The Challenge of Dining

The Challenge – Restaurant at Meadowood – St. Helena, CA

The most memorable mignardise that I shall ever taste was served on June 15, 2011 by Chef Christopher Kostow, the inspired and mischievous chef of the Michelin Three Star restaurant at the ultra-luxe Meadowood resort in St. Helena, California. One does not image that a chef cooking at a resort that might easily get away with a Cal-Ital version of Surf’n’Turf would serve a “sweet” that might as easily been a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. This tiny bite was a slight Oreo-like cookie (so slight that I didn’t even think to take a photo) with a mint filling. But what a mint-filling! In most instances a mint filling is little more than a sugar delivery system. But suppose one excised all sugar. The innocent, dream cookie was a mouthful of Scope. Pure, unabridged mintiness.

I have often wondered, even speculated in print, whether dishes, like sculptures, need to be welcoming to be artistic. Today I realize that even at the highest of the high-end resorts, at least one chef will utter uh-uh. Admittedly of the fourteen dishes served only two (an amuse and a mignardise) were challenging. But still the gesture reflected the subtle rebalancing of the relationship between chef and diner. And I was proud to have been a victim.

Both the décor – a high-ceiling, open space – and the service – very cheery, slightly nervy - was as one expected at a top Left Coast restaurant. Everything polished, wooden, white and light.

The first amuse was as precious as could be: a small crackly pillow filled with liquid goat cheese, garnished with a tiny flower from the restaurant’s garden. This latter was to be a theme of the evening; we almost ate a bouquet. The bite was luxuriant, because of its jewel-like quality, and it was surely a mouth opener.

Amuse followed amuse. The second dish, equally memorable, contained a few micro-carrots and radishes hidden in a snow drift of fromage blanc ice. I have never seen a dish to compare, and had the vegetables been any smaller they would have had to been served with a magnifying glass. The dish, only a few bites, was quite ingenious. It was a creation unlike any other.



Geoduck clams in beer batter, wrapped in lettuce with lemon zest and served on bread crumbs, was Amuse 3.0. Less showy than the ice, it was simple and delicious.



The final amuse was another poke in the eye: Goat yogurt custard with salty pickled plum (Japanese umeboshi) with nut rocks and shiso. When I tasted it I was convinced that some poor ill-starred stage on her final day in the industry had dropped a shaker of salt in the mix. The dish was on the edge of inedibility, and for several hours I felt great compassion for Chef Kostow. He was the star chef at a RESORT for chrissake! The plating was so perfect that it was a crime that the dish tasted so. Finally after several delightful dishes I inquired about the misbegotten plums, only to be assured – and assured several times! – that the taste was quite intentional. It was, our server asserted, designed to awaken our tongue. No salt had been added, it was all the salted plum. But for me, as with the later mint cookie, it raised the issue of whether food needed to be delicious to be worth serving. Richard Serra’s sculptures on the plate. The umeboshi certainly made me sit up, take notice, and beg for relief. It revealed that Kostow is nothing if not brave, but I’m grateful that it was only in the freebies – the amuse and the mignardises - that he tested us.



The first dish of the nine-course tasting menu was an artistically displayed Geoduck Clam Grilled over Grape Wood with Avocado, Osetra Caviar, and Shaved Almond. Served on a slab of wood taken from a wine carton, it was a smooth and elegant presentation. While the dish had the modernist foible of lacking a true center, the components were beautifully prepared, especially the geoduck reprise.



The second offering was the flavorful star of the night: Foie Gras Enrobed in Licorice with Wild Fennel, Glazed Pickled Cherries and Black Walnuts. I have lost some enthusiasm for foie gras, often used to demonstrate that the meal was worth its price, but thanks to the licorice this was a superb use of the duck’s liver, reminiscent of a salmon and licorice dish once served at the Fat Duck. The slightly bitter licorice cut through the unctuousness of the foie gras. It was a truly distinguished dish.



The third plate was a composition of Cucumbers of Sea and Land with Borage, Sorrels, and Frozen Herbs. Given the dangers of cooking with sea cucumbers, the texture was spot on, and, as I prepare to leave California, it reminds me of how much I will miss the bounty of Bay Area farms.



