I love birthday meals

Oh my friends, Blue Hill is amazing. I've never liked vegetables so much.

For those who don't know, Blue Hill is a restaurant that gets all their food from a farm slightly upstate from here - all their veggies, meat, etc - it's grown especially for the restaurant and seasonal and local (and delicious). It goes very well with my local food eating, CSA subscribing, hippie green self of late.

Zack and I headed over to Washington Place in Greenwich Village. We decided to get the tasting menu with wine pairings (the less decisions, the better. Just bring on the food, man). They started with some roasted kale and fresh sugar snap peas. The kale had a tremendous depth of flavor, considering it was one roasted leaf. It was savory and reminded me of dried seaweed. The sugar snap peas were garnished simply with olive oil, salt and mint, and they were so good - I could eat them like candy. Then they brought out some crazy tiny "peaburgers," burgers made of peas instead of meat. They came with fresh butter and arugula salt. They were amazing! Here's a picture that I did not take.


Then the food really started coming. We got "Today's Farm Fresh Egg" poached over some fava beans. I don't know if there is anything better than a really fresh egg, with the yolk all golden and running everywhere and yummy bread to dip in it. It was really good.

Next we got poached hake with fennel and seafood. The seafood ended up being lump crabmeat - best non-Maryland crabmeat ever. The fish was nice and tender, and had the remarkable trick of smelling nice and fishy, but not tasting overly fishy.

Then came three cuts of Berkshire Pork over cracked wheat with peas. Fresh peas? Amazing. Pork? Amazing. Everyone was happy.

We moved on to "cherry soup" with mint ice. The ice was very refreshing and the cherries were not too sweet - it was all texture.

Our final dessert was Blueberries and Lemon Gratin with yogurt sorbet. Take a second to think about the concept of yogurt sorbet. It was very humorous to me. But it tasted great! The lemon gratin was excellent as well - crumbly pastry and creamy lemon.

I'd go back to Blue Hill in a heartbeat. I highly recommend it.