yan can eat

Reinstoff

yancaneat — Fri, 08 Jul 2011 21:32:12 +0000

The Germans really seem to get the hospitality side of restaurant management. During each of my four meals, the service, in its own peculiar way, reflected the restaurant’s aspirations and felt not only appropriate but completely in synch with the quality and style of the cuisine.

Amador was absolutely transparent, with a hint of familiarity. Plates appear out of thin air and just as suddenly vanish into the ether. But all questions are immediately anticipated and any time you look up, you find someone kind, warm, and knowledgeable to tell you about the most minute details of a dish or offer up a spot-on wine pairing.

Bau (more on this soon, I promise) was opulent, deliberate, but still accessible. There was an unmistakable gravitas to each delivery but the formality was not stifling, and thankfully, not kitschy. Your table was the epicenter of the culinary universe – it felt regal in the best possible way. In Terrine, I was a friend. Anecdotes, smiles, and glasses of wine were freely exchanged. I departed with a warm handshake.

Reinstoff celebrates excess. But you have to find it before you can join the celebration. Turn onto tiny Schlegelstraße in Berlin Mitte and duck down an alley next to a jazz club in the middle of the block, to reach an unassuming courtyard. Look left, and find a metal and glass cube, near pitch-black, with hefty curtains obscuring the view inside. Pass go, collect $200.

I was greeted and whisked to a table along the back wall, from where I could observe the other patrons and admire the ultramodern room, awash in black and exposed metal. The lighting was sparse and dim, and only the stark white tablecloths broke through the monotony.

Chef Daniel Achilles offers two tasting menus, titled ‘quite near’ and ‘far away.’ The former presents modern riffs on traditional German cuisine, while the latter seems to have no reference, other than the modern cookery of Germany’s new wave of chefs. I chose the lengthier ‘far away’ tasting and, as I was dining alone, I accompanied it with the optional wine pairing. I now question the first choice, but not the second.

The wine pairing at Reinstoff worked as follows: a generously poured glass arrives a good ten minutes before the course it is meant to accompany. Finish that glass, and another is poured gratis. Finish the second pour, while enjoying your course, let’s say, and you get a third top-up. Considering that there are eight courses, plus copious bites at the beginning and at the end, depending on one’s constitution and self-restraint, it’s possible to not survive the meal, or at least not remember it.[1]

The amuses arrived en masse. The spoons on the left tile were beetroot, eel from the Müritz and garden cress at the top and egg, mustard and mache on the bottom. The beetroot cookie, a tad sweet, was layered with eel forcemeat and beet strips, with a few leaves of cress topping the stack. This was a tasty if overly familiar combination. The quail egg, coated in mustard, straddling a mache puree was a far better bite, with the sweet-hot mustard tamed by the egg yolk.

The tile on the right held a foie gras and chocolate bonbon titled duck liver, cacao and mango. It was superb and perfectly proportioned. The foie had a pronounced and refined flavor.

Last, a lollipop of vegetable muesli was paired with a piquant and salty yogurt. This, too, was very tasty and collectively the amuses left me excited for the meal to come.

The first proper course, brined tuna, peas and pomelo, proved yet again that technique cannot mask sub-par ingredients. The tuna, cured for too long in soy and draped with a sheet of gelatinized soy sauce, was overly ferric and seemed to have as much connective tissue as meat. The pea puree and fresh peas, while perfectly harmless by themselves, intensified the metallic flavor of the fish.

Langoustine poached in vanilla milk, cauliflower, almond cream and tonic fared better, but not by much. The langoustine tail was mushy, but at least the flavor of shellfish and vanilla was not jarring, and the creamy/crunchy contrast of cauliflower, almond cream, and marcona almonds was pleasant. I became more and more happy that I had a bottomless wine pairing.

The wine-fueled rollercoaster of a meal hit a peak with goose liver, spruce scions and goat quark cheese. The quark, rolled into balls and coated in spruce ash, melded well with cubes of an excellent foie torchon and the vegetal respite of some bitter greens. This was a truly great course, well dimensioned and thought out.

A fairly tasty tranche of plaice was lost amid the rampant acid of the pickled mushrooms and the saline fishiness of the bacalao puree (which was quite tasty by itself). The sweet/sour cherries provided a brief respite but were too few to contend with the overpowering flavors that dominated place from Brittany, cherries, cod fish paste and pickled mushrooms.

