DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

“I’d like the Vegilante, I said, “in a spinach tortilla.”

“OK, got it,” said the burrito master, tapping keys on the register.

“With braised tofu,” I continued meaningfully.

“Yes?” Two more keypresses, the first of which probably meant “cancel the plain Vegilante.” I continued with my spec.

“Organic brown rice …” He pressed another key.

“… black beans …” No keypress; the Vegilante comes with black beans. I suspected it might.

“… and no dairy: no sour cream, no cheese.” I had to be sure. He tapped again.

“Yes?” This order, he clearly thought, could go on forever. I hadn’t even gotten into the condiments yet.

“That’s it.” I gave him a winning smile, a smile that said, “if you wash your hands before you make my dinner, there’s an extra buck in it for you.”

He gave me a look that said, “Well, you certainly know what you want.” Just in case I’d missed the look, he said, “Well, you certainly know what you want.” I did, I did. In fact, I always do.

In wholly unrelated news, today I overheard someone say he had a “quandrum.” It’s an unfamiliar word, but the meaning was clear from context: quandrum is no doubt a synonym for “conundary.”

Happy people are three times less likely to get a cold, according to researchers who squirted cold virus up the noses of volunteers.

In my opinion, the researches have identified a correlation without proving causality. The truth is, people who are chronically bitter and depressed never want to leave home, and therefore never get exposed to runny-nosed kids and their snot-swabbing parents, and therefore never carry home a billion infectious germs on the tips of their fingers for later transplantation into virgin, if depressed, mucous membranes. And therefore they have no experience fighting off other people’s virulent diseases, and are much more prone to develop infection when finally exposed.

Of course, the researchers didn’t bother to ask me. Maybe that’s because I never leave home.

In a world of blame and disrespect, of lies and insults, like, say, the USA in the summer of 2003, small examples of kindness and emotional maturity stand out. See the following example, from an interview with Little Richard:

Little Richard: I’m in Las Vegas this weekend. Me and Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry, we all three together.
Aidin Vaziri: Wait, I thought you hate Chuck Berry.
L.R.: No, I don’t hate him. But, you know, Chuck is not very close with anyone.
A.V.: I heard he can get pretty grouchy.
L.R.: He’s not close to anyone. I love him and I wish him the best. I’m his brother and I wish him the best. But he’s not a really friendly person.

How easy would it have been to make a joke at Berry’s expense? Richard isn’t even Berry’s friend, and yet Richard stood up for him.

That takes class. That takes tact. I seem not to see too much of that any more, not even in myself. That’s my inspiration for today.

This is part three of the story of the most expensive meal I’ve ever eaten. Read The French Laundry, part 1: arrival, or part 2: appetizers

The arrival of our appetizers proper brought the first of several such interactive presentations. This was food-as-theater: to begin, a waiter delivered the specific silverware for the upcoming course. We were each provided only and exactly the necessary implements; the waiter knew what each of us had ordered and armed us appropriately.

Then three servers arrived with food. One stepped back behind my wife and held one hand in the other against his abdomen in a formal pose, and described the dishes and the action. “The lady is having Purèe of California Cépe Mushroom Soup with Russet Potato Dumplings,” he said as another server removed the lid from my wife’s soup bowl to reveal three lonely dumplings, which he covered carefully with the contents of a small pot of soup. “The lady’s Soup will be finished with Shaved Périgord Truffles,” said the MC as one of the servers brandished a truffle the size of a plantain and a buffed chrome microplane and proceeded to shave the flavored fungoid into an extravagant mound atop the soup. Needless to say, his aim was perfect.

Many restaurants “finish” dishes at the table, usually by offering some fresh ground pepper for salads. If the restaurant’s owners take themselves very seriously, they’ll use really long pepper grinders. But they can’t touch the French Laundry’s choreographed-service-with-voiceover approach. This was a different universe of high-end table service. To be clear, at no point during the evening did anyone ask us, “Now, which one of you had the Pied de Cochon Farcis aux Ris de Veau Servi avec Lentilles du Puy et Sauce au Vinaigre Vieux du Vin Rouge?”

