A couple years ago, Mike and Johnny got a rare glimpse inside the French Laundry. They were in SF putting on the third in a nationwide series of Achatz-Keller dinners, which my then-just-friend Mayur helped with (yes! when I refer to him as a friend, I use his name :).
Click through to Mike’s blog for a few more shots.
Oh and also, here are two posts on our dinner at the Laundry. (If I were to do it again, I’d get the vegetarian meal — I think it would have been that much more interesting.)
The pass. It was dead quiet here. We were just beyond the door way here speaking with Cory about the dishes we cooked and the dishes they were serving. It was amazing to watch the machine of this kitchen move and work.
Photo (C) 2009 Jonathan Edward Cigar
Are you ready for the snobbiest sentence you’ve ever heard me say (with the note that I mean it with humbleness and sincerity?) … this is exactly the problem I had with the meat courses at the French Laundry! They were too refined, too perfect. They lost the sexiness, the unexpectedness, of really good meat. I’m glad to learn I’m not alone in my wariness of the overuse/abuse of ultra-refined sous vide cooking….*
From The New Yorker’s fascinating review of the multi-volume tome, Modernist Cuisine:
The most instructive dish, however, was one of the failures, a slow-and-low chicken, cooked for several hours and served when its internal temperature had hit 149 degrees Fahrenheit. The problem was that, with all its juices still inside, it tasted far too chickeny. If you oven-roast chicken the regular way, you get used to the drying effect of the heat, and to the fact that some juices go into the pan and are recycled as gravy. With this version, the bird was so moist that its texture was almost jellied, the flesh was a faint pink, and the chicken-explosion of flavor was overwhelming. In a sense, it was too good. My roast-chicken-obsessed children threw down their cutlery in protest after a single mouthful.
* To be clear: I most certainly did NOT throw down my cutlery in protest. Let’s not kid ourselves, ‘twas still effing amazing.
The Marvelous and Amazing Never-Ending Birthday Adventure…
It was nearing dinner time on Friday and we really didn’t have a plan. M. suggested we have an early meal at a resort called Meadowood and then drive to SF. Sounded lovely … ‘til we arrived and it looked like a country club and I practically broke out in hives.
The blanc de blancs was crisp and perfect but golf was happening way too close for comfort and there was a man in a polo drinking a Bud Light (in NAPA!) a few tables away who was yelling into his cell phone and kept saying “That’s how I roll.”
(It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because M. uses the phrase “ironically” waaaay too much and it’s secretly driven me nuts. “See!” I said, “That’s what you sound like,” and I think that will be the last I hear of that.)
We got out of there as quickly as we could. Drove to Yountville and passed The French Laundry, which I stared at like it was a holy oasis because as every good foodie knows it is LEGENDARY and THE BEST IN AMERICA, et cetera, et cetera, and there it was: SO CLOSE and yet SO FAR.*
(A few years ago, M. ate lunch there, and although he takes issue with Chef Thomas Keller’s overly-refined style, he has said to me many times, “You have to eat there at some point and we’ll make sure you do,” and of course I wholeheartedly agreed. But, sadly, it wasn’t going to be this trip because lunch would have eaten up most of the day, leaving no time for wineries, and a dinner reservation was just out of the question.)
So we drove right past the Laundry and I didn’t pout one bit. Nope, no sir. Instead, we headed for Keller’s upscale-but-much-less-so alternative, Bouchon. A place many people would be thrilled to visit. But my heart had snagged at the pretty cottage down the road. As I opened the restaurant door, I said to M., with all the audacity of hope that true love affords, “I want to go The French Laundry.”
He looked me in the eye, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay.”
(I LOVE THIS MAN.)
So we went back to the parking lot and he changed into a suit and I into a cocktail dress (right there! in the parking lot!), and, giddy with the lunacy of it all, we walked into the place where frickin’ Anthony Bourdain and Mario Batali have to wait for reservations like everyone else, and asked, on a Friday evening at 7 pm, if they had a table for two.
They didn’t laugh at us, for which I am grateful, and instead took his name and sent us back to Bouchon to have cocktails and wait for … a sign from the gods?! I mean, a phone call just seems anti-climactic. But lo! an hour later they DID call and said they had a table and I’m pretty sure we high-fived each other and maybe I did a jig because what?! Who DOES this?!
***
{A view into the preternaturally calm kitchens.}
So. Dinner at The French Laundry. I mean … yeah. Words fail. The meals we had at Corton and Blue Hill at Stone Barns were (marginally) better, but c’mon, it’s The French Laundry and the magnitude of that fact is infused in every bite and every elegant gesture. And the experience was made all the better by the way we got in: storming the castle diffused the stuffiness and made it an almost illicit thrill. (The waitstaff could barely conceal their shock that we were able to walk in.)
I can only offer a visual taste…
{The infamous Oysters and Pearls, every bit as good as everyone says.}
{Foie gras with three salts.}
{Butter-poached lobster.}
{Lamb and duck, cooked sous-vide.}
{The glorious composed cheese course.}
{Happy birthday to me! (Again.)}
{A veritable candy store to choose from.}
… and there were many more courses and amouse bouches and champagne and one particularly spectacular wine that was older than HIM!
The meal ended at 1 am and then my hero drove to our next set of marvelous adventures in SF. (Though of course it felt like we were flying … and we still haven’t touched ground.)
* The Soul of a Chef: The Pursuit of Perfection by Michael Ruhlman first piqued my fascination with the Laundry.
