The first course was actually five at once: a series of “edible cocktails”. bite-sized delicacies infused with different liquors that provoked different areas of the palate. First was half a passion fruit, the fruity seed-filled pulp enhanced with a trace of matusalem classico, to be downed in one gulp. The texture of the flat crunchy seeds within the gelatinous fruit is always a pleasure, and the rum was just a whisper within the full bodied tang of the flesh. Couldn’t help wishing for seconds of that one.
Next were four candy-sized concoctions presented on tiny pedestals meant to be taken in one bite, like shots. The first was a citrusy bitter that left an aftertaste of grapefruit rind…then apple flavoured with brandy, grenadine and thyme…then a bit of squash infused with cynar…and finally a kumquat that punched you with a strong smokey taste of rye. The flavours went from bright to bitter in a sequence, and while we both preferred the lighter tastes at the front of the line, sampling the range of flavours in sequence made even an inexperienced diner appreciate the diversity of tastes.
The first plate presented three-day fresh golden roe on a puff of coconut mousse, next to pineapple converted to a shard of glassy cellophane, and a dot of licorice that was surprisingly bright in combination with the other flavours.
Next came a shallow bowl full of snow on which rested an oyster shell…and in that, a single salt-sprinkled oyster leaf. This is a spinach-sized green that tastes remarkably of ocean and shellfish; just two bites, and it feels like you’ve had seafood. The server tells me that Achatz found it in Scotland, got the seeds and now has a farmer who grows it for him locally. Fascinating to taste something green that tastes so marine-like – like how Portobello mushrooms taste like meat, but even more powerful and surprising.
The next dish was a two-parter featuring shrimp. One was a sesame-dotted breadstick, standing upright in a tiny pot of miso mayonnaise, and with the shrimp teased out and wound around the breadstick in a spiral. The other was a riff on Vietnamese street food fusing together sugarcane and shrimp into a tiny rectangle the size of your fingertip and dotted with mint on top. You chew the frigid little square without swallowing, like a licorice root; the shrimp flavour emerges unexpectedly from between the fibres of the densely packed bite . Lots of fun for a texture junkie like me.
The white dish is an essay in monochromatics: chunks of turbot and parsnip, layered between vanilla and lemon mousses and foams, traces of marshmallow slivers fried into shreds, rice cracker ,and a small creamy tube of white chocolate flavoured like coffee. I missed the black pepper in the recipe but believe it was there.
Right after came a palate-cleansing shot of brightness: a shot glass of celery juice, in which floated a ball of white chocolate and horseradish filled with apple juice that bursts in your mouth and leaves you ready for the next series of flavours.
At this point, if anyone isn’t appreciating the innovations of design that Achatz uses to present his food, it become impossible to ignore them. Rabbit appears presented three ways in a single ceramic container that looks like two teacup bottoms put together to make a sphere. The top of the ball is indented so it can hold a spoonful of rabbit mousse , embellished by shreds of deep fried spaghetti squash strands and a thin flat rectangular chip made of butternut squash. Once you eat that, the top half of the sphere is removed to reveal a ball of deep fried rabbit buried under beautifully smokey trumpet mushrooms and dots of different squash puree. It tastes exactly like Thanksgiving. And then, just as you think you’re done, the inner dish is removed once more to reveal what’s underneath in the bottom half of the ball that's been keeping the whole dish warm: a rabbit apple consommé, garnished with a cinnamon stick, and kept warm by a smooth black river rock heated to about a billion degrees to keep it all at fine dining temperatures. All the servers joke about the strategies they have developed to be able to carry out the incredibly hot spherical dishes without giving away its secrets too soon.
From here the presentation becomes more and more dramatic. What comes out next is a deep fried ball of pheasant, walnut, sage and grape, wedged to suspend in a spray of wires coming out of a little stand (staff call the implement “the squid” because it looks like an upside down wire octopus). Stuck into the delicious dumpling is a twig of oak leaves, singed on the edges. The idea is that the autumnal aroma of burning leaves is in your nose as you bite into the hearty, Thanksgiving-esque nibble of game meat and stuffing, evoking memories of warm hearty dinners on chilly fall nights. It works. Memory is manipulated like a seasoning to enhance the taste.
Early in the meal a server placed a “centrepiece” on the table. It looked like two flat brown chopsticks angled into a stand, and between them hung something flat and orange like a flag. Turns out this was part of the next course. Servers brought out a flat rectangular dish covered with a glass tray, on which were dotted a line of garnishes: smoked blackberry, black garlic candied cherry, nicoise olive, tobacco gel in a spoon, a vinaigrette and more. When you lifted the glass with these tiny treats off your tray, you discovered two metal pieces that fit together like a puzzle to make a stand. The server then draped the orange “flags”- which, we now realized, were sheets of pasta – over the prongs of the metal stand, ladled in some deliciously succulent short ribs, and then invited us to make our own raviola by spooning in whichever of the garnishes we liked and rolling it to eat with our hands. This to me was an entertainingly complicated course in structure, and in some ways the least successful because even with everything in the pasta, the strong flavour of the meat overpowered anything else you put in to enhance it, so it was sort of a lot of fuss for less than hoped for result. But you had to admire the cleverness of the dishware, and the idea at least, and I have a new appreciation for the novel taste of smoked blackberry. Hardly a disaster of a course.
