Sensorium - special blog edition

We are here for one reason only, to awaken the senses as they've never been awakened before.

I'm at the Sensorium DC dinner, in a newly erected geodesic dome in Southeast DC.  It's a pop-up dining experience, a twelve-course meal accompanied by a wacky stage routine - not dinner theater, not mimes, but something in between.  Kind of strange and inexplicable and European - a not-quite-as-contortiony Cirque du Soleil.

Sensorium comes from Bryon Brown, who I'd surely never have heard of had he not been married to a friend and colleague of mine.  His previous dinners were titled Artisa, one of the muses.  Tonight, in this weird dome with strange actors in odd hats, they tell me that Artisa is in my fork.

We start with the Amuse bouche course: kir royal grape with magic crystals from outer space. We are being instructed how to eat it. There are seven steps. Yummy flavor... explosion.  Yeah, it's pop rocks.  People have been talking about this in all the press accounts, so I don't feel too bad doing the spoiler here.

Kir Royal Grape with "Magic Dust from Outer Space."

Salmon tartare is course two. Small dice, with dill sprigs on top.  The wine is something very light and lemony, and it's going with this course and a couple more, I think.

Then: Corzetti pasta with pistachio brittle is on the way.

Corzetti pasta turns out to be a disk of pasta, and it's served underneath crumbles of sweet pistachio brittle. It's very al dente, and has a pattern stamped in it. It looks like a wet cookie.

Then: Cold beet gazpacho with iced goat cheese. Nice.  Beet anything is so pretty.

Red wine makes an appearance now - an Argentine Malbec called Cava Negra.  Absolutely delicious - the best of the wines.  There's a potato gratin with asparagus, cherry tomato, and balsamic. And a song about food chemistry!  This place never ceases to amaze.

Next up was an oyster thing on a salt bed - which I couldn't eat:

But Sensorium had checked with each of us about food allergies, so I was served this little tomato:

Fried eggplant with honey and thyme, served with a Syrah.  Light and delicious, and the little sprigs of thyme looked like they had been hand-selected for their perfection.

Next course: Chicken roulades with chestnuts and spaghetti squash.  Actually, I don't remember when this one came out - I just have a photo of it so I know I ate it.  The courses start to get muddled up in my head now, because of the great wines.

This was really nice - but all around the table I heard people saying "I could eat an entire chicken breast like this."  The small courses are adorable, but I was dining with three hungry men.

Next there was an oxtail something on a crispy ricotta something else - this and the eggplant got top nods from our table. 

We got magic tricks while we waited on one course:

Tony reaching for the three of clubs.  Maybe the whole deck was threes of clubs?

This pork belly one was great, and beautifully presented.  Mine came with a solid 5cm by 5cm cube of pork fat, which was more pork fat than I've eaten in the last ten years.  I just had a nibble and then abandoned the rest.

The best part was the green onion.  Or maybe the wee potato. 

Some wacky contraption was wheeled around to each table, looking like something from a mad scientist's lab.  It deep froze the palate cleanser, which was served to us on toothpicks.  Very entertaining.

The dessert course was fantastic - a blonde cake with fruit, sounds simple, but it was so dense and vanilla-rich, it made the night for me.  I haven't enjoyed a dessert so much in I don't know how long.

Then we were given this weird plate with just a pill in it:

When you reach for the pill, it's not there - some sort of weird imagey mirror thing projects the picture of this pill up on the top of this plate, when in reality it's down inside.  Some sort of tongue prepper, it makes tangy things sweet.  We got a taste of key limes after that perfectly illustrated how it worked.

It was truly a bizarre night, very tasty.  Combining the experience and the food and the very good wines, it keeps you interested and charmed.  I have to throw in two recommendations: The nicer-than-average portable restrooms ran out of water, which was a drag for all concerned.  And they REALLY need to have something there for non-drinkers.  There was a non-drinker in our party and he got water all night (while the rest of us got "spring sangria" at the entry and wine all evening.)  Even just a nice juice or sparkling water or something would have done the job.