I’m writing with an update on the newest haute-cocktail scene in Chinatown named Apotheke.  As I’m sure many of you have already heard by now, it’s opening in a former opium den in an obscure, difficult to reach location in a quiet corner of Chinatown.

It officially opened a couple weeks ago, but not to the general public.  It was the scene of some Fashion Week parties and various other private events, but as of this past Friday the 12th, Apotheke is officially open to regular joes like you and me.  For the average mixology-seeking cocktail enthusiast, though, Apotheke is shaping up to be quite a different scene than PDT, Death and Company, and others.

Here’s the official reservation policy, procedure, and information:

• It costs $1,000 to make a table reservation, and that $1,000 is the minimum table spend, not the upfront cost
• The $1,000 can be spent any way the group would like, whether it’s on cocktails or bottle service
• Cocktails start at $15 and go much higher depending on ingredients and size
• Tables can fit between 5 and 10 people, but the majority fit 5
• I did the math for you, dear readers: for an average table, each person would have to buy on average 10 cocktails to reach the $1,000 minimum
• You do not need a reservation to go, but there’s definitely going to be a long wait
• To make reservations, call 212-406-0400 between 12pm and 6pm Monday through Saturday
• Apotheke is open from 6:30pm through 2am Monday through Saturday

I think it would be an understatement for me to say I’m disappointed with this policy.  Some of the best spots in the city for a cozy cocktails are tucked away tables in cool, speakeasy cocktail lounges that were earned simply by placing the right call at the right time.  That wonder seems to be gone here, replaced instead by the kind of high-roller atmosphere purposely fostered by Goldbar and others.

In other cocktail news, Milk and Honey has officially changed their number, so all of you dear readers who finally found that holiest of grails, that elusive 718 number, you should probably go ahead and erase it from your phones.  Damn you M&H, why must be so elusive!

Cafe Gitane is a Moroccan-French fusion cafe in Soho.  It’s been around for a while, and has gone through quite an evolution of clientele and employees.  Back in the day, I hear it used to be quite the model hangout, but now it’s usually packed (and I mean packed) with hipsters and beautiful, though not professionally beautiful, people.  Naturally, I fit in swimmingly.

So let’s get down to business: what makes Cafe Gitane particularly distinctive, more so than other similar fusion cafes nearby in Soho?  The first thing that I find important is that they’ve managed to retain their characteristic light, jovial air unwaveringly since I started going a couple of years ago.  The room always feels like it’s filled with regulars having an absolutely splendid day and surrounded by bright colors and fanciful decorations–I challenge you to eat at Gitane and not feel immediately elated.

Another reason I love Gitane is that it is unpretentiously casual.  We all know that some places that claim to be casual and have good looking clientele, but go out of their way to make things exclusive, snobby, and basically everything other than formalizing the dress code.  Gitane takes no reservations, treats everyone the same, and does it all with a smile and a laugh.  By fostering this purposely unstructured environment, they’ve managed to become more than just a cool spot: it’s a neighborhood institution.

One way they’ve managed to do this is by keeping the food as casual and unpretentious as the restaurant itself.  Gitane masterfully creates dishes that other restaurants might be afraid to due to their simplicity.  They’ll throw two slices of fresh toasted baguette on a plate with brie and sliced apple.  Delightfully simple, but you know what?  Sometimes that’s all you’re in the mood for, and when it’s done right, it really hits the spot.  Here are a few examples of the simple dishes prepared with not-so-simple expertise:

This is a yogurt sauce with cucumber chunks, spices, and rose layered on top of hummus.  Simple, and mind-blowingly delicious.

Gorgonzola with pine nuts and honey.  You could make this at home, but somehow I doubt it would be as good.

Moroccan cous cous with hummus, baguette, and merguez sausage.  It’s presented in a zany way with flourish and personality, everything you would want in a cous cous!

Simply put, Cafe Gitane is my home away from home in Soho.  I know I can have a consistently friendly, fun, and fantastic meal without needing to worry about the fuss of reservations or fancy food.  I hope to find an equally hospitable home in Chelsea, but until I do, Cafe Gitane is going to be seeing a lot more of me.

