I spent the last few days at the Adobe CS3: The Creative License conference in midtown Manhattan. Sensory overload is not a strong enough term to describe what I was in the middle of. Not only was I surrounded by over a thousand designers while learning new technologies, but I was also in the center of Manhattan in one of the top hotels in the country.

 

The Waldorf-Astoria knows food. It may be in a very classic way, but they know it intimately. You are not likely to find new techniques or trendy ingredients here, but if you want a perfectly prepared rack of lamb with a port wine sauce at midnight on a Sunday, they are more then happy to oblige. That is in fact exactly what I wanted at midnight on Sunday when I arrived at the hotel. I had spent the last two nights at a comfort inn in Bethlehem, P.A. filming a rock festival with my friends and previous employers. After 2 twelve hour days of holding a camera above my head trying to get interesting shots of aging progressive rock drummers, I was entirely too exhausted to trek out for food.

 

I don’t think I have ever ordered room service anywhere before, so I have no frame of reference for comparison, but my meal was fantastic. The lamb was cooked to perfection (rare). The wine sauce was thick, heavy with the flavor of red wine. It was accompanied by baby carrots with the greens on, and covered in a honey glaze. They were tender, but still crisp enough to have a little bit of a bite. The side of carrots cost about ten dollars extra. Big surprise there. One thing I did get for free was a wonderful selection of artisan breads. It looked like one of the breads had olives inside, but I think it was actually raisins below the thick crust. It was hard to tell because it was covered in the port wine sauce as it entered my mouth.

The featured dish, way up at the top of the page, was the free lunch provided by Adobe, created by the Waldorf-Astoria kitchens. There were hundreds of tables covered with over a thousand clones of the dish when we walked into the grand ballroom after the morning session. I can’t imagine what it takes to cook on that scale. Once again, the dish was nothing that would blow me away, but it was cooked perfectly. It was chicken with what tasted like a dry rub of tomato and spices, and a mozzarella olive oil and smoked red bell pepper salad.

 

Each of the two days that I woke up at the hotel, I tried a different restaurant located on the property. Somehow, on both mornings, the dish that popped off the page at me had a poached egg on it. The first morning at Oscar’s I had a crab cake with a poached egg on top. It was nested on some sort of remoulade or aioli sauce. The idea of this dish is fantastic and I fully plan to steal it for myself. I have never really considered crab cakes for breakfast, but it’s a perfect match with the poached egg.  The egg yolk pouring down the side, mixing with the crab and sauce was gorgeous. The other restaurant I visited is called Peacock Alley. It’s open to the lobby of the hotel. The menu appeared to highly recommend the Peacock Alley breakfast, which included thick slabs of pork belly with poached eggs on top. I have a hard time saying no to pork belly. I was not disappointed.

Although it’s pretty unlikely that I will end up at the Waldorf-Astoria unless my work plans to cover the bill again, I hope for the possibility. I had actually planned to get out and enjoy more of midtown’s food selection, but because of the time crunch with the conference, I ended up eating at the hotel often. No regrets whatsoever. 

June 30th, 2007 by John (Cho-Tabetai)