Another oddity, saddle of suckling pig, summer onion, seaweed and saffron stock, was dominated by a heavy-handed seaweed stock and too-raw summer onions. The saddle was wonderfully cooked and exceedingly tender but it didn’t stand a chance against the oceanic broth.

Basil sorbet, cucumber, elderflower and Gin proved an effective palate cleanser and a delicious, light, and fresh course in its own right. Hendrick’s Gin, floral and summery, was poured tableside over a cucumber sorbet and a perfect cucumber brunoise, making an edible cucumber gimlet. When I mentioned how much I enjoy Hendrick’s, the sommelier brought out a bottle of Monkey 47, a local Gin from the Black Forest. If you like Gin, and especially if you like your Gin on the floral side, seek out this excellent bottle. In keeping with the restaurant’s alcohol policy, the bottle was left on my table to drink at my leisure.

Venison from Fürstenberg, corn, avocado and BBQ was yet another disaster. The venison itself was lovely, well-cooked, and flavorful, but the tasteless, plasticky corn kernels and under-ripe to the point of being crunchy avocado, along with a cloying BBQ sauce, did the dish no favors. Another refill, please. Or perhaps some more Gin.

Having had my fill of chef Achilles’ modernity, I had requested to try the dessert from the ‘quite near’ menu and was rewarded with local wild berries, herb floss and raisin pancake ice cream. The mélange of berries, tart and sweet, was sauced with a berry puree and sweetened with cotton candy that was partially melted into the dish when the sauce was applied. The raisin-flecked ice cream tamed the berries’ tartness. Everything married wonderfully and each bite seemed in harmony.

Mignardises: Orange carrot Solero, Piña especial, Summer truffles and cereals, Mint chocolate

Mignardises also merited high marks, especially the orange and carrot Solero, an orange and carrot Popsicle effortlessly combined the bright acidity of the former with the vaguely grassy sweetness of the latter.

Perhaps I erred by choosing the more avant garde menu, but I thought a chef of Achilles’ stature could execute such modernity well. Maybe the menu suffered because it lacked a point of origin and instead seemed a progression of out-of-focus dishes. It seemed to offer a clean break from the cooking of the past but did not have a unifying style or theme; it was a progression of singles. Nothing grounded this cooking or gave it direction, and the cuisine was just grasping at modernist straws.

Whatever the reason for the flavor disconnect, I was taken aback by the proliferation of middling ingredients. Other than the foie and the venison, nothing stood out. Well, except of course for that wine pairing.

Restaurant Reinstoff
Edison Höfe Berlin Mitte
Schlegelstraße 26c
Berlin

[1] Or, as was the case for the couple seated to my left, it may turn a dinner out into a display of affection that borders on the pornographic.

Rattlesnake Club

yancaneat — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 21:22:47 +0000

I was hesitant about publishing this post. I don’t enjoy panning a meal, and do so even less when a restaurant is attempting to do right by high quality products.[1] In many cases, I prefer that the ordinary and less than ordinary experience remain unwritten about.

But this wasn’t supposed to be just a run of the mill restaurant. Rattlesnake holds itself out to be “Detroit’s finest dining experience,” featuring “the highest-quality sustainably harvested seasonal foods.” And, there being a dearth of information about Michigan restaurants and the Detroit area being my home for the next two years, I decided that a quick blow-by-blow of my meal here would be appropriate. If this really is the best Detroit can do, we should be alarmed.

Dinner here was an impromptu affair, and we called thirty minutes prior to our arrival to make sure Rattlesnake could accommodate us – we were told to just come on in. I was worried, this being a Friday evening. Of course, I shouldn’t have been – at least about getting seated – we were the only table in a restaurant that seats at least 100. In the hour and change that we were dining, only one more group arrived.

Oysters poached in a champagne beurre blanc were good enough – meaty and a touch sweet, but could have benefited from some acidity. The tobiko served only a decorative purpose.

The downward spiral began at course two. The braised pork belly was served room temp, and doused in a sickly sweet bbq sauce. The braise seemed capably executed but as the dish was not heated properly, the layers of fat remained unpleasantly thick and waxy. The overly oily slaw below was composed of seemingly equal parts cabbage and raw onion, which was so pungent as to make the salad unpleasant to eat.

We soldiered on and I was rewarded with four rather large tranches of fried lake perch straddling a base of mashed potatoes and crispy, oily potato strings. The citrus fennel sauce tasted only of butter and cream and, despite the copious capers, cried out for salt.