Cafe Gitane
242 Mott Street (at Prince)
(212) 334-9552

I can hear you saying to yourself now that all that flowery, ostentatious verbiage above was entirely unnecessary.  Well, you’re right.  Moscato d’Asti is really just a sweet sparkling wine, or sparkling dessert wine, but let’s not be so hasty!  The wine comes in two varieties, red and white, and both are meant to be served chilled.  I’ve now had them with dessert at Gramercy Tavern and Per Se, but chez moi I enjoy them as pre-dinner aperitifs because they aren’t overpowering with sweetness at all: it’s just enough to get your tongue all excited and giddy.

The red variety that I can highly recommend is called Bigaro by Elio Perrone.  When the wine touches your tongue, it’s as if you’ve been transported to a field of a thousand fresh roses, strawberries, and other such delicious things.  Here’s a picture of it from my dessert course at Gramercy Tavern:

The white variety that blew my mind only a few nights after Gramercy Tavern was at Per Se, and this one was called Sourgal, also by Elio Perrone (how does this man do it!?).  The Sourgal simultaneously melted through my palette and somehow evaporated without a trace, leaving behind indulgent hints of peach, vanilla, white chocolate, and perhaps even some dandelions.  Here’s a shot of it at Per Se:

These two bottles from Elio Perrone cost around $20 each, so not too bad.  You can also get bottles of Moscato d’Asti for much cheaper, around $10, and because of the sweetness, the quality loss isn’t significant at all.  Noticeable, maybe, but still enjoyable.  So next time you go for the champagne with guests, consider giving Moscato a try, I promise you won’t regret it.

So there I was two hours into our meal, camera in hand, feverishly snapping photos of some of the most beautiful food this side of the Seine in Per Se’s delightfully elegant, yet tastefully modern dining room, when our server approached me, looking right at my camera.  “Oh no”, I thought to myself, “this is it.  He’s had enough.  Per Se just doesn’t roll this way.”

To my great surprise, not only did our server not mind my incessant picture-taking, but he offered me the treat of treats: a guided tour of Per Se’s kitchen, or, the Holy Grail of Culinary Design as I call it (we’re on a first name basis like that).  What follows is my attempt at re-creating my tour through the spectacular, daunting, beautiful, and flawless origin of Thomas Keller’s masterpieces.

Let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?  Nestled in between the dining room and the kitchen is the “cool down” hallway, which is a naked, calm space for servers to collect their thoughts after the hustle of the kitchen and before the bustle of the dining room.

The next room through that seemingly inauspicious hallway is the main room of the kitchen.   Here, food is garnished, completed, plated, and picked up.  It wasn’t entire clear which, if any, food is actually cooked in this main room, but it was where the majority of the chefs were, including the head chef.

My tour guide insisted I capture this gem above the entrance / exit of this main kitchen area:

As we continued through the main kitchen out the back, I was able to capture the main area from a different vantage point:

Out of the main kitchen and down the rabbit hole!  The next room is probably an uncommon room in other kitchens, but in Per Se’s it makes complete sense.  It is a secondary main kitchen, which functions as an entirely separate and self-sufficient second kitchen for large parties.  The idea here is that a large party should not interfere with the timing or enjoyment of the other diners, and so a second kitchen alleviates this possible time crunch.  Here are some photos of it (there were no large parties that night, so it’s empty):

The next hallway contained yet another gem, an important message from Chef Keller to his chefs and a gentle, but important reminder about service:

Next was the specialized, custom-built oven that is used to broil, bake, cook, and otherwise prepare meats of all kinds:

Down another corner was what appeared to be Per Se’s espresso machine.  What struck me about this room, and indeed, the entire kitchen thus far, was that it looked better than brand new.  It looked spotless in the way that made me think it was cleaned top to bottom every hour, meticulously cared for like it was a living, breathing partner to the chefs and servers.

Next was Per Se’s truffle room.  No, not where they keep their frozen truffle mushrooms(which I hear they have an entirely separate freezer for), but where they create day-of and keep cool their decadent chocolate truffle creations:

Last, but certainly not least, was the bakery.  Interestingly, I was told that this bakery is actually used round the clock, as it is shared with Thomas Keller’s more casual restaurant Bouchon downstairs in the Time Warner Center.  Different pastry chefs of course, but the same equipment.  No wonder those mini baguettes are so good!

