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This is part two of the story of the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten. Read The French Laundry, part 1: arrival.

The kitchen staff prepares a dozen different mini-appetizers every night, and brings two or three to each diner, to tease palates and set expectations for the evening. Our first amuse-bouche was a Gruyère puff pastry, which was delicious (even if I’d initially expected more Gruyère and less puff). Seemingly simple breads can be incredibly difficult to execute well, but this one was perfect: light, flaky, airy, with a distinct taste of the Swiss cheese for which it was named.

Soon a second waiter came to collect us. He led us upstairs in a smallish dining room of about six tables. The most striking thing about the space was something we didn’t notice consciously until a few minutes later: there was no muzak, no piped-in pap. As a result, everyone in the room spoke very quietly, aware of the lack of cover noise. It was an unusual atmosphere. I think I’d have preferred some sort of music, because in fact the lack of ambient sound does lend itself to eavesdropping. Here’s what we heard: everyone was talking about the food.

Our head waiter was the best I have ever experienced. He was attentive, intelligent, patient, all the things one would hope for. In fact, everyone at the restaurant except for the woman at the front door provided impeccable, professional, best-of-class service. It is fortunate that this is the case, for reasons summarized on the menu: “An 18% service charge is added to each check.”

We inquired about flexibility within the menus. For example, could we select a second fish course rather than meat? Our waiter assured us that substitutions were no problem; he made us feel that we were in charge of the show, and he existed solely to please us. That’s a refreshing feeling, and it helps justify the cost. He even went one better: “If you’d like, the Chef [yes, he pronounced the capital] could prepare a special fish course for the two of you.” Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought — if Thomas Keller wants to cook me a special entree, who am I to argue?

I also opted out of the cheese course. The waiter offered to prepare a green salad instead, and I eagerly accepted. You probably think I’m crazy to skip 1/5 of my opportunities to eat the most amazing food in the state, but I already knew I’d really appreciate something plain and healthy to go with the four courses of over-the-top rich indulgence. Also, I wanted to see what the French Laundry would do with a simple green salad, which, unlike everything else I’d be eating that night, was something I’d be likely to make for myself.

Another waiter appeared, bearing our second amuse. This one looked like a tiny ice cream cone. Its small size belied the monstrous taste explosion contained within. The cone was a sesame pastry, filled with crème fraîche and red onion, topped with a round scoop of salmon tartare. For two bites I was in gustatory heaven. It was shockingly good. My jaw would have dropped open had I been willing to risk losing even a crumb.

By now I’d surmounted all but a few remaining dregs of the ill feelings built up in the foyer downstairs. At any given moment, only about 70 people on the planet can say “I’m eating dinner at the French Laundry,” and as one of those people I was feeling pretty good. We were part of the fortunate few, attended to by a team of experts, fed by one of the best-ranked kitchens in the country, with more food on its way. The only thing that would have made be feel better, I thought, would be to learn that the GQ trust-fund dude from the bar, who had epitomized the idea that I was insufficiently endowed with money, fine clothes, leisure time, and sailing vessels to consider eating at the French Laundry, was in fact, a server at this very restaurant. Imagine my surprise when that person, fashionable socks and coiffure and all, delivered a bottle of wine to the next table. Heh. Life was good again. Maybe I’d even spill a little something for him on our tablecloth.

The third amuse, an egg custard, was an object lesson in finicky presentation. The flavor was good, if you happen to like combinations of ova, which we don’t particularly, but it deserves mention because of the attention paid to packaging: bird eggs had been carefully topped, drained, cleaned, filled with custard, baked, dressed with caviar, then placed into silver egg holders for serving. Fancy presentation is, of course, a hallmark of fine dining, and for the most part, the French Laundry’s presentations are stunning. In some cases, they are interactive as well.

Read the french laundry, part 3: climax

This is the story of the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten.

The front door of the restaurant opens into a small foyer with a short bar along the left side. The hostess table stands to the right; it was defended by an officious and somewhat unpleasant woman who wore her maitre d’meanor (I just made that word up) like a disagreeable shade of rouge. She intercepted us as we stepped inside, blocking our passage through the foyer as if we had planned to bully our way into the dining room to commandeer a table for ourselves. “Can I help you?” she inquired, although her body language was a lot less deferential than the words she spoke. Given the notorious difficulty of making reservations, it might be true that the restaurant gets a lot of drop-ins who deserve to be shunted rudely back out the door, but still I think it’s not too much to ask to have the greeter assume that arriving guests are indeed expected and welcome.

