Midsummer House – Cambridge, United Kingdom

After being prepared to admit, sadly, that there are no excellent restaurants in Cambridge, a week before my departure I had one of the outstanding meals of the year. Of course, the happy success was not a total surprise as the Midsummer House (set in a lovely garden near the banks of the River Cam) had received two Michelin stars. However, two Michelin stars have often been just enough to break one’s heart. But not this evening. Under chef Daniel Clifford the meal was nearly flawless, failing only a few minor tests.

The evening began with a tiny, but surprisingly robust gazpacho tasting, made memorable because of a wave of pureed celery that set off the acidity of the tomato base. It was delightful, and would have made a worthy bowl on a summer evening. This was followed with a simple and creative anchovy tempura – just enough fat and salt to make every health care vanish. It was unfortunate that these starters were pared with the only real failure of the evening: two cheese (brie?) gougeres that were overfilled and lacking interest.

Still working through the amuses, I was presented with a crystal ball filled with pink grapefruit cream and champagne foam. While foam is properly being edged off the gastronomic stage – having had its fifteen minutes of culinary fame – foamy champagne was a novel and witty retort. It was a memorable palate cleanser before my palete needed to be cleansed.

This was followed by still another amuse: a sweetpea veloute served with tiger shrimp. If not as creative as the remainder of the meal, it was silky smooth and the essence of an English spring.



Finally we reached the meal itself, which without being experimental, captured the best and brightest of modern European cuisine. The ingredients, of which there were many, blended in inspired and startling ways, and, in fact, I was profoundly grateful that I avoided the tasting menu so that I could enjoy these plates in full.

As my appetizer, I selected maple-caramelized sweetbreads with turnip, pistachio, ox tongue (!), and maple jelly. Although such as dish had danger of being an early, cloying dessert, the sweetness was mellow and added a complexity and richness to the subtlety of the rest of the ingredients, rather than overpowering them.



For a main course, I selected braised turbot with peanuts and pistachios (this turned out to be an all-pistachio dinner), sea scallops, cos lettuce, asparagus in a crackly pastry, and vanilla. While I would have preferred my fish to be more translucent, such is rarely how fish is served in the British Isles, and the fish was in no way overdone (even if such cooking involves dancing on a tightrope). The remainder of the plate was splendid, and complemented the mild white fish to excellent effect. Chef Clifford is particularly to be commended in his attention to texture.



I passed on an extra dessert – a tiramisu – too much caffeine: but it was a beautiful display.

Finally a triumphant close: warm braised cherries with pistachio (again!) ice cream with a cream filled pistachio “cannelloni” shell and underneath chartreuse tagliatelle. Perhaps the meal was dominated by nutty tastes, but they were remarkably sophisticated with the herbal echoes of chartreuse as a counterpoint.



The Midsummer House deserves attention and not only in the long evenings of June. The location and size of the restaurant militates against a third Michelin star (it is not really in position to be a “destination” restaurant), but I have no hesitation in preferring it over two London standards The Square or Marcus Wareing at the Berkeley, and, if not as creative as Gordon Ramsay or The Fat Duck, capable of equaling them in pleasure and bettering them in cost.

The Midsummer House
Midsummer Common
Cambridge, United Kingdom
+44 (0)1223 369299
http://www.midsummerhouse.co.uk

Madison's (Old Edwards Inn) - Highlands, North Carolina

About five years ago, the Old Edwards Inn in Highlands was renovated, transformed into a four-star (or five-star or however many stars mean really, really fancy and) inn, resort and spa. In the course of this transformation from an old-timey inn on Main Street, they opened a fine dining restaurant, Madison's. In its first iteration it attempted (somewhat bizarrely, and without much grace) to borrow from molecular cuisine and also incorporate a set of rather bizarre flavor combinations. Different is not always better. Back then the restaurant was rather too taken with itself, and my first meal was not a success - quite the contrary with a check that suggested that the owners felt that the food was more sparkling that it was.

