Café L’Ampoon: A Restaurant Menu Parody

Published in Gourmet Live 11.02.11
Gourmet Live dines out on the menu pretensions and self-conscious sourcing of our day

Cupcake-tini: Our house-made vanilla cupcake infused, muddled, and pulverized with gin and chocolate-flavored dry vermouth, stirred, shaken, and lit with rainbow sprinkles and malt balls in a Murano martini glass  12

Pole-caught heirloom goat feet with artisanal eggwurst crostini  9

Hand-dipped bat beignets in a pork-knuckle gelato nest atop a foraged waffle  9

Lollipop à trois: a burrata pop dusted with fennel pollen on a stem of charred salsify root; an organic free-range fried chicken drumette wrapped in ramps on a foie gras foam; and a seared pork-belly pop on a grilled lemongrass skewer, topped with black bean-Matcha caviar and micro shiso tendrils  18

Bushwick, Brooklyn, rooftop macro greens with lardons of Charles, a heritage Tamworth pig raised in the Pocono Mountains on foie gras and white truffles, dressed with house-cured vinegar and unfiltered tender-olive oil  11

Offal shooter du jour  Market price

Plywood-smoked canal salmon with a low-tide sea-foam coulis  24

Lazy Dazy Ranch wheatgrass-grazed Wagyu beef, massaged with patchouli oil and a Dead Sea salt spa rub, finished over driftwood coals and served with a ballpark mustard reduction  32

Coffee-steamed Sonoma County pork belly poached in raw sheep’s milk and blanketed with creosote-smoked bacon before slow-roasting in an Easy-Bake Oven  22

Chicken-skin bao stuffed with goat cheeks and handcut roadside pennycress, triple-fried and paired with dirty-water-dog dipping sauce  21

Stir-fry of locally shaved organic Bluestocking Farms Brussels sprouts and scavenged shellfish in a warm lemon and Sriracha glaze  22

Le lait à l’aréole: Park Slope, Brooklyn, free-range human breast milk demi popsicles bathed in rooftop wasp effluvia  Market price

Goat cheese panna cotta on a toasted quinoa pillow with salted-caramel cilantro-shoot confetti  10

Molten zucchini and frozen mung-bean yogurt whoopee pies infused with just-pressed Okefenokee Villa Estate olive oil  11

Tahitian vanilla bean cake brûlée with Gowanus Rumrunner aged Camembert crumbles  12

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