Monday, May 3, 2010

A Sunday at Per Se

By way of simple exposition, I turn 30 this week and I have the most amazing girlfriend there is. She took me to Per Se for dinner at 11:30am on a Sunday. This is a highly recommendable time for a nine course dinner. You're brunch hungry, but when you leave three hours later, you still have the wherewithall to reflect.
She probably chose Per Se because of the mildly obnoxious man-crush I have on Thomas Keller.
The affinity starts with Thomas Keller's philosophy on food, an art of comfort and surprise, nostalgia and invention. I aspire to that kind of cooking, but what I really admire him for his attention to detail, and the lengths he and his staff go to for their customers. Sure, a personalized printing of the menu probably didn't take up too much of the staff's time, they print new ones every day. But, when you walk into one of the premiere restaurants in the world and they hand you a menu with your name on it, though, you feel kinda special.

I'd seen the salmon cone muse bouche on the French Laundry episode of No Reservations, and I've been wanting to try one since. I'm not the biggest salmon lover, so I took the fava bean one and let my girlfriend have most of the salmon one. The cones are packed farther down with creme fraiche and chives. The recipe is in the French Laundry cookbook. I'm going to have to give it a try this summer.
These tiny wonders were just the start of the onslaught of food. Beyond the courses I go into in detail, they bring several rounds of bread, I had a dinner roll, a hoop of duck fat rye, a slice of walnut baguette, another of a rye baguette with currants, a salted butter from Vermont, an unsalted butter from California, these were just the options I indulged in. I'll not wax too poetical, though. I'm aware I'm starting to sound a bit much like Anthony Bourdain, and you likely want to look at more pretty pictures.

Another TK signature dish, "oysters and pearls." There's a savory tapioca under the sauce, and white sturgeon caviar next to the oysters. I'm not the biggest oyster fan either, but this was an amazing plate to start with. The oysters themselves were even better than the oysters I had fresh out of the ocean on Miyajima.

The first dish of the Tasting of Vegetables. "Bouquetiere de Legumes de Printemps Cuits et Crus"
Spring vegetable salad, with gelee of their vegetable stock and a pine nut coulis. Right off the bat they plate a ton of flavors in a very delicate balance. The spring onion blossoms were a great touch here and later in the beef course of the Chef's Tasting menu.

"'Gateau' of Hudson Valley Moulard Duck Foie Gras"
Most of the foie gras I've had comes off as meatloaf paste. Granted, I love meatloaf, and spreading it on crackers is pretty fantastic. This was many times more refined, like the difference between top shelf vodka and the Vladimir $6 a handle piss that comes out of Scobeyville, NJ. This looks like a cake, but the strawberries are pickled, and those whimsical translucent green twirls are celery. The top layer of the "cake" is a strawberry gelee, which was sweet, but just enough to balance the incredibly rich blend of foie gras and whipped yogurt that is the heart of this plate. The toast was also exceptional. How good can toast be? Well, this raised my bar. No butter, the bread is baked with enough fat already in it to promote the browning. It must have been toasted by a high heat applied directly to the surface of the bread. There's about an eighth of an inch of perfect tawny crispness on either side, with about a half inch of pillowy white delight inside. As if that wasn't great enough, when you get about half-way through this plate, they bring you a NEW plate of toast so that you have fresh warm toast for the second half. Details.


"Dover Sole 'Farci aux Olives Nicoise'"
Delicate pickled asparagus adds the bright notes to this hearty fish laden with olives over diced potatoes and an emulsion of egg and garlic.

"Garbanzo Bean 'Croquettes'"
When I saw this plate I thought, "Come on, it's falafel. Must we be so pretentious?" On one hand, I know Thomas Keller is being playful with his menu. On the other hand, even if he called them flalafel, they still wouldn't have been any less impressive. Each croquette is topped with a candied slice of meyer lemon set in a coriander gelee adding a spiciness and broadening the cultural setting of the mashed and fried chickpeas. Beyond highlighting how great something simple and familiar can be when done with the best ingredients and attention to detail, these guys were incredibly satisfying.

"Butter Poached Nova Scotia Lobster Mitts"
Despite the morel cream sauce over the lobster and split English peas, this was my least favorite plate. The few slices of morel in the sauce just put the lobster to shame for both richness and subtlety. Still, it made for a fantastic picture.

