A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [128]
There was a break between courses – a sort of seventh-inning stretch – and there we were: four grown men – three chefs and an author – standing outside Keller’s kitchen in the dark, our noses pressed up against the window screen, spying on the man, whispering.
‘SSssshh! . . . He’ll hear us!’ somebody said.
‘Look,’ said Michael. ‘See how happy he looks!’
‘My God! He’s got no mise at all!’ said someone else. Standing there in the shadows in the French Laundry’s garden, it felt like we were kids on Halloween night.
‘That’s a happy man,’ agreed Eric.
‘How many chefs get to do this?’ Keller had said earlier. ‘We’re just really lucky. And I don’t forget that.’
A twenty-course tasting menu, under the most favorable circumstances, is a challenge to any chef. A twenty-course (including amuse-gueules) tasting menu for a party of fellow chefs is, for most of us, reasonable rationale for a nervous breakdown. But imagine – try to imagine – turning out four distinct and different twenty-course tasting menus for that one table of chefs, only two or three courses in common, over sixty different plates of food hitting one party of four – and doing it at the same time as serving a full dining room of regulars, many of whom are also having elaborate multicoursed tasting menus – and you get the idea when I say that Thomas Keller is different.
The meal took six and a half hours, with very little, if any, waiting between courses. Four different little oyster dishes would arrive, and we would all first look at our own plate, then glance longingly at the others’. For a while, we’d taste a little, sawing off a tiny bite of oyster, for instance, then pass our plates counterclockwise so the others could try. After many bottles of wine, and many courses, some of us just stopped passing. How do you cut a single oyster into four portions? It’s hard. Some get more than others. In the highly charged atmosphere where everybody wants to try everything, this can lead to disputes – maybe violence. By the time the meat and fowl began hitting the table, I just hunched over my plate and said, ‘Don’t even think about it. You can try this one next time.’
There was a lot of head shaking and sighing going on. Who among us in the whole wide world of chefs would attempt this? It was, far and away, the most impressive restaurant meal I’d ever had. Let me give you a closer look. Listed below is the menu for that evening, what I was served. Keep in mind that Scott, Eric and Michael were simultaneously enjoying equally elaborate and yet different dishes.
The meal began with the French Laundry’s signature amuse – tiny little coronets of salmon tartare, served in a cone rack like at Baskin-Robbins (the inspiration for the dish). We all knew they were coming. We’d seen them in the cookbook – in my guests’ case, they’d had them before. In addition to being delicious, it’s psychological manipulation at its most skillful. You can’t help but be charmed. The cute little cones, wrapped in tiny paper napkins, press long disused buttons in the sense-memory section of the brain. You feel like a kid again, your appetite jump-starts, and a breathless sense of anticipation comes over you. You want – you need – to know: What’s next? Here’s what I had next: puree of Robinson Ranch shallot soup with glazed shallots, English cucumber sorbet with pickled cucumber