Notes on Food

Photos from this winter’s Push Project (super behind on posting), an amazing and delicious collaboration between Albert Adria (of the now-closed El Bulli) and Paco Mendez of Hoja Santa in Barcelona and Alex Stupak of Empellon Cocina. It featured a great mix of Mexican and Spanish food, traditional and super-modern, and tons of booze (let’s just say we started and ended with shots of mezcal). Such a treat and afterwards, I made a note to add Stupak’s Kitchen Table at Empellon Cocina to my list of reservations to make.

Wellfleet blood clams (a little bit strange looking but delicious and briny) with frozen sangrita and the aforementioned mezcal shot. Woo!

   Pickled vegetables, crunchy hoja santa (literally tasted like a crunchy, slightly sweet leaf), cantina olives (an El Bulli classic…spherified olives that exploded in our mouths) and corn jicara with pipicha oil and chipotle with a giant, refreshing saffron margarita

Smooth and silky avocado gazpacho with a whole bottle of Allende beer (we ended up having two each actually)

Black truffle quesadilla

Mini Pueblan-style sandwich with fried abalone (a tiny po’boy)

Mixed seafood cocktail with spicy ketchup

Red onion x-ni-pek

Papantla-style pipian with Maine lobster (yes, we each had half a lobster for this course – so pretty and so good) paired with a cider

Pork ribs in Grandma Flor’s adobo (one of the more traditional dishes, but also one of my favorites)

Mole with sweet potato and fruit with a red wine

Milk-soaked sponge cake with kabocha squash and pecan ice with…sherry? I can’t remember and honestly, at this point in the dinner, with all the different kinds of alcohol we’d already had, I was feeling pretty lit.

Corn, chocolate and cajeta (the perfect dessert…not too sweet)

Chicory flan with duck egg yolk and orange sorbet with sal de gusanos

Tagged: albert adria, alex stupak, delicious, dinner, empellon, food, hoja santa, mexican, new york city, paco mendez, restaurants, spanish