Coffee and salad at Bouchon Bakery

I've been to Bouchon Bakery a couple of times, for tea, for dessert... but never for savory food. I've always wanted to try their savory food. And last week, I finally got the opportunity!

MB and I met up at Bouchon in the early evening for a long-overdue catch-up. She ordered a coffee, soymilk on the side, which earned raves.

Action photo!

And I finally got my long-awaited salad! The winner was an endive and apple salad with peppercress, goat cheese, toasted walnuts, and walnut vinaigrette. Come to think of it, the menu promised walnuts, but in fact there weren't any. Perhaps that was for the best, because this concoction came as a vertically arranged plate of towering vegetation heaped onto a narrow plate-- it was clear that one forkful would dislodge the whole mess, sending tendrils of pepper cross tumbling towards the table. And it did. Imagine the extra mess walnut bits would have made! No matter-- the salad was actually quite good, if a little bitter, what with both the pepper cress and the endive. But the goat cheese was delicious, and there was lots of it. It was a satisfying salad.

Tried to capture the vertical reach on this puppy...

Oh, and it came with some intensely crusty and chewy French bread. Ahh, those French know how to make their bread.

Bread + butter with salt crystals on top = perfection

Mission accomplished! Confirmed: Bouchon does make good salads. The next time I'm in the area and feel like shelling out a pretty penny for some pretty produce, I'm there.

Bouchon Bakery
10 Columbus Circle
212-823-9364

Bouchon's toffee tart blows LWF&D away

On Saturday evening, I had one of the best desserts I've had in a long, long time. It came from Bouchon Bakery, a place I've been to a number of times for various reasons. But this time, it was their take-out window that suckered me. Don't get me wrong-- I'd been by that particular enclave of temptation many times before, but I'd always balked at the prices. Nearly $8 for a take-out pastry? I'll pass. Or, I should say, I passed, until I didn't.

It was the toffee tart that did it. Attractive peaks of whipped cream with just a few crumbles of toffee hiding the wonders below... Yes, it was $7.25 pre-tax, but I'd just returned from a traumatic hair cutting experience and needed something to calm my nerves. And toffee would do it.

oohhhmmmmmmmm

After dinner, I dug in. A cross-section revealed the particular genius of this tart: a flaky, crumbly pastry crust cradling a layer of sticky sweet toffee (with chunks of toffee candy mixed in for texture), all topped with a thin layer of pastry cream and then the aforementioned tufts of vanilla-bean flecked whipped cream. Sigh. Readers, it was so, SO good. Each element complemented the others; the toffee was very sweet, but since the layer was thin, it didn't overwhelm. The abundant whipped cream provided a cooling dairy foil for the sticky goo. Even the pastry crust was fantastic. And turns out that the tart was pretty large-- it could easily have been shared by two people (did I eat it all myself anyway? Yes. Or, well, almost... except for two last bites I couldn't manage). So I guess that makes the aggressive price tag a bit harder to swallow. Kind of?

Sticky toffee threads

Bouchon, you had me at hello. Why must your food be so darn delicious? And so darn expensive? It's a paradox of the ages. Or, I guess, just a reason to save up for my next visit.

Bouchon Bakery
10 Columbus Circle
212-823-9364

Tea and cookies at Bouchon

The other day, I met up with KS at Bouchon Bakery in the Time Warner Center for afternoon tea. Even at 3:30 on a weekday there was a short wait (damn you, Thomas Keller!), but we managed to snag a table without too much trouble. Our enthusiastic server didn't seem put out by our desire just to have tea and desserts, even though some others around us were having late lunches-- I spotted their signature grilled cheese with tomato soup and a couple of nice-looking salads.

But back to us. The tea: KS ordered Earl Gray, I ordered green with milk on the side. Our teapots and teacups arrived, and I sadly discovered that their green tea has weird accents of "lemon myrtle and ginseng," which means it doesn't go with milk. I'm sort of split on this front--as a server, if a customer orders green tea with milk, and your restaurant's version of green tea has citrus notes in it, should you alert the customer that it's not straight-up green tea? Especially if the menu just says "green"? I don't fault our server, but I wonder what the right path is here. Deep thoughts.

The offending Buddha Blend

Regardless, we drank our tea. And KS ordered a cookie, debating between the chocolate chunk and the double chocolate chunk and eventually going for the extra-chocolatey version. It usually comes with ice cream, but KS just wanted the cookie, and so our server graciously brought just the cookie and only charged her the to-go price. A nice touch. The cookie itself was huge and more like a brownie-- dense and fudgy on the inside, studded with chocolate chunks that almost melted into the batter. KS ate half and took the other half home, an Olympian feat of self control that is not even in my frame of reference. Half a cookie? Does that even exist? That's like the serving sizes of packaged muffings: "1/4 muffin." Really?

The cookie. Half was eaten.

Anyway, despite my private green tea travails, we had a lovely time at Bouchon. I admit I have an irrational soft spot for the Time Warner Center, which some might argue is just an anonymous commercial mall but I find to be a bastion of calmness and civility. Plus it has a Whole Foods! But I also really like Bouchon, especially so since my epic dessert-and-wine tasting there over the holidays. I've always wanted to come for real food, but golly it's just so expensive (salads cresting over the $16 mark...). Someday, Bouchon, someday...