I was steered toward this dish by our waiter, who said it was one of the chef’s favorites. I would have never ordered it if I had known how thickly breaded the perch was – the menu described is as “pan crisped” but this appeared shallow-fried. Upsetting, really, as the perch was quite good: sweet-fleshed, moist, flavorful. But severely lacking in seasoning and surrounded by a thick batter that turned soggy almost immediately because the enormous stack of fish created so much steam and heat.

And why on earth would you serve, in such ample quantities, both mashed and fried potatoes as sides for a breaded fried fish? Never mind that the mash was ordinary and the potato strings greasy. My friend’s steak fared no better – little in the way of flavor, a cloying red wine reduction, the same mashed potatoes that clogged my plate, and a thick ring of drab grey meat surrounding a pink center on a steak ordered medium rare.

It appears, from my admittedly limited experience with restaurants in and around Detroit, that the dining populace values quantity over quality and demands its chefs produce innocuous looking, easily identifiable, high-fat dishes that serve to sate the appetite. Much of this food has nothing to offer – no new tastes, no sense of place. Worse, the chefs procure fine local ingredients only to reduce them to a fried, over-wrought mess.

But armed with Steve Plotnicki’s guide, and some local recommendations from the Godfather himself, I will continue to give Detroit the benefit of the doubt.

Rattlesnake Club
300 River Place
Detroit, MI 48207

[1] And less still when this restaurant is, I’m sure, struggling to tread water in the rubble of downtown Detroit.

Ledoyen

yancaneat — Tue, 10 May 2011 19:01:16 +0000

Ledoyen[1] is truly an anomaly. Paris’s oldest restaurant[2], this Grande Dame puts out some of the most inventive and modern food in the city, but serves it in gigantic portions, with no tasting menu offered. A 3-star chef at the helm of a fabled restaurant that rubs shoulders with the Petit Palais and other Champs de Lycee royalty, but shuns the spotlight and relegates himself to the kitchen. Modernity and tradition sometimes comingle and sometimes conflict but this tension produces otherworldly food. Two years following this meal, I can recall each dish, each flavor, at a moment’s notice.

A long, regal entryway enrobed in red carpet and enveloped in a wreath of Christmas lights afforded a truly grand entrance. We were led up to the second floor; the vast room couldn’t have sat more than thirty at enormous and overwhelmingly generously spaced tables.

Triangular chips were presented as we were perusing the menus[3]; a sharp, salty parmesan and a gorgeous blue potato, which were promptly eaten before they could be photographed.

A tile with four amuses bouche was presented as soon as our orders were taken. The first of the amuses was a gorgeous beet and smoked eel macaron. The salty, smoky and gelatinous eel in the center was surrounded by crunchy but wonderfully delicate beet cookies, which straddled the line between savory and sweet, playing foil to the smokiness of the eel. We were instructed to eat this first, straight off the tray, hence no photo.

Foie gras with passion fruit gelée and gingerbread crisps was next to go. The foie was light but incredibly creamy, nutty, and rich; its fattiness was offset by the tangy sweetness of the passion fruit. Proportioning was perfect and the gingerbread cookie provided textural contrast and subtly spiced the foie.

Then, a crunchy ball, flecked with parsley and filled with warm mushroom and garlic cream. A fascinating construction (notice the gold rings holding the parsley spheres in place). The garlic flavor was a bit too prominent at first but eventually yielded to the earthy creaminess of the mushrooms. Finally, a wooden spoon held spherified truffle water, which had a strong, musty truffle aroma but little in the way of actual truffle flavor[4].

I was underwhelmed by the breads – a bacon roll was marred by a too-tough crust and dense middle. The squid ink was worse, even denser, with a faint seafood flavor that I just didn’t get. Upsetting, because butter was by Jean Yves Bordier and I wanted a worthwhile vehicle for it[5].

Good as the initial bites were, the second amuse truly set the stage for the coming meal and subdued us into silence with its deliciousness and generosity. Le potage d’Adèle Pidou, revisité featured, from the bottom, a foie gras mousse, mushroom consommé, and avocado cream. Chunks of lobster were hidden between the layers, and a truffle-coated crunchy sphere, similar to the parsley sphere in the previous course, peeked out over the top.

The first spoonful caused us both to pause. This dish begged for a more contemplative approach – we prodded, trying small bites of the individual layers. The creamy foie mouse was highly aerated and light, while retaining a rich livery savour. The mushroom consommé was earthy, salty, umami-laden. The avocado, creamy and faintly vegetal. The truffle ball added only a crunchy texture. Interestingly, every proportional combination seemed to work, but my favorite featured a sparing use of the mushroom consommé, as the salinity proved overpowering in larger quantities. An arresting performance.

