Next - Vegan

The day finally arrived for us to head back to Next, this time for only fruits and vegetables. Personally neither one us thought vegan food couldn't be good, but could it have the wow factor? We figured if any vegan food would wow us, it would come from the Next kitchen.

Apologies in advance for the picture quality, but the restaurant is pretty dark and it's hard to get crisp pictures in the dark.

We were seated promptly and served Scharffenberger Brut to pair with our first several courses. The center piece played double duty by holding the crackers for our first course of Burnt Avocado.

The burnt avocado was topped with what Next called a Kale bouquet - kale chips with edible flowers. The avocado was quite citrusy, we guessed the reason was 2 fold - to keep the avocado from browning and to add depths of flavors usually found through fat and animal products. We both liked this course. The housemade sourdough crackers with matcha were crisp and a nice accompaniment to the bright avocado

Before we could even dig into the avocado, they brought out our next course - frozen baked potatoes. These were served in a crispy skin and were, as advertised, frozen. The play on textures and temperatures made this successful, albeit, a little too cold for Sue's somewhat sensitive teeth.

Before we could even get through those dishes, out came the next of the small bites - 3 on a log. Nori dumpling, housemade sprouted tempeh and earl grey tea rambutan custard

We both really liked the nori dumpling, it was flavorful and spongy with miso and sesame seeds on the bottom. The sprouted tempeh was better than I was expected, but no real wow factor. The Rambutan custard was nice and refreshing.

The next of the starters was a dish of baby artichokes. This dish took the artichoke hearts out, pureed them, then stuffed them back into the baby artichoke. There was a citrusy tang to this dish as well. The dish was served on a bed of roasted artichoke leaves which provided a nice wood-smoked aroma.

Our next dish was Fermented Apple with Reindeer lichen. This was a dish that Next pushed the envelope on and really wanted to show the whole lifecycle of the apple. It started with the original centerpiece branches which were from the apple blossom tree to this dish which had fermented apple, apple ice and housemade apple cider vinegar. The cider was actually served as the beverage pairing for the dish and was brought to the table in a huge log that it was fermented in along with plenty of accouterments to serve the cider. It was a bit tangy, but not too much so. The dish itself was plated beautifully with rose petals scattered on it. The play on temperatures and textures here was really nice. Sue really liked this dish.

Next came the Lily Pond - This dish also made use of the centerpiece, unbeknownst to us the centerpiece with the floating flowers and candle was not water, but a brining liquid that was brining rainbow sorrel and celery leaves for the garnish of our lily bulb dish, which included lily bulb three ways - grilled, braised and raw. As with the previous dishes the flavors were all delightful, but still waiting for the wow factor.

When the utensils were brought out for the next course, one of them really confused me, but our waiter ensured me that I would understand shortly. What do you think this is for?

When the dish came out, it was served in a pretty neat way incorporating the beverage pairing. The dish was Fennel with Blackberry - served with rice milk yogurt and blackberry puree served with a fruity gin drink of Eric Borderlet Sidre, Bombay Gin & Blackberry. The drink is brought out smoking from an infusion of liquid nitrogen. We were instructed to take the mystery utensil (which turned out was hallow), use it to stir the drink until it warmed up enough to drink (once it stops smoking it should be good), and drink it through the metal "straw". It was hard to drink because you couldn't tip the dish, until you ate all of the food first - which wasn't necessarily a bad thing, as it was tasty - but I could taste more blackberry than fennel.

The next course was an ode to the lowly Dandelion - showing off the complexity and versatility. Salsifies with oyster and dandelion. Salsifies which are part of the dandelion family are also known as the oyster plant. This was a dish of two sides, right showcasing a salad preparation with salsify root with dandelion vinaigrette. The left side of the dish showcasing the versatility with dandelion greens raw and braised with smoked salsify and fried salsify matchsticks. We both agreed the left side was better and that the salsify fries were really yummy.

The next dish was beautifully cooked and really tasty. It was fun and playful. It was swiss chard and douchi. On one side you had a playful Pabst Blue Ribbon beer battered swiss chard leaf and on the other, pickled swiss chard. Very tasty - one of the highlights of the evening.

The next dish was their "Ocean" offering - Kombu atoll. Kombu is sea kelp. It's in a soba dumpling stuffed with sea kelp in a ponzu sauce. At first Sue wasn't sure wasn't about the texture, but after the second bite, she was won over.

Because this was a Vegan meal, there wasn't an opportunity to due a cheese cart presentation, so Next did the next best thing - A Mushroom cart. The picture is dark, but the presentation was nice, with colorful array of different mushroom - morels, shitake, maitake and trumpets, framed by some sunflowers. All the items on the cart were then used in the mushroom risotto. For this risotto, instead of Arborio Rice which is the usual way, Next made theirs with farro. As expected Mark loved this dish. Sue still doesn't like the texture of mushrooms, but the taste was good.

The next course was Thai inspired and was to mimic the national dish of Thailand which is Larb. This one was Brussels Sprouts, with a quinoa wire. Beautiful and tasty.

At first, I was confused at the utensils that came with this next dish. What was I going to do with 1 chopstick! (I have a hard enough time with 2!)

Turns out that the dish was actually interactive and involved the centerpiece into the dish. First you pull the sprouted garbanzo bean out then the crumble inside the tube was sprinkled on top of the roasted cauliflower and harissa dish. The 1 chopstick was used to help push the sprinkles up. This was one of my favorite dishes of the night. Really tasty. It was also served with housemade naan to help clean up the sauce.

Now on to the "dessert" courses. The first dish was savory and sweet at the same time. At first we were given a spoon with a sechuan peppercorn and olive oil jam on it to "cleanse and activate" our palates. We were instructed to chew it. I've read other people say that it was too hot or destroyed their palate, but I didn't think so. We were then served an olive oil jam cake with truffle essence and freeze dried strawberries. This was good, but not fantastic.

Next dessert course was Next's take on PB&J - Hibiscus ice cream with cake & pistachios. This I liked.

Last course of the night was also a winner - Aerated dark chocolate with passionfruit jam and cilantro.

And then we were done. As I mentioned, every single dish was good - really good and at a level that I probably wouldn't be able to reproduce at home. While we both enjoyed all of the food, we felt the wow factor was missing (I guess wow really means butter and/or bacon?) Another downer was even after all this food - we were actually still a bit hungry, even an hour later after we got home and our brains had time to catch up with our stomach. So, keeping the evening vegan, we went through the drive-through, purchased some french fries and onion rings and headed home for some sparkling wine to pair with it.

All in all a good experience and I'm glad that I could taste all the lovely ways fruits and vegetables could be prepared without animal products, but I'm not a convert, not that I expected to be. Hopefully we'll get into the Next food extravaganza, but so far this one ranks second to the Hunt.