Sunday, July 26, 2009

restaurant week diary: 10 downing

It's probably becoming very evident that all I've been doing the past few days is eating up a storm. Mika was away for six weeks and he came back right in the middle of Restaurant Week, so we've just been having wonderful meals with our New York friends. Last Friday, we decided to try 10 Downing. It was the perfect evening to sit outside with some wine and good food. The weather was gorgeous and the temperature perfectly cool with no humidity.

Our party mostly stuck to the restaurant week menu. The boys went with the chicken liver mousse paired with some bruschetta and pickles. I wasn't able to take a picture but it was very good, I thought. I'm not generally a fan of plain old chicken liver, but I love patés. Theirs was smoother and just yummy. I went with the white gazpacho for the sake of diversity, and was actually quite pleased with it. The gazpacho had some almonds and grapes that gave a nice freshness to the soup, pequillo peppers for bite, and boquerones for a little salt and fun flavor.


For my entree, I picked the crispy pork belly with creamed corn, anise hyssop and tapenade jus. I should have taken it as a sign that I was a tad annoyed with our server's response when we asked him to describe the pork belly. "Well, pork belly by nature is fatty ... " Umm, duh. I thought that the pork belly was not crispy enough, and was generally just dry. I did not like how it tasted with the tapenade jus. The saving grace of the dish was the creamed corn, which was delicious. But I would not be ordering this dish ever again.

I would, however, come back for the uova da raviolo. Beautiful poached egg wrapped in an open raviolo with some buttery truffle-infused sauce and pancetta. What more could you want?! It was soooo good. Damn you Mika for picking the better entree ...

Dessert was good on all fronts. Mika picked the peanut butter gelato with tristar strawberry marmalade, which was very nice. But I loved my buttermilk panna cotta with vanilla roasted peaches. So light and delicious. A great finish to the meal.




10 Downing is located at 10 Downing Street at Sixth Avenue, New York, NY 10014. Tel. 212-255-0300

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