The Test Kitchen is known for it's "experimental" cuisine and uses a tasting menu approach. Three apps, a main and dessert. All were good, service was excellent and it was an enjoyable meal.
Here are some photos!
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| The aperitif was hibiscus tea with honey and ginger. |
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| The restaurant is deceptively large and bustling. Lots of staff, and as in Razzle Dazzle, loud, somewhat frenetic music. |
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| Seating was comfortable but unusual. I thought at first I was being seated at the counter overlooking the open kitchen. Instead, I was seated at a lower counter that faces a prep area for the servers. Huge windows but no views at night and the restaurant isn't open during the day. |
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| There are three menus, which rotate (weekly? monthly?). On the left is the "B" menu. I was offered the option of mixing and matching with the vegetarian menu but opted to stick with the B menu. |
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| First up was corn and truffle. The surprise is that is not a piece of corn, but a molded corn mousse. On the side were grilled corn and truffle crumbs. Tasty. This was served with a bread plate of three tasty/crunchy rolls, served warm. |
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| The next course was smoked salmon and cucumber. It arrived covered with a cloche keeping in a cloud of smoke (photos of that later when they brought it for another diner). The sauce was buttery with lemon. Delicious and would be good as a cold lunch entree. |
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| Next was shrimp and garlic, with pasta and roasted tomatoes. The broth was made with lobster stock. Another tasty dish. |
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| There was attention to detail, including new silverware for each course. This was for the lamb that was coming next. |
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| One of the chef's was making the dessert, which was excellent. |
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| The lamb was cooked sous vide to the requested medium rare. It was served with zucchini, eggplant, some sort of blackened eggplant sauce and a flavorful jus. |
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| Check out her cloche with the smoke for the smoked salmon. |
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| That's the actual smoke after the cloche was removed. |
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| I typically love desserts the most and tonight was no exception. There was a strawberry gel, strawberry marshmallow, strawberries, pistachio crumble and...wasabi cream. Yup, the white fluffy stuff was wasabi cream. I'm now going to be using wasabi on my strawberries. Just enough heat to balance the sweet, it was an excellent dessert. |
