Welcome to
Consumed, in which Matt Duckor devours the food world, documenting the people, places, and plates that keep him hungry.
M Wells chef Hugue Dufour (left) with writer Adam Gopnik (center) and M Wells partner (and Dufour's wife) Sarah Obraitis.
You can be pretty sure that you're at the M Wells dinner when you see a large crowd outside of an abandoned looking building on a random street in Long Island City.
The setting for the evening. Soon, there will be a catamaran under construction where the table is.
Russian breakfast: eggs, smoked sable, creme fraiche and caviar. Toasted Wonder Bread was added at the last minute.
The M Wells crew busy working, plating Russian breakfast trays.
Dufour seasons a tray of wood pigeon.
Wood pigeon!
Guinea hen baked in salt crust.
An M Wells cook brings a tray of quail up from the kitchen.
Tuna T-bone steaks, a nod to the site's future as a steakhouse.
Dufour and crew in the basement kitchen.
Wheel of cheese! One of two served.
(Credit: Matt Duckor)
"We want to kill you...with food." That was chef
Hugue Dufour's mission Saturday night, when he hosted a dinner party along with his wife and business partner
Sarah Obraitis and writer
Adam Gopnik as part of this year's
New Yorker Festival. If you know anything about the type of larger-than-life, insanely indulgent food that Dufour's now-closed Queens restaurant
M Wells was known for, you know he's only partly joking. In fact, the evening was billed as "La Grande Bouffe," a nod to the 1973 French film in which a group of people eat themselves to death. So, yeah, we ate a lot.
The event took place in Long Island City at the home of the Dufour's upcoming, yet-to-be-named Eastern European-style steakhouse. He tells us that he expects the restaurant to open in April and that there will a real life catamaran (read: BOAT) under construction within the restaurant.
As for the food? We had exactly the type of in-your-face cooking that convinced us to put the restaurant on our 10 Best Restaurants in America list last year. All of the following were consumed: squash with roasted veal brains, clam chowder with foie gras, pickled fennel, house-smoked sturgeon, a Wonder Bread tower with caviar, quail and foie gras bread pudding, wood pigeon on sanguette, guinea hen in salt crust, tuna T-bone with peppercorn sauce, creamed sea spinach, french fries, green beans, and two different types of cheese. Oh, and a black forest cake for dessert.
Dufour didn't kill us, but we didn't leave hungry either. As a token of our thanks, we made a GIF of him looking quite intense with some cheese.