Waters on the Beach – Restaurant Robert Sudbrack – Rio de Janeiro

Despite the claims of Aussies, cuisine (like so much else, it is alleged) is a treasure of the Northern Hemisphere. Wishing to disprove this snippy claim, on a recent visit to the beaches of Rio de Janeiro (a conference on climate), I searched out the restaurant that can lay claim to being the most serious dining spot in Brazil (or at least in Rio). This is Restaurant Roberta Sudbrack, a smart boîte, located in a stylish neighborhood near Rio’s Jardim Botânico.



If I expected a nouvelle Cariocan cuisine, it was not to be. Roberta Sudbrack is Chez Panisse’s southern cousin: simple preparations, high quality ingredients, a comfortably elegant but unadorned space, unpretentious service: Berkeley by Bahia. Brazilian cuisine is particularly known for their caloric Saturday lunch feast, the feijoada – black beans, white rice, pork tails and ears, tongue, boiled beef, Spanish sausage – but this was Thursday night and the meal was stripped to its gourmet essentials. In our conversation Chef Sudbrack described herself as self-trained; a cookbook reader – influenced, she claims, by Joel Robuchon, although I saw less of his influence than that of Chef Waters. Chef Sudbrack, if perhaps lacking the requisite apprenticeships, is not without experience. Before opening her eponymous restaurant three years ago, she was chef for Brazil’s former sociologist/president Fernando Cardozo. Perhaps her restrained style derives from having to serve cheeky and picky world leaders. What would you serve Fidel and W?

I have long admired Chez Panisse, although I have never fallen passionately in love with the style. It is too dispassionate, too spare, too Quaker-meeting. Insufficiently samba. Sudbrack is a trip from the tropics, not to them. But this is Roberta Sudbrack’s vision. But given its mantra: local high-quality, organic provisions, simply prepared, it succeeds in its own terms with panache. The menu changes daily, depending upon market availability, a strategy that gives the produce priority over inspiration: imposing, canonical dishes take time to come marinate in the chef’s imagination: not the hours between sunrise and supper.

While the service was generally congenial, after a few photographs of the (three) amuses, our server/restaurant manager requested that I not photograph the food under I cleared it with the chef, due to arrive in a few minutes, and how proved most obliging. As a result, I lack images of two of the middle courses. At a place such as Sudbdrack, the dishes do not scream “look at me!” They are more taste-worthy than eye candy.

Our first amuse was perfectly composed tomato jewels on toast: a mild, clean, clear dish: bruschetta on circles of Holland rusk. This amuse doesn’t waken one’s mouth as much as cleanse it. It was carefully and cautiously prepared, if lacking in drama.



The following amuse was another spare on-toast presentation: Okra caviar on toast. Not a bit of Rio, but subtle without okra slickness. The idea was clever, but the taste, although pleasing, trailed behind the idea.





Our “official” amuse was a half-moon of foie gras with small pieces of pineapple and tarragon. What made this dish tingle were added salt crystals. Chef Sudbrack created a plate of smiling texture, even more than inspiring tastes. Although perhaps the pineapple was a nod to our venue, it owed more to a classic cuisine of ingredients. I loved Chef Sudbrack’s preparation, even if I cannot pretend that it was a stunning gustatory innovation.

The first appetizer was a deep-fried langoustine roll with new vegetables. Buttery crustaceans stuffed the crackly cigars. Lush, if reminiscent of high-end Chinese cuisine. These golden cylinders were surrounded by miniature carrots, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, and beets: the bounty of the well-tended garden.

Salt again featured in the next dish: Farm soft-boiled egg with shavings of asparagus surrounded by squares of buttered and salted bread. No dish could be more emblematic of the locavore movement: an egg, some bread, a bit of butter, and timely vegetables: all fresh and new. One will not confuse this cuisine with the fireworks of Tom Keller, Gordon Ramsey, Alain Ducasse, or Grant Achatz, but it was fine and true, reminiscent of New York’s Prune or Chicago’s North Pond. Keep it simple, keep it pure, and they will come.