As a fine-dining neophyte, I took a while to get into the swing of it. When our fish dishes were served, I blurted out a nervous question, “is that the sole?” as the waiter set down my wife’s entree. As if they’d make a mistake. I think I threw him off a little bit, because he seemed to over-enunciate every word a few seconds later when he stepped back, folded his hands, and described “the lady’s Sole”. He seemed to be giving me a hard stare. I was hopelessly out of my element.

Regardless, that dish was another highlight of the evening. It was the best fish dish either of us had ever tasted. My red snapper was excellent — impeccably cooked, adventurously seasoned, beautifully presented — but the sole was transcendent. It was the sort of food you’d write an essay about. It was the sort of food you’d happily pay $115 for. Exquisite.

After the fish course came an apology. The skate-for-two that Chef Keller had begun to prepare apparently wasn’t up to his high standards, so our waiter opened up the menu — we could order anything we wanted as a replacement course. In retrospect I’m happy things turned out this way, now that I know what skate looks like. Eww.

None of the courses were large, but they seemed to keep coming and coming. We were well filled by the middle of the meal. I can’t imagine successfully working through the nine-course tasting menu.

And what of the green salad? As I suspected, it was significantly different from my normal lunch salad in both concept and execution. A server delivered a plate of gorgeous greens, freshly hand-picked from the garden behind the restaurant. They’d been tossed, declared the MC, in the Chef’s own house-made olive oil — each leaf glistened with an absolutely even sheen. The play-by-play continued: “The gentleman’s Salad will be finished with hundred-year-old Balsamic Vinegar…” as my server filled a large tablespoon from a small antique bottle. The vinegar itself was sludge-thick, as if it had been sitting around evaporating for, I don’t know, 100 years. By all rights it should have been impossible to “drizzle,” but somehow he and it managed, dressing the leaves evenly until only a thin film remained on the spoon. At this point he tipped the spoon nearly vertical and placed individual droplets around the edge of the plate, at 10:00, 8:00, 6:00, slowing down as the drops were taking longer to gather, 4:00, 2:00, and then he paused at the top of the plate. The spoon seemed to be empty — only the merest hint of vinegar-syrup could be discerned clinging to the spoon. I so wanted the server to give up, having failed to complete the extravagant but ultimately pointless exercise in food-presentation, because this was the same guy who’d looked at me funny when I asked whether he’d brought my wife the right fish. But of course that final drop appeared within a few seconds more, and hit the plate at precisely 12:00. I have to admit, these guys could be a lot more smug than they were; their game was unbeatable.

The desserts were over the top. Mine was described as Déclinaison au Chocolat: “Hazelnut and Chocolate Mille-Feuille with Mousse au Chocolat Tiède and Chocolate Sorbet.” The tag-team of waiters brought me a large frosted-glass platter with three separate desserts: a mini-bathtub of mousse, a perfect scoop of sorbet, and a three-tiered architectural construction of micro-thin wafers and small spheres of, you guessed it, chocolate. The MC announced that all the chocolate was sprinkled with Normandy sea salt “for texture” and “to bring out the chocolate flavor.” The crunch did provide a nice textural contrast, but I think the chocolate flavor angle was pretty well already covered, infused, drenched, doused, soaked, smothered, and drowned. I ate every bite, licked every crumb, and rubbed the stray bits across my gumline. Oh yes.

Just as the appetizers were preceded with mini-sized pre-appetizers, the desserts were followed by “mignardises,” mini-sized post-desserts. I had a tiny crème brulée, and my wife had a pistachio custard. Both were excellent. And then the waiter brought a tray of petit fours, truffles, and assorted baked confections for which the label “cookie” is far too plain. We picked out the best, laboring under the illusion that either of us had room for even one more bite.

At the end, our “dining experience” timed out at about 2.5 hours. (If we’d ordered wine or a 9-course menu, we’d have stayed longer.) One of those five half-hours was spent eating; the other four were spent anticipating, savoring, and discussing the food. I think we talked about nothing else, and from the sound of things, the same was true for neighboring tables. All dinner guests marveled aloud at the seasonings and perfection thereof, the presentation, the huge flavors, the ideally combined and contrasted textures, and the impossibility of actually preparing any of these dishes, whether or not one owns the cookbook.

The critical question remaining to be answered is, would I do it again — would I eat at the French Laundry again? Is it worth the reservation hassle, the two-month wait, the wardrobe upgrade, the self-important guests, and the nervous sweat induced by a $300 meal?

Yes.

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