Dining out...experimentally

A few months ago we read about a concept coming to DC called Dinner Lab. It advertises itself as an opportunity for an up and coming chef to present a unique experience. It's one of those underground dining scenes I've read about, usually in places like New York, or San Francisco, where you imagine fabulous dinners are being served in strange, out-of-the-way places like loading docks or abandoned subway stations in a "gotta know the password" way.

I'm sure it's nowhere near that clandestine, but it sounded interesting. When we looked into joining earlier this year, I think we contacted them too late to join -- the membership was full up. We then promptly forgot about it, until a good friend of ours contacted us and mentioned that Dinner Lab was accepting memberships and she was joining. Well, you didn't have to tell us twice.

The theory is an interesting one. If you strip away the actual trappings of a restaurant -- the bricks and mortar (and the landlord/rent that goes with it), the full-time staff, the décor and the various bills associated with having an actual day-to-day business, you could get an excellent meal for way below what it would cost in said traditional restaurant, and you could have the adventure and the story to go with a one-of-a-kind dining experience. "The dining experience, liberated." Or so this video goes:




What does it cost? Well, it's a club, so membership is $175 for two people. Definitely non-trivial, but doable. But that just gives you the license to buy dinner later. And that can vary in price. We are doing our first experience this Saturday, and it's going to cost us in the vicinity of $100 for two people. And that includes alcohol. So, score one for value. But what does that really get us?

Well, the short answer is, we'll let you know. But here's the menu and the story behind it:

Chef Kwame Onwuachi is the chef, with a resume that features names like the Culinary Institute of America, Eleven Madison Park, and Per Se. Not bad. Here's his video (Can you tell I just figured out how to paste video into my blog? It's the little things...):



The menu appears to be pretty whimsical (and tasty):

1 - Pacific Coast Highway: whipped honey | pickled green strawberries | strawberry and smoked pimenton vinaigrette

2 - Yountville: salmon tartare | yuzu | shallot crumble | black pepper sable

3 - San Francisco Bay: monkfish | tomato confit ragu | little neck clams | charred brioche

4 - Salt Lick in Austin: smoked short rib  | vanilla espelette corn bread | cream corn creme brulee | "fixins"

5 - Late Night Chicago: white chocolate ice cream | brown butter cake | malted milk foam | vanilla meringue

6 - Butterfingers: housemade butterfingers

That's right. Butterfingers.

To add to the spook factor (and I'm all about the spook factor), two days out, we still don't know the exact location of the meal. We've been given a general area, which is good (somewhere in the Mt. Vernon Square area of DC). It could've been anywhere in the greater, sprawling DC metropolitan tri-state, DMV area. And we had to be prepared for that. Luckily our track record has proven time and again that we'll go far for a good meal. In this case, we don't have to -- Mt. Vernon Square is an easy Metro ride, or even an easy drive/cab/uber ride away. But there's definitely an air of mystery. Will there be a password too? Maybe even a dead drop, chalk markings on a mailbox, or some other trail.

I have no idea whether this will be cool. Will the food be good? Will we be able to stand the people we're dining with? Will we be the oldest people there? (a sad question, but one that occurs more and more these days). I have to admit I'm intrigued.

We'll do a post after the fact to see if the payoff is as good as the potential. Stay tuned...