Live Scallop Roasted in its Shell with Caraway, Seaweed, and Cauliflower was brought to table covered by the top shell, removed with a dramatic flourish. The scallop and accompaniments were matched to excellent effect. Kostow has a gift for understanding which flavors, colors, and shapes match. The caraway was a wry addition.





I have recently noticed that California chefs often select duck for their big protein. It is not that they have used the liver and do not wish the rest of the bird to go to waste. But duck has a gaminess that chicken lacks and a lightness of being that one doesn’t find in cow. Chef Kostow served his duck (breast and confit) rubbed with Chermoula spices (a North African spice marinate, often including lemon, pepper, cumin, and garlic) with Raw Rhubarb, Mustard Seeds, and Celery Leaf. The dish was beautifully presented and tasty, although I felt that it was less distinctive than some of his other creations.



Tête de Porc was quite a surprise, given that it was served on a tasting menu at a prime resort. Chef Kostow should be grateful that he has all of those Michelin stars to protect him. Not many chefs are willing to serve pig’s ear, head cheese, brined tongue, and pork cheek to well-heeled diners (along with peas, smoked potato and horseradish). Still fewer would get away with it. But it truly was a brilliant modernist dish with each component adding the proper texture. What was chewy was never too chewy. The display, reminiscent of the geoduck clams – a horizontal culinary poem – was a display of robust genius.



Our cheese course (Le Jeune Austise, a Verbena ash cheese from the Loire) was served with textures of Apricot and dashes of Sassafras Honey. As a break, it was very pleasurable.



As a palate cleanser we were served Rose Sorbet with fresh botanicals and an elderflower veil. The mixture of rose and elderflower was inspired, and again it was beautifully composed.



With some brio (and Chef Kostow is filled with brio), dessert was named “To Quicken the Heart”: flavors of umami, red cedar, and butter popcorn, and brown butter dacquoise. While the cedar might have been more pronounced, it was an impressive sweet that edged toward a very high-end modernist pudding.



And then among the mignardises was the mint cookie.

Meadowood is one of the most illustrious American restaurants. Of the Bay Area restaurants it holds it own with French Laundry, Coi, and Manresa: each a renowned culinary treasure. To think that I almost missed Meadowood, imagining that it might be resort dining at its best, but Chef Kostow is up to something else: creating a distinctively Californian, distinctively modern, and distinctively challenging cuisine. It is a triumph.

The Restaurant at Meadowood
900 Meadowood Lane
St. Helena, CA 94574
800-458-8080
http://www.meadowood.com/wine-and-cuisine/the-restaurant/

Mlle. Proust in Cow Hollow - Atelier Crenn – San Francisco

Often young chefs find a horsey-style and ride it, but not so Dominique Crenn who is working with flair to harness her own vision. She has been in the industry for some 23 years, and perhaps “young” is a matter less of chronology than the fact that she only reached wide gastronomic notice in 2008 when she became chef at San Francisco’s Luce, received a Michelin star, and was named Esquire’s chef of the year. She has since triumphed on Iron Chef, which might or might not testify to her vision, but certainly to her culinary chops.

Although she had worked with Jeremiah Tower at Stars according to her bio, she does not have the golden resume of some colleagues. Perhaps she is not self-taught, but she is not a sponge of others’ visions. This past year, Crenn branched out on her own, opening Atelier Crenn, a workshop for her own “Poetic Culinaria.” For those who hope that their chef is not only a creator of the idea of dishes, but also an overseer. She is a working chef, working the kitchen and the dining room both. Perhaps in a few years, this will not be so, but it is clear that neither she nor her food is set in amber. Having a chef visit one’s table is, perhaps, worth a third of a star alone.

Even if her culinary history does not reveal many mentors, she is a public figure with a biography. Crenn is apparently the adopted daughter of a prominent French politician, although I have been unable to discover which one (one hopes not the other Dominique: the ill-starred Strauss-Kahn). She was raised in Versailles, and after her mother took ill when she was nine, she determined to cook for the family. She and her papa and his friend, a prominent food critic, would visit the high-end boîtes of Paris. Much of her professional cooking has been in California, particularly in the Bay Area. She is edging ever closer to becoming a celebrity chef, and one of the relatively few female chefs who are in serious and sustained dialogue with modernist cuisine.