However, over the past two years, I have had several improved meals at Madison's, culminating with an excellent dinner last night. The chef de cuisine (at the restaurant for two years now and now in charge of the menu) is Chris Huerta, who worked with Guenter Seeger in Atlanta (at Seeger's, which, until it closed in 2006, was Atlanta's premier restaurant - Seeger is attempting to open a New York restaurant) and who was a stage at Per Se. Huerta is a serious young cook with a serious blog ("Chipped China"). My friends and I were very pleased with the style and assuredness our meal. In strictly culinary terms Madison's is - by some distance - the most accomplished restaurant in the area (go to On the Verandah for the view and good food). Madison's has a quite pretty space and in contrast to some area restaurants is light and airy and is relatively quiet. They also have an ideology of "Farm to Table Dining," which they are expanding - mostly vegetables and pork at this point.

I began with Huerta's Apple and Bacon Hushpuppies (ah! bacon!), which were the best hushpuppies I have ever eaten. Granted claiming that one found the world's best hushpuppies may be akin to picking low-hanging fruit, but they were delicious. A friend had a very creamy (and nicely composed) vidalia onion soup and another companion had a salad of Chilled Local Carolina Shrimp Salad, Florida Citrus, Winter Greens, and Vanilla Citrus Double Cream. Let us ignore the "local" shrimp as we are several hundred miles from the sea in the western Carolina mountains, but the Vanilla Citrus Double Cream was a very becoming complement to the fresh shrimp.

For entree I chose the compelling (although not visually remarkable - unless one likes a symphony of gray and brown) Braised Duck Leg, Celery Root Ravioli, and Stewed Hand Harvested Mushrooms with Natural Jus. It was a luscious combination with perfectly moist duck leg and properly cooked ravioli with its intriguing celery root stuffing. If not quite worth a photo, it was the most polished entree I have had in these mountains since the grand Frog and Owl closed fifteen years ago.

Dessert was an assured smooth vanilla-bean panna cotta with butterscotch sauce and crumbled espresso biscotti and a cornet of vanilla bean (I think) ice cream. Another appealing and modern presentation with a mix of flavors that were delightful, if not quite startling.

Madison's also has an extensive wine list and well-selected wines by the glass.

But for one who spends a month in the mountains each summer, Madison's poses a problem. Should every dinner out be a dinner at Madison's. Is everything else just slumming?

Madison's
Old Edwards Inn
Fourth and Main Street
Highland, North Carolina
866-526-8008 or 828-526-8008
http://www.oldedwardsinn.com/

Grump - Selene – Santorini, Greece

When it comes to restaurants, I can be a bit of a grump. My standard is perfection, and even I can’t meet that standard! Recently my wife and I took a cruise through the azure waters of the Aegean Sea. Now cruiseship food – even if bountiful, colorful, and well-provisioned - can not salve a culinary grump. But every so often we escaped the ship. One of these moments permitted us to explore the beautiful, white-washed island of Santorini, an island formed from the rim of a volcano, which the deity exploded for His own amusement (Santorini sits in a caldera – the collapse of land after a volcanic eruption), the most remarkable spot in the Cyclades. When one comes across a crescent sliver of land so exquisite my thoughts turn to, well, food. (My thoughts also turn to food when viewing a toxic dump or a beautiful woman.)

Still, Santorini is more than brownfields or lithesome legs, it is scenic. Were this insufficient, Santorini is also the home to one of the most astonishing restaurants in all of Greece, and, Michelin not to the contrary, in all the EU. Selene, perched on a cliff in Fira, the main town (in fairness most of Fira is perched on a cliff), opened in 1986 under the guidance of owner George Haziyannakis, who wished to show off the creative nature of Greek cuisine. He succeeded.



Yes, the view is perfection, but it cannot quite compete with the food. One looks down at one’s plate while the clouds and skiffs pass outside. We began with a pair of soups, cold tomato and warm rockfish and langoustine. The cool tomato was perfection in this warm June lunchtime, although had this been our only course I would have noted Selene as a most pleasant boite. The seafood soup was pure cream and sea: impeccably rich and sweet, with ingredients that revealed that locavores have a point.





