Mark and Jay treated us to dinner at a new restaurant called Bar Blanc. The chef -Cezar Ramirez – was formerly from Bouley restaurant and Bar Blanc is just two weeks old. They have an interesting menu with some unusual ingredients that we hadn’t tried till this evening.
Here’s what we had:
– Ginger steamed dorade with tofu puree, shiso sauce
– Seared cod with arrow spinach, roasted salsify, celery saffron, mussel sauce
– Milk-fed porcelet, pig belly, terrine of pig head, chanterelles, brussel sprouts, star anise, and orange
–Fettucini with braised rabbit
– Big-eye tuna sashimi with marinated elf mushrooms, black onion-squid ink miso, crispy burdock, black truffle dressing
BTW – don’t look for pictures of porcelet; they’re cute, 8-week old little pigs and you will feel bad about eating them 
Sides were:
– Langres cheese potato puree
– Pan roasted Brussels sprouts
The pan-roasted brussel sprouts were very good and are actually very easy to make, according to Mark’s girlfriend Cindy.
For dessert:
– Meyer lemon souffle with huckleberry marmalade and goat cheese ice cream
– Asian pear parfait with mascarpone, pear sorbet and truffle honey
We’ve never tried burdock, pig head terrine, Langres cheese or huckleberry marmalade. I think we had the root part of the burdock which were cooked into really thin fries. Langres is a sharp cheese from the Champagne region. The truffle oil-infused dishes were very good. You have to get used to the aroma of truffle though, even if you’re just using truffle oil. To me, it smells faintly of motor oil. Some people hate the smell. Supposedly, they use female pigs to search for truffles in the forest. “The female pig becomes excited when she sniffs a chemical that is similar to the male swine sex attractant”. Think about that the next time you eat a dish with truffles.
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