Fancy Schmancy

Limbering up for Thanksgiving this year, I steeled my stomach for a day of gratuitous over-consumption with a terrific dinner at Cyrus. Even with occasional minor lapses in service, food and decor, something about the place makes me inclined towards generosity. Maybe it has something to do their own kindness. At one point, for instance, our waiter appeared with a large glass of 1981 Margaux poured from a bottle another table had inexplicably left half-full (at that price, it was definitely not half-empty). "Not quite as good as the 1982," he said. "It'll do," we said.

While Cyrus's two Michelin stars reflect the fact that it lacks the overwhelming extravagance of the Parisian three star experience, it's not too far off; and certainly compared with somewhere like l'Ambroisie [it's delicious to think about what a master of foie gras like Bernard Pacaud would make of Douglas Keane's salt-cured "torchon" with peanut butter and jelly] or even the nearby French Laundry, the $110 7-course tasting menu is something of a bargain.

Keane dictates that the entire table must partake of a tasting menu, and sadly my dear dining companions seemed to lack the gall (or cash) for a full seven courses, so I had to settle for six. Highlights included a pitch-perfect truffled red wine risotto, an amuse-bouche of scallop ceviche with an exhilarating explosion of flavors that one of my friends likened to an oyster, and an absolutely stunning cheese course (accompanied by a panforte which was simply one of tastiest things I've put in my mouth all year).

I won't spend too much time describing the food. I have a theory that at what Olga terms "fancy schmancy" restaurants, the hefty price of admission isn't so much for food as it is for the theater of the meal. As such, maybe the most entertaining part of the evening was seeing the waitstaff whirring around the dining room like they were extras in a silent movie. I particularly liked watching a troupe of them march from the kitchen to a large party, and the almost comic timing with which they simultaneously set down plates at the signal of a barely perceptible nod.

There is, I think, nothing wrong with going to a restaurant for reasons that aren't purely gastronomic. Or maybe part of gastronomy is precisely what some see as an accoutrement. Theater and performance are integral to our experience of eating - even at the most basic diner. Even our own acts of consumption are pretty much always performative.

As for enjoying the show, it's just a matter of choosing whether you want to watch an orchestra perform incredible feats of massed-rank precision, or a bunch of punk rockers hammering out sloppy two-minute hits...

Ruminations on Noodles

One of the most wonderful things about gastronomy is how it defies simple laws of economics. You can spend a hundred dollars on a lavish dish, but it won’t necessarily be tastier than a plate of food that cost mere cents. In fact, for every carpaccio of olive-scented langoustine studded with Iranian caviar, there’s an insalata caprese whose raw, insouciant flavours threaten make a mockery of haute cuisine’s meticulous calibrations.

The way I think about it is this: certain dishes (say, the langoustine carpaccio) are fine-tuned so that each component has its place, but never the boldness to disturb the dish’s decorous symphony; the whole is crafted to be precisely the sum of its parts. Yet there are other foods - generally simple, traditional, more emotionally evocative fare - which are defined by being more than the sum of their constituent ingredients. In these cases, even if most of the dish is made from inadequate ingredients, as long as one critical aspect is excellent, it’s already well on its way to transcendence.

Take pizza, for example. If the crust is good (i.e. paper thin, chewy and meltingly light, and wood-oven baked), it doesn’t matter whether you put San Marzano tomatoes or ketchup on it. The result will inevitably be delicious. Granted, I wouldn’t think much of a ketchup pizza - even if it emerged piping hot from the oven of some storied Neapolitan wood-fired oven - but you get my point.

Or look at sandwiches. One of the most memorable sandwiches I’ve ever had was layered with nasty orange Kraft-esque “cheese” and half-wilted iceburg lettuce. The fact that everything was bound in a Gosselin baguette a l’ancienne didn’t just redeem the minor atrocity of a filling; the bread rendered it utterly beside the point. Like a good NYT Magazine fluff piece, the risible content may just have been an excuse for the article’s existence.

My thoughts turn to such abstractions because I’ve been thinking a lot about noodles lately. Specifically of the Japanese variety. I don’t know of any other national cuisine so intensely obsessed with long chewy strands of gluten.

On a recent rainy day, I found myself sitting in Kyo-ya for lunch. Nabeyaki udon. Mmm. The soup had a wonderful, smoke-tinged aroma redolent with shitake mushrooms. It was clean, light, and rich all at once, with addictive undertones of fish stock beneath the mushrooms. Sadly, the swathes of noodles - obviously store-bought, bland, and overcooked - weren’t nearly so good, and the pretty huge bowl (pot?) of noodles was filling but not all that satisfying.

I had always thought of noodles as being in the same vein of food as pizzas and sandwiches. Get one simple element right, and the rest of the dish follows. Who, for instance, eats pho bo for the noodles or even the beef? They are really just placeholders (albeit essential all the same) for the glory of the soup. So what was wrong with the udon?

Maybe it’s as simple as the thickness of udon noodles, which makes them more prominent and noticeable. Similarly, the assertiveness of the buckwheat in soba noodles (which I tried on another day) leads them to take on a more crucial role than the rice noodles in pho. I don’t know too much about the process of making udon, but soba noodles are a much more complicated enterprise than rice noodles.

Hm. Either way, I think the only way to be sure is to eat more noodles.