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• wd~50: The Cookbook - October 17, 2017 Anthony Bourdain/Ecco; Slp edition ,

• Wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wylie_Dufresne

  Wylie Dufresne
  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Wylie Dufresne
  Wylie Dufresne.jpg
  Wylie Dufresne in 2007
  Born 1970 (age 47–48)
  Providence, Rhode Island, U.S.
  Education Colby College
  French Culinary Institute
  Culinary career
  Rating(s)[show]
  Current restaurant(s)[show]
  Award(s) won[show]
  Wylie Dufresne (born 1970) is the chef and owner of Du's Donuts and the former chef and owner of the wd~50 and Alder restaurants in Manhattan. Dufresne is a leading American proponent of molecular gastronomy, the movement to incorporate science and new techniques in the preparation and presentation of food.

  Contents
  1 Early life
  2 Career
  3 References
  4 External links
  Early life
  Born in 1970 in Providence, Rhode Island, Dufresne is a graduate of The French Culinary Institute (now known as The International Culinary Center) in New York. In 1992, he completed a B.A. in philosophy at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

  Career
  From 1994 through 1999, he worked for Jean-Georges Vongerichten, where he was eventually named sous chef at Vongerichten's eponymous "Jean Georges". In 1998 he was chef de cuisine at Vongerichten's "Prime" in The Bellagio, Las Vegas. In 1999, he left to become the first chef at "71 Clinton Fresh Food". In April 2003, he opened his 70-seat restaurant, "wd~50" (named for the chef's initials and the street address, as well as a pun on WD-40) on Clinton Street on Manhattan's Lower East Side. In March, 2013, he opened a second restaurant "Alder" in the East Village. wd-50 closed 30 November 2014.[1]

  Dufresne was a James Beard Foundation nominee for Rising Star Chef of the Year in 2000 and chosen the same year by New York Magazine for their New York Awards. Food & Wine magazine named him one of 2001 America's Ten Best Chefs award and, in 2006, New York Magazine's Adam Platt placed wd-50 fourth in his list of New York's 101 best restaurants. He was awarded a star in Michelin's New York City Guide, 2006, 2007, 2008, the first Red Guide for North America, and was nominated for Best Chef New York by the James Beard Foundation. Among his signature preparations are Pickled Beef Tongue with Fried Mayonnaise and Carrot-Coconut Sunnyside-Up.

  In 2006, Dufresne lost to Mario Batali on Iron Chef America. In 2007, he began making appearances as a judge on Bravo's Top Chef, which includes season 2, season 4, season 5, season 7 and season 12. He was invited to participate in Top Chef Masters in 2009 where he placed third out of four in the preliminary rounds. Dufresne also appeared in the final of the United Kingdom version of Masterchef, teaching the eventual winner. He appeared as himself in the 5th Episode of HBO's Treme alongside Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert and David Chang.[2]

  In 2013, Dufresne won the James Beard Foundation's Best NYC Chef. It was his 10th nomination and first win.

  In April 2017, Dufresne, along with head baker Colin Kull and general manager Sharilyn Chavez, took over a pop-up space at the William Vale Hotel in Williamsburg as Du's Donuts & Coffee.[3] The pop-up grew into a small chain that now has locations in Soho and Brooklyn.[4] Dufresne's cookbook "wd~50", co-written with Peter Meehan, was published in October.[5]

  References
  wd-50.com
  Brion, Raphael. "Treme Chef Cameos: Colicchio, Chang, Dufresne, and Ripert". Vox Media Inc.
  Tuder, Stefanie. "Wylie Dufresne Brings Du's Donuts to Manhattan for Fall Pop-Up". Vox Media Inc.
  "Du's Hours & Locations".
  "WD-50: The Cookbook". Publishers Weekly.

  External links
  wd~50
  Du's Donuts
  Podcast interview with Wylie Dufresne, April 2008.
  Big Think video interview, August 2010.

• Bravo TV - http://www.bravotv.com/people/wylie-dufresne

  Wylie Dufresne

  SHOWS Top Chef Masters
  Wylie Dufresne is the chef/owner of New York’s highly celebrated wd~50 restaurant. The Lower East Side eatery was awarded a Michelin star in 2006, which it has retained through 2010. Dufresne himself is no stranger to acclaim. The James Beard Foundation nominated Wylie and wd~50 in the following categories: 2000, Rising Star Chef (while Wylie was the chef at 71 Clinton Fresh Food); 2004, wd~50 for Best New Restaurant; 2008 and 2009 for Best Chef, New York City. wd~50, whose ownership is shared with chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten and restaurateur Phil Suarez, acquired its unique name from the combination of Dufresne’s initials and the restaurant’s street address.

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• DU's Donuts - https://www.dusdonuts.com/team-member/executive-chef/

  CHEF & OWNER

  Long before Wylie Dufresne was aerating foie gras in his New York City restaurants,and Alder, he was running around his great-grandfather’s Rhode Island diner, living on a steady diet of American classics: johnny cakes, chowder and coffee milk. Fast forward through a decorated culinary career that has been described as “ingenious,” full of “wizardry” and “amazement,” and Dufresne is setting his mind to the singular item that shaped some of his earliest memories, and captures the heart of every type of eater the world over: the donut.

  Enter Du’s Donuts & Coffee, a donut and coffee shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. An endless tinkerer, Dufresne is applying his imagination and inventive techniques to the craft his great grandfather, Wallace Dufresne, practiced at Ever Good Donut Shop in Central Falls, Rhode Island more than six decades ago.

