A Most Amazing Meal

Last night, I had a most amazing meal.

In fact, the most breathtaking, speech-robbing, sense-slamming, flatly most astounding meal I have ever eaten. I began by feeling as though I was being carefully and deliberately seduced by an older gentleman of exquisite charm and refinement -- Sean Connery, say -- and ended up feeling as though that gentleman had put me in the passenger seat of his (secretly outrageously hopped-up) Bentley and then proceeded to whisk me along on a thrilling, death-defying, just-barely-bad-guy-eluding chase along the Autobahn culminating in arrival at his secret hideout where we both fell violently into each other's arms in a fit of pure, animal sex more like mutual rape than anything else.

It was a meal that deserves, if not demands, the culinary writing talents of an MFK Fisher to do justice to its description. Well, Mary Frances I'm not, but I'll do my best to tell you all about the Iron Chef dinner at Charles Nob Hill.

First, a tiny bit of background on what I was doing there in the first place. I'm a fan of a show called Iron Chef (check out http://www.ironchef.com). It's the "American Gladiators" of haute cuisine; it comes here from Japan, and is shown on the local Japansese-language channel. The idea is that this outrageously rich eccentric (played by Takeshi Kaga, a famous-in-Japan actor), living alone in a vast Japanese castle, has four "Iron Chefs" in his service, and he -- who has been-there-done-that in a big way -- in his ongoing pursuit of new experience spends his time trying to find challengers worthy of his chefs; he's depicted at the beginning of the show, pondering a big creampuff, or a cup of tea, or a forkful of something, and having made his decision, he devours the creampuff or whatever in one ravenous bite. Ron Siegel, of San Francisco's Charles Nob Hill restaurant, is one such challenger, only the third American ever to appear on the show, and the first ever (and this is no mean feat at all) to defeat an Iron Chef. Not only to defeat him, but to hand him a complete shutout. See, the eccentric announces the secret theme ingredient of the week, and the two chefs have exactly one hour to prepare a multi-course meal highlighting that ingredient; at the end of the hour, four judges taste and judge all the dishes. The judges' decision this time was 4-0 in favor of Siegel. (There's more details on this, plus links to newspaper articles, at ironchef.com, actually a fan site rather than an official site...)

The theme ingredient was lobster, and so for his victory, Chef Siegel decided to have two evenings, four seatings, where he'd serve the competition-winning dishes. The four seatings filled up almost immediately; they added two more, after which he said he'd be heartily tired of lobster and would add no more. 100 more people were on the waiting list... Fortunately for Greg and me, we're on the Iron Chef mailing list, and one of the subscribers revealed the rumor of the dinner before news of it hit the papers; I called immediately, and we were in. So here we go with the menu (and the suggested wine pairing from the sommelier in parens):

I came into the restaurant (as Greg pointed out when we left, we never had to touch a door the entire time we were there); Greg wasn't there yet, so I waited in the bar for him, and who else should be there but Da Mayor. I was amused, especially when I learned later that he apparently wasn't even actually there for the IC dinner.

I nursed a dandy Sidecar to whet my appetite. On the wall in the bar is a portrait of Daddy Warbucks. Greg arrived, we were seated in the corner of a room lit with a chandelier shaped like palm fronds, with crystals hanging from each leaflet, soft 30's jazz (and the occasional Sinatra warhorse ;) playing.

We did none of the suggested wines (it would've been $45/person, and on top of the $95/person prix fixe for dinner, would've been way more than we could afford instead of just somewhat more...) Rather, we did the entire evening on a bottle of 1997 Santa Margherita Pinot Grigiot, which I handed over to our hostess, saying "I have a terrible confession to make; I know about corkage and that you can bring your own wine to a restaurant, but I've never actually done it before..." She replied: "Just give it to me, and we'll take care of it." I did so, and she smiled, "You're in our hands now." And what hands we were in! A new service of utensils and plates for every course; the table cleared of crumbs afterwards with a steel-bladed tool express for the purpose; a young gentleman in a black jacket to take away Greg's empty pilsner glass on a silver salver; Jack, our main waiter, treated our modest little Italian gray as though it were premier cru from Bordeaux, and unobtrusively refilled our glasses (but not too full) between courses... And what courses!

The custard: the perfect balance of salt and suave richness, all perfumed from the peppercorns and bay leaves nestled in the hot rock salt that held up the egg shell in which the custard came served. The smooth custard like an Indian summer evening, the bursting of the big beluga eggs on the tongue like fireworks against that evening sky. With it came one, perfect, sourdough roll.

