Aldered States
The Gastropub Version of wd~50

... And here you were thinking you were going to go all the way through March without even one bowl of deconstructed oxtail stew.

Silly.

Pull up a chair at Alder, a mad scientist’s lair of an East Village gastropub from Wylie Dufresne, opening Thursday.

Wylie’s a legend. Started wd~50. One of the dons of molecular gastronomy. You know this. Well, this place is what happens when he sets his sights on the neighborhood watering hole.

What that means for you: post-work cocktails made with dubiously sourced Iranian berries. Deep conversations over plates of purple cheese. Lengthy casual-date discussions about a Caesar salad that’s been converted to sushi. The pervasive sense of Inception-like blown-mind-ness that comes from finding out the oyster crackers in your clam chowder are made out of oysters. Basically, an emotional roller coaster of confusion and delight.

So here’s how it’ll go: you’ll show up with someone who occasionally says stuff like “Wouldn’t it be cool if cheese was purple?” Breeze past the wrought-iron bar on your left. Take a look at the ceiling—looks like a wave made out of old fence posts. And hey, that’s what it is. Grab one of those two-tops beyond the bar and procure some Chinese-sausage pigs in a blanket and pine-infused rum.

You’d pine-infuse your whole world if you could.