A Quick Note about Chez Panisse
Oh. My. God. *drool*
I'm in a bit of a food coma right now, so this may not be all that coherent, what with the blood having gone from my head to the A-list party going on in my digestive system, but I wanted to write about lunch while it's still fresh on my mind (and in my tummy) and before I have a chance to go home and break the spell with frozen pizza and a fun-size Three Musketeers.
Appetizer: Two medallions of Sonoma goat cheese breaded and baked to warm and squishy melt-in-your-mouth deliciousness. Served with greens. (We all shared our meals, so I also had some blood oranges with red onions and olives, a bite of mackerel, and a piece of something (meat?) fried and served with avocado paste.)
Main course: Grilled chicken breast with bay leaves, red peppers, and oranges, served on a bed of delicate saffron rice. Accompanied by chickpeas, green peas, sundried tomatoes, and steamed miniature white turnips not unlike huge oyster pearls, only tastier. (I also had some pasta with non-yucky artichokes and some pork from a pig that was fed on a strict diet of hazelnuts. Rumor has it that the pig was also brought to the restaurant in a glass coach with a mini-bar and some Playmates inside.)
Dessert: Crème caramel (like really fancy pudding) with blood oranges and an almond cookie. (Also an apple tart with crème fraiche, a teeny tiny tangerine, one sugary date, and a forklift full of bittersweet chocolate cake with Chartreuse cream, made with a strong liquor from a secret recipe known only to three Carthusian monks locked away in a 900-year-old French monastery. Really.)
Altogether, my meal--without wine--cost somewhere around $45. But the experience, my friends, was priceless. The conversation was even good, which means we didn't talk at all about digital computer-to-plate printing versus traditional offset printing from film but about life and traveling and baseball and about me being a picky eater and having intense suburban pride, which gives me opinions like this and this about paying twice as much for food that can't possibly be that much better than what I can buy at Safeway. Even though over the course of the meal our client--did I mention he had a high British accent and piercing blue eyes?--came to realize how much of a freak I am when it comes to adventurous dining, we all had a wonderful time and came back two and a half hours later a lot fuller and happier and, in my case, a lot more friendly toward the idea of indulging in an occasional overpriced tastebud spoilfest (especially when someone else is paying).
Here's my one obligatory jab at the culture of fine dining: When you first sit down, they bring you two huge hunks of bread, which you then have to break into smaller portions. In the process of dismantling the bread, you create a huge mess of crumbs on the table, where you'd think a bread plate would be, but no, there's just a table. Then, between the main course and the dessert course, a scrawny little busboy comes over with a special crumb scraper, and proceeds to squeegee the offending specks from the table. What's up with that? Wouldn't it just be easier to give people bread plates to catch the crumbs?
Ok, one more jab, and I'm done: What was up with the guy in the avocado linen suit jacket and white pants with the Hollywood hair and the sunglasses? Puh-lease.
Here's a picture of me and my boss, Malcolm, looking as stuffed as Thanksgiving turkeys and as happy as Manila clams baked in a wood oven with hot red chiles.
Glad you had fun, the food sounds amazing!
I'm drooling like Homer Simpson.
Oh Leah, I'm a HUGE fan of fancy dinners. I could tell you some stories... Anyway, they're one of the many reasons I'm working out like mad now.
But yeah, going to a restaurant run by a chef whose sole desire in life is to make delicious food, is a must. It's like watching the Olympics and cheering the athletes for doing what they were born and love to do only you get to eat the results!