My wife Mary (celticat1.multiply.com) and I have this weird hobby of flying and driving around trying the greatest and best restaurants in the world, mostly following the 50 Best List (www.theworlds50best.com). I took on that liking long ago while living in Spain, home of probably the best food created anywhere these days, but never had the money to support it, so it was a heavenly match to find a life partner who shared the love for crazy tasting menus by famous chefs (a passion new to her) and made the money to enable such an expensive pastime. Thank you, Capitalism!
It was only natural that, in a recent visit to the Bay Area, we included a critical stop at The French Laundry in our route. The Laundry is, for now, considered the best restaurant in The Americas (North, Central and South- from Alaska to Patagonia) and Thomas Keller the most important chef in our country. He was the master chef who almost single-handedly created a new generation of fine dining in the United States by skillfully blending the classicism of refined French cooking with the tradition of America’s comfort food and our plentiful table and agricultural bounty. That and a painstaking, almost maniacal attention to detail and service made for a unique style that ushered diners into a new experience of amazement, awe and sheer delight. Forget the old, buttery French-dining thing with snotty waiters and heavy sauces that dominated America's restaurant scene for so many decades. This was something else. A new world.
Keller is still there, at the top. Not only in California, where he created his empire, but in New York as well, where he grew as a chef and failed as an entrepreneur. His famed restaurant Rakel bombed at the end of the crazy 80’s, when hungry Wall Streeters chose to go to their local diner instead of choosing second helpings of Keller’s luxurious French cooking . He is now back with a vengeance at Per Se, the ultimate Keller experience where everything is so fastidiously flawless you’ll either leave the place (if you ever get there) crying or wondering how such ideal perfection is possible in this deeply flawed world. Or perhaps both. We are now in an economic crisis so bad that will soon make the Late Eighties look like a bad-hair day, and yet diners are still flocking and anxiously hammering their piggies to have their own slice of the Per Se and French Laundry experiences. Keller is not at risk of going down like Rakel did- this time, in this crisis, it is the chain eateries such as Bennigan’s that are filing for bankruptcy. Fine dining is alive and well, thank you very much.
Wife and I are fans of Chef Keller, and I would rate Per Se as my favorite restaurant in the world. (Oops, did I say that? Yeah. I think I know what I’m talking about.) So we had to try the original, the Yountville outpost that started it all. I was afraid that I wouldn’t find the Laundry too special, that I would feel like dining at the Western version of Per Se. Unfortunately, I was right. The Laundry is like Per Se, only in a small town in sunny Napa Valley, California surrounded by a garden where you might run into Thomas Keller picking a fresh pear from a tree instead of an enclosed mall where the chances of sighting a famous chef (or sighting anything at all) are extremely slim. Other than the setting, the food and experience are a precise clone, minus the perfection I found at Per Se and thought somewhat missing at the Laundry. That venerable old building is just too small for so many waiters and diners roaming around clad in fancy jackets and dresses.
Also, I am finding myself jaded, almost cynically insensitive to the fine-dining world I love. No, perhaps I do not care anymore about that beef that came from a farm in Pennsylvania located 3,000 miles away from California, or the Australian black truffle (in season now!) presented in a black jewel case or the Montana cave salt that may be 40 million years old. You hear! 40 million. Enough of that. I care for good, imaginative, mold-breaking and mind-blowing food. I can do without the rituals and trappings.
Yes, the food was generally excellent and the service magnificent and warm, if flawed. But the whole thing lacks excitement and surprise. So I found the Laundry formulaic, a bit tired- a place and an experience in need of a good kick in the ass. You don't want your creation to get old and worn-out like the old French cooking you toppled and replaced, right, Keller? I know you don't.
Slightly disappointed (although excited to see Keller himself), I looked at the customers- those searchers of the Keller experience. We talked to a rich-looking couple from Cleveland who- along with their absurdly polite and mature but adorable young children- were having their first serious culinary experience. Unaware they were of the almost-mythical status of Keller's Laundry until we popped that cherry for them. The son, seven or eight years old, provided some clever and resourceful insight into life when we asked him what did he want to do when he grew up... and he immediately and surely said, "I want three days of everything".
Including The French Laundry, I assume.
I looked over at a table where five redneck ladies, all bad hair, clunky manners and bright Sunday dresses were having their first and last gastronomic journey aided by a solicitous sommelier who, no doubt, promptly coaxed them all into buying the most expensive wine flight ever conceived in Napa Valley.
And yet these colorful types all pale if compared to the one sight I cherish the most of my Laundry experience: the Iraq veteran. I said it right, an Iraq veteran at The French Laundry. He entered the dining room in full military fatigues, making his way to his assigned table with the help of a cane and flanked by his beautiful, overdressed and visibly nervous (probably overwhelmed) girlfriend. This Asian-American California guy was barely in his 30's and yet had seen the worst of (in)humanity and was about to see some of the best. He had been in Baghdad, enjoyed it and survived to tell his story, back in America.
Wounded but happy. He was no charlatan. We talked to him in the garden, during one of our breaks from the 4-hour food trip. He spoke of Iraq as we would of going grocery-shopping, unaffectedly and down-to-earth. He believed in it, he went there, did his thing and came back. His dream was to dine at The French Laundry, and there he was, with his cane and his uniform; his limp and vivid memories.
He chose not Bud Light and his neighborhood sports bar with his buddies and the local cheerleaders but Napa Valley and one of the best restaurants in the world, surrounded by people who might look at him as an outsider (Why are you not wearing a jacket? What are you doing here?) and frown. He was a hero, in many ways.
You may not agree with our current government, with the Military of the United States, with the wasteful and useless invasion and war on Iraq. I don't either. But I hope that you, like me, respect and admire these men and women who chose to fight a war (wrong or not, and for whatever reason) in trenches and faraway hellholes instead of sitting comfortably at home.
They have the guts we lack. They deserve to be remembered, respected and admired when they come back, whether they choose to celebrate at their local dive with the frat boys -as we saw in Hartford, Connecticut, in another moving sight of a young veteran coming home from Iraq- or at a sushi bar in Manhattan. But when you take your wounded veteran guts from Baghdad to The French Laundry to celebrate your return, You -the Iraq gourmet soldier whose name I'll never know... You will forever be etched in my mind.
And that is indeed what I remember the most about my French Laundry experience, well worth paying over 700 dollars for. Come to think of it, and predictable as the Laundry may have become, only Thomas Keller could be behind such an unforgettable feat.
(A different kind of perfection)
