then, there was applesauce

there was yogurt, made by the house with harold mcgee's own culture from india, now over 50 years old and still going strong. many of us are partial to the vanilla-flavoured variety although the vanilla is said to have an inhibitory effect on the culture. next to the vats of yogurt was a bowl of house-made applesauce, which carried with it a trace of the slightly resinous flavour of the winesap apples from which they were made. at dinner, there was a roughly-chopped salad of raw tomatoes, red onions, and cucumbers. the tomatoes have a ways to go before they're in season enough to explode with flavour, but the salad was excellent nonetheless. the meat and grill line looked different tonight because there were several slabs of whole roast beef tenderloin, perfectly cooked to a point between rare and medium-rare. they'd let the meat sit for long enough that the carving station wasn't awash in juices and each slice was a even, rosy pink through to the centre. next to the beef, what appeared to be an unusually large and angular pork loin turned out in fact to be a enormous slab of seared sushi-grade ahi tuna, rubbed with paprika. thin, garnet slices fell off the block and lay, improbably large and beautiful on my plate, napped with a honey teriyaki sauce and wasabi aioli. (is it an aioli if it doesn't contain, primarily, oil and garlic?) the tuna was meltingly tender, irreproachably fresh, and was completely wiped out before i could get seconds.