[Pigging by Wilfrid: March 16, 2015]
Quite simply, if there's a better restaurant in Salt Lake City, I'd very much like to know what I was missing. Because this place isn't just very good for Utah, it's very good for anywhere--and being in Utah, it's terrific value too.
Chef Bowman Brown is constructing lengthy (no choice) tasting menus, based on local ingredients, with accents and themes recurring in true grand dining fashion; and his staff are serving the food with polish and flair.
And this is all going on in a small, one-story house (in England, we'd call it a "bungalow"), in the city, but a couple of miles from downtown. I headed out there through an interesting hinterland of tattoo parlors, pawn shops, shuttered Latino nightclubs, and low-lying dives with names like The Spot. Forage itself seems (but I'm not sure) to be at the edge of a nicer suburb--and certainly it's attracting a well-dressed clientele which can afford the local version of big bucks.
$89 for sixteen courses.
I'll wait while my New York readers stop laughing and pick themselves up off the floor. A comparable menu here, executed at all successfully, costs twice the price and up (and up). So many details--and despite a printed menu, most of them announced verbally but I'll do my best to take you through the experience.
I needed to be quicker with camera to show you how that chicken broth got into that cup, and earned its menu designation of "spring tea." A server arrives with a customized glass teapot, the top aperture stuffed with sparkling fresh herbs--thyme, chives, rosemary, and three or four others. The broth is poured through the herbs into the glass pot, then from the glass pot to a regular tea pot (not sure why), and thence into the cup. The most herbal glug of warm chicken broth you're likely to have tasted.
Now certainly the kitchen is borrowing cutting edge tricks and tropes from elsewhere. I don't doubt other chefs have poured broth over fresh herbs, and you can hardly walk a block in New York without finding a single pristine vegetable perched on a rock. This was a carrot, sprinkled with cured egg yolk (not much flavor) and nestling on fermented carrot juice.
I'm drinking a bubbly pink Malbec at this stage. The wine pairing isn't as good value as the menu ($65, and you could choose five or six full pours off the BTG list for that), but it seemed churlish not to buy into the whole experience).
Really good home-made bread, with a dense crust, and it was only the prospect of a dozen or so more courses that stopped me eating all of it.
With the home-made butter, and some coarse salt for random seasoning. Ah, here comes a Schlumberger Pinot Blanc.
Nicely geared to spark up a plate of salt-cured wild walleye (there's farmed walleye?--apparently, yes) with sprouted rye berries (tasty), pickled chestnuts (muted) and a parsley cream. Walleye is not a fish I'd ever rave about, but this was a grown-up treatment, and it's a locally caught freshwater option. Let's be fair, it's a long walk for a saltwater fish from the ocean to Utah.
A jewel of a dish. Pumpkin cream and sturgeon caviar over a bacony pork jelly. Fine orchestration of flavors--not the greatest caviar, but this is not a $100+ menu.
Elk. Yep, they have in elk in Utah--do they ski?--and I saw it on more than one menu during my stay. Thin slices two ways--marinated (practically a carpaccio), and cured (think elk bacon). The garnish, black truffles I was told--but almost certainly canned, and not flavorful. Again, this isn't a $100 plus menu.
Fun with rocks again--and not for the last time. This pretty box contains only one edible element, a neatly tied salad featuring at the very least wild cress, wild garlic, and buckwheat leaves. You pick up the little bunch, and...
...splash, in the buttermilk. And eat the result. Refreshing (and, I can't resist, more appealing than the raw sprouts dunked in a kind of fish sauce at Aska, NYC).
Next up, utter comfort, especially for those of us who grew up eating smoked fish with potatoes (haddock, in my case). Smoothly puréed, smoky potatoes, with trout roe (a better pop than the sturgeon roe featured earlier) and some little trout crisps. Oh, Domaine Huet Vouvray Sec, Clos du Bourg.
And then the trout flesh, smoked, on a twig, with a dab of fermented corn purée and splinters of salted plum. No, I didn't break the dish, it came that way. We're into a Simonnet-Febvre Chablis by now.
Another smooth dish, this time a wild garlic custard, with a buckwheat broth, a tiny buckwheat crisp, and pea greens. Like eating the bottom of the garden, in a good way. Domaine de Lancyre 2013 Roussanne, at this point.
You'll have noticed the smart orchestration of ingredients, the same theme appearing and re-appearing in different forms. Following the sturgeon caviar, we then ate a shard of crisp sturgeon skin with a (slightly too sweet Meyer lemon cream lurking beneath).
And the skin was followed logically by that which underlies it, sweet chunks of sturgeon flesh in a froth I failed to identify, supported by some excellent heirloom beans, and decorated with parsley and yarro. Cutting the richness, a bright Morgadio Albariño.
In case white fish in a foam is now old hat, a clever take on duck eggs came with yet more pebbles from the garden. In half an eggshell, a piquant mayonnaise, but in the pierogi--that's what they called it, and yes it maybe is more of an empanada--the rich, yellow yolk. Dunking time again.
And a red wine, a fruity pinotage by Neil Ellis, very well suited to the meat course.
Someone at a nearby table was overheard to say these were the best beef cheeks he's ever eaten--and it's Mount Pleasant beef, so local again. But I thought this was a dish which could easily have been elevated from good to brilliant. The cheeks were impeccably cooked, but the garnish--roast beets and blackcurrants-- was too austere. Blackcurrants, after all, add more acid than anything else, especially once cooked.
The reduction was well made, and powerful, but it just needed some other accent--maybe something sweet, maybe a fruit (a tomato even) to make it more than a very stern gravy.
A slow change of gear from savory to sweet, via a sheep's milk tart with compressed apples and pine shoots, served whimsically atop a log. Urban Riesling was the pairing.
Then picking up a theme again, and playing a variation, an uncloying sheep's milk ice cream over a colorful lavendar mousse, with blueberry preserve.
Almost finally--and my notes falter here--a collation of toasted almonds, salted cherries, and chestnut ice cream. I have a feeling there was an excellent dessert wine here, which I also missed. Well, I didn't miss drinking it.
With the relatively painless check (the wine pairing, tax and tip took it towards $200, a mark it would comfortably have surpassed in any comparable New York restaurant), a final conundrum. Yes, rocks and pebbles again, and hidden among them, a chocolate. Can you spot it? I did, and still have all my teeth.
In case you can't imagine what genuine high end dining in Salt Lake City might look like, here's a glimpse of the room. No bar or counter dining, soft music, and a casually austere feel--whether you want to call it Japanese or Nordic-influenced is fine. I'd be happy to find this place anywhere.
Next time you're in Utah, you know what to do. Here's the website.
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