# written by my friend, Bruce, with some input from the other diners
The first thing that arrived in e-mail was the wine list. It's an impressive list: 426 wines, fifty pages worth, some of them costing thousands. Reading through it took fifteen minutes. Discussing it with the rest of my group took weeks. We had no choice, though. When you have a table at the French Laundry's private room, they want you to choose your wine in advance.
Yep; the French Laundry has a private room. It's for parties of at least eight and of at most twelve. There's no menu choice; you get the nine-course tasting menu, tailored to the wines you've pre-chosen for the meal. But here's the secret: it can be reserved up to twelve months in advance. If you're a large group, this is the secret back door to avoid the telephone queue every morning.
Four weeks ago today, eight of us had dinner in the private room. It's upstairs, through an arched doorway off the main room. It's also small. At eight we were crowded; I can't imagine how they manage to squeeze in twelve. But open doors lead onto the balcony on two of the sides, and the weather was nice enough to walk outside and rest between courses. Not what I expect when I reserve a private room--I expect a door that closes and some room to maneuver--but it did just fine.
We were offered our champagne in the garden, but we decided to have it at our table. It was a NV Billiot Rose Ambonnay, well balanced with a nice minerally crispness that matched the next three courses well.
The first amuse-bouche was a gougere: a Gruyere pastry ball. It was good, but nothing special. Pity, as this seems to be what they give everyone to start. Two of our party arrived early and waited in the garden for the rest of us--they were given a pair of gougeres to keep them company.
But no time to feel any disappointment, as this was quickly followed by a second amuse-bouche: a cornet cone filled with salmon tartare, lemon-infused olive oil and red onion creme fraiche. Wow! This was delicious in every way. The interplay of flavors--lemon, cream, black sesame--and the balance of textures--soft salmon against crispy cornet--was inspired. It was fun. It was serious. It delighted the palate and left everyone wanting more.
Luckily, more was to come.
Printed menus were at our place settings when we sat down, and the first dish off that menu came next: "'Oysters and Pearls': 'Sabayon' of pearl tapioca with Begaduce River oysters and Iranian Osetra caviar." This is one of Thomas Keller's signature dishes, and I've read it about it many times. It lived up to the hype. The tapioca pearls, the oyster pieces, and the caviar were a medley of round toys for the palate, and the briny flavor was gently blended by the sauce. It was flavorful and complex, while at the same time light and balanced. Luxurious without being overwhelming. A prefect match for the champagne. For some of us, this was the best dish of the night.
The next course was a surprise, not on the printed menu. It was an eggshell standing on end with its top neatly sliced open. (I had seen this presentation before, but for some at the table it was a novelty.) Inside was a mixture of custard, white truffle oil, black truffle ragout, potato and chives. One of us called it a "culinary Faberge egg," and it was delicious. The rich and earthy truffle flavors made the dish very intense, and was matched well with our second wine: a 2001 Prager Gruner Veltliner "Ried Achleiten," Smaragd. And ephemeral; just a few spoonfuls and it was gone. My only wish is that there was more.
But that just meant that there was some Gruner left for the next course. Second on the menu, fifth if you count the amuse-bouches, was the salad: "Salad on Hawaiian hearts of palm with breakfast radish, celery branch and 'fines herbes' vinaigrette." When we first saw this on the menu we were skeptical, but we were all surprised. Each individual ingredient was perfect, and the mixture of flavors and textures worked well. It probably helped that Keller positioned this dish after two rich courses. An unexpected surprise, and another good match for the Gruner.
Our third wine choice was 1979 Baumard Savenierres "Clos de Papillon." There are some Loire wines that age long and beautifully, and this was certainly one of them: fascinating complexity on both the nose and the palate, and still quite young at 24.
Amazingly, Keller produced a dish to match. It was "Grilled filet of Hawaiian big-eye tuna with Italian eggplant 'chutney' and madras curry 'emulsion.'" Another delicious dish. The tuna was perfectly grilled; the top was just barely browned, with the degree of doneness tapering off slowly through pink to the seared bottom. The texture was flaky without losing its integrity. The waiter commented that this is an unusually good variety of tuna. It was certainly among the best pieces I'd ever had.
But it was the sauce that made the dish. The eggplant/curry mixture complemented without overwhelming. Is it possible that somebody knew that 24-year-old chenin blanc tastes like eggplant and curry? It just couldn't have been a coincidence.
Number seven (if you're counting): "Sweet butter poached Maine lobster, caramelized fennel bulb, crystallized fennel chip and sauce 'noilly prat.'" One of the problems with eating an entire meal at a restaurant like the French Laundry is that you rapidly lose all sense of perspective. This is a dish that, I believe, would be the star of a meal elsewhere. Here, it was an also-ran. Not that there was anything wrong with it. The lobster was perfectly cooked, and the mild lobster flavors were as intense as any I've eaten. The sauce was a very tasty vermouth and lobster stock reduction. But the food clashed terribly with the Savenierres (probably the sweetness of the lobster meat), and hey, this is the French Laundry--the competition was intense.
And it's probably a credit to Keller that the dish was overshadowed by one of its own ingredients. The fennel chip, the fennel chip--we couldn't stop talking about the fennel chip. A razor-thin slice of dried fennel plant: it was visual, textural, and gastronomic perfection. If we could have arranged a big bowl of them in the center of the table, we would have fought each other over who was eating more of them.
