Food Porn 2: The Legend of Curly's Gold

I'm not normally the type to make New Year's resolutions, but this year I was overruled by my own body.  My gastrointestinal tract resolved that I should lose 10 pounds.  Or maybe it just decided to follow the lead of the locals and spend January on vacation.  Whatever the reason, for the first week of this year my body refused to digest any food.  I had to bail on the trip to Patagonia with Johnny and Steph, although spending 18 hours in the bathroom of a bus would probably have been a pretty funny story after I went through a few counselling sessions.  After seven days without a proper meal I had some catching up to do, so I made reservations for Mike and I at La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar.

We arrived before the doors had opened, and met a lovely Australian couple who were also waiting to get in.  We ended up sitting next to Jess(i?)e and Matt, who provided excellent company and were celebrating Matt's birthday.  The chef had previously worked at El Bulli, the Catalan shrine to molecular gastronomy that routinely tops lists of the best restaurants in the world.  La Vineria de Gualterio Bolivar serves only a set sixteen course tasting menu, which balloons to twenty courses if the person you are with doesn't eat seafood.  Take that, you stupid stomach!  Here are a few of the highlights:

The second appetizer plate.  The waitress was talking very fast, and switching between English, Spanish, and French, so I didn't understand all of the descriptions.  The spoon on the left was a slush ball of something on top of some other things.  The middle one was chicken strips on quinoa.  The final spoon held a croquette of liquid Parmesan, which tasted about how it sounds.

I believe this was called Gesundheit Salad

A perfectly poached egg wrapped in crispy pastry, with creamy goat cheese, truffles, and other stuff.

Smoky seaweed, pumpkin octopus ravioli, creamy pâté, crunchy soybean bits, the ubiquitous other stuff.  When hot water was added, this created a dish that all miso soups want to be when they grow up.

On the right, a 'truffle' of I forget.  On the left, a tiny jar of perfectly clear chicken soup.  Served with an absinthe spoon, for some reason.

Pork covered in some kind of foam, with apple gelatin and other stuff.  Mike: "This totally makes up for all of the seafood."

Dry dulce de leche cookie dough with a milky hot chocolate shot.  The first time I've ever made cookies in my mouth, and they turned out great.

There were several other dishes, including beef cheeks on quinoa souffle, a pineapple and Campari slush, a dessert with ice cream made from dry ice, you get the idea.  One of the better meals I've had, but it was a bit gruelling.  We were there for three and a half hours, and even though it was easily the most expensive restaurant we've been to in BA, it was also the only one without air conditioning.  By the time we paid the bill and burst out into the mercifully rainy night, it felt like we had run a marathon.