From the Ledge

Any legitimate, laminated-card carrying foodie will at some point in his or her life decide to make the pilgrimage to the nirvana, the apex, the Shangri-La, call it what you want, of American culinary greatness, Thomas Keller’s The French Laundry tucked away in the small, bucolic town of Yountville in Napa Valley, California.  A trip to The French Laundry is a singular experience for the food-obsessed, a combination culinary bar mitzvah/confirmation ritual, cattle branding, and pledge initiation – a rite of passage, a marker, an indication that one has indeed earned his or her foodie stripes.  So when I had the opportunity to dine at the restaurant during my recent trip to the wine country (with heartfelt thanks to my friends Dulce and Greg, who managed to get my reservation around the convoluted FL system!), I was on the road faster than anyone can say “bouillabaise”!  And The French Laundry experience was indeed quite the experience – dining as a civilized, leisurely, luxurious ritual; food as a vital, centrifugal life force.  I probably ate some of the best dishes I have ever eaten in my life in that one night two weeks ago at the restaurant (and more on that below), and there were mostly hits, very few misses, in the twelve course (including two amuse bouches) Chef’s tasting menu.  The service was impeccable. Yes, it was worth the trip, the expense, the hyperventilating.  But I do think I hyperventilated a little too much, since I wasn’t as blown away as I expected to be.  Although the dishes were excellent and sophisticated, the techniques superlative, and the ingredients top-caliber, I really didn’t think the menu had the risk-taking, the imagination, the redefinition, the capability to astound and flabbergast of, say, an Alinea, (which has recently overtaken FL in the 50 Best Restaurants in the World ranking, and, yes, just in case people forgot, Grant Achatz trained under Keller at FL). I will always take provocative over comfortable, and for this 21st century foodie, FL felt like an early 2000 artifact.  And for most people, that’s not a bad thing.

My college friend Raquel and I decided on two things early on:  we would not do the wine pairings so we could focus on the food (we started off with a glass of rose wine and then switched to non-alcoholic Sonoma county sparkling the rest of the night), and that we would order both of the selections for those courses with two options (so we could try everything on the Chef’s menu).  My first impression of the restaurant was that it was smaller than I thought it would be, and also a lot dimmer (hence the less-than-food-porn quality of the photos accompanying this post).  The design was like Town and Country French chateau, which was absolutely not my thing. Plus I couldn’t figure out why there was only one bathroom in the whole place (gosh, I wouldn’t want Amy Winehouse or Kate Moss or some other locked-bathroom-prone celebrity dining the same time I was).  But these were little wrinkles, easily waved away- we were there for the food. 

There were two amouse bouches:  first, one-bite pieces of puff pastry filled with aged gruyere cheese, light, airy, teasing; then, Keller’s signature cornets of salmon, wafer cones filled with smoked salmon, scallions, and cream cheese, sort of like an imaginative, playful take on lox and bagels- deliciously memorable, these cornets made you want for more. 

Then the first showstopper of the night came out:  a rich, luscious, enveloping “soup” of a cauliflower panna cota, pureed to a consistency resembling a down bedspread, with california sturgeon caviar and an oyster glaze.  The combination of the saltiness of the roe and the sweet, milky cauliflower was startling and heady (I thought this was probably how it felt to lie in those opium dens so prevalently depicted in 1930s Hollywood movies!)

Then delicious but pretty conventional appetizer courses were next:  a refreshing salad of heirloom tomatoes, avocado, cilantro shoots, yellow beet, young corn, and creme fraiche, so seasonally apt, and silky foie gras to be eaten with flaky toasted brioche from Keller’s Bouchon Bakery down the street, and a trio of salts.  Yes, salts.  Salt tastes like salt to me so I wasn’t really sure what the difference was between the Brittany salt, the “Jurassic” salt (there was some flummoxing hoohah about the salt coming from prehistoric caves. I was pretty impressed that the server kept a straight face, that’s what I call good employee training!), and (gasp!) salt from the Philippines, which Keller had dubbed “Ilocano” salt (from the Northern Philippine provinces).  This proud Filipino didn’t really understand what was so special about the Philippine salt and I scratched my head about the culinary value of these accoutrements as my jaded, world-travelled friend Raquel sniffed, “I didn’t really travel 45,000 miles from the Philippines to eat Filipino salt!”  Ha!