To conclude, I’ll mention a few things about the tour that surprised me:

1. It was eerily silent.  Everything and everyone was moving in perfect unison, as if they were actors in a play rehearsed a thousand times.  As a result, there was hardly any commotion at all.
2. It was startlingly clean.  It was as if no actual cooking even occurred there.
3. Everyone in the kitchen was genuinely nice.  Despite the rush they all must have been in, many stopped what they were doing to chat with me.  For example, the wonderful pastry chef is originally from Cambridge, England.

In all, Per Se’s was by far the most impressive kitchen I’ve ever seen, and at least 2-3 times the size of the dining room itself, I will remember it as the most substantially important aspect of the entire experience.  Walking into the kitchen, I could actually feel how proud the chefs were to be working in and with it, and I think that sentiment certainly finds its way into the food.  That level of dedication is difficult to fake.

Before you ask to see more photos from Per Se’s kitchen in bigger sizes, you should probably check out my photo page (I’m three steps ahead of you).

If you’ve seen Pixar’s animated movie Ratatouille, then it should definitely look familiar.  This is Thomas Keller’s version of the classic provencial French vegetable dish named ratatouille, and its resemblance to the final creation in the movie Ratatouille is no coincidence.

Thomas Keller was actually a consultant for the movie and he allowed the film’s producer to intern at the French Laundry and design this fancy layered version of the dish.  So, if you ever wanted to taste what looked so amazingly delicious in the movie, then all you have to do is take a trip to the French Laundry or Per Se.

Oh, and by the way, it really was as delicious as that evil food critic said it was.

1. Of my many varied dining experiences, Per Se has supplanted Chateau Cordeillan Bages in Bordeaux as the number one meal of my life
2. This is the first post in my new design (I hope you like it!)
3. Really, what can I actually contribute to the Per Se dialogue?  I’m a simple, lowly blogger who felt like a pauper chasing after a parade of kings

Nevertheless, Per Se must be written about, and so it shall.

In any given restaurant experience, there are too many moving parts to count that must coalesce perfectly to yield sublime enjoyment and culinary pleasure for the diner.  These parts include general ambiance, room temperature and lighting, service (front wait staff), back service (bread, plate clearing), and food temperature, presentation, taste, flavor, and creativity.

It would be an understatement to say that Per Se succeeded in all of these aspects, and in fact it would be doing Thomas Keller’s masterpiece an injustice.  What Chef Keller has created and managed to retain for the past four years is not an amalgamation of carefully studied procedure and recipes, but rather a seamlessly beautiful journey through a world of food, fantasy, fun, and friends.  Beginning to end, top to bottom, Per Se has masterfully and effortlessly attained an exemplary and enviable status in the world restaurant culture, and such ardent adulation is well-deserved.

I’ll begin with the service, because I find that there is an interesting dichotomy between service and food.  On the one hand, a meal with excellent food can still be marred by terrible service, but terrible food can sometimes be rescued by valiantly accommodating and kind service.  To this end, the entire Per Se staff knows how to make everyone feel perfectly at home.  Being young, I’m used to less-than-stellar treatment from haughty waiters at fine-dining restaurants, but at no point did anyone at Per Se make me feel out of place.  Granted, I did look fantastic in my slim suit, brightly summer-colored shirt and perfectly matching tie, but who’s counting?

We were ostensibly at Per Se to celebrate my sister’s birthday, and to our great surprise and sincere delight, we began the meal by being presented with custom-printed menus which read “Happy Birthday Emma” on top.  This thoughtful beginning evolved into over three hours of attentive, caring assistance from our wonderful waiter James, our sommelier, as well as the varied staff that helped with bread, place settings, and plate delivery (which was always perfectly synchronized).  Every minor quibble or squabble I’ve had with restaurants’ service all these years, things like removing plates from the table before everyone is done, inconsistent or incorrect cutlery placement, improper attention paid to stemware placement and use for different libations, was gracefully and almost miraculously taken care of.