These soups were followed by an appetizer of local bivalves with lemon foam – molecular cuisine in the isles! – paired with potent seafood tartlets. Here was a chef who was aware of both the standards of modern cuisine and the robust cookery of the Aegean. Again the local clams were salty-fresh and the buttery tarts composed of the finest catch of the wine, dark sea.



But truly it was the main course that was spectacular: that afternoon I fell in love with all things Santorini. As is clear from the photo the ravioli is not the enclosed, Italianate pocket pasta, but rolls of perfectly cooked strips with – again! – blessedly fresh seafood with plump mussels and delightful squid, so perfectly prepared that the word rubbery was banished, and authoritatively and sharply seasoned crayfish and shrimp.



As magnificent as the ravioli was, it was surpassed (just barely!) by the risotto: rice in a fava bean sauce with a juicy roasted rabbit with an evocative rosemary jus: symphonic notes of Greek cuisine, but so expertly prepared that it would have been perfection if prepared by Escoffier. A month later I still dream of this brilliancy.



To close the afternoon, we were served a sturdy baklava with a startling Niotiko cheese ice cream. Not a showy dessert, but with the view appearing again, the dessert served its purpose.



Never have I been so pleasured by the combination of taste and scene. With God as designer and with Selene’s own divine kitchen staff, any grumpiness must quickly be voted off the island.

Selene
Fira, Santorini
+30-2286022249
http://www.selene.gr/

Moto 2009

Last Tuesday I returned to Moto, Chicago’s premier molecular restaurant (at least if one places Alinea in its own transcendent category), and I was surprised at the changes. The restaurant looks much the same, but the cuisine feels different. The changes at moto may mirror those decisions made by many successful artistic rebels. After their moment of publicized rebellion – after they have thrown down the gauntlet and after the media has chronicled that gauntlet – the rebel needs to ask, “what now?” These heroes come to realize that there is a lot to be learned from the standards of the world from which they have rebelled. Perhaps symbolically when we were given our kitchen tour we did not need to wear protective googles – there was no laser in evidence.

Strikingly, the dish from the ten-course dinner (with a few extra courses) that I remember most clearly and most fondly is (almost) a dish that could easily have been served at any restaurant committed to contemporary cuisine. The kitchen presented a pan-seared Texas quail with modulated hot (pequin) pepper and celery three ways. Granted the dish arrived with an edible paper that was reminiscent of buffalo wings – the dish was ostensibly a deconstruction of buffalo wings – but what struck me was how sweet and luscious and even traditional the quail was. My tablemates agreed. The “Chicago steak dinner” was likewise a lovely, modernist dish with a beautifully cooked bit of prime rib eye. Yes, it was a deconstruction of the composition of such a dinner, but not a destruction of it. Perhaps the least effective was the faux “breakfast” – a coconut and passion fruit egg (white and yolk) served with crab cake tater tots and blood orange ketchen. The crab was extremely tasty, but the egg (a borrowing, if I recall correctly, from WD-50) was more curious than enjoyable, given a texture that was perhaps too reminiscent of plastic.

As with this “egg” dish, some of the Moto oddities – the powders and a little nitro and a Cuban sandwich shaped as a cigar with ash, but for the most part the tastes were strong. There were no dipping dots to be seen. Moto’s problem has been that the concept has on occasion overwhelmed the taste. The edible menu (as the amuse) is a case in point. No one would demand to eat this cracker were it not for the jest on which it is based (eating the menu).

Pastry Chef Ben Roche’s desserts were, as usual, most enjoyable, but not so different in spirit from what one might be served as Jean-Georges, Per Se, or, in Chicago, at Blackbird. They were compositions of flavor points, following modern canons, rather than provocations. And they were all the better for that.

Moto 2009 reveals a greater attention to flavor, while sometimes the presentation seems to be minimalist (such as the BBQ beans and slaw. The roadkill (described on the menu as “roadkill of fowl”), a now canonical dish at moto (a result of the visit I organized when the restaurant had first opened) is based on duck (not raccoon) and is much more elaborately plated. However, while the dish is tasty, it has lost some of its authenticity as a just-in-time creation.

