[Pink Pig Time Machine by Wilfrid: March 8, 2010]
From London to my birthday, then, ten years ago, and what a whippersnapper I was. With friends, first, to The Sequel, a restaurant in Islington. Honestly, I recall nothing of this evening, but my journal soberly details the meal.
A duck salad to start, then something described as "open swordfish lasagne." Open lasagne? Open raviolo makes more sense, but never mind. Mango sorbet and black rice to finish, and someone chose the Plantagenet Omrah Pinot Noir to accompany the meal; an odd choice for swordfish, but it wasn't just me at the table.
Next day saw a roundtrip to Southampton in the rain, an expedition guaranteed to dampen any spirits. I tried to revive by dining at Snow's on the Green, the pleasant Brook Green neighborhood bistro. Rocket and green bean salad as a light appetize, then more duck - this time à la ficelle . Originally this technique (used really for beef) called for the meat to be suspended on string and lowered into gently simmering stock; nowadays it really just means poached. This poached duck came with cotechino sausage, obviously a good idea, and was followed by a spot of cheese.
After shopping for stationery the next morning in New Bond Street, and picking up Sorry Meniscus, Iain Sinclair's pamphlet rant about the Millenium Dome, I made a break for the airport. Thanks to the recovery of lost time when flying west (not, I think, what Proust meant), I made it to the Bowery Ballroom that same evening to watch the venerable Jonathan Richman go through his wry motions, supported by Vic Chesnutt, who passed away just last year.
The weekend was mine to relax and recover from air travel, and I seem to have spent it reading: James Gibbon Huneker's biography and a book about Olson's Maximus poems. There was a visit to Double Happiness on Mott Street, the basement cocktail bar in a former bath house and a precursor of the current speakeasy trend, and to nearby Mare Chiaro, the ancient Little Italy pub. There was an only partially successful attempt by myself to reproduce a macaroni dish described in Lampedusa's novel The Leopard. And there was a party at a midtown Irish bar, The Old Stand.
Finally, coinciding with the 75th anniversary of the New Yorker, my birthday, and I bought myself a Larousse Gastronomique to celebrate. Dinner at Restaurant Daniel, my first visit; I'd had missed Daniel's flagship when it was in the Surrey Hotel space subsequently converted to Café Boulud. In 1999, he had moved his main kitchen to grander digs at the Mayfair Hotel, and a little more than a year later I was finally in attendance.
And it was the beginning of a history of relative disappointments with the place. I say relative, because it's a fine restaurant of course - superb surroundings, an enormous service brigade, and an ambitious menu. Unfortunately, the space is so large, and tables turned so frequently, that not all diners can realistically expect an authentic upscale dining experience - whatever the talent in the kitchen, the restaurant simply can't work the magic that is possible in much smaller restaurants whichgive guests their table for the entire evening. That practice is standard, of course, at Michelin three star restaurants in Paris, and we saw it all too briefly at Alain Ducasse at the Essex House in New York. Daniel's scale is such that the sense of being processed efficiently through dinner reigns - unless, of course, you happen to be known to the house.
The amuses bouches included an excellent langoustine en gelée. Ballotine of foie gras with a black truffle crust was well made. Roast pheasant with ceps - and more black truffles - seemed to have been standing around for a while. It was not cold enough to send back, and yet not as freshly and hotly plated as one might expect at these prices. Almond and raisin blinis with chilled pear and ice cream finished the meal, and the wines had progressed from champagne, through a 1996 Gevrey-Chambertin 1er Cru, to Sauternes. As the check arrived I asked myself - "Is that all there is?" Subsequent visits have tended to confirm that the answer is - yes.