We followed Chuck’s advice in ordering our dishes, ordering five and having the kitchen plate each for two. And good thing we did, as portions were almost comically large; the half portions were the size of mains in most other restaurants. Despite dinner taking four-plus hours, we were dangerously full by the end, both because of the portion sizes and because of the abundance of amuses/desserts.

Our first course, Noix de Saint-Jacques “acidulée à cru/façon crispy,” seemed simple enough: raw Breton scallops[6] were sliced into coins the size of silver dollars (these specimens were enormous) and layered atop a bed of dried scallops. The saucing: a light, acidulated yogurt. Everything turned on the quality of the ingredient, and these scallops were the best I’ve had, and have yet to be outdone. Firm, meaty, incredibly sweet. The only thing I could do when i first tasted this dish was to laugh at how good it was.

Like the scallops, the complexity of chef Le Squer’s gnocchi belies the dish’s outward simplicity. Unlike the scallops, here, the technique is the star. The gnocchi are actually mini soufflés, nearly weightless. They sit in a soup of parmesan water and olive oil, which I thought way too green and peppery for this application. The generous blanket of Alba truffles didn’t disappoint in the flavor department.

Grosses langoustines Bretonnes, croustillantes, emulsion d’agrumes a l’ huile d’olive is a house signature dish and is featured on the three course ‘tasting menu.’ Like the scallops, it relies on superlative Breton ingredients, here a whole langoustine tail a la plancha and a ball of langoustine meat wrapped in phyllo and deftly fried, all gently accented with a citric olive oil emulsion. The langoustines were, in a word, perfect, and again I could do nothing but laugh after the first bite. If I could eat one dish before dying, it would be this[7].

We moved from sea to pasture with Ris de veau en brochette de bois de citronelle rissollée, jus d’herbes. The sweetbread, roasted on spears of lemongrass which perfumed the entire dish, is also featured on the tasting menu and, as with the langoustines, I can understand why. The overly generous portion (this half order was the size of a softball) was roasted to achieve a creamy center, laquered with soy, and given crunch by a sprinkling of dehydrated sweetbread[8]. The acidic herb sauce admirably cut through the richness and made the dish seem even lighter than it was. Another spectacular effort.

And then from pasture to the wild with Lièvre à la Royale. Lest you think that Le Squer relies solely on quality ingredients to inform his cooking, this dish exemplified a mastery of technique few can achieve. The wild hare (chew carefully, the hunter’s pellet may still be lodged in him) was taken off the bone in one piece and marinated for days in red wine. The flesh was then rolled around hare forcemeat and foie gras and poached in the same wine. The sauce featured the hare’s blood, thickened and enriched with a touch of bitter chocolate. Behind this marvel were quenelles of beet and celery root puree, and a pastry filled with the hare’s organ meat, a ferric accompaniment to the sweet flesh, creamy sauce, and rich foie gras. Somehow Le Squer managed to distill the taste of every braise my grandmother had ever made into one dish – this was magical.

I had looked forward to trying a proper French cheese board but, regrettably, cheeses at Ledoyen were a disappointment. I asked our server to put together a tasting of three cheeses for me and was brought three soft, oozing varietals, including an Époisses, a brie, and a third which I forget. They were paired with some lovely walnut bread but I thought the cheeses unremarkable, as much for the curious selection as for the quality. Perhaps I had simply exceeded my capacity for savory food.

But respite arrived in the form of dessert: Croquant de pamplemousse cuit et cru au citron vert. Candied grapefruit peel, grapefruit confit, grapefruit sorbet, layered between sugar sheets. The flavors sounded clear and loud, each layer highlighting a slightly different taste sensation inherent to grapefruit, with the top layer of raw supremes providing a reference back to the source.

There were pre and post-desserts: some capable mignardises, a coffee pot de crème, and a devastatingly tasty Kougin Amann [9]. There was an avalanche of caramels, both salty and sweet, which we took home in a lovely bespoke Ledoyen box. Chef Le Squer seems to believe in killing with kindness.

