Adrià and Grant Achatz in Chicago definitely “think outside the box,” experimenting with the chemistry and physics of food to produce wildly interesting creations that defy conventional expectations. People tend to appreciate such food only as long as it remains sufficiently grounded. Some prominent chefs like Noel Jones of Polytechnic ON20 in Hartford have recently shied away from the molecular gastronomer label.
Since purchasing the restaurant, Hernandez has held frequent wine dinners. He brings in stirring live music and spends long hours with his chef developing multi-course menus with such eclectic ingredients that he’s fortunate if he breaks even. But wine dinners are great for restaurant morale, for garnering publicity, for rewarding loyal customers and for expanding one’s customer base.
Before the dinner, I checked out the wine lineup,
spying both old favorites and intriguing vintages I had never before tried. Ajoomal is a respected and knowledgeable wine presenter. Here Ajoomal is shown with Aguilar,
here with restaurant publicist Nancy Maar,
and here explaining to guests the provenance and properties of the wines they were enjoying.
I will take readers through this incredible meal chronologically, so they can more easily experience it vicariously. Happy customers
began their first course with glasses of a NV Ondarre Cava Brut Millennium, Rioja.
Three different tapas were served with the sparkling wine. The first was a Kobe beef tartare with truffle and Dijon mustard served over multigrain toast.
The second was escargot with a truffle and morel mushroom injection. Each snail was stuck on the end of a plastic pipette. As one took an escargot in one’s mouth, one squeezed the end of the pipette, injecting the delicious fluid.
Similar in design, the third was a piece of tender octopus with a smoked paprika and truffle oil injection.
For the second course, guests were served a fascinating combination of white truffle tea and a kalamata olive muffin.
Most guests loved the unexpectedness of the preparation. It was brilliant in that neither the white truffle tea nor the intense kalamata olive worked well on its own, but taken together they were terrific.
After that course we were brought
great freshly baked bread with sweet whole cloves of garlic pressed into it
and extra virgin olive oil laced with white truffle oil.
The attentive staff
took great care of guests throughout the meal.
Accompanying our third course was our second wine, a gorgeous Palacio de Fefiñanes 1583 Albariño from the very first producer to bottle under the Rías Baixas D.O.
The only thing more unusual than the description of our third course—a Dover sole roll in a fumet with clams, baby squid, white truffle caviar and truffle foam—would be the sight of it. I was so curious about the chef at this point that I went into the kitchen to watch him plating it.
This delicious dish was designed as an island of food rising out of the intensely blue Mediterranean Sea. Here you see how my plate looked,
and here you see my neighbor’s.
Pretty wild, huh?
From an ocean scene, we moved on to a scene of a river moving through a boulder-strewn landscape. But it was more complicated than that. Served over a white truffle aïoli, salmon smoked in French oak was trapped with smoke under an inverted glass,
which was lifted as the dish was served, releasing the vapors.
A blue streak represented a river, while potatoes coated in a (somewhat) edible shell represented boulders. Here is my neighbor’s plate.
This was the only dish that didn’t blow my taste buds away, but it was still really interesting. With this dish we were served a lovely 2009 Añares Terra Nova Verdejo Especial, Rueda.
Our fourth course was really more of a palate cleanser. We were served
a refreshing cucumber, lemon and honey sorbet.
An absolutely gorgeous Tempranillo, a 1999 Valserrano Gran Reserva, Rioja,
led off our fifth course. Although not quite as visually striking as some of the other dishes, the fifth course was actually my favorite. It featured milk-fed suckling pig in a sherry sauce, a slice of truffle-marinated foie gras terrine balanced upon a carrot-and-quince mold, frisée with pomegranate seeds, and big shavings of white truffle. Bravo!
The sixth course wasn’t too shabby, either. Tenderloin of venison in a white Perigord sauce was served over thyme-and-wild-mushroom sand with balsamic shallots, lentil sprouts, baby carrot and fresh truffle shredded tableside. The food was delicious, the presentation whimsical and touched with humor.
Served with this course was a potent 2006 Pico Cuadro “Vendimia Seleccionada,” Ribera del Duero.
A glass of NV Martinez Lacuesta Vermouth, Rioja accompanied our dessert.
Our delightful dessert proved to be a chocolate and white chocolate ingot topped with white truffle caviar and edible gold leaf and served with truffle air. Note the colors of the Spanish flag painted onto the plate.
It’s a rare meal that feeds both stomach and mind so fulfillingly.
Our senses of sight, smell, touch and taste were abundantly stimulated by this wonderful wine dinner, but so was our sense of hearing. Brought in from New York City for the occasion was a music trio called Inti & The Moon, who performed a lovely, and often thrilling, fusion of pop, Latin, folk, rumba, flamenco and other musical genres.
The members of the trio were New Yorker Concetta Allegra,
Ecuadorean Geovanni Suquillo,
and Dominican Albert Siri.
During a break from performing, Allegra came around to tables
and sold CDs to interested listeners (we bought all three).
At the end of an incredible evening, Hernandez, Aguilar and Rebolledo took a well-deserved bow,
and then Hernandez posed with some of his favorite customers.
Inti & The Moon, 631-813-5115
intiandthemoon.com
Meigas, 10 Wall Street, Norwalk, 203-866-8800
www.meigasrestaurant.com