Dynamic Dish: Oktoberfest in August?

The awesomeness that is Dynamic Dish is nothing new, and I’ve thrown up posts on them a number of times (see pizza post here and DD/New York wine post here), but I went last weekend and the meal I had is worth mentioning.

I’ve recently had the itch to get back to DD – their tweets have been killing me. Every time they throw out the day’s menu, all other lunch plans seem boring. There was also a great interview with Dave last week that had me thinking of them.

We managed to snag a table for Friday night at 8:30, and when we got there, the place was jammed and we had to wait for a couple to finish their meal before we could be seated. There was another party of four people waiting along with us, in the door way, wine in hand.

There is only one table for two in the place, so we were seated at a large table next to another couple, with the menu sort of acting like a divider. This didn’t deter me from eavesdropping on the conversation. Apparently one of the young ladies was having relationship trouble, and boy oh boy was she mad at her boyfriend for not texting her back!

We ordered a salad to share as a starter – tat soy with quinoa, scallions, sprouts, and tofu in an sesame dressing. Though you could have just looked at the menu in the photo above and picked that up.

This salad was wonderfully put together, one of the best salads I’ve had in a long time. Tay soy is an Asian vegetable with dark green leaves in a spoon shape, with a root end that is slightly crunchy and has a taste similar to bok choy. The sprouts were crisp and bursting with flavor, the quinoa was a welcome addition of texture, and the cold tofu was super firm (roasted?) and had a hint of lemon/acidity that cut through the strong sesame flavor of the dressing.

We shared the two specials of the night for our main course. Below is Georgia lima beans in a tomato sauce with grilled white patty pans on cous cous with parmesan.

I had no idea what a patty pan was, but that’s one thing I love about Dynamic Dish. On almost every visit I have some variety of vegetable I’ve never had before. And in case you’re wondering, a patty pan is a type of small, disc-shaped, squash.

The tomato sauce rocked on this, and I enjoyed trying the patty pan, but I almost forgot about this dish when I tried the other special.

The other special was the celeriac schnitzel with mashed Georgia yams and horseradish creamed cabbage, and this was one of the coolest dishes I’ve had in while, not to mention the first fried dish I’ve had at Dynamic Dish.

I loved the whole take on the traditional German dish – the celery root schnitzel was just thin enough, crunchy and well fried, with a flavorful exterior, and firm, fresh vegetable inside, all served with the traditional lemon wedge.

The yams were delicious; almost dessert-like, but with a more savory balance than most mashed sweet potato dishes I’ve had, of which I’m not usually a fan.

But the cabbage may have been the most surprising part of the entire dish. An homage to sauerkraut, they were wonderfully creamy and tart, a far cry from the oft-runny traditional sauerkraut, and they really brought the whole dish home for me.

I really loved how they took this veal dish and created a take on it that wasn’t a knock-off using obscure vegetarian meat replacement ingredients, but rather they worked with the flavors and textures of the vegetables they had to create a dish that is reminiscent of tradition, but stands on its own. Simply fantastic.