Culinary Institute of America - Hyde Park, New York
Eating alone can be sublime, especially if you’ve spent the day pimping your employer. That’s how I felt Tuesday night while dining solo at Katarina de Medici, one of the four restaurants on the CIA campus in New York’s Hudson River Valley . I came to the CIA to attend their career fair, and by 5:30, I was ready for their early bird special. Dinner at that hour –and by myself—for once sounded just peachy, as I had been on my feet since 7am, delivering nearly the identical song and dance to roughly 300 culinary students that stopped by my table. By dinner time (if you can call it that), I was painfully sick of my own voice, and I entered the Parma-yellow Italian restaurant without the hum-drum-attitude that normally accompanies me when I must dine alone.
Like most culinary schools, the campus restaurants are staffed entirely by the school’s students. It’s understandable and visible that no one prefers their rotation to the front-of-the-house. Nonetheless, without too many hiccups, my chef-turned-waiter kept me watered and happy on my barstool perch in front of the wood-burning oven where I could watch breaded tomatoes, fingerling potatoes, asparagus, and shrimp slide in and out of the heat.
With a glass of Prosecco, I started with a platter of prosciutto di parma , parmesano-reggiano, radishes, fava beans and watercress drizzled with balsamico. The prosciutto is sliced tracing-paper-thin with a fire engine red hand-crank slicer displayed in the middle of the dining room. Believe it or not, this slicer is so gorgeous, no one blinks.
The next course was a variation on the same theme, which I didn’t mind one bit: raw tuna dressed with capers, micro-greens, and olive oil. Heaven.
A glass of Nebbiola de Alba and I was ready for the main course. Gnocchi is up there on my list of all-time favorite Italian dishes, so I am a sucker and order it every time, even when I suspect it won’t be house-made. Can I just say that the CIA’s spinach gnocchi, presented in a smooth tomato sauce with a decadent dollop of herbed ricotta cheese in the center, were the lightest, most ethereal little pillows of heaven I’ve ever let melt in my mouth? I swear to you, they were worth the 17 hours of travel hell I endured to get to the Hudson River .
Yeah yeah, all of the above washed down with a chocolate molten cake and vanilla gelato, macchiato on the side. The meal had been too perfect: I wasn’t in the mood to experiment. (To be honest, I rarely am when it comes to dessert.) I devoured every morsel that was placed in front of me that night.