• The New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/01/t-magazine/wylie-dufresne-dus-donuts-food-diary.html

  Quoted in Sidelights: “The iconic dishes he served at … WD-50 influenced an entire generation of molecular gastronomists,”
  T MAGAZINE | RITUALS
  One Award-Winning Chef — and His Surprisingly Cheap Eating Habits
  By RACHEL LEVINMAY 1, 2017

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  Wylie Dufresne, who recently opened Du’s Donuts & Coffee at the William Vale Hotel in Williamsburg, eats about four Pret a Manger sandwiches each week. Credit Gabriela Herman
  The deli menu at the Gramercy Food Market, a 24-hour bodega at the corner of East 22nd Street and Second Avenue, offers half a dozen grilled chicken sandwiches named for men of a certain stature: There’s the Al Pacino (with spicy dressing), the Larry King (with Russian dressing) and the John Lennon (with chipotle sauce). Each comes with a free bag of Lay’s and a Pepsi. But Wylie Dufresne doesn’t do lunch here. Only breakfast. And only before 11 a.m. (to avoid the $1 late-breakfast fee). And so frequently that the guy behind the counter knows his order: one egg on a roll ($2). Except Dufresne takes two eggs (for an extra 50 cents). “It’s a classic New York egg-and-cheese — the best,” says the chef, who lives nearby. “There are so many bad ones. It’s so satisfying when it’s done right.”

  Dufresne takes the foil-wrapped sandwich with him down 23rd Street, walking at a rapid clip. He’s dressed more like a hiker than a world-renowned chef revered for artfully plated, scientifically forward food, including delicacies like fried mayonnaise and savory everything-bagel ice cream. The iconic dishes he served at his now-shuttered restaurant WD-50 influenced an entire generation of molecular gastronomists. But on this day, he’s preparing for the opening of Du’s Donuts & Coffee, a much more casual joint situated at the William Vale Hotel in Williamsburg. (The space is now open.)

  “My friend says I look like I’m ‘forever camping,’” he admits, referring to the waterproof backpack usually strapped across his chest, and his dry-wick North Face shorts crammed with mini flashlights and a pocketknife.

  As for the hot breakfast sandwich in his hand, he says, “You can’t eat it yet. It’s not ready.” Not ready? “The cheese hasn’t melted yet. It’s still steaming.” Also, he needs coffee — which he didn’t order at the deli because, he says, “I won’t drink bad coffee.” And he is constantly on the hunt for good coffee.

  Photo

  Dufresne’s breakfast combo: an egg-and-cheese sandwich and an iced latte. Credit Gabriela Herman
  Since the closing of his restaurant Alder two years ago, Dufresne has roamed Manhattan in search of two “meaningful coffee experiences” a day. He pulls a binder clip, fat with punch cards, out of one of his many pockets to prove it. He recounts stories of buying two coffees and only receiving one punch, being called “Willy” by baristas — and sometimes using his eldest daughter’s name, Sawyer, only to see it scrawled onto his cup as Soyer. “Guess they’ve never heard of Tom?” Dufresne laughs. He fans out his punch cards like a poker player proud of his hand: Everyman. Birch. Ground Support. Toby’s Estate. “Ah, they owe me a free one…” he says, pleased.

  Turns out, so does Brooklyn Roasting Company, where he ends up this morning. Standing in line, corralled by velvet ropes, he whips out his phone and started the timer. “I always time it,” he says. (He refuses to wait for longer than eight minutes.)

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  He picks up his short latte (no sugar, no lid). It’s a warm spring day, but even in the dead of winter, Dufresne’s latte is iced — with the proper milk-to-espresso ratio only his most regular baristas get right. Purists might balk at putting milk in coffee, Dufresne says, “but for me, it’s all about coffee and milk. They’re friends,” he explains. “Like bread and butter. Wine and cheese.”

  Slide Show

  SLIDE SHOW
  |
  12 Photos
  A Day With Wylie Dufresne
  A Day With Wylie DufresneCreditGabriela Herman
  Speaking of, 15 minutes after leaving the bodega, his cheese is ready. Dufresne unwraps the sandwich to reveal a lightly toasted Kaiser roll, eggs scrambled, a slice of American oozing in its orange-hued glory. Though Du’s is strictly doughnuts (10 highly technical flavors, including peanut butter yuzu as well as Creamsicle), eventually he plans to add an egg-and-cheese of his own — on an onion Kaiser. He really likes onion Kaisers. In fact, Dufresne has a lot of likes (and dislikes). Some more mass-market than you might expect from a James Beard Award-winning chef just back from the World’s 50 Best Restaurants ceremonies in Melbourne.

  He likes Popeye’s fried chicken so much he served it at his wedding. He likes the occasional McDonalds burger (no ketchup, no pickles, no sauce). He really likes the NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, enough to DVR it. And despite the ostensible competition, he deems Dunkin’ Donuts’ chocolate glazed “perfect.”

  Unlike most of America, though, he prefers to finish his coffee while seated rather than taking it to go. “I don’t like holding anything,” he explains. (Umbrellas, in Wylie’s world, are especially ridiculous.) “Scrubbies,” however, are essential. He makes a beeline for Home Depot, which he navigates with the speed and expertise of a star employee, and goes directly to the Scotch-Brite Extreme Scrubs. “So much better than Scrub Daddy,” he says. “Shark Tank’s biggest seller ever!”