Luckily, the next dish more than made up for any disappointment. It was rabbit: "'Un paquet de rillettes de lapin,' French green lentils and applewood smoked bacon 'lardons.'" I loved this dish while eating it, and the more I considered it over the next few days the more it impressed me. I buy rillettes in France all the time; it's perfect picnic food. (Rillettes is meat, usually pork but also rabbit, goose, poultry, fish, etc., that is slowly cooked in seasoned fat and then pounded or pulverized--along with some of the fat--into a paste. It's delicious.) But to heat it up and serve it with that sauce...wow! One definition of brilliance is to do something that is obvious to everyone else once you do it, but that no one else thought about doing before. It was smoky, slightly chewy, robust but not gigantic, earthy--delicious in every way. It was a perfect dish to match our fourth wine: 2000 Allemand Cornas "Chaillot."
Course number nine was meat with a capital "M." The menu said: "Snake River Farms 'calotte de boeuf grille,' forest mushrooms 'duxelles,' La Ratte potato 'fondant' and 'buerre colbert,'" but to us it was meat and potatoes. Actually, that's not fair. It was a perfectly fine course, but it paled in comparison to what we had just eaten. The beef was cooked rare and tender. The duxelles were delicious. The tater tots--forget "fondant"; they were tater tots--were fine. This course was probably included for the people who expect meat and potatoes.
But we did order a Burgundy, so we should have expected beef. But we didn't get the Burgundy we ordered. We agreed on the 2000 Roty Charmes Chambertin "Tres Vieilles Vignes," but a few courses earlier we had been told that it was not available. Out came the wine lists. Even though we were able to restrict the discussion to the five pages of Burgundies, it took a while to pick a replacement. The sommelier was very helpful and knowledgeable, and did a great job in helping us choose. But it was just wrong. The whole point of selecting wines beforehand was so they would be available when we arrived. If the bottle wasn't available when we selected the wines, why weren't we told that when we selected it? (Three of our other first choices were not available; we learned that via e-mail and were able to pick others.) If it was available back then, why wasn't it held for us? And if there was no guarantee that our selections would be held, why did they make a meal to suit the wines? It just didn't make sense.
In any case, we ended up with a 1990 Camille Giroud Volnay "Santenots." It was okay, and a fine complement to the beef, but some of us were looking forward to the wine we ordered.
After the beef we began the long and winding road towards dessert. Cheese first. The dining room is too small to have a cheese cart; there just isn't room to maneuver. And Keller prefers prepared cheese dishes to a selection of cheeses. For us he made a "'Herbiette,' roasted sweet pepper 'crostini,' nicoise olives and basic-infused extra virgin olive oil." Honestly, it wasn't much. One cheese, and not a very interesting one at that. A nice enough crostini, I'll admit. Hardly a cheese course, really. And totally unmemorable.
Next came the most confusing dish of the night. On our menu: "Frog Hollow peach sorbet with Cream of Wheat pudding 'cake.'" First of all, how can you possibly have peach and frog in the same culinary-related sentence without bringing to mind Peter Cook and Dudley Moore? And second, it was just a dollop of sorbet on top of the pudding cake. The sorbet was good enough, but the table was divided over whether the Cream of Wheat helped or hurt the dish. Some thought it matched well, others thought the blend was a complete and total disaster. The best I can say is that the sorbet was really good.
Chocolate followed: "'Delice au chocolat' with passion fruit 'coulis,' chocolate 'dentelle' and yogurt 'foam.'" This was better than the peach, but it was nothing more than a solidly executed chocolate dessert. Where's the brilliance? Where's the inspiration? Who's the pastry chef, anyway?
Maybe we were too jaded at that point. Maybe we should have ordered one or two dessert wines. Maybe it was after 11:00 PM and we were just tired.
We were certainly full. When the "Mignardises" (a fancy name for petit-fours) came around, it was hard to take more than a couple of bites. And the bites varied: absolutely delicious coffee-toffee-mocha flavored macaroons, excellent chocolate-hazelnut candies, good chocolate velour tartlette, dry mini chocolate-chip scone. There were more, but I just couldn't try everything.
After taking our coffee order, the kitchen brought us another course not on the menu: a choice of a small creme brulee or pistachio pot au creme. Both were delicious. Of course we swapped around so that everyone got to taste everything. The creme brulee was intensely flavored and exactly what you expect a creme brulee to be. The pistachio was also rich and intense, a perfect rendition of pistachio flavor in cream form. Coffee and tea came for those who wished, and we were done.
Well, almost done. We asked for a kitchen tour and they gave us one, four at a time. I've toured a lot of high-end kitchens over the years, and that one was--by far--the smallest I'd ever seen. I'd like to sit somewhere out of the way and watch them cook dinner someday.
It was a wonderful meal. Service--as expected--was excellent, but not perfect. The captain was great. He paced the meal well. He interacted with us pleasantly. He correctly gauged the timbre of our group and matched it.
I only have four service complaints. One, that weird contretemps with the Burgundy. Two, the waitstaff lapsed in keeping our water glasses full towards the end of the meal. Three, they got confused over who ordered what coffee or tea. And four, the captain opened a second bottle of champagne for us without asking. I dislike it when restaurants try to push wine. But he didn't try doing it a second time.
But these matters were small compared to the meal. We had a delightful time. The restaurant was a beautiful little jewel. The grounds were serene. We enjoyed standing on the balcony between courses, looking at the gardens. The ingredients were beyond reproach. The presentations were excellent. The level of creativity was, with a couple of exceptions, excellent as well. Same with the service. The cost...well, there is that. Everything included, the cost was $334 per person.
And that's something that can't be ignored. The French Laundry was not the most expensive meal I've had--Michelin three-stars in Paris have cost more, as did Ginza Sushi-Ko in Beverly Hills--but it was certainly up there. On the other hand, while I am not the sort of person that ranks experiences, the meal was certainly one of the best I've ever eaten. To me, the only financial question you can really ask about this absurdly priced meal is whether or not it was worth it. It was. No question.
I'd go back in a heartbeat.