The main entrée was roasted duck leg, cooked over low temperature, with a lovely and evocative (if not notably Brazilian) cauliflower couscous. This dish could hardly be simpler, yet it was lovely in its delicacy. I could smell the baby cauliflower wafting from the plate as chaste as cuisine can be.



Dessert proved a rich, dense, and naughty chocolate tartlette with an ice cream, memorable for its fluffy egg white texture. Another beloved and straight-forward dish, none the worse for letting flavors speak for themselves.



By the close of the evening we no longer expected cataclysms, just the delight of organic, local materials prepared with respect. Perhaps one would not travel half way around the planet, trailing carbon credits, to try cuisine that is available close to home (which is, after all, the point). Still, this truth does not weaken the calm call of Restaurant Roberta Sudbrack for wise Cariocans.

Restaurant Roberta Sudbrack
Rua Lineau de Paula Machado 916
Jardim Botânico
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
55.21.3874.0139
http://www.robertasudbrack.com.br

[url=http://www.vealcheeks.blogspot.com]Vealcheeks[/url]

Joia to the World – Joia – Milan

Although the betting line on Italy asserts that one cannot get a bad meal, my month-long visit proved – some nights – to disprove that culinary bromide. But forget those forgettable nights. This memory is a glorious – and surprising – meal, a lunch actually, in Milan (my most treasured meals were invariably lunches; dinners matter less).

I was nearly at the end of my stay without a truly astonishing meal. It was almost chance that I stumbled upon Joia, the lovely restaurant of Chef Pietro Leeman, a Swiss chef, trained by Freddy Girardet in Crissier at his Restaurant de l'Hôtel de Ville, according to some the world’s best restaurant in the 1980s (my meal, under Chef Girardet’s successor Philippe Rochat, was certainly world class). Chef Leeman has been cooking in Milan since 1989, and while one can see some echoes of Crissier, there are also dashes of Michel Bras, Hester Blumenthal, and Alice Waters in his cuisine: unfussy, playful, and seasonal, a half-step from vegetarian (with a few fish choices). Chef Leeman defines his style as “Alta Cucina Naturelle,” but this does not quite do him justice, ignoring his desire to subvert the relationship between the diner and chef, more characteristic of cuisine agape, a cuisine of amazement. In our postprandial conversation, Chef Leeman was quick to differentiate himself from molecular cuisine in his refraining from using the more experimental cooking techniques (he added foam to one memorable dish, but perhaps, foam is the new butter). His dishes aim for poetry more than science, as evidenced in the brio with which each dish is named: “A Stone Rolls,” “Virtue,” “Moving With Deliberation,” and “Blub”). Diners may find these zenish labels charming or pretentious, as they will. Several dishes are interactive, and perhaps a little too jesting in spirit. Chef Leeman does more than cook, he thinks and feels.

For my luncheon I ordered the five course spring tasting menu (all vegetarian). I began with an amuse: a shot glass filled with a soupy parfait: lime, puree of flageolet beans, and balsamic gelee. This was everything that an amuse could be: cool, awakening, filled with surprise, and a showcase for the chef’s talents to come. Although no one would describe Joia as an “Italian restaurant,” the use of the wondrous balsamic gelee serves to indicate that Chef Leeman can work marvels with Italian ingredients. The mix of lime, beans, and vinegar might seem preposterous, but the solidity of the beans served to bind the lime and the vinegar. A great start.



The first appetizer, “Contact and Consent,” was perhaps too precious in conception. I was presented with two small trays with three objects each: the left tray was designed for touching, while one ate the parallel ingredient on the right. On the left was a small glass filled with ice studded with flower petals, a sprig of rosemary, and a stone: Haiku Cuisine. Facing these were, in turn, snow pea and tomato soup, a zucchini flower stuffed with pea puree with a dab of mustard and dill, and asparagus on a fried chickpea square. I loved the sweet and simple soup with its swirls of red and green, and the well-made zucchini flower, alternatively pungent and smooth. I confess to feeling a bit foolish touching the stone, an exercise that had some of the excess of wearing earphones to hear the ocean at the Fat Duck. Tastes, not contraptions, are their own reward.