  Photo

  Dufresne in Home Depot, stocking up on Scotch-Brite Extreme Scrubs. Credit Gabriela Herman
  Errands done, Dufresne has one last stop before it’s time to test the doughnuts at Du’s: Pret a Manger. He eats Pret for lunch pretty much every day. The chain has 50 locations in Manhattan, and “I’ve got four in my rotation,” Dufresne says. But only one order: the balsamic chicken and avocado sandwich, a cucumber seltzer and a brownie bite. “It’s fantastic.” As good as Maile’s, he says, referring to his wife, who is the editor in chief of Food Network magazine.

  He first tried Pret when Sawyer was a toddler. It was easy. She liked chicken. On his day off, they’d sit on a rock in Union Square, near where he grew up, and share a sandwich. “I remembered thinking, ‘That’s tasty.’” Years later, without WD-50 to feed him, and in a moment of nostalgia, he rediscovered Pret’s chicken sandwich. “Next thing I knew,” he says, “I was eating it four times a week.” Soon, Dufresne started bringing his laptop, taking phone calls; Pret became his de facto office. “Setting up investor meetings, my business partner once asked, in all seriousness: ‘Which Pret do you want to meet at?’” he recalls, laughing. “This woman was giving us $75,000. I picked the Nomad instead.”

  Only twice has his Pret order strayed — to the chicken soup, and only because he had a cold. He has the utmost praise for the prepackaged sandwich. “It’s smartly engineered,” he says, explaining that the grilled chicken, not the mesclun, is dressed in the balsamic vinaigrette and sits between the dry lettuce and the avocado, so the bread doesn’t “sog out.” He takes it outside to Sawyer’s rock and eats every bite except the brownie bite. He likes to save it for later, for his second coffee experience.

  Meanwhile, Dufresne can’t help but laugh about his steadfast devotion to eating Pret’s chicken sandwich. “We’re all creatures of habit,” he offers. “At least it’s not a candy bar.”

  Du’s Donuts and Coffee is located at 107 N. 12th Street, Brooklyn, NY, dusdonuts.com.
  A version of this article appears in print on May 7, 2017, on Page ST3 of the New York edition with the headline: Chef’s Coffee Trek.

• Eater NY -

  NYC RESTAURANT OPENINGS
  Wylie Dufresne Is the Magician of Offbeat Flavors at Du’s Donuts
  13
  The highly-anticipated doughnut and coffee shop is now open in Williamsburg
  by Stefanie Tuder@stefanietuder Apr 26, 2017, 12:53pm EDT
  Photography by Nick Solares
  SHARE

  Wylie Dufresne with some Du’s donuts Nick Solares
  Today marks the return of science-forward chef Wylie Dufresne with the debut of Du’s Donuts, his deceptively simple doughnut and coffee shop in Williamsburg’s William Vale Hotel. Du’s opened at 8 a.m. today with 1,000 fresh-made doughnuts that are on track to sell out by mid-afternoon sold out as of 2:41 p.m.

  Customers lined up starting at 7:30 a.m. to get a taste of Dufresne’s first project in three years — including chef friends and food media like former Food & Wine editor-in-chief Dana Cowin, who is now the chief creative officer with Chefs Club International. It’s been a long, molecular gastronomy-less road without Dufresne, the chef-owner who rose to fame with WD~50 and Alder, and people are psyched he’s back.

  As is Dufresne’s modus operandi, there’s more than meets the eye when it comes to his food. He’s applying the same methodical sorcery to doughnuts as he did to dishes like his renowned eggs Benedict with fried hollandaise sauce. That means spending three months perfecting the cake doughnut recipe with head baker Colin Kull (San Francisco’s Tartine) and figuring out ways to ensure the glaze melts in your mouth and not on your hands.

  GRID VIEW

  1 of 10
  Strawberries and cream
  Offbeat flavors — which go for $3.50 each — such as pomegranate tahini, pistachio pink lemonade, grapefruit chamomile, peanut butter yuzu, and more — are on the opening menu, alongside coffee from Brooklyn Roasting Company. Apparently the most popular so far today is the banana graham, which is dusted with Golden Grahams and filled with a banana flavor.

  Once it gets its footing, Dufresne plans to serve traditional New York egg and cheese breakfast sandwiches, as well as cocktails, wine, and beer. “I love [the idea] that people can enjoy a cocktail old fashioned with an old-fashioned doughnut,” Dufresne told Eater said.

  Du’s is now open daily at 8 a.m., until sold out. Should you go, let us know how it is.

• GQ - https://www.gq.com/story/wylie-dufresne-interview-wd-50-cookbook

  Quoted in Sidelights: “cranking out donuts with flavorings appropriately idiosyncratic (e.g.: Brown Butter Key Lime; Mexican Hot Chocolate) for a Dufresne project,”

  “With this book, all I was trying to do was say how much I loved this place and how special it was. “Once I realized it was going to go away, and if not for good then for a very long time, I wanted to get a little bit of it down somewhere so that it could be enjoyed by at the very least those of us who worked there.” “There was a lot that went into what we did, and within that labor was a lot of fun. That’s what I wanted the book to be, to create sort of the arc of the restaurant, but also what it was like to be there. I hope that what we did convey was the joy we had in the doing.”