There were carts for everything – a champagne cart, a cheese cart (two, actually), a digestif cart. Dishes where wheeled in on carts. There was even a napkin cart – when one left the table, it was summoned to collect their napkin and, using tongs, get a fresh napkin from the cart, fold it, and place it on the table. Neither the old nor the new napkin was touched by human hands. In spite of all this fuss, service rarely felt overly formal. Our captain, Patrick, was witty, jovial, and well versed in chef Le Squer’s food, as well as food and cooking in general. He took great pride in describing the Lièvre à la Royale, only to try to dissuade us from ordering it because he believed the flavors would be tough on the American palate. Thankfully, we were not to be dissuaded. He spoke English fluently, as did the majority of the staff, and I heard him speaking Japanese to another table. I believe he knows a bit of Russian as well.

Top to bottom, the staff cares about the food and the experience. When my cheeses were brought out, an assistant sommelier practically sprinted to our table to offer me a glass of port to go with them, lest I, boorish foreigner, pollute my palate with the remnants of my Bordeaux.

There is a sense of whimsy and an unmistakable style to Le Squer’s food – it’s difficult to put into words, really, but his platings and dishes have a dream-like look to them. They would be instantly identifiable as his. Le Squer operates in shades – the emerald sauce beneath the sweetbreads transitions to the green-tinged brown of the protein, getting darker and more caramelized on top. So too with the langoustines and emulsion: shades of white-cream-pink, completely complimentary, and starkly contrasted by small stripes of green. The platings were other-worldly, magical, wondrous jewel boxes.

Most wonderful, I feel, is that every decision by Le Squer feels deliberate, purposeful, rehearsed. There is the sense that these recipes have been painstakingly refined and require a diner’s undivided attention. They challenge and reward the engaged eater[10]. Le Squer is a consummate technician but his machinations are transparent, taking a back seat to the flavors. Dishes are deceptively simple but neither the ingredients nor their preparations, at least during our meal, could conceivably be improved upon. The cuisine is the product of the singular vision of a master craftsman.

[1] I am heavily indebted to Chuck for recommending Ledoyen to me. It was at the time, and continues to be, the best meal of my life, with at least two dishes vying for the best bite of my life. In many ways, this blog germinated from the residue of this meal, which kindled my food obsession.

[2] Operating as a dining establishment since 1791 (but, alas, not continuously).

[3] If you arrive with a date, she will receive a menu without prices. Doyennes are not to be bothered with the financial trivialities.

[4] The self-encapsulated liquid spherification technique was first used in culinary applications by el bulli’s Ferran Adria. When a liquid is enriched with calcium chloride and submerged into an alignate bath (or enriched with alignate and submerged in calcium chloride), it begins to gel, from the outside in. The longer the submersion, the thicker and chewier the outside shell. More info on this technique can be found here.

[5] Apparently, some think it inappropriate to eat butter straight off the knife.

[6] Chef Le Squer hails from Brittany and loves to show off his local produce, including some of the most wonderful shellfish I’ve sampled anywhere.

[7] I am occasionally quick to indulge in hyperbole, but this dish deserves all the praise it gets. It was simply the best thing I have ever eaten.

[8] I was pleasantly surprised by chef Le Squer’s use of dehydration to flavor dishes with, seemingly, their own essences – the scallops and sweetbreads were both sprinkled with dehydrated versions of themselves, imbued with a saline umami crunch.

[9] This remains the single best pastry I’ve ever eaten.

[10] Or, like a diner at an adjacent table, you can insist on being served a green salad for an entrée and sliced fruit for dessert, despite this being late December.

The Sportsman

yancaneat — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:17:59 +0000

“Yes, of course four hours should be plenty of time to finish your meal and get back to the train station in order to catch the last train to London.” This soon-to-be infamous sentence marked the nascence of my meal at The Sportsman.

Many writings on chef Stephen Harris’ seaside pub romantically place it at the end of the world or at the end of civilization[1]. Actually, the lovely, quaintly wind-worn cottage is anchored a few dozen yards inland of the North Sea, on Faversham Road the near beautiful town of Seasalter. Quite romantic, actually, but more Manet than Gauguin. This historic oyster fishing community is a scant 60 miles east of London; an easy 90 minute drive or train ride. The restaurant is a 15 minute cab ride from the Favesham or Seasalter stations[2]. Certainly not inaccessible.

Dinner service, however, begins at 7:00 at the earliest and the last train to London departs the nearest station at around 11:15 or so, so you can understand the nature of my concern in making a reservation for a rather lengthy tasting menu.