At the risk of being too verbose (ha! too late for that!), I’ll end my discussing of service by simply listing a few of the points I was most impressed by during the meal:

• I was always accompanied to the restroom by a wait staff member, and when I returned my napkin had been beautifully refolded
• Our waiter genuinely took interest in our specific, and often contradicting, wine preferences, crafting a perfect individualized wine pairing for each of us.  For me, this included a journey through champagnes, sweet whites, dry whites, deep reds, grappa, and even an obscure Japanese beer with the cheese course!
• Unlike at Daniel and other two- and three-Michelin-starred restaurants, we were treated exactly the same (read: like royalty) as every other table
• When we left Per Se, we each received a branded folder containing print outs of the night’s menu as well as a complete list of the wine pairings
• Instead of being annoyed with my continual photo-snapping, as some waiters in high-end restaurants are, James offered to take me and my family on a guided tour of the kitchen after the meal!  (More on that in another post)

Trust me, readers, I searched long and hard for something to complain about in this meal.  After all, I am a stickler for service.  I was waiting for something to go wrong: a fork slightly ajar, a glass gone slightly awry, a plate misplaced, but I have nothing for you.  I’m sorry, Per Se is just too good.

You must be wondering by now when I’m going to get to the food.  Ok, I get it, I’m wordy.  But it’s hard to concentrate when every time I think of the meal my mind sinks into a blissful daydream of sensuous sauces and heavenly halibut…..

Ok…I’m back!  Now, onto the food.  There’s no way I could give each and every course its due time because we had more than 10 of them, so instead I’ll highlight the courses that I found exemplary of Thomas Keller’s style and leave the rest for you all to explore in the photo gallery.  For your convenience (you always come first, readers, you know that), I’ve typed out the entire menu and wine pairings below:

First Course: “Oysters and Pearls”
“Sabayon” of Pearl Tapioca with Island Creek Oysters and Sterling White Sturgeon Caviar
Paired with: Billecart-Salmon Rose Champagne

–

Second Course: Sauteed Hudson Valley Moulard Duck Foie Gras
White Wine Poached Frog Hollow Farm’s Peaches with Watercress and “Sauce au Poivre”
Paired with: Kiralyudvar, Tokaji Cuvee, “Illona,” Hungary 2002

–

Third Course: Herb Roasted Fillet of Atlantic Halibut
Cauliflower Florettes with Black Trumpet Mushrooms and Madras Curry Emulsion
Paired with: Francois Villard, “Fruit d’Avilleran,” Saint-Joseph, Rhone Valley 2006

–

Fourth Course: “Macaroni and Cheese”
Butter Poached Nova Scotia Lobster, Parmesan Crisp, Creamy Lobster Broth , and Mascarpone-Enriched Orzo
Paired with: Peay, Chardonnay, Sonoma Coast, California 2006

–

Fifth Course: Libery Farm’s Pekin Duck Breast
Globe Artichoke “en Barigoule,” Glazed Radishes with Wilted Dandelion Greens, and Duck Jus
Paired with: Domaine Tempier, “La Migoua,” Bandol, Provence 2005

–

Sixth Course: Elysian Fields Farm’s “Selle d’Agneau Rotie Entiere”
Caramelized Greenmarket Squash, Confit of Holland Eggplant and Chickpea Puree with Marjoram-Scented Lamb Sauce

–

Seventh Course: “Tommette des Alpes”
Haricots Verts, Pickled Pearl Onions, and Frisee with Burgundy Mustard
Paired with: Hitachino Nest beer, “White Ale,” Japan

–

Eighth Course: Plum Sorbet
Santa Rosa Plums, Ginger Pudding, Plum Consomme, and Gingerbread Crisp
Paired with: Elio Perrone, Moscato d’Asti, “Sourgal,” Piedmont, Italy 2007

–

Ninth Course: “Peanut Butter and Milk”
Bitter Chocolate Mousse with Salted Peanut Cream and Reduced Milk Ice Cream
Paired with: Nonino, Amaro, Veneto, Italy

–

Tenth Course: “Mignardises”

Before you say anything, I know, that’s a lot of food. Not only that, but there were quite a few extra courses provided that weren’t on the menu, bringing the total to around 13 or 14 courses.  And now, without further ado, some food pictures!

We began our meal with Thomas Keller’s now-famous riff on the ice cream cone: a crispy cornet wrapped around gorgeously rich creme fraiche and topped with a ball of diced salmon.  I really enjoyed this dish for a few reasons, and I’m going to dwell on it a bit because I think it splendidly represents many of Chef Keller’s cooking techniques in one fell swoop.