The menu includes a moving (and somewhat ambiguous) letter to her father, talking about pain and sun, surf and sweat. As with so much poetry, readers have much to read in, but one can hardly imagine a male chef making the claim that his cuisine is such a personal and private expression, a way of reliving the past, whether troubled or happy.

Ultimately reviews are about the food. Critics are often asked, reasonably, how good was it? Asking that of Crenn is a bit like asking that of, say, Eva Hesse or Robert Rauschenberg: they don’t easily fit on a 30-point scale. They are important artists with a vision that might or might not appeal and techniques that might or might not be proficient. The most obvious limitation of Crenn (and for that matter Rauschenberg) is that her dishes are not noted for their precision. If you admire Thomas Keller’s perfection on a plate, this falls short of that standard. Perhaps Crenn doesn’t have the staff, but I think she doesn’t have the desire. Memory doesn’t work like that. She is attempting to produce remembrance and reverie. Whether she succeeds is as much a function of the diner as of the cook.

We four diners ordered all eight of the dishes on the savory menu (all the photos are to be found on my Flickr account page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/52391789@N00/with/5796811013/. But I realized that having a bite didn’t do justice to a plate that was designed to be savored and to be considered. So I focus on the dishes that I ordered.

We began with a quite lovely and evocative amuse: a spoonful of freeze-dried split pea soup, a bloody-dried beet “kiss,” an intense bit of fungal broth, and an non-edible boulder. It was quite a stunning composition: possibly Freudian, but perhaps freeze-dried split pea soup is simply freeze-dried split pea soup. The consommé was properly intense, the beet was deeply flavored – a root with a zing. The bright freeze dried pea soup didn’t wow my tongue. The crumbly texture added little to the enjoyment of the flavor, but distracted a bit.



My opening course (diners can choose any three dishes from the savory portion of the menu) was a “Walk in the Forest,” a composition of textures and aromas of the wild. I imagined that it was going to be similar to David Kinch’s iconic “Into the Vegetable Garden” salad, a bowl of local surprises. It wasn’t quite. The plate was coated with a pine paste (a surprisingly sticky and sweet paste, more keeping with dessert), covered with various forms of mushrooms, the raw and the cooked and the pickled: a delicious black trumpet mushroom paper, picked and pickled morels, champignons, added were hazelnuts, chestnuts, tiny lettuces, toasted pumpernickel, and sorrel oil. I was glad to have selected the dish and I surely will remember it, but I don’t quite know what to make of it. As a culinary matter, it was somewhat too sweet and too pickled (Crenn seems to enjoy the tang of pickling). The plate was remarkably creative as an idea, and just a bit off as culinary practice.



My second plate was poetically entitled, “The Sea, An Interpretation of Aquatic Flavors: Mussels, Oysters, and Arctic Char.” As I have previously suggested, the modernist style of dessert is to present the diner with a mix of preparations. The Sea, not so sweet as the previous dish, had this same decentered quality. Crenn prepared abalone, smoked oyster, char, mussels, squid ink meringue, and dehydrated lemon foam. It was quite charming in its ingredients and preparations and beautiful in its presentation. However, not having lived Crenn’s life, I wondered about the poetic imagery of the dehydrated foam. What might it signify? Still, it was a very worthy dish: a collection of satisfactions.



My main protein was more standard: Duck with crispy skin, spring garlic, strawberry, rhubarb and smoked buckwheat. I recently ate a magnificent duck entree at Coi; Crenn’s was more exuberant and less precise. Still, it was an excellent use of big protein. I particularly admired how she sprinkled toasted buckwheat on the plate as if buckwheat was salt. It stood in contrast to Patterson’s carefully composed accompaniment of radish and wheatberries. Crenn’s duck was a special preparation, well within the modernist canon.



Finally dessert (from pastry chef Juan Contreras) was a witty trompe l’oeil: a carrot cake with spring pea cream. The joke was that the cake was within the hunky frosted “carrot” with tiny carrots and frozen peas as accompaniments. Perhaps the cake itself tasted no better than a routine carrot cake and the cream was more clever than wondrous, but still it was a pleasurable ending to a most distinctive meal.