“First to the Left, then to the Right” was another interactive dish. The chef provides three small glasses: cream of zucchini, puree of Tropea onion (allegedly a Calabrian aphrodisiac, as if Italy itself were not Viagra), and a yogurt and horseradish curry. First the instructions, then the dish. Consume half of the cream soup, add the puree, finish half of this mixture, then add the curry, and finish. Gustatory miscreant that I am, I tasted each vessel before mixing and matching, but eventually fell into line. The outcome was quite satisfactory, although I could easily have had a bowl of the cream of zucchini or the zucchini/onion mix. The chef might have simply prepared three bowls as he wished, rather than demand his non-union clients collaborate, but it was a treat to see how his flavors spiral, reaching a crescendo.



What might a dish “In Praise of Tradition” mean at a vegetarian restaurant? The dish, meatless, was robust without attempting to recreate meat. Chef Leeman served bread dumplings, roasted chestnut, and carrots with snowpeas and Castelmagno cheese (a semi-hard, Piedmont cow’s cheese). The dish was impressive, capturing the stewed features of tradition, while still being airy and sprightly, and very much the chef’s creation. It appeared hearty – and was – while not dismissing the bearable lightness of a naturelle cuisine.



The final main course, “Beneath a Colorful Carpet,” included a lovely array of morels, asparagus, smoked ricotta, lightly spiced zucchini, and arugula pesto. This mixture was napped by a foam of saffron and (separately) raspberry. I was afraid that this would be a jarring excess (and I might have replaced the raspberry with mint – although the berries were well-modulated), but this dish was astonishing and so spring-like, one might have imagined one was in the woods, rather than in traffic-choked Milan. Unfurling vegetables so gloriously revealed the power of a meatless mind in the kitchen.



My dessert was known as “Ah.” Oh. And it was something of a gibe, referencing more classic presentations. The dish arrived under glass with smoldering incense, shades of Grant Achatz’s odorous cuisine, giving the plate a smoky aspect. Chef Leeman prepared Cream Catalan with cherries, bolstered by a scoop of lush pineapple ice cream and a cup of passion fruit juice, the plate dotted with saffron and cherry sauce, reprising the saffron/raspberry foam of the previous course. As in a symphonic production notes reappear in new forms. This was a compelling plating of cream and fruits, with the springy twist of late memories of an incense and intense evening. Here was fruit salad, reimagined.




What is the inverse of an amuse? A lagniappe, perhaps. A reprise of the fruit juice: pineapple with notes of raspberry and ginger. The small glass was sheathed with a soft wafer of banana and chocolate that obligingly slid into the drink. As Chef Leeman’s entrees pay tribute to vegetables, his desserts are paeans to fruit.



Joia is a splendid, startling, provoking restaurant. Its small, elegant, but somewhat humble, space separates it from a palace of haute cuisine. And the Chef’s desire to provoke may cause some second thoughts. But measured bite-by-bite, eating at Joia is an astonishing afternoon. This midday I selected the abbreviated menu, but next time I will ask for the Chef’s finest hours. I am sure that he will – comically, mystically, poetically - oblige.

Ristorante Joia di Pietro Leeman
Via Panfilo Castaldi, 18
Milan
02-20-49-244
http://www.joia.it

Vie is for Volume – Vie

There is a thin sounding board – a line in the decibel sand – between excitement and exasperation. Restaurants as organizations appeal to their market niche not just in cuisine and cost, but in clamor and clatter. And the politics of noise can be the undoing – or the doing – of sterling restaurants.

Last Saturday, frightened by the ongoing repairs on the Edens Expressway, feeling cut off from the Chicago dining hub, my wife and I headed west: to Western Springs and Vie, a restaurant that I had once visited on a calm – nearly empty – Tuesday night. Arriving Saturday night at 9:00 p.m. we were escorted into a jangling, buzzy dining space (Vie has a warren of small spaces, not well soundproofed). Despite polished service and Chef Paul Virant’s impressive and confident locavore, seasonal cuisine, what was most memorable about the first half of the meal was the roar of conversation: and this in a restaurant where the tables are not snugly packed and the diners are not screaming sweet nothings. While the core of a review should properly be what is on the plate, it was sound that was on the mind. If Vie hopes to compete with the Chicago luxe restaurants and not to be a glorious bar-and-grill, Chef Virant needs to call his decorator. He gets an earful from this diner.