  “In some ways this book is the magician showing you exactly how his tricks were done,”
  “the tale of a groundbreaking restaurant that solved problems by thinking in ways most other chefs hadn’t considered.”
  Food
  Wylie Dufresne, Who Opened New York's Most Out-There Restaurant, on What He's Up to Now
  Photo of Lang Whitaker
  BY LANG WHITAKER
  October 6, 2017

  ERIC MEDSKER
  GQ spoke to the former wd~50 chef about working with scientists and serving Lou Reed.

  Wylie Dufresne has a cold. “There are so many things coursing through my veins right now,” the chef says between hacking coughs, “I’m not sure which ones are helping and which aren’t.”

  It is perhaps understandable that Dufresne finds his immune system currently compromised, as a lot of things are happening all at once for the innovative chef. Not only is his Brooklyn donut shop, Du’s Donuts, cranking out donuts with flavorings appropriately idiosyncratic (e.g.: Brown Butter Key Lime; Mexican Hot Chocolate) for a Dufresne project, but he’s also preparing for the release of his first book, wd~50: The Cookbook (out October 17th), and celebrating the book by mounting a sold-out two-week pop-up-style resurrection of wd~50.

  The restaurant, which opened in 2003 and catapulted Dufresne into minor fame, was a fine dining restaurant with a sense of humor, unafraid to challenge conventions, ask questions, and blow minds. They may have refused to put a salad on the menu, but Dufresne did figure out how to fry mayonnaise and glue meat and make a carrot/coconut dish that looked for all the world like a sunny-side up egg. All of it happened in a way that was equal parts delicious and mysterious. While cooking informed by molecular gastronomy was all the rage in Europe, Dufresne was the vanguard in the United States. The restaurant closed in 2014.

  Wylie Dufresne
  RICHARD DREW
  The Cookbook has plenty of recipes, most of which require at least one ingredient you’ve probably never used before. (One recipe begins: “This miso soup dish was born out of my brief obsession with methylcellulose.”) While Dufresne may have blinded us with science, and in some ways this book is the magician showing you exactly how his tricks were done, the book is more useful to us plebes as the tale of a groundbreaking restaurant that solved problems by thinking in ways most other chefs hadn’t considered.

  “With this book, all I was trying to do was say how much I loved this place and how special it was,” Dufresne explains. “Once I realized it was going to go away, and if not for good then for a very long time, I wanted to get a little bit of it down somewhere so that it could be enjoyed by at the very least those of us who worked there.”

  GQ: There’s a line on the book’s back cover that says when wd~50 opened in 2003, it was New York’s “most innovative, cutting-edge restaurant.” Which made me think, if wd~50 opened in New York tomorrow with the same menu you opened with in 2003, you might still be the most innovative and cutting-edge restaurant.
  Wylie Dufresne: I think it’s too bad that a place like New York City that wants to be on a world-class level with all the other art forms we celebrate, doesn’t necessarily want to embrace that, but that’s ok. [laughs] We still continued to do what we did, whether we were the only ones in the pool or there were a bunch of people with us. We were going to do what we do. We had a mission and like I said, I feel proud that we stuck to our guns and didn’t really cave or compromise.

  To be honest, the recipes seem pretty daunting, even for someone like myself who is very comfortable in the kitchen. For instance, fried mayonnaise sounds like it would be cool and fun to make, but it turns out it’s actually really, really hard to make.
  Well, it is! It is really hard to make. There was no other way I could do it. I couldn’t pick the easy recipes—that wasn’t what it was about. Part of it was that I wanted people to understand that it was a process, and we went through that process all the time, and happily. Let’s remember, if you’re going to push that rock up the hill every day and when you wake up it’s going to be back at the bottom, you’ve got to find a way to push the rock with a smile on your face. You’ve got to imagine Sisyphus enjoyed his job, and we did. But there was a lot that went into what we did, and within that labor was a lot of fun. That’s what I wanted the book to be, to create sort of the arc of the restaurant, but also what it was like to be there. I hope that what we did convey was the joy we had in the doing.

  The thing that really jumped out to me when I read the book was your genuine affection for wd~50.
  We had some ambitious goals, and it took a long time, but I think we got there. I’m proud of what we were able to accomplish. There’s a lot of people that worked really hard over those 13-plus years, and I feel very fortunate to have met and worked with all of them, and to have had the opportunity to do it in that place. I was lucky then, I feel lucky now. I liked my office, you know, where I went to work every day. And I felt fortunate to have it. And I still feel the same way.

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  ERIC MEDSKER
  Would you ever go back to wd~50, besides as just a pop-up?
  I don’t know. I think the question that someone has to ask is, Does New York want that? Not just once, not just for a couple of weeks, but does New York want that night-in and night-out, 365, for a ten-year lease? I don’t know the answer to that. I ask myself that question a lot. I think we are seeing right now a real resurgence in fine dining, with what the Torrisi boys are doing at the Four Seasons, and the fact that the Four Seasons is back, the Eleven Madison Park guys are doing another restaurant, and you got what’s going down in FiDi on Pine with James Kent. It seems like there’s a lot of people who have confidence that fine dining is coming back, and a lot of people are betting on it. Five years ago, I wouldn’t have bet on it—I would have thought we were going the other direction. But that being said, wd~50 is a very particular part of fine dining. Is there room for that? I don’t know the answer to that. It’s hard when you’re the only guy in the pool. It’s hard. And I don’t mean hard like, “Oh, poor us.” I mean there’s an uncertainty to that position. When other people are doing the same thing you can sort of get a sense of where it’s at, but when you’re the only one doing it, you don’t have a lot of stuff to compare it to. So I wonder about that question. I don’t have the answer. I’d be curious to know what other people thought. I don’t have any plans right now. I’d love to get back into the restaurant game. If I found the absolute right space tomorrow and someone said, “What would you put in it?” I don’t know if my first reaction would be wd~50. I wonder a lot if people want it. I guess we’ll see how the book sells (laughs).