Michael Bauer, the lead critic at the San Francisco Chronicle, awarded Atelier Crenn a disappointing two-and-a-half stars in April, complaining not about ideas, but execution (and an average wine list). My meal (and those of my companions) in June deserved more credit, even if the cooking of ingredients is not quite at the level of the best of the San Francisco restaurants. Still, when a chef is still at work in the kitchen and the ideas are bubbling and bouncing, Atelier Crenn stands a good chance of being a better restaurant in December than it was in June. Even now, it is a restaurant that is always thought-provoking and vibrant. Chef Crenn, trying to capture her past and to share it, has a distinctive, potentially influential, gastronomic voice even if not all the songs are lullabies.

Atelier Crenn
3127 Fillmore Street (at Filbert)
San Francisco
415-440-0460
http://www.ateliercrenn.com

A Night of Sparkling Forage – Coi – San Francisco

I begin my sermon by reciting the eleven (plus two) course tasting menu at Coi in full, chef Daniel Patterson’s own record of a virtuoso meal: cracker, beet rose, clam, tart, crayfish, asparagus, allium, morel, duck, carrot/coffee, strawberry, unrefined sugar, chocolate paper. This is almost a haiku. Talk about letting your dishes do the talking!

In the fall I dined at Coi, and had a sterling meal. Some great courses, some just missing the mark. The evening made me wish to return, and I waited until shoots and leaves began to appear in the woods and fields and streams and tidal pools of Northern California. Along with Copenhagen’s Noma, Coi is labeled an outpost of the “New Naturalism” – the desire to create gastronomic wonders with found ingredients, foraged food. In practice it owes much to farm-to-table gastronomy. Chef Patterson likes to source his ingredients from within 300 miles. I don’t mind this conceit, which serves mostly to focus the mind of a chef who might otherwise have too many choices: placing limits on Culinary Future Shock.

We were informed that we would receive a list of dishes as we left (ahem!), and my notes were not as elaborate as they might have been, but I did jot here and there. But these dishes deserve perfection in description as well as perfection in composition. In the former case, the words will at times cry out for errata. I am abashed and you will be, at times, misguided. So it is.

The dinner was bookended with two crackers: a savory one and a chocolate one (described as chocolate paper). While neither was a remarkable contribution in itself, they did turn the evening into a gastronomic sandwich.

The first substantial course was deeply remarkable. One of the first garnishes that an aspiring cooking student is taught is to take a peeler and circle a tomato, skinning it. This slight slight-of-hand produces a tomato rose (even I can perform the task). Naïve diners are startled and impressed. Our first course, played on this naivety, as Chef Patterson created a beet rose with each petal separately carved. This floral sculpture was set upon a bit of yogurt, and surrounded by shaved/chopped ice infused with the delicate perfume of rose extract. The idea was cute, but had the flavors and textures and temperatures not matched, it would have been little more than a cook’s trick. But the marriage was for the years, and the dish one of the finest, most creative opening dishes I have had, an amalgam of root and petal.



The second course is titled “clam.” It might have been labeled “calm.” Coi’s label is true enough without doing full justice to the luscious take on pasta and clam sauce. With geoduck, Manila clams, and Squid Ink pasta, nudged to one side of a bowl (reprised subsequently with morels and popcorn), it provided a symphony of textures. The bivalves were lightly chewy without being gummi. Quick and fresh, it was Pacific found cuisine and excellent in all respects.



Although plate three is described as “tart,” this four-letter word misses its grandeur. Here the sauce transcends: a lime green wheatgrass sauce that was devilishly overpowering. The aroma wafted from across the room. Yes, there was fennel, a buckwheat biscuit, a balsamic sauce (I think), and fromage blanc to create a modern Napoleon, but it was the take-no-prisoners sauce that conquered.



Ah, how beautiful was bowl four with its foraged flowers and leaves. Chef Patterson insisted that we never forgot that the land – and then the sea – is magical. Here were crayfish, May peas, and seasonal Watsonville artichokes. Astonishment and delight. Beautifully composed, complex, and yet simple in its focus.



The next plate pays ironic tribute to those chefs now experimenting with paleo-cuisine. Ash as condiment. Two stalks of local spring asparagus, cooked in their own juice, were dusted with seaweed powder and fermented anchovy paste, and served on a bright, buttery, lemony sauce. If the dish was not brazen, its insight revealed a chef who was fully vegetating.



And then arrived Allium soup: a dish that bowed to alliums everywhere: chive, garlic, onion, leek – the band of brothers – with a cheesy base. It was lush, and a reminder of how close we are and how far we have come from French onion soup. That classic is grand; this new classic reminds us of how much the frontier of cuisine has advanced.