So moto is changing, as it should be. Chef Homero Cantu seems to be considering what he needs to do, rather than what he can do. After all, if it is only the ideas that matter, what would justify return visits? Moto remains vital and exciting, clever and tasty: but now a restaurant that doesn’t need to strain so hard to be worthy of its diners’ love.

Moto's edible menu (Grand Tasting Menu version)

Passion fruit and coconut egg with crab tater tots and blood orange ketchup

Saffron Scallop with Lemon oil power, Orange and Shiso syrup

Deconstructed French onion soup: Gruyere and onion cracker

House made pequin (chili) quail with trio of celery

Smoked beef brisket, frozen cole slaw, and BBQ beans

Roadkill of fowl: duck, red and yellow beets, crunchy red rice

Chicago Steak Dinner

Pina Colada forms for dessert

Pumpkin pie forms for dessert


Moto
945 West Fulton Market Street (West Loop)
Chicago
312-491-0058
http://www.motorestaurant.com/

Spanish Panache - Cinc Sentits – Barcelona

How can so many svelte women be on display in Barcelona? Don’t they know that four star dining abounds. Surely they must because they are to be found at those tables, but there must be a caloric catch somewhere. So much taste, so much elegance, so little time. Among these choices none is better than Cinc Sentits – a brilliant establishment that revels in the five senses (the soundtrack included Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Dean Martin - a pack of rats in a clean, cool trap). Of my meals within the boundaries of Barcelona, the finest meal was that splendid lunch at Cinc Sentits, a temple of light near the University of Barcelona. Cinc Sentits is a college of the senses.



I began with one of the most compelling and thrilling starters in recent memory: a shot glass filled with drama and with love: cava, cream, and maple syrup with a little salt as accompaniment: all of the passionate food groups were here: champagne, cream, sugar, and salt in a jewel-like composition. I was dazzled by the light.



A second, deeper starter was a tomato ice compote served with a slice of sausage, garlic foam, and small bread cubes: gazpacho deconstructed. The presentation was exquisitely composed and a cool counterpart to the hot streets of a waning Barcelona summer. By forcing the diner to contemplate the construction of gazpacho, it did what majestic modernist cuisine must do: to turn food into theory, while keeping it at the peak of delight.



Then followed a squat square of foie gras: a cube of liver with an elegant and rich pasty layer beneath and a crispy burnt sugar crust above. Like so many such dishes it might have overplayed a desire to transform foie into dessert, but what saved the dish from a sugary mass was the subtle play of textures throughout, as fetching as a rectangular crème brulee.



The seafood plate was a perfect rectangle of tuna in a smoked tomato water with a roasted onion “sofregit” (a tomato-onion-olive oil sauce) and black olive salt (Cinc Sentits is partial salt as a condiment). Perhaps tomato water represents the ultimate downsizing of French saucing, but such lightness makes one feel healthy, forgetting the calories elsewhere (The secret of Spanish beauties). If not as filled with drama as the amuse, it was a subtle, slinky dish.



Iberian suckling pig was the last in a trio of rectangular cuisine. Fatter and denser than what had been previously presented, this sous-vide pork – perhaps slightly mushy as served - wallowed in its richness, swathed in a crispy ratafia glaze (a fruit cordial) and sprinkled with (more) salt. The texture was a bit off, but the taste was dense and complex and precisely porcine. To recapitulate the lifeworld of a Spanish sow, apples served as the accompaniment: in cooked slices and as an apple jam with wine and honey.



Dessert was a plentiful plate of gloriously zesty Maresme strawberries (an area on the coast of Catalonia known for these ruby berries). On top sat a scoop of marscapone sorbet with some fennel and rose water. One can not term this combination “simple;” splendid is more precise. Airy, herbal, flowered, and divine.



Cinc Sentits is a restaurant for the five senses. By no means the most expensive restaurant within town limits, of my dozen meals this was the pinnacle. Cinc Sentits is Catalan splendor on high heels.

Cinc Sentits
Aribau 58 (Eixample)
Barcelona
93-323-9490
http://www.cincsentits.com/en/index.htm