NEWYORK.COM RESTAURANT SPOTLIGHT: WD-50
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By Sonya Pierre
New York is a great place to find every kind of food imaginable. Known as the melting pot of the world, this city can accommodate every taste bud. Some of the most selective eaters fall in love with New York City's dining scene. With no shortage of restaurants, each block in the city seems to have at least four restaurants on it, and two of them are winners. In Manhattan's East Village, the clear winner on the block is WD-50. |
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This restaurant is a true treat, especially for the more experienced diner. With entrees such as bone marrow, fried quail, and grilled octopus, it takes extraordinary customers to appreciate this extraordinarily great food. Chef Wylie Dufresne goes out of his way to make sure that each dish is unlike any other dish a diner has ever experienced. Dufresne opened WD-50 (named for the chef’s initials and the street address), a 70-seat restaurant with a state of the art kitchen, in April of 2003. It’s located at 50 Clinton Street on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Dufresne’s partners in the venture are the noted chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and restaurateur Phil Suarez.
Chef Wylie does a great job of accommodating diners. For a recent vegetarian diner, he customized each of his most popular dishes, replacing red meats and poultry with fish and seafood. The service is impeccable and the wine selection is impressive. Favorite recommended dishes? Go for the hamachi tartare with wakame, the sake lees tahini, and the grapefruit-shallot. These, however, are rivaled closely by the coconut cake with brown butter sorbet.
Dufresne has been nominated and awarded many top honors including the James Beard nomination for Rising Star Chef of the year, and a Best New Restaurant award in 2005. In 2006, Restaurant Magazine voted WD-50 thirty fourth in its annual “The World’s Best Restaurants” issue. In New York magazine’s 101 Best Restaurants edition in 2006, WD-50 was awarded four stars out of a possible five. The true award, however, is given to the customer who can get a reservation. Reservations are currently taken a month in advance. So good luck, and happy eating!
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