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  Introducing the New GQ Best Stuff Box

  But it’s also about you, right? When you opened wd~50, that was a reflection of where you were as a chef and what you aspired to be. A decade-plus later, maybe that’s just not who you are anymore. It seems like you’ve answered a lot of questions you were chasing.
  I have not given up my curiosity, my love of asking questions, my love of finding out how to do something as well as it can be done. And I think right now you see that in our approach to making doughnuts at Du’s. It’s no different than our approach was at wd~50. We’re doing it in a very different format and I’m learning a whole lot about what it’s like to own a wholesale/retail business versus a restaurant, but in terms of how we look at a doughnut and figure out what’s in a doughnut and try to make it the best expression of a doughnut possible, and how we come up with fun interesting flavors, and how we balance all that stuff, we’re using all of our preexisting DNA.

  As someone who is always searching out new things, what’s exciting to you these days in the world of food?
  I would tell everybody to run out to Empellón and see what Alex Stupak’s doing. His stuff is really amazing and interesting and exciting. He’s looking at food through a Mexican lens but he’s not necessarily interested or bogged down in being authentic. He’s interested in using indigenous and authentic ingredients, but he’s not interested in making food that’s been around before. To me that’s an exciting thing that’s going on. I love what Danny Bowien’s doing down at Mission Chinese. I think that’s a fun and clever way to look at a culture. Here in New York, those are just a couple. I love what the Torrisi boys are doing at The Pool and The Grill Room. It’s just super fun and both old world New York and something we’ve never seen before—it’s looking backward in an effort to look forward, and I think that’s really fun. I think it’s going to be fun to see what comes next. But by that token, I still think you can get some of the best hamburgers in the world in New York City, too. There’s the top and the bottom and everything in between.

  Why didn’t you guys ever serve a salad at wd~50?
  It was just not something that I found particularly compelling. I’m not trying to say that salad sucks, and I suppose now, looking back with a lot of years behind me, I could have said, “Well, why don’t you just apply your creativity to salad?” But we just decided we didn’t want to do it. It was more like everybody was coming the first couple of years saying, “Can I get a salad? I don’t want what you’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out, can I just get a salad?” As a 33-year-old, my response was, “No, you can’t, because we don’t do that.”

  But you broke that rule for Lou Reed?
  So Lou Reed used to come a lot at the beginning—he came to 71 [Clinton Foods, where Dufresne used to work] quite a bit, he was a real supporter. He and I were among a group of New Yorkers who won an award, and he was incredibly nice and gracious, because there’s no planet where Lou Reed and I are on the same level, let’s be honest. But the stars aligned and I get this thing and got to meet him, and he came [to eat] a bunch and was super cool and super nice. And God bless him, he always asked if he could have a salad, and we always said no. He was always OK with it, and we always figured out something we could make him. And again, it becomes a sort of thing, right? Like, someone comes to your restaurant a lot, and you make certain concessions for regulars because they’re supporting you. We were playing around with different things, and we had this idea that wasn’t really a salad by any means—it’s a piece of endive with oil and vinegar foam that we hit with a blowtorch and put tomato powder on. So under the very sort of loosest terms, it might be considered a salad, because it’s a vegetable with some vinaigrette on it. We served it to Lou Reed and he was totally cool about it. I don’t think he thought we were giving him a salad. He just thought we were giving something kind of tasty and interesting and different, and he was great about it like he always was. He was always Lou Reed, and he was awesome.

  Eric Medsker

  Eric Medsker

  Would you call what you did at wd~50 molecular gastronomy, or something else?
  That’s actually a scientific term that was coined by scientists to refer to work they were doing as scientists. So it does a disservice to the scientists’ hard at work to refer to it as that. Now, those scientists do work that’s very specific to what’s going on in the kitchen, so inevitably the molecular gastronomist is going to have a pretty symbiotic relationship with the chef. But I’m no more a molecular gastronomist than any scientist is a chef. It’s like calling me a biologist, or a chemist—I’m none of those things. I’m not a molecular gastronomist, I’m not a neuroscientist, I don’t have a degree in science. So it was a term that became applied to chefs cooking in a particular style, but it does a disservice on a number of levels. It’s like saying you throw a baseball around so you’re a baseball player. No, I’m not. And it really doesn’t sound delicious. “Hey honey, it’s Tuesday night and we have a sitter, you want to go have some Thai, some Chinese or some molecular gastronomy?” No one’s ever going to pick that.

  But that being said, we didn’t know what to call it, and I guess when Nathan Myhrvold came along and it sort of landed on “modernist cooking”—is that any better? “Do you want to get pizza or modernist cooking?” It’s no better. But to be honest, the term molecular gastronomy eventually served a purpose: It gave people somewhat of a reference of what they were in for.

