Eager diners queue up for brunch at M. Wells.
Part of me wanted to believe the closing of M. Wells—the critically acclaimed eatery run by Québécois chef, Hugue Dufour, and his wife, Sarah Obraitis—was a hoax. Perhaps Dufour—a man fond of gilding every dish from gazpacho to grilled cheese with foie gras like a gastronomic Willy Wonka—who’d raved about making a foie-enriched shwarma had yet another trick up his sleeve. And then one brunch he asked me to go on camera for NY1. And I knew it was no hoax.
My 15 seconds of fame consist mainly of railing against the diner’s landlord. Comments about how M. Wells revolutionized how I think about food, and, come to think of it foie gras, diners, and brunch, didn’t make it to air. Nor did concerns I voiced about how M. Wells’ new location could never be the same as the old. The truth is I could speak for hours about this incongruous deluxe diner hard by the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel.
I always order the same few things at conventional diners: eggs, burgers, breakfast, BLTs, and salads. M. Wells took the diner experience and blew it wide open for me and many others. You want foie with that egg sandwich? Check. Sweetbreads? Yep. Saddle of lamb in tahini sauce? OK. A gigantic burger to feed a small family? Why not.
There are three salads at M. Wells. For the better part of a year I ate only one: the excellent Caesar salad with smoked herring ($7). Only in the past few weeks have I tried the green salad ($6) made with a refreshing variety of herbs and a blue cheese salad ($9) with walnuts and apples. And only in the past few weeks have I begun to indulge in foie gras.
Hugue Dufour at Raclette & Friends one of the FareWells dinners
he's been holding before M. Wells shuts its doors next week.
I had been on the fence (mainly because of the $200 price tag) about attending the series of FareWells dinners, but I checked out Raclette & Friends two weeks ago. A few years ago I’d tried raclette, a Swiss variant on fondue that involves scraping a wedge of raclette cheese on top of sundry nibbles, including cornichons, bits of cauliflower, and charcuterie. The device used to melt the raclette looked a cross between a panini press and a waffle iron, a cheesy bake oven of sorts. The whole experience was somewhat anticlimactic. I knew Dufour’s raclette party would put it to shame. And it did.
Remembrance of things raclette.
Three wedges of cheese locked into a gizmos resembling a salon nail dryer were stationed along the diner’s counter. “We just bought them yesterday,” Dufour said of the devices each of which bore a label reading, “APPAREIL A RACLETTE l’ALPAGE.” As expected the items over which the cheese was scraped included potatoes, cauliflower and bread, but also creamy beef tongue, exquisite Caesar pad mushrooms, and superb ham and lomo from Sam Edwards of Surry, Va. I’m not sure how they do it in Switzerland, but the temptation to turn the plate into a Gallic nachos supreme was quite strong. I’m pretty sure that the gents who ordered tequila shots amid a crowd drinking rosé were feeling the bar snack vibe. Never I have eaten so much melted cheese in one sitting. It was such a surreal, satiating experience that I felt drunk when I got home even though I hadn’t touched a drop of the many wines poured that evening.
A brisk brunch business during the last days.
Next morning found me standing on the corner across from the Midtown Tunnel entrance. There was a line of diners—hipsters, first-timers, foodies, and families—all waiting to eat brunch. I had returned as much out of a sense of journalistic duty as one of fear. What if M. Wells never reopened? (This fear was engendered by hearing Jouney’s “Don’t Stop Believing” on multiple occasions during brunch and flashing back to the last episode of The Sopranos.) I would never have a chance to try their gravlax pie ($16). The dish had been the object of unrequited gastronomic desire since I’d read about it weeks ago. On every previous visit they’d been out of gravlax pie, largely due to its popularity and the curing time for gravlax. That morning I was in luck.
The gravlax pie in all its salmontastic glory.
When it was plopped down on the counter it was almost too pretty to eat. Slices of salmon were draped over a gigantic biscuit, the whole affair crowned with crème fraiche and drizzled with chive oil. Salmon roe was strewn about for good measure.
It remains one of the best things I’ve ever eaten. The gigantic warm biscuit—really more of a pot pie stuffed with dill and potatoes—was a perfect partner for the fish. I left a few bites of flaky crust and potato on the plate, but only because I’d overindulged in cheese the night before.
Peking duck patiently waits to be carved.
Another M. Wells specialty that I never tried until very recently was the Peking duck. “I’m not Chinese you know,” Dufour told me after the multicourse extravaganza. It started with a dish of whelks, clams, and crab in a spot-on gingery black bean sauce. And it ended with fried bananas, fortune cookies and foie gras. In between there was crispy duck skin and pancakes and a most excellent duck fried rice shot through with seaweed, crisp shallot, bonito, and succulent morsels of meat.
Tonight Dufour conjures up Peru by way of Belgium for a dinner he's calling Tintin et Le Temple du Soleil. He plans to make those foie gras tamales he spoke of long ago as well as papas a la huancaina—a rustic Peruvian potato dish in cheese sauce—also enriched with foie. Dufour is not Peruvian, though his wife’s family is. Wild llamas couldn't keep me away.
And to think they never put party tongue trotters on the menu.
“What are you gonna do?” World’s Fare Girl asked me about the closing of my favorite diner. “They don’t have 12-step groups for M. Wells do they?” What I will most likely do is lose some weight until they reopen nearby. My name is Joe and I’m an M. Wells’ addict. And if nobody has told you today, the foie loves you.
M. Wells Diner, 21-17 49th Ave., Long Island City, 718-425-6917
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