“Hot potato/cold potato” is a signature of the restaurant. You are presented with a shallow wax bowl that looks like an oversized contact lens. In it is a potato soup, and speared through the side of the bowl is a needle that suspends little chunks of cold potato squares and black truffle. Pull out the needle through the side of the bowl and the chunks fall into the soup, which you then down in one gulp. Fun and unusual, and pleasantly creamy and chewable all at once.
At this point the ultra contemporary dinner takes a Victorian turn, as etched glassware comes out for the wine. It accompanies a classically plated L’Escoffier style dish: pigonneau (squab) a la St. Clair. Probably one of the most conventional dishes on parade, but still hearty and satisfying, especially remarkable considering it was three bites big.
Black truffle explosion brings you back to the 21st century with one burst. It arrives as a raviola with parmesan and a little romaine lettuce leaf, suspended on a spoon resting within a bottomless bowl, just a ceramic ring. When you bite into it in your mouth, black truffle tea floods your palate, which makes for a mix of richness and lightness all at once.
The last of the savoury dishes blew my mind with their innovation and presentation. First was a glassy shard of pineapple flavoured cellophane, pinched between two small metal wheels so that it stood upright on the table. It was dotted with pink spots, which I learned was ham powder, sprinkled in to taste like a Hawaiian pork. Next to it was a pair of metal wires bent into a half circle that rocked on the table, and suspended on a wire between the ends like laundry on a line dangled a tiny strip of bacon edged in butterscotch and a bit of green apple fruit leather. Third on the table was a shot glass full of a beige foamy soup: liquefied caramel popcorn. The blend of smoky ham and pork against sweetness and tang was delightful – kept going from bite to bite to combine the flavours – and once again evoked holiday table goodness in just a few richly layered nibbles. One of my favourites of the night, and once again the tools and implements impressed me as much as the food itself.
It’s worth noting that one of the loveliest wine pairings of the night comes with this smoky series: a Pineau de Charentes blend of grape juice and cognac. Perfect strong sweet full-bodied companion flavour to those arrayed on the table.
At last came the dessert round (and you can be sure that there wasn’t just one). The servers startled us by bringing out air-filled pillows the size of place mats, on which they balanced shallow dishes of food. The pillows are filled with vapourized Earl Grey tea and vanilla, and the weight of the dishes pushed the flavoured air out through invisible pores in the billow, so that your nose fills with the combination of sweetness and bitter edge and enhances the food you’re about to eat. What goes with this fragrance is caramelized white chocolate, rose, mango puree, pine nuts and lemon. Caramelized white chocolate. Think about it.
Part two of dessert was a clear glass tube, like a test tube with two open ends, and in it was a dark purple jelly, then a white cream, and finally a beige gelatin full of bubbles. In order, these were hibiscus, crème fraiche and tapioca (like bubble tea), but when sucked from the tube at once (from the purple end), the tastes and textures combine to taste EXACTLY like bubble gum. The tapioca balls even let you chew! Loved the playfulness and surprise of this dish and wished for more so that I could discover it again.
At this point our server came out and surprised us by rolling a thin gray silicon sheet over our table, which looked like a high end vinyl tablecloth. Several more servers followed, laying an array of dishes and pots of food on the table, without explanation, while we looked on with interest. And that’s when the showstopper emerged. Chef Grant Achatz himself came to our table. He began dabbing and sprinkling and dotting different things on the table surface: milk chocolate, chocolate peanut powder, wine-pickled whole blueberries, blueberry sauce, cream flavoured with local honey; he was decorating the table like he was painting a dinner plate. Then a server brought out nitrogen-frozen chocolate mousse, which he broke up into airy chunks, and then broke a flat purple wafer of freeze-dried blueberries over it, as well as chunks of white meringue-like nougat. All business, he retreated back to the kitchen leaving us to pick up our spoons and swirl the various sauces, powders and puffs together around the tabletop in different combinations to blend the flavours in a decadent mix of sweetness. It was incredibly rich, and flavourful, and yet light and ephemeral all at once. Honestly, a gasp worthy finale that is as much fun to watch being created before you as it is to eat.
I don’t know how many more world class, three star meals I may get to enjoy in my life. But it was worth waiting forty years for this one. Dinner for two cost more than a mortgage payment, but the memory will last just as long, and the pleasure that lingers is far more profound. I've never experienced a meal quite like it and it makes me smile every time I recall it.