The small bar in the foyer had room for four, and five were already crowded there, leaving us to stand uncomfortably in the doorway. It seemed everyone was having a nice time except for me — they were talking, laughing, drinking, casually previewing the night’s menu, and not being hassled by the tense hostessperson with clipboard and fangs. Worse, one of the guys at the bar, a GQ coverboy in a crisp blue blazer with a fashionable shirt and tie and unseasonable tan and digitally retouched teeth and an accent and I’ll stop there while this sentence still has a prayer of being understood on the first pass, was holding forth on the best time of year to sail to St. Maarten… I shifted my weight with a sigh and felt the unfamiliar bind of my stiff leather shoes and brand-new suit jacket, and decided that eating at the French Laundry was a big mistake: I have the wrong temperament, the wrong salary, and the wrong wardrobe.

We’d come too far, though. The reservations were two months in the making, and we’d driven an hour to get here. I’d come for the food, so I resolved not to let my buttons get pushed by the people.

The hostess, her bureaucratic mind assuaged by the presence of my name on her ledger, offered us the wine list so we could browse it while we waited for a place to stand while we waited for a place to sit while we waited for our table. She apologized for the delay, explaining that the restaurant plans for a “three hour dining experience” (!), but that some guests “linger over their meal.” While this revelation cascaded around my brain (it’s possible to “linger” over a three-hour meal?!), I opened the proffered list.

It was a padded binder containing about 40 pages. Some of the prices had four digits. Yes, before the decimal. I felt all orifices tighten simultaneously.

I flipped past the chapters of European wines to find the page on Zinfandel, the only varietal with which I could honestly claim familiarity. I was extremely surprised to see that the prices were not unreasonable — $30 to $50 per bottle. And then I realized that I was reading the prices for half bottles.

The bar opened up. We took two stools with relief. Standing in the doorway had been stressful; as ironic as it might sound, having a place to sit made my spirits lift immediately. And it cheered me up even more to hand the wine binder back to the hostess with a firm “no thanks,” pronounced so as to clearly communicate the sentiment, “$30 for a half-bottle of Zinfandel, are you out of your freaking mind?!”

The restaurant offered three fixed-price menus. The standard menu provided five courses (appetizer, fish, meat, cheese, dessert) with several choices per course, for $115. The vegetarian menu offered nine courses with no choices, for the same price. The Chef’s Tasting Menu, the creme de la creme, the Keller extrava-gonzo, ran $135 and contained nine courses plus upgrades, e.g. foie gras for a “$20 supplement.”

I’d abandoned my vegan tendencies for this meal back when I made our reservation. And upon reading the vegetarian menu, I decided that a couple of pieces of fish wouldn’t hurt either, for the vegetarian menu contained two courses I just wasn’t that interested in: something with beets, and something else with artichokes. I don’t care if God is in the kitchen wearing a white apron; I’m not paying $115 to eat artichokes. So, both my wife and I decided on the standard five-course menu, although we planned to request a second fish course in lieu of the land-meat.

As we were reading the menu, poised between awe and fear, excitement and anxiety, hunger and, well, more fear, a waiter approached with a tray bearing two small spherical rolls. He inquired, “Gruyère puff pastry?” We gratefully accepted, and I began to relax into the decadence of the evening. Then I bit into the biscuit and thought with alarm, “What the hell, it’s empty!” It’s laughable in retrospect, but from the waiter’s description I guess I’d had in mind some sort of upscale cheese stick.

Read the french laundry, part 2: appetizers.

CNN reports: Young women who eat more red meat and full-fat dairy products such as cheese may be raising their risk of breast cancer.

CATIC, the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center, was established shortly after 2001-09-11. It issues bulletins to police about forthcoming events, including political marches and rallies. The implication: by participating in your government, you are a terrorist.

Fortunately, surveilling political gatherings is illegal in California, and AG Bill Lockyer is fighting back. The Chron reports: Lockyer backs ACLU on privacy; He agrees to ban surveillance of political activity

You can read more about CATIC here. The press release notes that CATIC has issued 224 terrorist threat advisories. As far as I remember — please correct me — exactly zero of those have turned out to be true. Hmmmmm.

Pictured is my wife’s suggestion for lunch today — an assortment of peppers from the garden. I can only hope the arrangement was unintentional.