I would be remiss not to highlight, as all before me have done, chef Harris’ dual passions: local ingredients and house-made everything, inasmuch as it’s possible. His pigs are fed local apples and dinner scraps. He harvests seaweed and salt from marshes visible out of the windows of his pub. He churns the butters and bakes the breads[3]. Of course, the vegetables, fish, and meats are sourced from small farmers in surrounding towns, and the quality of much of the produce is quite high (some extraordinarily so). It seems that only the cheeses, wines, and diners travel some distance to get here.

Chef Harris offers all comers a daily changing menu, written out on a large chalkboard right next to a board listing the day’s wine selections[4]. Those ordering in advance and dining on weekdays can request a tasting menu that will differ substantially from the days a la carte options. I went the tasting route, which at £55 per person, has to be one of the greatest values in England.

Lightly pickled herring sat proudly atop a buttery rye bread throne – the world’s tastiest lollipop, as far as I’m concerned. Alongside, a sweet and gentle whole grain mustard, a suitable counterpoint to unbelievably tasty pork scratchings (what every chicharone should aspire to). Elusively simple, but only because the proportioning was dead on and the execution was faultless.

Next, oysters, in a celebration of Seasalter tradition, effortlessly brought into the 21^st century. A plump, perfectly trimmed fellow waddled in impossibly rich homemade cream and sweet/sour gooseberry granite. One rewarding bite underlined and accentuated the oyster’s inherent sweetness.

Impressed as I was by the previous courses, bread service really blew me away. A country bread, open crumb and craggy crust; soda bread, yeasty, dense, sweet, like solidified beer; and bar none the best focaccia I’ve ever had, flecked with onion and rosemary, dripping with olive oil, and sporting a deep golden crust. Add house churned salted butter, and get ready to ask for seconds.

Chef Harris is as much imitator as he is innovator, quite fond of riffing on dishes of his contemporaries[5]. His Salmagundi, a name borrowed from a 17^th Century British recipe, is an homage to Michel Bras’ Gargouillou, with a concurrent nod toward David Kinch’s Into the Vegetable Garden, itself a Gargouillou adaptation.

Local vegetables, cooked and raw, surround a sous vide duck egg. The salad is accentuated by a light dressing and a vegetable ‘soil’ that adds a pleasant nutty crunch to each bite. The carrots, peas, and zucchini were superb but some of the vegetables were cooked more than I would have liked and rendered too pliable. This was a competent dish, but some of the vegetables were merely good and the composition relied too much on the richness of the duck egg to round out its flavor.

Chef Harris is justifiably proud of the fishermen he works with, and the slip sole with seaweed butter he served next was one of the better pieces of fish I’ve had – shockingly firm, almost disconcertingly so at first, but with a deep, lingering sweetness. The seaweed butter added marshy salinity to the mix and further enhanced the sweet fish. This was spectacular.

Up next, we sampled the chef’s foray into cured meats – an 18 month aged ham, made from Monkshill Farms white pigs that were fed scraps from the kitchen, apples, and whatever else was in season. While the ham was quite good, it still felt a bit rough around the edges – the fat, in particular, had excellent flavor but the meat was on the dry side and quite salty. Chef Harris has only been curing the hams since 2004, so I have no doubt that he will continue to refine his process and the product will improve with time.

And then a real standout – a generous serving of local lobster, (a half lobster per person) robed in a deep, rich lobster sauce, was draped over a squash blossom stuffed with zucchini squash and onions. The lobster was consummately prepared (read, very lightly cooked) and flavorful. The sauce, savory-sweet. The squash blossom stuffing mirrored the sweetness and the texture of the lobster. Here again, what seemed effortless simplicity revealed deft cooking and sourcing.

Braised and breaded/fried lamb belly with mint sauce reminded that lamb and mint actually do make for a natural flavor pairing: rich and gamy with fresh and green.

We followed up the belly with a more comprehensive tasting of the lamb: braised shoulder, aggressively crisped on top, propped up a rib chop, medium rare edge to edge. The shoulder was richly flavored while the chop was almost sweet by comparison. The lambs feed in the salt marshes by the coast, so their flesh takes on that saline flavor.

Chef Harris’ brother, Philip, who runs the wine program, tends bar, and helps with the front of the house, came out to say hello. We chatted at length amid glasses of wine and felt as welcome as family thanks to Philip’s generosity and kindness.

We talked and sipped as dessert came and went – a stunning mélange of local berries, sweet as summer, sauced with a berry reduction and served in a dark chocolate tuile. Each fruit was exemplary and I can easily say that I’ve never had better.

