Tim and Nina Zagat, founders of the famed Zagat line of restaurant guides, teamed up with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten to throw a breakfast launch party for Modernist Cuisine this morning at Jean-Georges’s renowned New York restaurant. The guests at the sold-out function included many of the most recognizable names in the culinary world, from pioneering chefs like Ferran Adrià of elBulli, Wylie Dufresne of wd~50, and Dave Arnold of the French Culinary Institute to esteemed food and culture writers like Corby Kummer and Calvin Trillin, to trendsetter celebrities like Martha Stewart and Padma Lakshmi.
The Modernist Cuisine culinary team was on hand in the kitchen to work alongside Jean-Georges staff to prepare the meal, which included:
- corn bread with bacon jam, made with centrifuged corn juice;
- a mushroom omelet, featuring precisely constructed egg stripes, steamed in a combi oven and accompanied by mushroom marmalade;
- short-rib pastrami, cooked sous vide for 72 h and flavored in a high-tech smoker; accompanied by hash potatoes cavitated in an ultrasonic bath and an egg yolk cooked sous vide;
- pots de crème made with cold-infused coffee and topped with maple crumble, accompanied by an Earl Grey posset, served with Meyer lemon curd and praline granola.
For more photos and details, hop over to Zagat’s Buzz page.