The Wandering Goat

I signed up for Twitter a couple of weeks ago and I have to say, I've found the whole thing pretty fascinating. I get to read the craziness that Chad Ochocinco and Stephon Marbury come up with on just about an hourly basis. I get a chuckle from Jeffrey Ross making fun of Depak Chopra. The one truly useful thing I've gotten out of the whole experience, however, was snagging a couple of tickets to Stephanie Izard's most recent Wandering Goat dinner.

As I understand it, these dinners are intended to keep her skills sharp and to develop menu ideas while getting ready to open The Drunken Goat in the next few months. Of course, it's also a fantastic way to market a restaurant that's not even open yet (not that a Top Chef winner needs that much extra help, but hey, every little bit helps).

Turns out that the dinner we got tickets to was a cocktail party at chef Art Smith's house in Hyde Park. Smith was generous enough to open his home up to about 90 complete strangers (mostly Top Chef groupies and local media types) for an evening of passed hors d'oeurves. I'm not sure how many of the things we tried are destined for the opening menu at The Drunken Goat, but many of them showed a lot of promise. Here are some crummy pics as I was trying to minimize my use of a flash.


Most of the action was in the kitchen, with almost all prep work being done at this large table in the middle of the room.


Bay scallops on the left, gnocchi on the right. The gnocchi were very good. The bay scallops were thrown out of balance by the anchovy used in the vinaigrette (the weakest dish of the night IMO).


Hamachi and braised bacon. This was the strongest dish of the night IMO. The smooth sweet hamachi was an ideal companion to the rich, salty and smokey bacon. I could have eaten these all night.


Smoked and braised goat and goat cheese flatbread. Very tasty, prepared in a wood fired oven in the backyard by...


Chef Roger Herring of Socca. They were also doing grilled shrimp outside on the grill which I didn't get to try. I did get to try some grilled steak with miso that was fantastic.


Action shot of Stephanie getting dessert ready.


Dessert - Pumpkin gelato with caramel corn and hot cider with spiced rum. Perfect Fall dessert.


Celebrity chef porn.

Thanks for the report! I'm hoping to get to one of these dinners soon!

Scored tickets to the last Wandering Goat dinner! Wondering if I will be seeing any other LTHers there?

CrazyC wrote:Scored tickets to the last Wandering Goat dinner! Wondering if I will be seeing any other LTHers there?

I scored tickets by e-mailing Stephanie a couple of dumb jokes yesterday (http://www.stephanieizard.com/home/view/goat_walks_into_a_bar). See you there!

I'm going to this tonight but my dining partner backed out at the last second. If anyone is interested in buying ticket and can make a 7 pm dinner tonight, PM me.