Morels and popcorn are not a typical match. Even I (whose book Morel Tales pays tribute to the cracked passions of fungal collectors) was startled. When we learned that the morels and popcorn were served in a popcorn reduction (!!!), what was there to say? Only that this dish, presented mirroring the placement of the clam dish, was poppin’ good and that a few surprises remain in a post-molecular age.



Our major protein was a duck consommé (not pictured), served with soft spring redwood shoots and followed closely by duck breast, redwood oil, duck leg confit, radish, and wheat berries. Many modernist chefs find big proteins challenging. Meat squats on a plate lumpishly. And this was a chuck o’ duck. But with the redwood oil (recapitulating the broth), the crispy top, and the pungent radish, the duck breathed life.



Carrots with coffee beans might not seem the most traditional combination (and I must assume – although I didn’t ask – that the beans were imported from afar). The combination with crème fraiche was among the most stirring wake-up-calls and palate cleansers that I have encountered. Chef Patterson demanded that I reconsider these ingredients.



Our first dessert was a lovely sorrel ice cream with ripe strawberries, nestled in foam (I neglected to note the foamy flavor). It was very fine in all regards, although perhaps less stunning than its predecessors.



Finally, a medley of unrefined sugar. The plate reflected the now-canonical modernist dessert – multiple movable parts - but tonight with a recognizable theme: molasses, sorghum, raw brown sugar, gingerbread. Each unrefined taste gave the dish a richness and suppleness that white sugar lacks. The sweet dessert was almost savory. Coi reasserted the philosophy of naturalism that had been thematic throughout the long and glorious evening.



This May dinner at Coi will be among my most treasured dinners. Nothing was wrong, everything was right; much was fantastic, some was staggering. When I first dined at Coi, I found an excellent restaurant; this night I discovered a shattering one.

Coi
373 Broadway (North Beach)
San Francisco
(415) 393-9000
http://www.coirestaurant.com

The Burden of Critique – Benu – San Francisco

A dispiriting requirement for any food critic is the responsibility to write critical notices of restaurants that shoulda, coulda been better. Even with a looming deadline, these are painful to write. For those of us without deadlines perhaps another week might make things easier. Few critics enjoy a sad review. Our task is something other than writerly sadism.

Very few restaurants are actively, in-your-face bad, and we need to treasure those. Often the failure is embodied in a few errors and fewer astonishments. When one writes about a restaurant based on a single evening, there must be much room for excuse.

I pen this in prologue to my dinner at Benu, a restaurant that has received genuine and enthusiastic praise from many in the Bay Area. Chef Corey Lee decamped from The French Laundry, and set up shop in the spritely, developing area South of Market. His goal, it has been claimed, to produce food of Kellerian perfection but with an Asian sensibility. Benu is sometimes called “The Chinese Laundry.”

I give Chef Lee high marks for intention (and for congeniality), but, based on one meal, not fully on execution. Neither the service nor the dishes were marked by perfection. I generally give the service a pass when it is good-natured, but this night there were enough minor errors of service and of molasses timing that made us realize that we were not in Napa. Thanks to my dining companions, the seven hours passed quickly. Many the dishes were thoughtful, but slippages dominate my memory. Chef Lee is a gifted Imperfectionist.

But I begin with one stunningly grand dish from a fifteen-course tasting menu. A dish from the blessed past: a tribute to Chrono-Cuisine. We ordered as a special addition to the tasting menu, Poularde Cuit en Vessie, the classic French preparation of Chicken poached in a Pig’s Bladder. What is not to adore? I found Chef Lee’s Breast, Celery, Black Trumpets, Green Almonds, and Dates to be splendid. While my dining companions found the dish over-celeried, I fully embraced the modesty of the celery, and treasured the celery glaze that covered the chicken. No thin sauces please. What was so special was how simple it seemed, even while being a fully complex dish. The green almonds and dates added their special sour, nutty, sweetness to the plate. It was among the greatest dishes that I have had in 2011, and I only wish that every dish that Chef Lee prepared had this power and vision. But alas.