Given that this review lacks a sound track, I turn to the Chef’s doing. At most restaurants the appetizers are the star: the meal goes downhill from the start. This is not true at Vie: our entrees stole the show. True, my wife ordered a salad (Local Lettuces, Marinated and Shaved Fresh Hearts of Palm, Garlic and Herb Vinaigrette, Parmigiano-Reggiano), and, true, she enjoyed it exceptionally. For me it was a nicely done play on a Caesar-type salad, impressive within the genre.



My appetizer was Wood-Grilled Gunthorp Farm Duck Breast, Cracklings, Arugula, Black Raspberry Aigre-Doux, and Tatsoi (a type of bok choi; Vie helpfully places a glossary on their menu). The combination was very nice indeed, although I found the duck undercooked (mostly a problem of texture). With duck cooked more to my liking, this would have been a superior dish, especially because of the remaining textures and the pungency of the flavors.



As a main course my carnivore partner selected Marinated and Wood-Grilled Painted Hills Strip Steak (provenance is vital at locavore haunts), Baked Wisconsin Cheddar Toast, Local Asparagus, and Creamed Spence Farm Ramps (no other farm will suffice!). As with my appetizer, the meaty center of the meal was enlivened by a set of pungent companions. The dish didn’t need Worcester to have zip and zing. The beef flavor and texture did not dominate but was nicely matched.



My entrée was splendid. Throughout this mid-May menu Chef Virant teased the diner with seasonal morels in various guises. And I finally gave in to morels, baked crepes, goats milk ricotta (I believe), green garlic vinaigrette, and local Bordeaux spinach. The dish was a triumph. The morels were perfectly tender (and well-cleaned) and the garlic and crepes matched them bite for bite. Chef Virant is as expert a vegetarian as is Chef Trotter (whose vegetarian menu often surpassed his open menu: even with foie gras!). This was the dish that I will treasure: Vie is for Virtuosity.



Desserts were both successful. Baba Au Rhum is difficult to destroy, but Vie’s version – Baba Au Whisky, Dooley’s Toffee Liqueur Ice Cream, Candied Walnuts, and Caramel Sauce – is very lush. Without the whisky, it might have been too sweet, but the alcohol keeps the sugar at bay. The warm Caramel Gooey Butter Cake, Almond Chocolate Chip Ice Cream, Almond Lace Cookie, and Almond Toffee Square was also sweetly striking. Although I am not a fan of “gooey” as a gourmet adjective, this cake was gooey. The toffee square was more chewy than I prefer. It was more taffy than toffee, but well-made.





Vie consistently turns out impressive cuisine. While not aiming for a pastoral environment, Chef Virant has made Vie into a destination, not only when the Illinois Department of Transportation directs traffic his way.

Vie
4471 Lawn Avenue
Western Spring, IL
708-246-2082
www.vierestaurant.com

[url=http://www.vealcheeks.blogspot.com]Vealcheeks[/url]

Schwa and Frolic - Schwa - Chicago

Six of us visited Schwa last weekend. Typically Schwa limits its tables to parties of four, but on Saturday Michael Carlson called and informed me that because of cancellations, we could expand our table. We embraced his generosity.

I have been to Schwa four times, and have enjoyed my meal each time, but I felt that this evening Chef Carlson was at his most assured and confident and his happiest. There were fewer missteps, and – dare I say it – he looked more relaxed: more ready for beachwear than a hospital gown. This is how a career should be. While the interactions were never unpleasant, tonight there was a joy that had not been evident previously. Fatherhood does that (for awhile) and a few (four) friends.