This was my girlfriend's least favorite, but the few bites I managed to steal were some of my favorite of the whole meal. "Coddled Squire Hill Farms' Ameraucana Hen Egg" with brioche soldiers, smoked onion white sauce and a black winter truffle puree. The yolk in the egg was cooked with a gradient from puddle through pudding to wet clay. Everything was just so intoxicatingly comforting. I could probably make it through six of these before reason kicked in and/or my heart just clogged to a standstill.

"Four Story Hill Farm's Suckling Pig 'Porchetta'"
The porchetta by itself was a bit cloying, but it played so nice with everything else on the plate, especially the pickled green tomatoes. I would have been thrilled with a plating of twice as much of the polenta "grits" and collard greens and just a hint of the porchetta.

"White Asparagus Amandine"
This compared to the porchetta plate was the second time the vegetable tasting flatly outdid the chef's tasting. This plate was a playful riot of satisfaction from start to finish. Green almonds, ever had them? Ever heard of them? TK is showing off a bit here, but it's the kind of grandstanding that's hard to hate on because it's so clearly validated by the end-product. The plating, while pyrotechnic in terms of composition, was also understated, deftly drawing attention away from the morels and the "ramp top subric" that are the passion and backbone of this plate. The subric here was a cake similar in consistency to the falafel, but dark green and full of rampy exuberance. This is the one that had me making my girlfriend's favorite enrapt faces of food fugue.

"Snake River Farms' "Calotte de Boeuf"
Thomas Keller takes what is typically a scrap cut of beef, the strip around the outside of a rib-eye, and turns it into one of his signature dishes, and one of the most amazing pieces of beef I've ever had. The spring onions were a great pairing, very subtle with tones of vanilla. The other things on the plate were less memorable compared to the heavily marbled and yet still seriously meaty "calotte."

"Marscapone Enriched Yukon Potato 'Agnolotti'"
A decent plate, and a great accompaniment to the calotte de boeuf.

"Soup and Sandwich"
Fantastic soup, but the sandwich was a bit heavy. The "minestrone" was a combination of pickled vegetables, ravioli and vegetable stock, lightening the palate after the beef course. The goat cheese sandwich played well with the tomato marmalade, but very greasy.

"Gorgonzola Cremificato"
At this point in the dinner, this course proved a little much for my girlfriend. The pickled green tomatoes lightened the gorgonzola and polenta cake beneath, but after six courses plus the breads and craft butters, well, the body can only take so much indulgence and we were still a course away from dessert.

"Mango Sorbet" over rice pudding with rice wafer and whipped jasmine tea. Just when I thought I was done making faces, they put this down in front of me. The mango sorbet was stunning, but the real winner here was the rice pudding. The jasmine tea was a nice touch and held up to the robust mango, but the rice pudding was best by itself as a subtle refrain between the outbursts of the burlier flavors.

Pineapple Sorbet with lime macarons, compressed golden pineapple, papaya and persian lime salt. What is compressed pineapple? It's that fin sticking out of the sorbet, half a vertical slice of pineapple pressed and dried. My girlfriend likened it to a very fancy fruit roll-up. The rest of the dish was an invigorating interplay of tart and salty.

"Swiss Roll"
Another of Thomas Keller's signature dishes, a play on the form of the swiss roll snack cake. The birthday candle was as adorable as it was tasteful. The plate was beautiful, and many of the details were superb, especially the pineapple foam and the glace a la creme fraiche, but the cake itself was a bit timid. How gorgeous is this plate, though?

"Trinity and Hearts"
Rhubarb Jam, a yogurt-based Bavarian cream, crystallized rose petals and rose-scented yogurt sherbet. I only managed a bite of this before my girlfriend housed it. It was very good. I'm not the most dedicated dessert fan, though, and even ended up giving up a great deal of the swiss roll.

This creme brulee came out as a bonus desert to the tasting of vegetables. It was exemplary of its kind and, at a modest three inches across, was a delightful dollop of indulgence to close the plated portion of dinner.

But wait, there's more. After dessert they brought out a second, tiny, yet incredible dessert. This was a honey-ginger pot au creme. Ginger-infused honey lurked beneath an exquisite stiffened cream in an adorable little piece of ceramic reminiscent of Winnie-the-Pooh's honey pots. Another fantastic bit of interplay, the spoon they give you fits perfectly around the curve inside of that tiny little pot, allowing you to attack even the very last lick of an incredible meal, not including the selection of seasonal chocolate truffles, (fennel and dark chocolate and olive oil in white chocolate were particularly stellar) chocolate covered hazelnuts, adorable little sugar candies, nougats, caramels and a selection of bonbons that they bring out as you brace yourself for the check.