When one orders Vessie, the bird does double-duty. A second course was poularde leg with peas and spring onion bulb and a shrimp roe sauce. And once again the chicken was as moist and flavorful as heaven, but here the accompaniments were off. The shrimp roe sauce overpowered the bird, even though the English peas and onion were congenial. It was an effectively composed dish, a work of art in a black bowl, but missed greatness. Still, we were all gratified to be able to treasure such a wonderful chick, and through the interactive ability to shuffle my plate, I could minimize the sauce, while voiding the chef’s salty vision.



Our meal opened with Thousand Year Old Quail Egg, Ginger, Potage and a Ginger-Almond Foam. Lee’s dishes often read as braver than they taste. I loved the Ginger-Almond Foam, and the textures were sublime, but the dish lacked the kick than I expected from an egg of such antiquity. It launched the meal, but was not the glorious blowout of Tom Keller’s pearls.



This starter was followed by an amusingly light dish of Caviar and Bone Marrow with a Lobster Crisp. Imagine a lobster pork rind. It was a two-bite wonder. Chips ahoy. We were having fun.



While my companions slurped a stunning homemade tofu, abalone, chrysanthemum soup, I was served sautéed abalone Grenobloise – floured and served with lemon and capers. I suspect that Chef Lee lacked a second stunning abalone dish in his quiver. This was a sturdy, if somewhat unremarkable, presentation. I was less enthused with my plate than my companions were with their bowls.



I soon returned to the main road: oyster, cabbage, pork belly, and fermented Korean pepper (gojuchang) gelee. On this small plate the gelee was the star. But we agreed that the balance was off. Not enough cabbage to contain the pork and oyster: here was Atkins Cuisine. Everything that the gelee touched was rosy, but such a tiny dish seemed heavy.



The next dish altered my perceptions. We were served a pair of lovely-looking Xiao long bao (Chinese dumplings): one filled with foie gras, the second with shrimp and black truffle: A-list ingredients. But how could dumplings go so wrong. Gummy and starchy and not entirely cooked: if this is an indication, Benu needs a Chinese grandma at the stove. Perhaps this Saturday was the opening night for a newbie stage, but these lumps didn’t come close. With a perfect dinner, one error reminds us how perfect the dinner is, but that wasn’t the case at Benu. The inners were silky smooth, but Silk and Gum lacks the cachet of Oysters and Pearls. Fortunately no other dish was so down-and-dirty.



There followed a small plate of unagi (freshwater eel), crème fraiche, lime and a small stick of feuille de brick (phyllo). For a small serving it was a pleasant interlude, but the lime and unagi could have been more pronounced.



Lucky seven. Our seventh dish was a star turn, a subtle and savory classic: monkfish liver torchon, turnip, cucumber, salted plum, and a small slice of toasted brioche. Here was a dish worthy of calling Benu “The Asian Tiffany.” In its simple complexity, its confident play of flavors, and its willingness to combine musky liver, picked turnip, salty plum in an elegant presentation it revealed Chef Lee’s genius. I would love a reprise.



White sausage, black bread, and XO sauce seems so modest, and in some way the presentation was. The fish sausage was rather spongy, lacking subtle notes, and, as my dining companion pointed out, the house-made XO sauce lacked the textural complexity of the store-bought version: only in America. I objected to the velvet sheen of the sauce less than an expert XO taster, but aside from the impressive crispy squid ink wafer, I found the dish rather pedestrian in composition and flavor.



Finally Shark Fin Soup, or perhaps more prudently “Shark Fin” Soup. Fee Fie Faux Fumble. The soup was subtle, filled with delicious crab and rich truffle, which surely would have been sufficient without a Mad Man’s claim of shark’s fin. Perhaps the chewy consistency recapitulated shark fin, but why make the claim if you cannot carry it through.



After two courses of Poularde Cuit en Vessie, we were solidly landed on land protein. We were served a loin of lamb stuffed with lamb mousse and fennel-scented lamb sausage. While the asparagus was as fresh as spring, the remainder of the dish, properly cooked in a bountiful broth, was somewhat old. The protein never sang. It was technically satisfying, but not a dish of any particular achievement.



I am a sucker for lily bulbs, and so sprinkling lily buds on ketchup or Twinkies satisfies me. This beef braised in pear, lily bulb, celery, and shiitake was a far superior dish to the previous lamb. The celery proved a nice reprise of the Poularde breast. Here was a cut of cow that sparkled, and was one of the strongest creations of the evening. Pear and celery might seem in conflict, but the fruity, herbal mixture was a pleasure.



