NY Times Reviews Cafe China, WD-50 Changing Entire Menu

A soon-to-be-retired dish at WD-50

By James Mulcahy

Of course, the Dining Section of today's NY Times contains the obligatory restaurant review. Pete Wells stopped by Midtown's Cafe China and dropped a two-star review on the joint's spicy fare. The Chinese eatery is prettier than may of the city's other Sichuan haunts, but Wells doesn't take that as a mark of inauthenticity: "The skeptics would look at you with outright disbelief if you told them that this quaint, demure restaurant serves uncompromising Sichuan food that can stand with Manhattan’s best."

That's swell, but the real news coming out of the section this week is the fact that Wylie Dufresne is going to revamp the entire menu of his WD-50, replacing every dish on May 10. Dufresne was a forerunner in molecular gastronomy, but now that chefs all over town have been breaking out the foams and liquid nitrogen, some of the dishes at his eatery have seemed like museum pieces. The chef claims he is making the change for "creative reasons" and will also do away with a la carte selections in the dining room, replacing them with tasting menus at $155 and $75, depending on how many courses you're hungry for. If you want a sneak preview of what to expect re: the menu reboot, check out the full article here.