The meal concluded with a generous quartet of mignardises, including a capable berry financier and a refreshing rhubarb sorbet.

You’d be surprised how quickly time passes when you’re surrounded by wonderful company and terrific food. We certainly were when, in the middle of dessert, we realized that nearly four hours had elapsed since we were warmly greeted at the Sportsman’s door and the last train to London was leaving in a scant 30 minutes. Thankfully, a cab could get here quickly enough to get us to the train station in time[6].

The ride back afforded ample time to ponder my meal, and its effect on me has only increased with memory. I’m so thoroughly compelled by The Sportsman because it’s a restaurant that can only exist in Seasalter. It would be destroyed through reproduction, completely reformulated in relocation. And Chef Harris seems acutely aware of this: he asks, what would Serrano ham taste like if it was made using the best that England has to offer? How does a British garden or a local oyster best translate to the plate? And then, he serves his guests the answers. And if the answers aren’t up to snuff, he will rethink the formula until he can express the best of Seasalter.

I think the true draw, the real romanticizing notion, is that The Sportsman is in a class of one: a chef striving to bring the best out of himself in order to showcase the best his corner of the world can offer.

The Sportsman
Favesham Road, Seasalter
Whitstable, Kent, UK

[1] And, indeed, this can be a great starting point for an extended metaphor about the primal directness of chef Harris’ cooking, but we won’t go there.

[2] Or a brisk two-hour walk, as I learned the hard way when getting in. Google maps is not to be trusted!

[3] And did I mention that Harris is entirely self-taught? A self-taught chef opening an idiosyncratic restaurant in an idyllic hamlet and doing everything his way. How has Lifetime not optioned this yet?

[4] Mostly French, mostly inexpensive, and quite well-chosen.

[5] Unlike some chefs, he readily gives credit where credit’s due and openly divulges the inspiration behind his dishes.

[6] Although there seem to be some lovely bed and breakfasts in Seasalter, I don’t imagine I would have had much luck booking a same day room at 11pm, and a night on the beach, while surely memorable, would not have been the ideal ending to this story.

Manresa

yancaneat — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:30:18 +0000

Long enough have I tried in vain to write a post on my favorite restaurant in the United States. Sometimes, words fail me; other times, it is memory. Most always, the rather dim dining room prevents my mediocre camera from adequately capturing the gorgeously nuanced cuisine on the plate.

But no more. My recent birthday meal with a pair of good friends was a blogging softball, a good way to segue into the glut of Manresa meals. The photos turned out decent throughout and I forgot to get a copy of the menu, allowing me to leave dish descriptions only as lengthy as my quickly fading memory allows[1].

I decided to save the history and context for a later post. Let’s just say that I (among others) believe Manresa squarely belongs in any conversation about best restaurant in the US[2] and that chef Kinch’s biodynamic farm, which supplies all of Manresa’s vegetables and is fertilized by the restaurant’s compost, is an important ideological contribution to modern cuisine.

Diners are offered a four course menu with choices or a set daily changing tasting menu[3] that runs fifteen or more courses. I always allow chef Kinch to cook and have never been disappointed.

The first course, one of two that never leaves the menu, highlights chef Kinch’s whimsical approach to cooking: black olive – red pepper plays with the diner’s perception and expectations. You see what looks like chocolate and berry but you get black olive madeleines and red pepper pate de fruits. The expected familiarity of chocolate and fruit is replaced by a much different, more savory sweetness from the olive cookie and a herby, vegetal sweetness from the jelly.

Citrus was at the fore of the next course: pristine Mandarin segments, meticulously peeled, robed in a Jasmine tea jelly and dressed with what tasted like Douglas fir. The woodsy fir and shockingly tart mandarins made for a novel and surprisingly complimentary paring, cooled and sweetened by the jasmine tea jelly. The nuance and cleverness of this dish are revelatory[4].

An elemental oyster, barely cooked and reintroduced into its own jellied liquor, was simply garnished with seaweed. The brininess of the sea.

Foie gras and cumin seed caramel, an incredibly smooth and light foie gras flan topped with caramel and flavored with cumin, was better than I remembered, with the salinity and sweetness now perfectly proportioned. Peppery, lemony mache did well to cut the dish’s sweet richness.

Giant clam and potato in shellfish broth. The sweetness of the sea.

Going still deeper into the sea, chef Kinch has, over the years, come closer and closer to perfecting his bonito butter, a slightly foamed butter sauce infused with the concentrated umami of dried bonito and rounded out by the nuttiness of toasted seeds. Here, it dialed up the inherent saline flavors of plump, unctuous octopus and sweet Dungeness crab.