The soup: creamy, with just a hint of brine; I think there must've been lobster shells in the broth. The truffle smidgins added an idea of luxury more than the taste of themselves; many of the tastes were unknown to me, but I have tasted black truffle before, and here they had rendered all their tang of earth to the sea-tang of the soup, leaving only little black shavings to tell us they'd been there.

The salad: on top, fresh fennel and Italian parsley drizzled with a great x-virgin olive oil (we asked: San Giuliano organic cold-pressed) and a touch of salt, then a crispy potato galette, then two bits of lobster meat, cool, rich and salty (lemoned and just barely seared, or maybe blanched), then slices of avocado, smooth and unctuous, then a tomato concassé that was rather like a Mexican salsa, and basil-steeped x-virgin olive oil drizzled decoratively here and there. All color and flavor, like Mardi Gras. Greg, who doesn't like raw tomatoes or avocado, was all set to just have a taste and then hand me the rest; next thing he knew, there wasn't any "rest" to let me have. ;)

The ravioli: this was the dish the judges panned for being too sweet; the sweetness was all in the sauce, with a quality I couldn't place, not sugar, not honey, what? Chef Siegel, who came out later to each table to accept the diners' accolades, confirmed my perception of tarragon, and revealed that the secret sweetness was corn juice. I found it wonderful. The single big raviola was light and delightful, the sweetbread (my favorite organ meat) browned to perfect crispness on the outside and rich and smooth on the inside, and the corn-juice sauce was the perfect foil to them both. And, it turned out, it and the fresh slab of rye bread that followed in the space between courses, fragrant with caraway and pleasantly sour, were the perfect bracer for what was to come.

The roast: I almost wanted to weep. I'd never tasted foie gras before. Nitnorth has said of it, "Whatever you call it, it's still liver." He couldn't be more wrong. Yes, there's a little liver taste, just at the end, but it's like the best part of the liver. You know how liver-and-onions always smells better than it tastes? This was that smell, with no disappointment. It was like the soft, roasty, meltingly good fat on the edge of a piece of prime rib -- the stuff you're supposed to cut off and not eat because it's bad for you, but which you always eat anyway with a sense of guilty pleasure. Tender as a piece of rare steak. In fact, the whole dish was as steaky as a shellfish dish can get; I think the wild mushrooms resting in the port-and-fig reduction contributed a lot to this. For my last bite, I couldn't resist putting the last bit of lobster (dragged through the incredible port sauce), the last bit of foie gras, and the last bit of fresh fig all on my fork and into my mouth at once in a single Kaga-esque, libertine mouthful. What a rush! Now I understand the occasional orgasmic comparisons made by the Japanese starlet judge who's inevitably on Iron Chef. My heart was beating fast; it was like giving head -- you don't want to stop, but you must breathe; I was unutterably grateful for the cool astringency of the Pinot Grigiot.

Cake and icecream (when I wrote that, my Newton parsed it as "cake and delirium", which I thought ridiculously apt); the cake was almost more like mousse than cake, a dark round sprinkled with powdered sugar, with two long dark chocolate "cigarettes" leaning up against the little ball of icecream. It looked for all the world like a piece of futomaki sushi, with two chocolate chopsticks, which I thought was really clever and fun, but Siegel assures me that it's the Charles' signature dessert and no particular IC reference was intended. In fact, the IC folks never got to taste this one; Siegel added it just for this dinner. Lovely shavings of white and milk chocolate under the icecream, and the cake itself dense and bitter and perfect.

Miss Fisher was very much on my mind at this point, and so I asked Jack if the restaurant had any marc to finish off the dinner with; alas, no, but they did have grappa, so I got us two glasses of grappa. It was a muscato grappa by Susanna Gualco, its bracing pungency and slight taste of raisins the perfect step back from such a fierce meal; and we had a presspot of coffee, which I, who usually take it with cream, couldn't bear to take any way but black.

Jack handed us a copy of their regular menu, and, like Chef Siegel before him, expressed a hope that we'd come back for one of their more ordinary (!) dinners. The menu from the night before showed a prix fixe dinner for $65/person, containing: artichoke ravioli with wild mushrooms, dorade with potato gnocci and fall vegetables, roasted Maine lobster with braised beef tips and beet jus, veal tenderloin with sweet bread medallion and black truffle risotto, mascarpone sorbet with huckeberry soup, pear financier with vanilla bean icecream, and for an additional $5 a selection of assorted cheeses with fresh fruit and walnut bread. There were a la carte entrees too -- black bass, duck breast, filet mignon, etc -- and "first courses" -- cranberry bean soup, quail, foie gras, scallops etc.

So here I am, back in the real world, breathless and bemused, trying unsuccessfully to brush some order back into my hair and clothes as I watch the Bentley roar away into the sunset. It's going to take me a while to come down... But I'm definitely going back.

Cheers,