The first point is that it’s a beautiful creation and is beautifully presented (not always one and the same) — Keller had the cone holding platter designed specially for this amuse bouche and nothing else.  Secondly, it swiftly delivers an extremely focused, yet potent explosion of flavor and taste: it screams fresh salmon.  In many of Per Se’s dishes, Chef Keller attempts to present the diner with a hyper-concentrated, fresher-than-you’ve-ever-had-before version of an ingredient.  A cucumber sorbet with fresh cucumbers and cucumber foam (my sister’s first course), for example, deceived my tongue into thinking that it had suddenly been transported to a wonderful field of a thousand freshly diced cucumbers.  In fact, the cucumber sorbet tasted more like cucumber than real cucumber!  Oh Chef Keller, you are a master of trickery indeed.

This second point is important to re-emphasize because it really does set the stage for the rest of the meal.  Unlike many other chefs in New York and abroad who are constantly pushing the envelope in terms of flavor combinations (like at wd-50, Tailor, or El Bulli, for example), Chef Keller manages to create a plethora of dishes that are both brilliantly simple and tantalizingly complex by presenting many preparations of the same core ingredient, always as fresh and pure as possible.

Onward and upward!  The first menu course I’ll mention in some detail is the foie gras.  If you know me at all, you’ll know I love my foie gras, so it should come as no surprise that Keller’s take on the creation was nothing less than spectacular.  In keeping with the minimalism of the salmon cornets, the foie gras au torchon is presented modestly, accompanied only by poached peaches.  The result?  The sauteed foie gras was delicate and concentrated, perhaps even a bit sweet, which is quite the opposite of the occasionally overpowering fattiness of warm foie gras, and the mouth-filling sweetness of the peaches were a perfect match for the richness of the foie gras.  Served alongside was an expertly paired sweet white wine from Hungary, the first of many interesting and adventurous choices made by our sommelier.

Next on the menu was the herb roasted fillet of Atlantic halibut.  Given the somewhat unpredictable nature of halibut (its texture and taste can vary dramatically depending on cooking technique), I wasn’t sure what to expect.  The best adjective that comes to mind is “unbelievable”.  When I closed my eyes, I truly believed that I was savoring a mouth-wateringly tender piece of filet mignon.  But oh how my tongue was deceived!  Keller’s halibut epitomizes his belief in isolating and accentuating particular flavors: I’ve never before experienced fresh fish so tender, juicy, yet clean and light on the pallet.  An unforgettable dish, I think the halibut can claim the best savory dish award for the meal.

With the high point of the meal now mentioned, it seems only prudent to discuss the low point.  Yes, it’s hard to believe, but no meal can really be perfect, can it?  Keller’s only misstep was with the course entitled “Macaroni and Cheese”, which was really just lobster and orzo pasta.  There was no cheese of any kind except for a overpoweringly potent parmesan crisp, and the orzo was dry and tasteless with no hint of mascarpone at all.  The lobster itself was a huge letdown, especially following the halibut.  It was chewy, uncharacteristically fishy, and bland.  The lobster I had had only a couple months before in France was almost magically tender, striking the perfect balance between buttery softness and crab-like crispness.  Keller’s lobster, however, was a disappointment.

Both the duck and the lamb  were fairly unremarkable, relatively speaking of course, being surrounded by such fantastic other dishes.  The duck was probably the best I’ve had: appropriately fatty, succulent, and well-portioned and garnished.  The lamb was definitely the lambiest lamb I’ve ever tasted, which means Keller took the taste isolation maxim almost a bit too far.  The lamb was strangely unlike other red meat or even lamb that I’ve had: it possessed a dark richness to it that reminds me much more of wild game like reindeer (I ate it in Stockholm, don’t worry about it) than cow meat.  Overall, a very satisfying dish.

Ah, dessert.  Dessert is tricky: I’ve said before that I think many chefs take the easy way out on the final course because it’s relatively simple to create something palatable and sweet.  Oftentimes, though, these copouts leave a sour, not sweet, taste in my mouth because of their lack of creativity or adventurous nature.  Wylie Dufresne certainly does not disappoint in this way at wd-50, as his desserts feature fantastical combinations as wild and weird as his savory courses, but I found that Chef Keller’s desserts did not quite live up to the spectacular savory courses.  Don’t get me wrong: they were absolutely perfect in their own right, but just not quite as memorable.