  We were looking for answers to questions, and we were finding answers from molecular gastronomists. Molecular gastronomy refers to a particular field of science that is equally applicable for the bistro chef on the corner who wants to learn how to roast a chicken and how to make a bearnaise that doesn’t break. Understanding the principles of molecular gastronomy helps you do those things. But it got applied to people who were then taking that knowledge and thinking wildly creatively with it. And that’s again where it became misleading, because any cook should be interested in the basic principles of Molecular gastronomy. They help you understand what’s happening to your food as you cook it. There’s no right or wrong way to poach an egg, but there are more or less informed ways to do it, so you ought to be informed about what you’re doing. Molecular gastronomy is continuing to help lift this sort of veil of ignorance that lives around us cooks. We do so much and we don’t know why we do it that way. We do it that way because that’s the way it’s been done before or the way it’s always been done. But we go and do it because we understand that doing it this way gives us result X. We do it because that’s the way we were shown. So Molecular gastronomy is helping us to know that if we do X, we get Y. If we do Y, we get Z. If we do A, we get B. If every chef understands the variables, then each chef can adjust those variables to his or her desired end result, and that’s at the core of Molecular gastronomy, helping provide information to chefs, so that they can make their own informed decisions. It doesn’t mean we’re putting foam on a plate or making weird gels or doing any of that. But that is what people associate it with.

  So it’s confusing, incorrect, and somewhat useful. I fought the term for a long time, and now I don’t fight it anymore, A) because I’m older and I pick my battles; and B) I think it actually finally became part of some sort of an understanding of helping people know what they were getting into. But running into people and they go, “Oh, you’re the molec

• Star Chefs - https://www.starchefs.com/cook/chefs/bio/wylie-dufresne

  Chef Wylie Dufresne of Du's Donuts & Coffee - Biography

  Brooklyn, New York
  September 2017
  Before his last year as a philosophy student at Maine’s Colby College, Wylie Dufresne went home and took a job at iconic Providence, Rhode Island restaurant Al Forno. That summer was a major turning point for Dufresne. After graduation, he enrolled at The French Culinary Institute in New York, marrying two skillsets—in philosophy and gastronomy—that would ignite one imaginative career.

  Remaining in New York, Dufresne worked his way up Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s kitchen ladder: four years at JoJo’s, followed by opening Jean Georges, where he eventually rose to sous chef. In 1998, Dufresne was hired as chef de cuisine at Vongerichten’s Prime in Las Vegas. The following year, he became the first chef at 71 Clinton Fresh Food on New York’s Lower East Side, where his father was a partner.

  In 2003, Dufresne moved across the street to debut the experimental wd~50. Dufresne’s playful innovations made him one of the most recognized and influential chefs in America. He was named a StarChefs Rising Star in 2005, and wd~50 maintained a Michelin star for four consecutive years, received a slew of James Beard Awards, and made it on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list before Dufresne decided to close the restaurant in 2014.

  Dufresne has been busy since, consulting and collaborating with friends. In 2017, before opening his bakery, Du’s Donuts & Coffee in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Dufresne spent months perfecting the recipe for his cake-style doughnuts. He also recently released his first cookbook wd~50: The Cookbook, telling the story of his pioneering restaurant and the dishes that made it famous.

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  Interview with Chef Wylie Dufresne of wd~50 - New York, NY

• All Star Chef Classic - https://www.allstarchefclassic.com/talent/meet-the-chefs/wylie-dufresne

  Hometown: Providence, RI

  Restaurants: Du's Donuts (Brooklyn, New York)

  All-Star Chef Classic Event: Vegetable Masters Dinner Presented by Blue Shield of California, Grill & Chill Presented by Pacific Sales & Stella Artois

  Bio: Wylie Dufresne is the chef/owner of New York’s highly celebrated wd~50 restaurant. Before opening his bakery, Du’s Donuts & Coffee in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Dufresne spent months perfecting the recipe for his cake-style doughnuts. He also recently released his first cookbook wd~50: The Cookbook, telling the story of his pioneering restaurant and the dishes that made it famous.

• First We Feast - https://firstwefeast.com/eat/2012/10/wylie-dufresnes-10-career-changing-dishes/

  The 10 Dishes That Made My Career: Wylie Dufresne
  The creator of fried mayonnaise and the peanut-butter noodle finds inspiration in ice cream, mashed potatoes, and more.
  Sophie Brickman Oct 15, 2012
  SHARE TWEET
  The website for wd~50 describes its cuisine as “new American,” which is a little like describing Michael Phelps as “a guy who swims.” Yes, it’s true, but it’s so wildly understated as to be borderline delusional.

  When chef-owner Wylie Dufresne opened up his Lower East Side restaurant in 2003, he announced himself to the world as an envelope-pusher, a creative force who deep-fried mayo, served pizza in pebble form, and rolled noodles out of shrimp meat, all without so much as a by-your-leave.

  But how, exactly, does an individual evolve to see a sauce and think “fried cube”? Cheese slice and think “rock”? Crustacean and think “noodle”?

  Here, Dufresne takes us through the key dishes that influenced him on his way to earning three stars from the New York Times, one star from Michelin, and a nomination from James Beard for Best Chef New York for the past six years running.

  The following interview has been edited and condensed.

