Saturday, January 30, 2010

L'Arpege - It Doesn't Get Any Better

L'Arpege
84 Rue de Varenne
75007 Paris, France
01 45 51 47 33
www.alain-passard.com

I will always be grateful to Alain Passard. Years ago in Paris I asked at a two-star restaurant if I could get the chef to prepare something vegetarian. I was met with disdain. How could I dare to ask such a thing? This was a restaurant gastronomic, not a tofu and sprouts fern bar. And so I found myself later that evening sitting at a fern bar with a plate of pasta and textured vegetable protein, thinking how wrong that picture was. And then came Passard.In 2001, Passard, who five years prior had earned his third Michelin star for L'Arpege, stopped preparing red meat and turned his attention to vegetables. His announcement was met with shock. Some felt he was risking his Michelin stars. But Passard's star shined through it all and today L'Arpege (as well as other of his restaurants) not only turns out wonderful food for vegetarians, but paved the way for other famed chefs to take another look at vegetables, and to accommodate vegetarians. To be clear, Passard does offer pork, fish and plenty of other animal-based dishes for the carnivorous.

A recent nine-course lunch at the quaint and unpretentious restaurant began with a collection of ravioli, each filled with a different vegetable from Passard's five-acre garden outside of Paris.

Then came a most amazing combination of slightly cooked egg yolk, creme fraiche and maple syrup all served inside an egg shell, which was placed in an egg cup. My dining companion couldn't figure out what all my fuss was about about until I explained you had to scoop to the bottom, getting all the ingredients at once, to get the incredible flavor combination. It was a mixture of sweet and slightly bitter that was divine.
That was followed by a very thin layer of onion gratin (above) with black pepper and fresh greens.

After the egg and maple syrup combination, the most surprising dish was the celeriac "risotto" with black truffle (above). It really wasn't risotto at all - there was no arborio in it - but celeriac that had been made into the shape of risotto. Every time I took a bite the creaminess of the sauce fooled my mouth into expecting smooth grains of rice, but instead there was a delightful fresh texture and light crunch. Delightful.

Beets were salt-roasted. The salt allows the beets to slowly cook and develop their flavor while the salt absorbs excess moisture to keep the beets from getting soggy. The beets tasted sweet and were still firm.


Celeriac was again served but this time in the shape of tagliatelle with more slices of fresh black truffle - a benefit of visiting in winter. The "noodles" had just enough crunch to distinguish them from a flour-based pasta.

A wonderful well-aged comte was freshly shaved from a large round that was wheeled throughout the room. The cheese had a melt-in-your-mouth texture like a fresh cheese, yet looked on the plate like a firm, dry cheese.

For dessert, there were sheets of thin chocolate piled up with creme. The dish was very light and flaky, and much too light on the chocolate for me.

To finish off, we received a plate of macaroons in unexpected flavors including beetroot and parsnip.

Passard visited each table during lunch and then came back and chatted some more with me as I was leaving. "My restaurant I made for you," he said when I told him I was a vegetarian. "You come here all the time." I'd go daily if I could, and if I could afford it. Lunch, which is a bargain when compared to dinner, was 130 euros per person. The wine pairings were another 70 euros per person. It is well worth the splurge.

Sunday, January 24, 2010

Jean-Georges' JoJo a Vegetarian-Friendly Spot in New York

Jo Jo
160 East 64th Street
New York, NY 10021
212.223.5656
www.jean-georges.com

Star chef Jean-Georges Vingerichten opened his first New York restaurant almost 10 years ago in a cozy townhouse on the Upper East Side. When that elegant restaurant opened, Ruth Reichl wrote that the food, "took my breath away." That restaurant, Jo Jo, is still cozy and elegant and serves food that delights. Best of all, it's possibly the most vegetarian-friendly of Jean-Georges' restaurants, offering a vegetable menu and, in general, food prepared with light vegetable stocks and herbal vinaigrettes.

During a recent dinner, while the four-course vegetable menu sounded wonderful and was tempting at just $45, I opted for three courses from the a la carte menu. I started with a butternut squash soup that was surprisingly light yet very flavorful. I continued with the beet green ravioli with ricotta cheese and marjoram brown butter (below).

My beet ravioli was an appetizer-sized portion, but yet with the soup and dessert to come was perfectly sized to be my entree. The ravioli were fulfilling while the beets on top were fresh and flavorful. The sauce was very light, allowing the other flavors to take center stage.

Dessert was the only mild disappointment as the chocolate mini-cake with soft chocolate filling seemed a tad overcooked.

Overall, Jo Jo is a wonderful choice for an intimate and well-prepared vegetarian dinner that's easy on the wallet.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Commis Delivers on Food, Misses on Ambiance

Commis
3859 Piedmont Ave.
Oakland, CA 94611
510.653.3902
www.commisrestaurant.com

Commis may be the latest restaurant in the San Francisco East Bay to have a Michelin star, but that doesn't mean it's worth visiting. Yes, the food is good - sometimes outstanding - but it's so noisy it's tough to enjoy the meal.

The restaurant is in a long, narrow space that seats just 31 people, with seven of those being at the counter around the open kitchen. Every surface in this restaurant is hard and the noise is overwhelming as diners try to yell over the music and then over each other. A relaxing spot for dinner this is not.

Dinner started with a small, refreshing glass of lemon grass soda followed by a firm boiled egg yolk in onion soup with buckwheat and chives. This opened the evening with an interesting visual and a surprisingly rich and luscious taste.

The three-course menu is small and vegetarian entrees are generally made from what the chef finds at the produce market that day. We were offered an entree featuring a variety of mushrooms or the option of selecting from various ingredients on the menu. (While I was told in two separate phone calls that the restaurant can easily accommodate vegetarians, it seemed somewhat more of a challenge than expected when I was there and told to design my own meal.)

We began with the cauliflower soup with cardoon (above) and the winter roots salad with crispy kale (below). The soup was excellent, very creamy and with the cardoon providing more texture than flavor. The salad was rather ordinary with the exception of the kale. Paper thin and crispy, it was a bit like crunchy nori.


The mushroom entree (below) came with dollops of black bean and bourbon sauce and atop black barley. This dish was very flavorful with the bourbon sauce providing the sweetness and thickness of a very well-aged balsamic. The second entree of root vegetables did not work nearly as well. It was a jumble of mostly bland flavors.


The thin slice of pumpkin pie custard was a heavy ending to an already rich meal. Other options included a cheese plate and an apple and huckleberry tart.

The fixed-price menu is $59 and $29 more for wine pairings. There is an extensive selection of wines by the bottle in the $40-$50 range.

Overall, Commis provides a wonderful dinner, but in an uninviting environment and not really with vegetarians in mind.