Mostly Ex-STRAW-dinry

The day after graduation, after Dr. Virago left to head home for the holidays, Shorewoodian and I went into The City. She had never been there, so we hit several of the big To-Dos, the Guggenheim (covered in scaffolding! D’oh!), the Met (actually, just the Met’s gift shop, though I did talk the guard into letting me into the museum proper without admission just so I could pee in the Roman period. Uhm, in the bathroom located in the Roman period hall, to be more exact. What can I say? It was a long train ride. Nature called.), Empire State Building, Herald Square, Times Square, past some of the Broadway theaters and of course Rockefeller Center and the tree.

It’s funny, but when I lived in New York, I never went to Times Square and never ventured into Midtown during the Christmas season because of, you know, all the tourists, so most of our route was as new to me as it was to Shorewoodian.

We also ducked into St. Patrick’s Cathedral before heading to dinner at Gordon Ramsay at The London. I’d made the reservation weeks earlier, because when I got the crazy idea to do this whole career change, I was partly inspired by Ramsay as a chef. I say "as a chef" because I do think he’s talented, based on his cookbooks and his columns in Olive and other British food mags that I read regularly. Let me state that my appreciation for Ramsay predates all the Hell’s Kitchen foolishness and overexposure that he’s had in the last few years.

Anyway, we went to GR@tL, where I decided hell, this is the only time I’ll eat here, or in any such ridiculously posh restaurant, so I’m going for the five-course tasting menu. That’s what credit cards are for, right?

Here’s my review, not as a professional restaurant critic, because I’m not and never want to be one, but as, well, just me, The Pastry Pirate:

The dining room was small and done mostly in silvers and grays... I think. It’s hard to say for sure, because it was so damn dark. That would be my only major complaint about the setting. It was hard to see a lot of details in the food, even. I felt a lot of the other people there were there because they are Ramsay groupies... I heard two different tables giddily ask if he was in the kitchen. Puh-leez... I’m sure he helped develop the recipes, but he’s never in the kitchen (one of his proteges is the head chef). As if.

The waitstaff was younger and less stuffy than I’d expected. Our back server in particular was pretty funny and laidback. Most seemed to be European, particularly French, but not the fussy nose-in-the-air sorts.

First they brought out two tiny pre-amuse bouche croquette-like things apiece with mushrooms and cheese. Okay, but not earth-shaking. The actual amuse bouche came after that: butternut squash veloute with parmesan foam and fresh thyme. Now that was something. The flavor was so intense but the texture was weightless. I’m not a fan of the whole foam trend, but I thought it was used judiciously. Scrumptious.

They gave us two breads: an Italian fluta, which was excellent, rich and flavorful with good crumb, and a multigrain which, I’m sorry, sucked monkey butt. I guess I just got used to the bold, hearty multigrain we make at school. This one was weak in flavor, with a tight crumb and dense crust that suggested overbaking and poor shaping. So sayeth The Laminator.

The first course was little discs of free range chicken, each topped differently: poached quail egg and chive, truffle and frisee and confit foie gras with pear chutney. Normally I am not a fan of foie gras, but here it was light and subtle and meltingly good without overwhelming the chicken, which was moist and intensely flavorful. The chutney also helped to cut what I think of as the globby mouthfeel of foie gras. My favorite of the three was the one with quail egg, as I am a fan of perfectly poached eggs, and this one was splendid.

The second course was tiger prawn ravioli with fennel cream, chervil veloute and shellfish vinaigrette. The ravioli skin was tender and super-thin, but the filling, while tasty, seemed a bit chunky and just a little salty. I like salt, so I loved it, but I was surprised to taste it so obviously in a place so inspired by classical French cooking, which I think of as "tournee everytheeng, but skeep the salt... it is for, how you say, the peasants, no?". The cream, veloute and vinaigrette just sort of became one creamy, vaguely herbaceous presence on the plate, which is not a bad thing, but it didn’t have quite the distinctive character suggested by the froufy description.

The third course, wow. Fluke fillet with almond bread, Concord grapes, celery hearts and champagne veloute. The fish was meltingly good, delicate and cooked to perfection, the thin layer of almond bread on top too soft to be considered a crust, but with excellent contrast in texture and flavor. The grapes were a succulent surprise. I was getting a little velouted-out at this point, but here it was so light and complimented the fish so well that I’m not going to complain too much.

My main course was medallions of venison with red cabbage, quark dumplings and cocoa sauce. The venison was perfectly medium rare and, while I’ve had venison before, the flavor was so intense it knocked me back. I realized it was the bitter cocoa (bitter in a good way) that was really bringing out the meatiness of the deer. It reminded me more of the one time I had wild boar than any other venison I’d had. It was excellently prepared, though based purely on personal taste preference I’d have to say the fluke was my favorite.

The "pre-dessert", pseudo-intermezzo was an adorable rounded shot glass layered with passion fruit curd (at least that’s what it tasted like), mint granite and coconut cream. I have stated my position on passion fruit before (enough already!), and am not a huge fan of coconut, but both were so subtly flavored and perfect in texture that I really enjoyed them. The mint granite was ex-STRAW-dinry (for non-Ramsay fans, he has a habit of pronouncing anything he likes as "extraordinary" in a rather declarative way), though. Real, fresh mint, herbaceous rather than sweet. Huzzah.

Shorewoodian and I got different desserts: she went with a chocolate savarin that came with mandarin oranges and bay sorbet, while I had a cinnamon and raspberry sable with lemongrass foam and raspberry cremeux. I thought mine was okay; I liked the pairing of lemongrass and raspberry with cinnamon, but I’ve had much better sable. Hell, I’ve made better sable, and the caramelized phyllo decor on mine tasted slightly stale. Shorewoodian’s bay sorbet was excellent, but her mandarin orange segments came with membrane and all. That really surprised us both. I know doing citrus supreme on a mandarin is a pain, but it’s not that big a deal – I did my share on externship – and honestly, it ought to have been done.

They brought over the "bon-bon cart," which is apparently what they decided to call their mignardise. We picked an assortment of treats, including all the molded chocolates, which I cut in half and inspected, as much as I could in the dungeon-like lighting, before sharing with Shorewoodian. The chocolates were fairly well done, capped a little thickly here and there, but one of the macaroons was stale (mon dieux!) and flavorless. Of course I was being very nitpicky, in part because it was so expensive but also because I can remember long hours spend julienning individual pistachios when I worked at the fancy-pantsiesed of the fancy-pantsed restaurants I was at during externship, or the way LeChef had us re-do our apples over and over just to get them absolutely to his standards.

So, while I found the desserts and sweets somewhat wanting and the lighting too dim, I will say the savory courses were fabulous, especially the butternut veloute and fluke. I also liked that the service, and the menu itself, was not pretentious. No one came around with a capsule of essence that I was supposed to sniff before tucking into the first course to enhance my dining experience, you know? And the food was all recognizable as food, not some strange post-modern sculpture on a plate, which I was pleased to see. But the mandarin oranges and multigrain bread, and the lighting or lack thereof, will not be forgotten, or forgiven. Not quite fully ex-STRAW-dinry, Gordon.