Chicago boast numerous consummate chefs: kitchen artists who can create stunning meals: Trotter, Nahabedian, Liccioni, Bowles, Achatz, Tramonto, Bayless, Stegner, Joho, Kahan, Cantu. Michael Carlson is among that elite dozen. But his restaurant is not like any other. Unlike David Chang or Jose Andres, he does not pass food across a counter, but cooks and serves and scrapes the pots. I feel myself blessed to visit Naha, Trotters, Frontera every few years, but I want to visit Carlson each season. The fear at its opening was that Schwa was a mirage, a culinary unicorn: it couldn’t exist, and that someday – soon – I might kick myself for not making that last reservation. I kicked last October. Perhaps every chef wants – in fantasy – to do it all, but this is also the hope of the diner. It is nice to be greeted by Chef Trotter, but it is something else to show Chef Carlson that the parsley is misplaced (no parsley tonight!). Schwa is a divine chimera. If I had to choose a last meal in my chill cell, perhaps it wouldn’t be Carlson’s dishes I would first salivate after (except his canonical lusty quail’s egg ravioli), but if I were given a one-night reprieve it would be Schwa that I would visit, and explain to Ashley Dupree that I was engaged. What is remarkable is the creation within that small space on Ashland of a single, momentary community of cooks and diners. I like and admire servers, but let it be me and the stovemen. (I never fantasize about coolly-precise servers, no matter how cute, as long as there are hot cooks about).

I was struck by how carefully Chef Carlson separated and calibrated his flavors and textures. Carlson is less a chemist in the style of Cantu or Achatz than a literary critic: he likes to consider, rearrange, and interpret ingredients as they create a “dish.” His style is not precisely molecular, but it treats a dish as a text to be sliced and diced.

To start at the end. Desserts have been the weak link at Schwa. Pastry chefs have a language that most chefs speak only in pidgin – and the translation between the two accents may be rough as Sam Mason came to realize after receiving pastry encomiums at the sweet genius at wd-50, he was crucified when first opening Tailor in New York. With the small staff at Schwa, desserts seemed – well – half-baked. Not tonight. Dessert was sweetened candied veal sweetbreads with ice wine vinegar caramel, passionfruit culis, lavender foam, and a dehydrated parsnip chip. Although deconstructed dishes often have the disadvantage of being “a little of this, a little of that,” forcing diners to reconstruct the chef’s ideal in their clumsy way, this dish was compelling it its separation, not even considering the literary conceit of the punny sweetbreads.

Dinner began with a complex and refreshing amuse of grapefruit vesicles (cells) with honey sorbet, chamomile agar and black truffle shaving. (I credit both “CG” and “wino66” for these borrowed descriptions – the Schwa menu is telegraphic, as is the rage at molecular restaurants: this dish is labeled “amuse”). Here was a lovely combination that was sufficiently robust that the truffle was overpowered. The flavor was dominated by melodious honey sorbet and tart grapefruit. The meal began and ended with the kitchen’s sugary touch.

The first course was notable for a brioche that will reside in any bakery hall of fame. We were served pickled Jonah Crab, a slice of dehydrated banana (the dehydrator works overtime at Schwa), batons of celery, celery root and a celery root puree. What was heroic, however, was an unprepossessing cube of brioche injected with hot banana liquor that didn’t just melt but exploded like Carnival. It is a challenge to explain a sensation that is as much tactile and olfactory as gustatory, but it was stunning: doubly mouthwatering.

This appetizer was followed by soup: a potent rich and salty beer cheese soup, made from Chimay washed cheese, served with a freshly made soft “pretzel hole” and a dehydrated mustard chip and an herbal smear. If not as stunning as the previous course, it was intense and intensely satisfying.

Now Chef Carlson returned to a trio of greatest hits. First, Pad Thai: jellyfish with thai flavors. It is a cute conceit and certainly flavorful as a small bite, but it was not a dish that I craved a second time, even though I had enjoyed it previously.

This was quickly followed by the Schwa Pine Cone (I am not certain if I have had precisely this recipe): sea urchin ice cream on a maple syrup flavored cone with some pine essence. The uni ice cream was a lovely palate cleanser, even if the cone was sweeter than necessary and needed a more dramatic pine essence.