The next courses showcased a lovely, perfectly-seared fillet of kahala fish which was fleshy but not dense, served with squid, artichokes and a sexy arugula and saffron emulsion, a beautifully-plated dish that really didn’t tickle the imagination; as well as breaded frog legs with spinach, haricort verts, marcona almonds, capers, and a tangy piquillo pepper coulis.  I thought the frog legs were a tad underseasoned but marvelled at the combination of the ingredients, despite the fact I’ve seen many of them in various fine dining settings before.  Here’s a photo of the fish, clearly another highlight of the evening:

If I was to choose one course during the night that approximated for me the vision of The French Laundry experience that was knocking around my head prior to going there, it was the almost-divine, perfectly-cooked Maine Lobster tail with white asparagus, mizuna, and passionfruit mousseline.  It was luxurious, creative, astounding, delicate, perfectly calibrated.  I would never have thought of pairing lobster with passionfruit, and this was a knockout!  The lobster’s sweetness was delicately balanced by the sour-tangy-sweet fruit custard, which were then further enhanced by the semi-creaminess of the white asparagus.  I could have eaten three portions of this!  The dinner could have ended at this point, and I would have been very happy.

The next courses were the ones that I thought were the weakest of the night:  a well-cooked, but plain and almost pedestrian chicken thigh, elevated by the use of sunchokes, pine nuts, and a perplexing but tasty Brazilian bean called cuapuacu, which had an ethereal, coffee-like flavor; and a pretty outrageous pork dish made from pig head and cheeks, with all the fatty bits intact, breaded, then fried, and served with truffle sauce.  I though it was good for two bites, than I couldn’t go on because it was too rich, too fatty, too much like cinderblock settling into the depths of my stomach.  It was a pretty unsuccessful try, and also quite shockingly out-of-form, given the delicate hand in the previous courses.

Thank goodness for the beef course, which was again one of the highlights of the night.  A beautifully rare piece of beef, unapologetically, deliriously marbled, with a tender consistency bordering on the silky, from the the famous Snake River Farm, the most acclaimed of the American Wagyu purveyors, was paired with robust mushrooms, sweetish carrots, a surprisingly light bone marrow pudding, crispy potatoes, and a very sophisticated bordelaise sauce.  Biting into that beef was a spine-tingling experience, akin to that first time you had sex or your first memories of chocolate.  It was a dining experience that epitomized all definitions of pleasure.

By this time, I was truly ready to go…but, no, there was more!  The cheese course was good but unmemorable, and the three desserts, a nectarine sorbet served with a very welcome puffed quinoa, the chocolate gateau, and the lemon panna cotta with the strawberry consomme, were all well-done, but again, in my view, had been done, in various iterations, riffs, forms, combinations, in other fine dining restaurants I’d been to before.  Since I never say no to calories (ha!), I finished them all, but at that point nearly four hours since the beginning of the dinner, I really didn’t need to.  When the final course, the tower of mignardises (yes, I wanted a small plate but got a panic-inducing box of them instead) came, I was ready to climb into bed, my bed, Keller’s bed, any bed!

It was quite the culinary experience, yes, but I’m also not dying to go back soon.  I appreciate and value Keller’s and the restaurant’s contribution to the evolution and advancement of American dining and palettes, and it’s still a destination that all foodies should go to at least once in their lives.  In my humble opinion, though, there is so much more excitement and originality in contemporary American dining elsewhere, which should give Keller and his pioneering restaurant great pride for opening doors, cultivating tastes, and discovering talent.

Tags: The French Laundry