When the solicitous waiter in a fancy special occasion restaurant where you are having the chef's menu no less asks you how your last course was, are you supposed to automatically chirp "great!" or are you supposed to weigh in with a foodie critique? If the former, then why the charade of interaction?
I remember someone telling me once that the most annoying thing about being a potsmoker was that part of the transaction of buying it was to smoke a bowl with your dealer, when you truly have no desire to create anything other than an economic relationship with this person.
I supposed that having the chef twirling around the dining room is part of the customer service by which fancy restaurants distinguish themselves from other types of dining establishments. It's not one that I value, mostly because I'm confused about what role I'm supposed to play in this particular scenario.
At Ortolan the other night, we mixed it up: for the most part, I did the requisite chirping and mr. babe remained silent rather than overly-honestly express his true feelings about the heirloom tomato five-ways. But what do you want from someone who hates tomatoes, on principle? In any case, I only expressed displeasure over the caviar and cream and runny egg cooked in the shell in ash which was interesting at the top with the thick sweetness of the cream and the sharp salty tang of the caviar, but by the end of the egg was too too salty, grossly so in the sense of fully unrefined and overwhelmingly salty.
However, when I said I loved various courses, I meant it. All the courses were small--thank god, because we were full and trying to strategize how to pace ourselves after three--and different and surprising. The trend seems to be a conjunction of two things: to derail the expectations of common ingredients and to put different tastes together. That is, few dishes did not have some combination of delicately sweet and slightly bitter, such as the duck which was paired with a slice of peach and a peach glaze with the verbena emulsion.
Here is the full chef's menu. http://ortolanrestaurant.com/showmenu.php?id=1
It was wonderful to have our anniversary there: the ambiance creates the feeling of luxuriating in comfort and thoughtfulness--a lovely reflection of what being with Michael is most often like.
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2 comments:
yay, you're writing again! i never know what to say when they ask how the food is, either (although i'm usually not somewhere where the chef comes out...). my dad's policy has *always* been to provide constructive criticism, which was mildly mortifying to me when i was a teenager. but fine now. anyway.
jc and i went to a fabulous, fancy-shmancy place for our anniversary this year (l'espalier). it was soooo fun eating such amazing food - like an epiphany: "oh, THIS is how food's supposed to be." and then i got hooked watching a top chef marathon and now i totally wanna take a cooking class... but should finish the PhD first, i 'spose...
hi! that's fun. i did not have the sense that this is what food should be but more like this is what can be done with food...soup in a test tube, half of it emulsion, sure! a tomato parfait? surprisingly yummy! i also can't help but think of all the dishes, geez louise. i'm also thinking, b, you're already a great cook! but a class would be fun...probably after you defend would be good timing.
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