  1. Surf ‘n’ Turf
  You could argue that as humans, we have been cracking shells on the beach and throwing large haunches of meat on the open flame and eating those things together for a long time. The notion of combining surf and turf has been a creative springboard not only for myself, but for a lot of chefs over the years. One of the first dishes we put on the menu [at wd~50] was foie gras with anchovies, and my defense of it was always, “Well, surf and turf is an old idea.” Chowder has got bacon and clams in it, right? And it works. Why does it work? I don’t necessarily know, but it works. Right now we have a dish with pork ribs and this apricot relish made with seaweed. It doesn’t seem weird to me to say, “Why don’t we put seaweed in an apricot relish?” I’ve put seaweed in hamburger mixes because seaweed is inherently rich in umami, which is a flavor that drives the deliciousness forward in food. And why wouldn’t you want to drive the deliciousness forward in food?
  2. Michel Bras’ Chocolate Coulant (Molten Chocolate Cake)
  You’ve probably had a chocolate cake that when you cut into it oozes chocolate in the middle. The first person to do that was [French chef] Michel Bras. It’s probably the most copied dessert in the world. As a young student, I had a notion of a chocolate cake that was molten in the center. I wrote that down in a notebook when I was 20-years-old, and not two years later I was working for Jean-Georges [Vongerichten] and serving a chocolate cake going, “Oh, I’m not as clever as I think I am.” I had what I thought was a good idea, but it was already ubiquitous the world over. I needed to get a little bit more hip to the world. That dish helped me realize that I can’t work in a box.
  3. Michel Bras’ Slow-Baked Fish
  This technique [of baking fish at sub-200 degree temperatures] was revelatory in terms of understanding the different textures a fish could be, how you could bake a fish and not have it be this thing that is squeezing out all this white snot. You could cook a fish slowly and it could take on the texture of suede. It drove home the notion that fish doesn’t have to be overcooked.
  4. Ice Cream
  I don’t remember the first time I had ice cream, but I don’t remember ever not eating ice cream. Going to Baskin-Robbins as a little kid, you’re like, “What the fuck, there are 31 flavors! Who thought of putting bubble gum into ice cream?” How cool was that, because when you were done with the ice cream, you were left with a mouthful of gum. That goes on to being a 20-year-old stoner and you’re like, “Cherry Garcia man, that’s awesome!” Everyone has seen ice cream as a creative opportunity. We’re not just satisfied with chocolate and vanilla and strawberry. There’s everything from Parmesan cheese to balsamic vinegar to béarnaise, and that has left an indelible mark on me. It has helped to inform the notion that thinking creatively is okay. For me, there have been savory applications, like steak tartar with béarnaise ice cream, or venison tartar with edamame ice cream.
  5. Joël Robuchon’s Mashed Potatoes
  I knew about them well before I ever got to eat them. The last step is adding sort of an insane amount of fat to the process. And there’s a part in Jeffrey Steingarten’s book [The Man Who Ate Everything] where he talks about how instant mashed potatoes are prepared. It’s a very interesting technique that involves bringing science into the kitchen. When we combined the old techniques like Robuchon’s and the more modern techniques, that’s when we really began to make leaps forward at this restaurant.
  6. Heston Blumenthal’s Ballotine of Anjou Pigeon
  An important dish would be whatever the first dish was that used meat glue, and I believe it was Heston Blumenthal’s pigeon dish. Nature is imperfect from a cooking standpoint: Animals are not designed by nature to be cooked. They’re designed to walk around and do whatever they do. Part of their design wasn’t to be caught by humans and cooked, so when we cook them, we break them down into primal cuts. When you break down an animal even more, you get more controlled cooking. Meat glue is fundamental to breaking an animal down and restructuring muscle, and meat glue [a.k.a. transglutaminase] is an important ingredient that is part of the identity of this place. While Heston got that snowball rolling, we have helped make that snowball much bigger.

  7. Ferran Adrià’s Liquid Mango Ravioli
  I believe Ferran’s mango ravioli sparked the hydrocolloid revolution, and hydrocolloids have been very important to our identity, particularly in the first five to eight years of the restaurant. Every cook has been using gelatin since he was a wee lad—gelatin is a hydrocolloid, various types of starches are also—so it’s interesting that there are those who say nay to hydrocolloids and yet have been making mousses or doing JELL-O shots since they were a kid. We’ve done fried mayonnaise, which led to fried hollandaise; the carrot-coconut sunny-side-up; the various dishes using mock ricotta. Early on, when we weren’t in a position to either negotiate for or even purchase some of the more expensive pieces of equipment that are now in our restaurant—things like centrifuges and rotary evaporators—hydrocolloids by comparison were a relatively affordable way to set ourselves apart.
  8. Pierre Hermé’s Macarons
  The same way Robuchon made everyone rethink what a mashed potato could be, Pierre Hermé made us reimagine what a macaron could be. Anybody that makes a macaron now that makes your eyes roll back in your head is doing so on the shoulders of Pierre Hermé. He changed the protocol in terms of how they’re made and manufactured, [which included] aging the egg white. It’s about, “Can we build a better mouse trap?” Plenty of people have taken the status quo and sought to make it as close to perfection as they could. Others have wanted to make it their own or improve upon it. Hermé did that, and we’re always questioning the process here.
  9. Mugaritz’s Slow-Poached Egg
  We have an egg obsession at this restaurant and the first time I had a slow-poached egg, or the 64-degree egg, was at Mugaritz. That was an “aha moment.” I love and am fascinated by egg cookery because it never seems to end. Andoni [Aduriz, chef-owner of Mugariz] was using an immersion circulator to cook the eggs, and while we were already using circulators at the time, I thought, “Wow, how did he cook an egg to be that shape and that texture? I love eggs, why don’t I know how to do this?” We built on the idea and took it in a lot of directions. It was as important to me as my mother teaching me how to make scrambled eggs with a fork and a pan.
  10. Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Shrimp in Spicy Carrot Juice
  Jean-Georges wanted to take stocks and butter and cream out of the kitchen and bring them back in the form of juices and vinaigrettes. I knew I wanted to work for him, and he got me in my formative years. There was a shrimp and carrot dish: It was carrot juice made with lime leaf, lemongrass, Thai chilies, and a little bit of butter, [then] served with poached shrimp. It was amazing to me that a soup could be built off of a juice. Jean-Georges is also fundamental to how I plate food and how I think about food—always thinking, “Take more away, less is more, less is more.” There’s nowhere to hide when there is less on the plate, but the food is less busy. And his philosophy has stuck with me to this very day.

