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Our Meal with The Wandering Foodie

***The Wandering Foodie - check his blog for his take on our meal together

Let me start with this: it's Thursday morning, January 14th, and I'm still, more than 12 hours after my meal with Hagan Blout of The Wandering Foodie, completely stuffed!

The Wandering Foodie's project is called 93 Plates - he's eating at a different NYC restaurant, with a different Food Blogger 3 meals a day for 31 days. I know - best job ever, right? Daniel and I were lucky enough to make his list of blogger-diners and we joined him for meal #39: dinner at DuMont in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

A personal quirk: I think the service at a restaurant is nearly as important as the food. I have a hard time enjoying even the best meal if the waiters/hosts/hostesses are rude. To that end, the people of DuMont were fabulous, really accommodating and friendly. Of course we got special treatment, but something tells me that the Dumont staff is always this way, blogger or no blogger.

On to the most important thing, the food: I can't say enough about the classic, tasty dishes at DuMont. The first course was chestnut soup, which was creamy and hearty. I use chestnuts in my Thanksgiving stuffing, and so that's what I tasted in the soup: homey, comforting Thanksgiving. Nothing better!

The soup was followed by really great scallops - nice and firm with a crispy crust - with Mitake Mushrooms and broccoli, grilled shrimp salad with fried cauliflower, crunchy chorizo and lobster vinaigrette, and pork belly with pineapple and cilantro. The shrimp was a bit on the salty side, but the pork belly was spot on - really moist and fatty. Also - pork belly and cilantro? Great combination! Who knew?

The third course was wild striped bass with herbed chowder; braised lamb shank with couscous, pomegranate seeds and eggplant caviar; and the most delicious dish we had all night: NY Strip Steak with barley risotto, Swiss chard and dried cranberries. I can't say enough about this steak - it was AMAZING. It was cooked perfectly rare, set in a bowl of this scrumptious barley risotto that was meaty and rich. Paired with the dried cranberries - the dish was fantastic. One of the best steaks I've ever had.

We also had 3 desserts - the one most worth noting was a hazelnut chocolate brownie with malt vanilla ice cream. Can you see why I'm still stuffed? Ridiculously delicious meal!

Let me end by saying that the meal we had at DuMont was not economical. I mean, for us it was, since the Wandering Foodie is amazing and generous, but for the eating public, it wouldn't be. Not that Dumont is crazy expensive by any means, but it's certainly not a cheap restaurant in any sense of the word.

That said, you know, I'm a fan of splurging. Sometimes you have to treat yourself, and if you're sticking to the Economy Bites way of cooking and eating you deserve a treat every once in a while. Be it DuMont or wherever, it's OK to splurge on great food sometimes, and splurge we did! I can't say thank you enough to The Wandering Foodie for letting us join in on his big project! Hats off to you!

Tags: The Wandering Foodie, Dumont restaurant, Dumont Brooklyn, New York Strip, Scallops, Chestnut soup, pork belly with pineapple and cilantro, pork belly, striped bass, lamb shank, brownies, coconut panna cotta, apple crumble

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