Once upon a time there was a Hidden Kitchen in Paris: one apartment, two Americans, and a table of eight guests. But eventually their idea outgrew the square footage of their apartment, so they opened up a restaurant with a wine bar downstairs, and they called it Verjus.
Friday was the second night they were open. I'm lucky enough to have a friend here as gastronomically inclined as I am, so I wasn't left downing an entire bottle of spunky young Beaujolais wine by myself. Besides, I'm pretty sure that leisurely is written into the protocol for a proper French dinner, as sanctified by UNESCO, so Elizabeth and I did the Frenchmen proud.
Over the course of three hours of fine wine and fine conversation, this is what we ate:
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buckwheat cracker,
winter pickles, greens,
pine nut butter, ricotta |
monkfish, red cabbage raviolis,
seaweed, red pepper,
seafood broth |
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sea scallops,
grapefruit, poppyseed,
onion ash, chipotle, chive |
house-smoked salmon,
beets, quail egg,
herbs, buttermilk |
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duck breast, white miso labne,
cauliflower, nori crumbs,
micro basil, kimchi |
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pork belly,
celery, chicharron, cilantro,
heirloom carrots, ricotta |
I won't say that it was a perfect meal, but it was beautifully plated. Our servers were so friendly, and I really liked how the names of everyone working on the floor and in the kitchen were printed at the bottom of the menu. I'm also pretty sure we held up the service at a few of our neighboring tables because our server was so amiably chatting with us about what she was studying in Paris and where we were all from.
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chocolate ganache,
pineapple habanero sorbet,
chevre custard, graham crumbs |
There were some missteps, which is entirely understandable for only their second night open, with a full slate of reservations for both seatings. Some things were only a bit off: certain flavor combinations didn't sing, or else drowned each other out. The flavors on the cracker weren't punchy enough, especially since it was the starter. The scallops just couldn't hold up to both the bitterness of grapefruit and the heat of chipotle; I'm doubtful as to whether bitter/spicy is the greatest combination in the first place.
But every subsequent dish just climbed in excellence. The little raviolis that followed were delicious, stuffed with perfectly salted cabbage. I'm a sucker for seaweed, and adding dehydrated red pepper lent it all a satisfying crunch. The salmon plate was perfectly cooked: ideal flakiness on the fish, just-barely-set yolk on the egg, perfectly roasted perfectly violet beets. And with the next two dishes, I sort of lose my capacity for speech, so I'll just let those pictures show you how meat should be cooked. The duck breast, incidentally, was my favorite dish, because I am a fool for miso and the only thing better than slimy seaweed is crunchy seaweed. And that meat. God that meat!
What really surprised me, after the tour-de-force of those last two dishes, was the listless dessert. Three wildly different flavors, but three oddly similar textures. Even the plating on this one was off. Where were the Asian element that was so beautifully suggested in all of the other dishes? The spices/fruit combination derived from the scallop dish, but that was the weakest thing of the night to reprise, and the chevre/chocolate was too classic a flavor combination given some of the quirky things that preceded it.
I was a little sad about finishing on a weak note, and wish we could've gotten a cheese plate instead. I was struck so suddenly, so urgently, by the need for Roquefort that the thought of holding up the corner brasserie for a wedge of the stuff actually crossed my mind. But I got over my temporary sadness pretty quickly. It's hard for me to hold grudges, or hold up brasseries, when I've just had the first tasting menu of my carnivorous life, prepared in a way that just might woo me over to the side of permanently eating meat... and when I feel a little like the guy on the label of the wine bottle.
