GASTROMONDIALE

MANRESA AND REFLECTIONS ON AMERICAN HIGH END DINING

One category of restaurants that often disappoints me is high end dining in the States.  Contrary to the widely held belief that the US has been catching up with Europe, I think the opposite is the truth.  I have some vivid memories of memorable meals in the 1980s in New York at LUTECE (superlative canette for two, blanquette de veau),  Le Cirque during the reign on the great Daniel Boulud, early years at restaurant Daniel (I still remember a lunch there in December 1994 when Monsieur Boulud prepared for us a whole menu around pico magnatum), and at LESPINASSE under Gary Kunz. The early years of LE BERNARDIN were also memorable.

 

CHEZ PANISSE: BEST RESTAURANT IN AMERICA?

Ranking: 18/20.

A friend who has a discerning palate  and who is a serious wine critique once said that the Chez Panisse philosophy is akin to the best producers of Bourgogne.  That is, some legendary wine makers try to do the least possible to influence the wine and instead let the wine make itself as much as possible.

It is true that the hallmark of Chez Panisse cooking is to spotlight the ingredients and not the chef. This is the gist of Alice Waters’ philosophy who is inarguably the most influential person shaping the course of the farm to table movement in America.

There is nothing like success that breeds its discontents.   There are basically three criticisms leveled against this Berkeley CA institution.  Some people allege that the cooking is “too simple too safe”.  Others contend that albeit Chez Panisse led the “quality of the product first” revolution,  there are now so many restaurants throughout the United States which have adapted the same motto and one can find equally good products elsewhere.  Finally there are those who claim that the restaurant is now “démodé”, that is, it is no longer a harbinger of culinary trends.

There may be some fragments of truth in all of these claims.  However, I disagree with all three.

Ubuntu: Unfilfilled Promise of a Vegetarian in Napa

There are few restaurants in the world that I want to see in top form as much as Ubuntu.

For one thing most chefs today pay lip service to the potentials inherent in cooking with vegetables, but do scant justice to them.  Vegetables are often relegated to a secondary or lesser role in dishes concocted by great chefs, and sometimes one is astonisted that in some Michelin 3 star restaurants one can eat very mediocre vegetables used as "garnies" in meat and fish dishes.

For another thing, California now boasts some quite good produce.  Maybe still not on par with the best examples of the Old Continent, but a visit to the still reigning temple of California cuisine, that is Chez Panisse in Berkeley,  or a visit to Los Gatos to the shining star “Manresa”, should open anybody’s eyes to the potential inherent in California produce.

This is maybe why I was quite moved in hearing that Chef Kinch’s assistant at Manresa, Jeremy Fox, had left to become the chef of a new venture in Napa.  This very talented and nice fellow is now at the helm of the vegetarian Ubuntu restaurant in Napa. His wife is the dessert chef.

Alinea

SUMMARY:   Chef  Achatz  offers an avant-garde cuisine with unmistakeable personality.  Achatz  loves to compose his dishes from too many elements, but he does not lose sight of overall balance. More often than not his creations are harmonious and pleasing both to the eye and to the palate. On the other hand, some dishes are overwrought and unnecessarily complicated.  He should also be commended for not losing the clarity of ingredients, despite overly manipulating them.  This said, his penchant for seeking the most intense taste often leads to excessive use of  “de-hyrdrating and smoking” techniques to the detriment of tiring the palate and detracting from the overall progression of the meal.

The overall progression of the meal is indeed quite random. There is no well thought out rationale as to why some dishes are offered in the sequence they are offered.  The wine pairing in Alinea is also not perfect.  It is much better to order an Austrian dry Riesling and/or a Chablis than to ask for the expensive and not well conceived  wine pairing program.

Gastromondiale ranking: 16/20 or **

The Real Luau (by David Katz)

As a lover of food who has moved to the Hawaiian island of Kauai, I could either lament the lack of great restaurants, or embrace the delicious traditional preparations of the wonderful range of indigenous ingredients.

To be fair, there has long been a movement among the best Hawaiian chefs to replace the bland fare that hotels feed to visitors with elegantly simple dishes of local fish and organic produce.  But were Michelin to tour the entire state, they would find one or two places worth a stop, and none worth a detour, let alone a journey. 

Foremost among the Hawaiian culinary traditions is the feast known as the luau. 

Joel Robuchon Las Vegas

“Twinkle twinkle little star

How I wonder what you are

Up above the world so high

Like a diamond in the sky”

I am in the Las Vegas airport waiting for the bus which will take us to the MGM Grand Hotel where Robuchon’s three Star Michelin restaurant is located.  A young girl, apparently bored from the long wait,  is chanting this tune over and over again.

The next day, while leaving Las Vegas for the greater pleasures and promises of California, I can’t help but murmur the same tune. With one difference:

“Twinkle twinkle little star

How I wonder WHERE I am

……."

Recommended Restaurants in the Bay Area: Manresa, Chez Panisse, Quince, Oliveto

The Bay Area—San Francisco dining scene has a special meaning for me for a simple reason. It is here that I cut my teeth for fine dining, in the mid 80s. Before the Bay Area, obviously I ate well in my home country, Turkey, but I have never been impressed by the so called Continental-French restaurants in Turkey. When I arrived to Berkeley as a beginning graduate student in the mid-80s, I was unaware of the lower depths of the everyday activity called eating. I had grown up in a boarding school eating in the school five days a week and was familiar with the level of food in Turkish factories. But nothing I had known had prepared me for what I found in the International House at Berkeley at the time. The food was simply inedible. And I barely ate. At one point I lost so much weight (I was 120 pounds and 5’ 8’’) that some feared I was about to become anorexic.

The French Laundry: Solid but Imperfect

Other than Alice Waters, is there any single gifted American chef who has labored so hard to raise the bar when it comes to superlative cuisine, as Thomas Keller?  Probably not.  In my opinion Keller deserves his fame, and I can’t think of enough rewards to bestow upon him to pay off our debt. If there were an American equivalent of the French “legion d’honneur”, Thomas and Alice both deserve to be nominated for the highest honours as cultural ambassadors of America in a world which is no longer enamored by all things American.

Alain Ducasse in New York

During the last three months or so I had meals in some of the temples of Haute Cuisine in the US.  Notably Michel Richard’s CITRONELLE and MAESTRO (at the Ritz Carlton in Tyson’s Corner) in Washington DC,  DUCASSE, JEAN GEORGES, and PETER LUGER steakhouse in New York,  MANRESA, CHEZ PANISSE, OLIVETO, FRENCH LAUNDRY in Northern California and URASAWA and CHINOIS ON MAIN in Los Angeles. All but one of these meals had their merits. That is, apart from CITRONELLE  where the chef is serving almost a caricatural form of ersatz haute cuisine for the unsuspecting, lack luster clientele (although the staff is cordial and the wine steward one of the best in the States), all of these restaurants strike high points and I would recommend them for different reasons. I hope to review at least some of them in the coming weeks, and I now start with the Alain Ducasse at the Essex House in New York.