The next dish we were served was the shanghai shoots with some kind of brussel-sprout-like mini cabbage pickles on the side. The shoots were served with fermented black beans, which tasted a lot like sundried tomato. We had sort of forgotten the description we were given by the time we ate the dish so we had to look it up later. The flavor was nothing short of magical. The cabbage pickles were great, crunchy and vinegary as any pickle-afficionado/a likes their pickles.


The Korean Fried Broccoli came highly recommended. The menu description says "Basically, it's crack in broccoli form." That definition isn't far off. The broccoli sort of melts away, and you just get a crisp, clean bite of crunchy, salty and spicy all at once. Hard to resist, and definitely one of my favorite dishes of the night.


The next dish was "Mushroom." Mushrooms are my favorite, so I was psyched to get to try it. The menu description of it reads, "Portobello mushroom mousse with sauteed asian pears, cherries and truffle toast." The brown spheres are the mousse that you spread on the toasts, there are cooked portobello mushrooms in the middle, pear slices, and fried portobello chips on top that look like wings. I think this had great flavor pairings. I would never have thought to try mushrooms and pears together, but it was so delicious. I think I recalled this later as one of my favorite dishes we tried. 



Next was "Fennel", described as "raw and pickled fennel with fennel jam on a carta di musica", ie, cracker. There was shaved fennel raw in the salad I think, and some seared fennel on the cracker, too. Then it's topped off with fennel frond oil. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about -- fennel frond oil. You can't get that just anywhere! Brilliant minds at work, people.






We asked to have the broccoli dogs included in the tasting, but I think they were supposed to be included anyway because I saw a bunch of other people with the same food as us get them too. Quite literally a "broccoli dog", the dish was much heavier than the rest, with thick, homemade bread as the bun. I ate this with a knife and fork to give off the illusion that I'm a refined manhattanite enjoying a nice Wednesday evening with my husband, and not a knucklehead that stumbled here from Queens via the subway. Either way, I dug the broccoli dog, and loved the bun. Alex said his bun was dry, but I was into mine. The salt & vinegar kale chips on the side were flush with powdery vinegar that hit the back of your throat every time I took a bite. Maybe that was the only part of any dish I didn't like.


While we got our broccoli dogs, they also placed a giant spread of brussels sprout tacos in front of us. By this point, our stomachs were approaching capacity, but we powered through a few tacos after our dogs. The sprouts were just meh, and the toppings weren't especially exciting. There was guac, pickled onions, salsa verde, pickled jalapeños, radish slices and fried tortilla strips. I loaded mine with a little of everything, but mostly guac and we stopped eating the tacos after we ran out of guac. What kind of sophisticated socialite would eat a veggie taco without ample guac?


We each got to choose our own dessert. I like that idea, since no one really wants to share dessert, though we did try a little of each other's. I ordered the "corn" dessert. This was amazingly whimsical and delicious. The corn cake was sort of vanilla-cake-based with corn elements. The spheres are corn sorbet scoops and the popcorn is super spicy! I liked taking a bite of the sorbet with the popcorn together. I was super into this dish! Very Willy Wonka, if you will.




Overall, I loved the tasting menu. Everything we ate was well thought-out and brilliantly executed. On the downside, I wondered why they didn't just make this restaurant vegan. If the theme of the restaurant is vegetables, including things like dairy and eggs is sort of cheating, isn't it? I know the chef would be more than capable of making these dishes fully vegan and fully delicious. Although all but two dishes could be made vegan, the vegan versions of the dishes were just the original dish with the non-vegan part omitted, not replaced with something else inventive. By the way, the two dishes that couldn't be made vegan were the creamed chard, and the carrot meringue pie. In the age of aquafaba and sweet maresas, we all are fully aware that vegan meringue exists, and any vegan worth their weight in cashews knows how to make creamed chard and make it great. So those are my main criticisms. The versions of the dishes we got did entirely what they were supposed to do, completely reinvent vegetables. I loved Dirt Candy and would definitely put it on the board for best places to get an amazing vegan meal in the country. I still feel the title goes to Vedge in Philly, but Dirt Candy does a great job coming in second! Let me know where you got your favorite vegan meal in the country in the comments!