• International Culinary Center - http://www.internationalculinarycenter.com/alumnis/wylie-dufresne/

  WYLIE DUFRESNE
  » ALUMNI » WYLIE DUFRESNE

  “ALL OF MY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT IS GROUNDED IN THE SKILLS I LEARNED AT ICC. THEY TAUGHT ME HOW TO APPLY MY CREATIVITY.”
  Wylie Dufresne has established himself as one of the most creative chefs working today. Combining his love of food with a thirst for knowledge, he creates innovative dishes by incorporating science and new, cutting-edge techniques. Wylie is considered the leading American proponent of molecular gastronomy.

  Before giving birth to dishes like pickled beef tongue with fried mayonnaise at his now-famous wd~50, Wylie studied philosophy, graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Colby College. While studying Nietzsche and honing his critical thinking skills, he took a summer job before his senior year working at Al Forno’s, an Italian restaurant in his hometown. It was this experience that made him realize he belonged in the kitchen. After he finished his senior year, Wylie enrolled at the International Culinary Center and never looked back.

  Although many consider Wylie as a chef with unorthodox techniques—pushing buttons and boundaries—he firmly believes that having a solid foundation of basic cooking knowledge and skills is necessary for any creativity to bloom. “It’s essential to have a solid grounding of traditional techniques—I still use many of them.”

  After graduating from ICC, Wylie worked on the opening of Jean Georges, later becoming its sous chef. His experience there was deeply influential on his style of cooking, and Wylie considers Jean-Georges Vongerichten a friend and a mentor to this day. In 1998, Wylie packed his bags and moved to Las Vegas to become the chef de cuisine at Vongerichten’s Prime in The Bellagio. A year later, he returned to New York to become the first chef at 71 Clinton Fresh Food, garnering a James Beard nomination in 2000 for Rising Star Chef.

  In April of 2003, Wylie opened wd~50 in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Armed with a state-of-the-art kitchen, it is here that Wylie has melded his ideas and skills into his famous dishes. Building upon “solid grounding” of techniques, he re-imagined classic dishes, deconstructing them into familiar, but entirely, new creations. The result is a taste experience that is both familiar and distinctive. A signature dish, eggs Benedict, takes an old recipe and turns it inside out, turning hollandaise sauce into fried cubes held together with hydrocolloids and modified cornstarch, accompanied with columns of perfectly textured egg yolk.

  His work at wd~50 has awarded him with several James Beard nominations for Best New Restaurant (2004) and Best Chef, New York City. In 2013, he won the James Beard Award for Best Chef, New York City after six nominations. In the same year, he opened Alder, a well-reviewed neighborhood spot that applies innovative techniques to comfort food. In 2015, he won the James Beard award for Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America.

Quoted in Sidelights: “love letter” “lack of pretension.” “are clever and inspirational.”
Print Marked Items
WD-50: The Cookbook
Publishers Weekly.
264.40 (Oct. 2, 2017): p131.
COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text: 
* WD-50: The Cookbook
Wylie Dufresne, with Peter Meehan. Ecco/
Bourdain, $75 (352p) ISBN 978-0-06-231853-4
In 2003 on New York City's Lower East Side, Dufresne opened WD-50, where he transformed ingredients
in astonishing ways. This landmark book is a love letter to that paradise lost, and Dufresne's lack of
pretension makes it relatable, despite the fact that few home cooks will be able to recreate its
multicomponent dishes (and many others will flinch at the book's price). Visual puns abound, as with "fried
eggs" with yolks made of carrot juice contained in a locust bean and carrageenan membrane, ice cream
shaped to look like everything bagels and served with cream cheese combined with methylcellulose and
then dehydrated, and faux tartlets with soft tahini gel rings in place of crisp crusts. Dufresne charmingly
plays gastronomic Encyclopedia Brown as he explores the challenge of deep-fried mayonnaise, the wonders
of "meat glue," and his rationale for relaxing his no-salad rule and making one (albeit in the form of an
endive leaf dipped in whipped vinaigrette and charred with a blowtorch) for "Lou effing Reed, the coolest
person who was ever going to come for dinner." Dufresne himself is a rock star of the kitchen, and his
recipes here are clever and inspirational. (Oct.)
Source Citation   (MLA 8th
Edition)
"WD-50: The Cookbook." Publishers Weekly, 2 Oct. 2017, p. 131. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A509728481/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=054e0d1b.
Accessed 4 Mar. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A509728481