The plum sorbet was presumably supposed to play the part of the partly savory, partly sweet pre-dessert, and it performed the role admirably.  The sorbet was deep, rich, light, and colorful all at the same time, and the ginger pudding gave the concoction the bite it needed to spice up the plum’s inherent smoothness.

The peanut butter and milk, while flawlessly created and presented, was surprisingly unoriginal.  The chocolate mousse was superb, the peanut cream tasted like extremely potent peanut butter gelato, and the reduced milk ice cream tasted simply like diluted, or less rich, vanilla.  Overall, very good, but not exactly uniquely memorable.

After the official desserts, platter upon platter of truffles, mini desserts, pies, and pastries were brought to our table.  One of the many creations that graced our presence was a miniature vanilla bean creme brulee: nothing fancy there, but it was flawless.  Deliciously rich inside, crispy, not charred, on top, and just the right size, Per Se’s creme brulee reminded me of what creme brulee should taste like.  All immaculately created in house, the truffle selection featured 7 or 8 (I lost count) exceptional truffle flavors, including Chilean spice and macadamia nut.

Per Se is an exercise in pinpoint perfection.  In 10 courses, don’t expect to receive 40 mind-blowingly adventurous culinary combinations.  Instead, know that what you’ll get is a flight of 10 distinct flavors and tastes, extracted so perfectly and infused into oftentimes unfamiliar shapes and forms.  Chef Keller has used Per Se as a platform to ask the diner to question the need to constantly blend: why have potatoes and steak together?  Why have tomatoes, cheese, and basil together?  If all the ingredients are the best they can be, then each particular one is capable of producing an awe-inspiring course of its own, and that’s exactly what Chef Keller has done.  Focus is a virtue, and it is something Per Se possesses in abundance.

Despite a few minor missteps (missteps, mind you, that were still better than you could likely taste anywhere else), Per Se is the ultimate example of style, elegance, taste, and service coalescing in wondrous harmony.  My family and I are nobodies (trust me), and yet we were treated like long-time regulars.  Our every need was eagerly anticipated almost before we even knew we had it, and the genuine kindness of the wait staff, sommelier, maitre ‘d, and everyone else involved cannot be overstated.  Per Se has it exactly right, from character to cuisine, and I absolutely cannot wait for my next visit through those venerable blue doors.

Here’s a sneak preview: it was the absolute best restaurant experience of my entire life.

Allow me to elucidate why the roll is called Pain in the Ass.  On the inside rests shrimp, crab, tuna, salmon, white fish, and avocado.  On the outside, instead of rice or seaweed, is a delicately wrapped thin slice of cucumber with ponzu sauce.  In other words, it’s a ridiculous pain in the ass to make.  I know it sounds like the kitchen sink, but trust me, it’s both delicious and immaculately constructed.

This just goes to show that sushi doesn’t have to have rice, or seaweed, or just one type of fish to be acceptable or delicious.  The Pain in the Ass roll is now on my short list of favorite sushi rolls I’ve ever had, and Sushi Imari’s creativity certainly doesn’t end there.  If you’re in the area, definitely check them out.

What’s the most exciting or unique sushi roll that you’ve ever had?  Share your story in comments.

Sushi Imari
375 Bristol Street
Costa Mesa, CA 92626
(714) 641-5654

As conventional wisdom goes, a trip to a gourmet restaurant should yield a cornucopia of cooked goods, ranging from pork to salmon to beef to frog.  These dishes will likely be preceded by a savory salad and followed by a sweet dessert.  But who says that’s the way it must be done.  Nobody, that’s who.

I had the great privilege of attending a special 5-course wine dinner at 118 degrees last night.  Now, 118 degrees is not your standard restaurant: they only serve raw food.  What?  A whole restaurant dedicated to serving uncooked dishes?  Yes, it turns out they do exist, and from the palpably excited atmosphere I witnessed last night, they’re thriving.  I admit, I was surprised myself to learn that there existed such diverse-enough spectrum of food to support a fine-dining restaurant, but indeed there is and I sampled quite a bit of it over five courses.