Finally the quail egg ravioli. Still fantastic after all of these months. Brilliant. Erotic. Tampopo.

The artic char roe with pumpernickel coins, Meyer lemon puree and rutabaga consommé has been criticized for being out of balance with too strong a pumpernickel presence. Perhaps Chef Carlson has dialed back on this pungency or perhaps I just enjoy marked tastes, but I found the flavors and textures compelling and well-modulated: a remarkable take on caviar-and-blini. This deconstruction revealed true culinary bravado.

Kona Kampachi sashimi with galangal crisp, Lime gelee, maple mousse foam, salsify batons, and daikon disks was wonderful in all ways that a dish can produce wonderment in our firmament. Another deconstruction, this Japanois-inspired, and a very fruitful – reprising the candied mid-March maple-syrup theme of the meal: not too sweet (although the meal was more heavily weighted toward sweetness than some chefs might have dared).

The greatest revelation of the evening was the liver and onions. In a city in which liver has come to mean foie gras undercover: Chef Carlson presented a simple preparation with a disk of calves liver perched on a scoop of onion risotto. What not to like? With liver this sweet and rich, why pine over foie gras? Why duck into liver speakeasies? A dill smear decorated the side of the bowl with small cubes of bayleaf gelee, crispy shallots and pickled cipollini onions. Liver and onions rules!

Our final main course was antelope loin and leg, served sous vide, with butternut squash and white chocolate foam. Perhaps this dish suffered by its placement after the superb kampachi and amazing liver. The antelope was pleasant, the chocolate foam was well prepared, but by this course I wanted a miracle, not pleasure alone.

Our cheese course – once a memorable one-bite pungent (epoisse) cheese risotto, a signature dish of Chef Carlson - was tonight a small wedge of Humboldt fog goat cheese (with a truffled ash layer) and graham cracker crust. It tasted like Humboldt Fog Goat Cheese. Let the kitchen take a breather. And then dessert.

This was not only the most triumphant meal that I have had at Schwa, but the most fun. I revere the Jonah crab appetizer, the Kampachi, the liver and onions, and the Candied Sweetbreads, and, always, the ravioli. But I will mostly prize the experience of being served by a staff that seemed at their ease, having fun, and playing with their food and their admirers. Each hour of joy is a benediction.

Schwa
1466 North Ashland
773-252-1466
www.schwarestaurant.com

So Tomorrow --- Blackbird

I enjoyed a splendid lunch at Blackbird. A wonderful way to end a year of eating. The food at Blackbird really flies. At its best Chef Kahan's cuisine is as creative and accomplished as any chef in town, perhaps less elaborated but with a startling and compelling mixture of tastes and textures.

I began with baby octopus confit with braised chestnuts, empire apples, pea tendrils and sassafras caramel. This construction was as fascinating and wildly textured as any appetizer I have had for awhile. Chewy, crackly, smooth and crunchy. Sweet and just a bit sour. A truly magnificent dish.



As an entree I selected slow roasted duck with fried byrd mill grits, citrus brussel sprouts and puffed wild rice. I was blown away by the finely threaded brussel sprouts - the emotional heart of the dish. The duck, grits and rice, well-cooked, played a supporting role.



Dessert was a beautifully composed mission fig beignet with cara cara oranges, butterscotch and bacon ice cream. I have been rather critical of desserts as late, but not this. Like the appetizer, this was one of the most sensational and brilliant desserts of the year. The bacon ice cream seemed simultaneously surprising and totally natural. What a lovely way to end the year.



Why then is Blackbird not often listed in the company with other four star restaurants, where, by virtue of the food it belongs? When Blackbird opened a decade ago it was sleek and chic. But time has taken a toll on the restaurant. The restaurant no longer seems as stylish as it had once been. The plates don't need to be refreshed, but the tables might be. The room is so 1999! The food is so tomorrow!

Blackbird
619 Randolph Street (West Loop)
Chicago
312-715-0708