Dirt Candy Visited 4/8/2011 4 Forks

Dirt Candy 430 E 9th St., (between 1st Ave & Avenue A), New York, NY 10009

When I made the reservation for Dirt Candy almost 2 weeks ago I was shocked that even at two weeks out the only slot available was at  5:45pm.  But after walking in, I realized why.  The place is TINY.  At it's max capacity, it only holds 18 people.  So if you want to get a seat there, plan on making reservations way in advance.

But making that reservation will be totally worth it.  Everything on the menu is vegetarian. I know, I know, it might sound slightly off-putting at first.  Believe me, especially as someone who loves meat and seafood, I was wondering how good just vegetables could be.  But this place was great.  They make you forget that there isn't any meat on the menu.  The menu is seasonal and there are about 4 choices of appetizers and 5 choices of entrees.  Aarti, Deanna and I split the mushroom and squash appetizer.  The mushroom came in a mousse form and a sauteed shitaake version with small slices of toast.  The mousse looked a bit weird because it just came in a grey solid cube but it tasted a lot like foie gras and even had a similar texture.  The sauteed shitaake had a really strong punch to it and was cooked just perfectly that it still had a little bit of crunch to bit.  The squash actually turned out to be a soup, so it was a bit hard to share.  It might have been a mistake to have eaten that one 2nd because by the time we ate it, it was pretty cold. To be honest, it was good but nothing to write home about.  For entrees, I got the zucchini, Aarti got the corn and Deanna got the cauliflower.  Obviously each of these dishes come in a more robust form, it's not like they just dump you a plate of zucchini.  My dish was zucchini cut up into the shape of pasta and it was covered in a yogurt mint sauce. It was absolutely delicious.  I had to take some of Deanna's waffle and sop up all the yogurt.  Deanna's dish was a play on fried chicken and waffles but instead it was fried cauliflower and waffles.  The cauliflower was fried perfectly but the waffle was kind of flat and could have been a bit more buttery.  Aarti's dish was a plate of creamed corn mixed with cilantro and watercress topped with a tempura egg.  The egg was nice and runny and the corn had a nice consistency and the flavors of the cilantro and watercress really popped in the dish.

We also got dessert, which was the pea mint ice cream bar.  It was a pea mint ice cream chunk on top of a thick cream base and chocolate cookie.  The best part was the cookie and cream, it tasted like you were eating icing on top of a cookie.  The ice cream was good and definitely tasted like pea mint but I would have rather just had a giant cookie with icing instead.  The waitress was super friendly and really really knowledgeable about the whole menu.  All the dishes were really delicious and didn't make me miss meat much.  I'm glad it wasn't vegan because I think some of the key components of the dishes had diary and eggs in them.  We also split a really unique bottle of dark red sparkling wine, something I've never seen before but it just tasted like champagne instead of wine.  Overall it's a unique place that will definitely make you think twice about how creative one can get with just vegetables.  The total bill was $56/pp with tip.