The name 118 degrees comes from the idea that any food cooked above 118 degrees Fahrenheit begins to lose its healthy aspects, or in some cases takes on actual harmful qualities.  While I might (and do) debate whether the trade-off of outright health versus taste and texture in the setting of a restaurant is a good one, I suppose the more interesting point is that this harsh restriction on the chef clearly forces them to become more creative with ingredients that other chefs may only see as periphery or garnishes.

The upshot of this obviously is that each dish is unlike any you’ve ever seen or tasted in your life, but the downside is that because the tastes are so unfamiliar and the textures so unique, it may be a tough hurdle for some to leap over.  This isn’t the first time I’ve been to a raw food restaurant, so I wasn’t entirely uninitiated, but it was still what I would deem challenging food.  If you’re willing to experiment, eating raw food can introduce to a whole new world of culinary adventure.

The theme of the evening was a five course wine dinner that paired 100% organic wines and champagne with dishes that aren’t usually on the nightly menu.  The result was filled with ups, downs, lefts, and rights, but if anything it was remarkable.

We began our meal with a compressed summer berry salad paired with an organic cava sparkling wine from Spain named Can Vendrell.  To be honest, the organic champagne tasted like any other champagne I’ve ever had, so nothing to report there.  The summer berry salad was quite a creation, though, visually and otherwise.  It certainly struck a beautiful pose with its bright red strawberries contrasting sharply with the dark, sensuous greens below.  To be frank, I’m not generally a fan of overly sweet appetizers, and this may have been the sweetest I’ve had in a long while.  Though the strawberries were fresh and the dressing was wonderfully concocted, it was simultaneously too sweet in taste and too thick in dressing to be a pleasant beginning to the meal.

Onward and upward as they say!  I refused to let that oh-so-sweet misstep get me down, so I barreled through unperturbed to the next course: sweet coconut noodle soup.  If there was one dish during the meal that successfully paraded the culinary prowess of raw food, this was it.  While not boiling hot, the warm soup was an exercise in textural dexterity, adeptly blending thin slices of squash, noodles made from coconut, and the semi-creamy, semi-airy, and all-delicious soup itself that was so vigorously unadulterated that the coconut was given center stage.  Truly a heart-warming soup.

I love cheese.  In fact, if I were to become a raw-food vegan, cheese may be the thing I miss the most.  So when I saw that there was going to be a raw, vegan variation of caprese, the classic Italian tomato-mozzarella-basil salad, I was overjoyed.  The tomatoes were exceedingly fresh and juicy, and the organic olive was superb–but how was the cheese?  Well, let’s just say it wasn’t as picturesque as mozzarella.

The pignolia cheese, made from nut milk, was a thoroughly unattractive sight and I’m sad to say it ruined the presentation, an important part of each dish for me.  Aside from that, I was extremely surprised to taste the concoction and discover that it tasted almost exactly like caprese.  Who knew?!  If you eat with your eyes closed, you may be hard pressed to tell the difference between this raw-food creation and a sumptuously authentic Italian caprese.  Well, maybe you should eat with your eyes closed anyway…

Up to this point, I haven’t yet pointed out explicitly that one issue casual, non-raw-foodist may have with eating this food is that it is typically phenomenally fatty because of the extensive use of nuts in each dish.  This tends to yield a sometimes-pleasing but always-filling mouthfeel and creaminess that some may like and others may shy away from.  The first three dishes managed to control the fat levels by offsetting it with either fresh, juicy fruit or sharp textures.  Unfortunately, the main course failed to avoid this crisis.

It felt like I was eating tasteless thick cream wrapped in rough, unpleasant seaweed.  My main course was saffron cannoli stuffed with marinated vegetables and garlic creme.  The cannoli itself, presumably made from some plant composite, was leathery, tough to chew, and on the whole unpleasant.  The stuffing of marinated vegetables could easily have been confused for chunks of tofu or any other bland, unrecognizable substance since the overload of sauce completely obscured any semblance of taste whatsoever.  What’s the deal with oversaucing and overdressing everything?  Chefs — just let the ingredients speak for themselves!  I would have loved to taste fresh, seasonal marinated vegetables, but all I got was creme (no garlic) wrapped in rawhide, a truly disappointing dish that had high potential.

