Guess who came to dinner?

If my hard drive hadn't crashed and burned yesterday afternoon, right now you might be reading a sentence that goes something like this: It may well have been the event of the year -- the food lover's version of opening night at the opera, or the debutante's ball.

But my hard drive did crash and burn, taking with it my 2,000-word post on the Manresa dinner chefs David Kinch and Alain Passard prepared over the weekend. Funny how quickly a disaster of such epic proportions will turn a writer into an editor. Now all I have to say is:

It was grand.
We loved it.*

Besides the obvious, what I most enjoyed about eating dishes from two chefs with markedly different styles was how stimulating it was, both intellectually and sensually. It forces you to define, if not with your mind then at least with your senses, how they differ from the other. As a food writer, I thought it was an incredibly useful exercise. It also helped me to understand why I so enjoy David's cooking. (If I had that draft you would understand too, but I don't, and my brain hurts enough from trying to explain it the first time. Sorry. Send your hate mail to Apple.) I know it wasn't a competition, and Passard's monkfish dish was unquestionably star material, but for me the dishes I would happily eat again and again were David's.

The menu, for those of you interested in a play by play, is below. Dishes listed in English were David's, those in French, Passard's. Translations are my own.

*
Garden croquettes and our radishes
Epinards et mousseline de carottes à l'orange (Spinach and carrot mousseline)
*
Consommé of osetra caviar, seaweed brioche with farm butter
*
Poireaux au beurre, émulsion à l'huître et vinaigre "cépage muscadet" (Leeks in butter, emulsion with oysters and muscadet vinegar)
*
Monterey Bay abalone, a broken egg and vegetables from the garden
*
Lotte, moutarde onctueuse d'Orléans, pomme de terre fumée au bois de hêtre (Monkfish, Orléans-style mustard, beechwood-smoked potato)
*
Ris de veau poêlé et châtaignes effilées à la truffe noire (Veal sweetbreads and chestnuts with black truffle)
*
Roast spring lamb, young root vegetables perfumed with dates
*
Carottes, sauce au chocolat "araguani" (Carrots, "Araguani" chocolate sauce)
*
Meyer lemon soufflé and other citrus "Gene Lester"
*
Petits four du jardin

***

*We loved everything except Grand Master P's dessert of carrots and chocolate sauce. Trust me, I wanted to love it. I wanted to be able to call it masterful, revelatory, genius even. But it was, for me, a flop.

(The chocolate sauce, however, made from Valhrona's Araguani 72% bittersweet chocolate, was the best chocolate sauce I have ever, ever tasted.)

If you'd like to approximate the taste sensation at home, simply steam some baby carrots until tender and split in half lengthwise. Drop in a puddle of the best bittersweet chocolate sauce you can find. Dig in. Let me know if you see stars.

Comments

[NS]

Don't quote me on this, but I believe that the chocolate sauce served with the carrots included a bit of langoustine broth. (Our server told us that it was broth from the monkfish served earlier, but Joy's table was informed that it was langoustine broth -- which is consistent with the rumors that had been circulating in advance of the dinner.)

In my view, the monkfish was far and away the best dish of the evening, and largely because of the mustard sauce (although the fish was certainly cooked perfectly as well).

[Catherine]

NS, that would make sense, because when I ran into David in February he said Passard's dessert would include chocolate, carrots and langoustine. Whatever was in that sauce, it was mind-blowingly good. If only it had been carrot cake, or some other such delectable creation, sitting on top...

[sam]

I can't get the chocolate sauce out of my brain. I think that chocolate was incredible too. I could have had just a bowl of the sauce. Like dessert soup.

When I asked J&F's table how they knew it had langoustine in it they told me 'because it says so on the menu',
not on my menu it didn't. I have to ask them about this a bein tot, it certainly didnt taste of langoustine, so if it was in there I have to question why?

did you have two long soft carrots and one short fat hard unedible carrot on your plate? I did and so did F's C. Well actually his had shot across the table and landed on the tablecloth to be quite precise.

[Catherine]

Sam -- langoustine was not on my menu, either. All my carrots, at least insofar as I recall, were long and slender and soft. Thank God; I am already prone to tossing food off my plate quite by accident. I wonder if Bittersweet or Fog City sell the Araguani chocolate?

[catherine]

OK... so I have to ask what you thought of the seaweed brioche?

[Catherine]

I. Loved. It. It was one of my favorite things of the entire meal. Buttery, of course, both crumby and slightly crisp on the edges, and the seaweed added a lovely salty, savory quality. I once had seaweed-flecked crackers at bushi-tei, which I also adored. It is a genius combination. And the farmstead butter, specially churned by Andante Dairy in Sonoma, was lovely to slather all over top.

[Fatemeh]

Yes, actually, I felt that the brioche with all it's perfection was pretty much a delivery system for the more perfect butter.

Yum.