Bouchon Bakery
10 Columbus Circle
212-823-9364

LWF&D gorges on chocolate and wine at Bouchon Bakery

A few weeks ago I heard about this thing called the Circle of Taste, a promotional food-related group for the Time Warner Center restaurants and shops. I signed up and entered a few of their giveaways and then didn't give it a second thought (go on, you can sign up too-- click here). But then about a week ago I received a call on behalf of the Circle of Taste informing me that I'd actually won one of the slots at a "Chocolate Delight on a Star Filled Night," a chocolate and wine tasting at Bouchon Bakery. Score! So early on Thursday evening, I met SB, my good friend and +1 for the evening, at Bouchon for an evening of indulgence.

We were met by a high table set to accommodate the eight winners and their guests, with each place set with a menu and a goody bag. I love goody bags! This one included a few Time-Warner-Center-related items, including a reusable shopping bag (which I actually like), in addition to a star-shaped Christmas ornament that mimicked the enormous stars hung in the TWC's atrium and a box of chocolates from Bouchon. Yum.

The evening's bill of fare

The glorious light-filled atrium

Goodies!

Take-home chocolates!

We kicked off the evening with a glass of Bisson Prosecco, which we sipped while waiting for the first dessert to arrive. The prosecco was very, very dry, with an almost appley taste-- a bit austere at the start, but after a bit of air and a few sips the taste opened up.

Prosecco

And then the first dessert came, and we were off and running. Chef Sebastien Rouxel came out to introduce and describe the dessert, which he did prior to every course, a rare treat (I always like seeing the chefs who prepare the food. It makes it more personal!). The tasting started with white chocolate, a dessert entitled "Douceur Tropicale." A beautiful dome encased in white chocolate was filled with white chocolate cream on a base of rum cake. Next to the hemisphere sat a square of braised pineapple atop a square of citrus gelee, all accompanied by a smear of caramel jam. Though some don't enjoy the taste of white chocolate, I'm definitely a fan, and this dessert was right-on. The mousse inside the dome was ethereally light, and the thin piece of cake that formed the base of the dome was perfect. I'm a huge proponent of cooked pineapple-- I love it grilled, but apparently braised and seared works too-- so I loved that piece of the dessert as well. When I sipped the prosecco with the dessert, I found the bubbly almost too dry for the intense sweetness of the white chocolate. But a sip between courses was an excellent palate-cleanser.

Dome of delight, plus pineapple

White chocolate mousse

The next course started with a glass of Chateau la Rame Sainte Croix Du Mont, which turned out to be a honey-colored dessert wine. At first sip, it struck me as way too sweet, almost syrupy with a candied aroma and a faint taste of apricots. But this actually turned out to be the best pairing of the night-- when consumed with the milk chocolate "Tentation au Chocolat," the wine actually tasted less sweet and quite complementary. The dessert itself was a knockout, perhaps my favorite of the night. A scoop of milk chocolate cremeux-- basically a silky mousse-- was enrobed in a praline glaze and topped with three crackly chocolate bites. A tiny scoop of condensed milk sherbet sat atop a crumbly cookie of sorts. Oh, and there were two smears of sauce and a tangled tuile that tasted like bananas. The composition was a visual delight, and the sublime taste of that milk chocolate cremeux is pretty much engraved in my brain. Insane.

Sweet, sweet elixir

A milk chocolate composition

Inside the milk chocolate cremeux

Our final course began with a glass of Melville Estate Pinot Noir. After the unctuous sweetness of the dessert wine, the Pinot Noir tasted dark and almost harsh, but perhaps that made it an appropriate accompaniment to the dark chocolate "Tart au Chocolate Acidule." This dessert was another incredible composition, a layered stripe of chocolate cake, mousse, and dark chocolate ganache topped with a crinkle of gold leaf and a spiral of dark chocolate. A scoop of cranberry sorbet, draped in pink foam, sat atop a carpet of chocolate cookie soil. And then there was a spoonful of pure caramel, topped with a dehydrated cranberry tuile that tasted uncannilly like a fruit roll-up. I often find dark chocolate desserts to be too strong, just too much, but (perhaps due to all the wine?) I didn't have that problem with this plate-- everything, once again, was incredible. I'll admit my favorite part was the caramel-- smooth, sweet, and perfect-- but I also truly enjoyed the cake-mousse-ganache concoction.

A glass of melted rubies

Dark chocolate + upscale fruit roll-up = awesome

So, in sum, damnnnnnnn, Bouchon. These desserts were incredible, and sitting in the chattering Bouchon "dining room" (really a cordoned-off area of the third floor of the TWC) opposite a sparkling atrium with giant stars whose lights glittered to the tune of Christmas music... well, it was just an incredibly pleasant experience. And to think SB and I got all this food and drink, and an evening of quality catch-up time, gratis... well, it makes me want to keep entering all the contests I come across. And though it may increase my competition, I encourage you to do so as well-- you've got nothing to lose, and you may just win something truly sweet.

Circle of Taste
Time Warner Center
Ten Columbus Circle