Then followed two desserts. Neither was really remarkable. Fennel sorbet with rhubarb, sesame, and meringue was saved from catastrophe by the wondrous fennel sorbet, an ice of genius, but the other contributions were textually challenged. Too gooey for an adult palate.



Banana ice cream, burnt acorn (custard, praline, and bread pudding), ginger gelee and foam was a typical modernist dessert: a bit of this, a bit of that, lacking a center: the kitchen sink approach. It was not a failure, but nothing really sang, and I learned that burnt acorn will not make my Baskin-Robbins list of 31. It was a brave effort, but an effort nonetheless.



And so the meal ended. The greatest problem with Benu is its buzz. Corey Lee does show moments of genius and of gastronomic power, but his menu has not fully developed and his cooking is not always assured. To compare this meal, filled with deadends and with inspiration to the French Laundry is to do this young chef a disservice. The poularde was memorable – and Chef Lee is to be commended for his attempt to retrieve and reconstruct the greatest culinary triumphs of the past. The monkfish torchon was astonishing, and the beef and lily bulbs inspiring. But these were matched my dishes that were bland, doughy, or gooey. Critics often end their remarks suggesting that they will or will not return. In my case, let time be my judge. Benu may become the Chinese Laundry, but tonight it was just too close to dry cleaning.

Benu
22 Hawthorne Street
San Francisco CA 94105
415-685-4860
http://www.benusf.com

San Fran Hip - Flour + Water

As I think of my year in the Bay Area, I have discovered that San Francisco restaurants are adept at producing stylish, creative cuisine at prices that 20-somethings can afford. Yes, there are some extravagant restaurants and, frankly, some rotten ones, but SF has a mid-budget culinary swagger that few cities can match. Perhaps this is a function of the fact that SF is a youthful, vibrant city and a city where people dine out: seven meals at $150/per is more Silicon Valley than Noe Valley.

Several restaurants might be named as fitting this category: Delfina, Zuni Café, among others. But as I managed to snare a rare reservation at Flour + Water, a sophisticated modern Italian restaurant in the Mission District - a restaurant that is Pizza-plus – F+W is my text. Flour + Water charges $17 for pasta, $16 for pizza, and $21-24 for their secondi. The restaurant is well-priced and always filled. It is the Eternal Seating.



My companion and I ordered a pair of antipasti, two pasta, and a secondi, and were, in general, quite impressed: three of the five were distinguished. Pork belly with broccoli salsa gribiche, asparagus, sofritto, and fresh coriander was marred by a small and overly crispy pork belly. It was pretty, but not truly delicious. In contrast, the halibut crudo with strawberries, favas, and fennel blossoms was a cool tribute to spring. The fish was sweet and the accompaniments added layers of textures. The tasting notes were just right.





The path of pasta diverged. One was fabulous, the other sounded fabulous when read on the menu. Less successful (and not a choice that our server recommended when asked for pasta advice) was Aleppo Spaghetti with Ink Braised Squid, Mint and Chili Oil. Aleppo is a mild Syrian pepper. While the pasta was properly cooked, the plate with its black and brown tones was not inspiring and the flavors, presumably intended, seemed a bit off. Mint and chili did not match well. Braised squid was not as pleasing as the grilled version.



In contrast, the Taleggio Scarpinocc with Rosemary and Aceto Balsamico (which our server enthusiastically admired) was stunning in its simplicity. These oddly shaped raviolis (shaped like wooden shoes) were luscious, and were as fine a filled pasta as any I have had for months. The cheese was astonishingly tangy.



The secondi – slow cooked cod with artichokes, spring onion, asparagus, pounded herbs, and fennel – was lovingly prepared, elegantly presented, and carefree. If it was not as savory as some main courses, its subtlety carried the night. The lightness of the fish made it float away.



With Flour + Water only a few blocks from Humphrey Slocombe Ice Cream, a post-modern ice-creamery (Brown Butter Ice Cream and Malted Dulce de Leche), we didn’t test the F+W desserts.

We left F + W with wallets only slightly lightened and hearts greatly so.

Flour + Water
2401 Harrison Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415-826-7000
http://www.flourandwater.com