At this point, I was a bit downtrodden: maybe I’m just not cut out for raw, vegan food I thought.  Maybe I just “don’t get it”.  But no, I’m open-minded, I know a bit about food, and I’m not crazy.  Then dessert came, and wow did it make up for the the cannoli.  We were presented with a beautiful assortment of cinnamon plums topped with vanilla custard, cherries in a deep, rich, velvety chocolate, and a hazelnut bar with espresso and vanilla gelato.

The star of this show was definitely the hazelnut bar — it was boldly rich, though no sickly sweet, and it allowed for a ballet-like interplay between the robust taste of espresso, the crunchy texture of the hazelnut, and the smoothly sweet flavor of the gelato.  When mixed with the fondue-like chocolate accompanying the cherries, the cake was elevated to raw-food nirvana.  While the plums were impressive in a minimalist way, I found them lacking as they were noticeably under ripe.  Admittedly, I think the dish requires the plums to be somewhat firm, but in that case a different fruit may have provided a more pleasant combination, perhaps a pair or an apple.

After five courses and countless mouthfuls of food I’ve never encountered before, I was finally done and I enjoyed the adventure immensely.  I’ve already pointed out what I considered the faults of individual dishes, but I’d like to briefly touch on what I found to be a shortcoming in raw food dining overall.  For me, a “traditional” dinner, with its vast spectrum of options and possibilities, provides for a more sensorially exciting experience.

Let me explain: if you think about the world of different textures available to a traditional chef, from the succulent crispiness of shrimp to the deep, chewiness of a well-cooked filet to the creamy, melt-in-your-mouth foie gras, I can’t help but the think, at least from my experiences thus far in raw food restaurants, the potential for a meal to continually surprise your mouth is greater for the traditional chef.  Raw food chefs have to be content with using vegetables, fruit, nuts, and variations thereof, and to my pleasant surprise much can be done with those seemingly restrictive ingredients.  However, where traditional food is perhaps lacking in degree of sheer creativity demonstrated by raw food, it more than makes up for it in both variation and accessibility.

118 degrees is a journey not to be undertaken by the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.  I was continually impressed by what could be accomplished with such an apparently limited set of ingredients and “cooking” techniques, but I was unfortunately less enamored with the actual results.  Because of this, 118 degrees is likely to continue to cater mostly to those who are raw foodist, vegan, or even vegetarian themselves.

For those who don’t possess any personal qualms against eating cooked food, the overall experience is lacking in the requisite reward of exquisitely memorable tastes and flavors for the dining sacrifice of man’s best culinary friend for millennia: fire.  Unless I become a raw foodist overnight, I doubt I’ll be returning to 118 degrees anytime soon.

To see more pictures from my visit to 118 degrees, please visit the photo gallery.

Every interaction with your public runs the risk that some people just won’t get it. They won’t understand the protocol at your jazz club, or figure out how they use that new thing you just built. They won’t get your verbal shorthand or they’ll be frustrated by your presumption that they’re insiders.

He makes a fair point, and the dilemma risk taking poses is supremely palpable in the food world as well.  I would assume that the vast majority of diners are "n00bs" when it comes to exotic food — we know what we like and we stick with it.  But, without risk taking, there is no excitement.  Seth ends with such a notion:

Once you dumb it down so every single person gets it, you bake out the magic and the mystery and the elegance.

So, when applied to restaurants, this can lead to one of two results: either the restaurant is remarkably challenging (like wd-50 where every morsel of food is a world of unique exploration), or it is indistinguishably boring.  In my ideal world, there would be at least some restaurants that could find an in between.

Here’s my earth-shatteringly new idea: take a restaurant like wd-50 where most dishes are an incredibly different take on an otherwise recognizable course.  To the uninitiated, that might be confusing.  In my fantasy restaurant, diners would be presented with two options for each course: "Challenging" and "Comfortable". 

For example, at the French Laundry, Chef Thomas Keller makes serves a dish called a "Caesar Salad", but his variation features thinly diced strips of lettuce atop a thick parmigiano-reggiano custard, dressed lightly with anchovy dressing.  The entire creation lays on top of a small, perfectly sized flat crouton and is garnished with a dash of balsamic glaze.

Clearly, this is a challenging Caesar salad.  The  "comfortable" Caesar salad would be the variation we all know and love, simple romaine lettuce tossed with Caesar dressing and topped with croutons.  This way, a restaurant can take risks as well as hedge against n00bs, who are invariably around every corner.