Into the vegetable garden is Manresa’s calling card and perfect showcase for the brilliant produce supplied by Kinch’s biodynamic farm[5]. This is Michel Bras’ famous gargouillou transplanted in both spirit and execution to the California coast.

Anywhere from 30 to 60 vegetables, some cooked, some raw, and each cooked separately, are painstakingly plated and garnished with a foam of their cooking juices and a ‘soil’ made from dehydrated vegetables and beet juice. Each ingredient is picked the day it’s used and never sees the inside of a refrigerator. The composition changes every day depending on the harvest. Each bite is an exploration, a marvel at how many different tastes can exist in two nearly identical leaves, how strongly and purely a vegetable can taste of itself.

Stewed chestnuts and abalone was a brand new dish and still in the development phase – creamy bits of chestnut (a bit too chalky, i thought) were paired with visually similar bits of tender, meaty abalone that was finished with butter and lemon juice. Dabs of avocado mousse lent the dish their vegetal creaminess. The acidity was very welcome and the dish could have benefited from more of it, but the richness, abetted by a topping of milk skin, was pleasant after the austerity of the previous course. I also thought that the proportioning was off – too much chestnut.

Seared monkfish was served in a bone marrow and onion sauce and paired with a quenelle of chervil cream. This sauce is also a house specialty and, I think, as brilliant as the bonito butter. Each bite is rich and sweet, but with a pleasant acid backbone. Then you get a whole different kind of unctuous lactic sweetness from the chervil cream. These bracing flavors make the fish taste more delicate and light, but don’t obfuscate its flavor. A menu staple, whichever fish this dish implements, (the cod cheek version is my favorite) the quality of the protein is second to none.

The squab at Manresa is always first-rate and this was no exception. A sous vide and seared breast, ferric and rich, straddles a sweet, crunchy confit leg. This version was sauced with a jus enriched with black truffle flecks and matched with a croquette of mashed potato and truffle. The truffle flavor was, unfortunately, rather mild but the pigeon itself was of such quality and so consummately prepared that it really needed nothing.

Most every one of my Manresa meals had ended with lamb,[6] but this time we finished with veal and it was quite possibly, the best dish of the meal. Kinch’s take on vitello tonnato was as delicious as it was brilliant. A rosy roasted rack of veal was sauced with a bonito cream, whose umami tang upped the meat flavor of the mild mannered cut. This preparation turned the cut into the best of all worlds: tender and milky yet meaty and deeply flavored. There were onions, brussels sprout leaves, baby turnips, and veal jus. Everything had a place and a purpose. An appropriate summary of chef Kinch’s cooking.

Pre-dessert: flavors of lychee and rose. Refreshing.

The main dessert brought citrus back to the forefront: a velvety cheesecake served as a vehicle for supremes of different citrus fruits. This is exactly the type of dessert I like, fresh and light.

I’m less enamored by chocolate than I am by fruity and acidic desserts, but my futuristic/primal chocolate orb birthday cake was very enjoyable. A shiny, smooth chocolate coating enrobed a rich ganache; a few bites went quite a long way.

The meal’s ending mirrors its beginning and closes the loop on the meal: madeleines and pate de fruits; but this time, the cookie really is chocolate and the candy really is strawberry. And just when you think the meal has ended, manager Michael Kean sees you out and says goodbye holding a giant glass jar of house-made salted caramels. Take as many as you feel etiquette allows (I have problems following this advice). They are spectacular.

I’ll table the effusive praise for the precision and novelty of the cooking, and wait to wax poetic about Manresa’s importance to local and national dining, as well as to food ethics and practices. But I do think that everyone who believes that food can serve more than just a nutritive purpose owes a visit to the kitchen and garden of David Kinch.

Manresa
320 Village Lane
Los Gatos, CA

[1] Dish names are not official unless italicized.

[2] Until my recent meal at Alinea, it was number one on my list.

[3] Following the restaurant’s recent renovations (which I haven’t seen) which expanded the dining room and added a full bar, diners can now select a five course menu with choices in each course or the surprise tasting.

[4] I was served this dish during my first visit and initially thought, what a rip-off! Three citrus segments? The first bite proved me wrong.

[5] Kinch’s explanation of this dish provides a perfect visual: holding a mirror to the garden.

[6] Manresa serves some of the best, if not the best, lamb I had ever had.