I am not a restaurant critic, because after once trying testing for one of the big restaurant guides I realized it was one of those 95% total boredom, 5% excitement jobs. However, here I am (temporarily) back on that job, because yesterday evening in Charleston/SC I had one of the most remarkable meals of my entire life. The last experience which altered the way I think about food was at Noma in Copenhagen in early 2010, just before it was voted the best restaurant in the world by a global jury for the first time. That’s why I’m making this abrupt change of plan.
Yesterday the Riesling Road Trip 2 event in Charleston didn’t require my presence before 9:30pm and after writing a newspaper column in the morning I decided to spend some time exploring the incredibly beautiful old town (more on that subject in a later posting). Suddenly, just after 5pm I found myself standing in the late 18th century Unity Alley in front of McCrady’s Restaurant and all kinds of bells went off in my head. How could I have failed to register that Sean Brock’s restaurant was here? How could I have failed to realize that I might have the time to visit it? So I stepped into the glazed in courtyard that is the reception area and bar and gingerly asked the receptionist if I could sit at the bar and have a snack (they offer a plate of snacks for $20), and when she said that would be no problem I asked if I could have a full meal (four courses for $65). “Sure,” she replied. It was my lucky day.
I ordered quickly and while I was reading the marvelous wine list (including German wines beginning with ‘Eins, Zwei, Dry’ Riesling from Leitz in the Rheingau for $10 and ascending to the 2011 Hermannshöhle Riesling ‘GG’ from Dönnhoff in the Nahe for $122) I realized just how little I knew about Sean Brock. However, this turned out to be a serious advantage, because it meant that my dinner was wave after wave of flavors and textures which the gastronomic me surfed on a longboard of euphoria.
In essence, the first dish was green salad, that is a cucumber and green strawberry salad. Yes, strawberry as a vegetable next to rather normal bitter greens and my old friends the sliced radish and cucumber, here both marinated (familiar) and dehydrated and ground to an astonishingly aromatic green powder (unfamiliar). The freshness of the dish was ratcheted up by the lemon balm and sorrel vinaigrette, and one of the lightest ricottas I ever tasted adding the only sense of weight. Pansies never looked more beautiful than on this ravishing plate. A vision of spring that awakens memories of springs past!
Not only the fava beans in the second dish reminded me of my maternal grandfather, also the trout. He was as talented a fisherman as he was a gardener, and the fruits of both were combined on this plate. Here the astonishing thing was the “sauce” based on juiced fava bean leaves, which came close in taste to my first experience of macha, the green tea served in the Japanese tea ceremony. That was the only other thing I ever experienced which tasted this spectacularly green. It was a great contrast to the sweetness of the beans , the trout (particularly the parts which had browned slightly during cooking), and the parsnip cream under them. The wild bay foam added a delicacy the dish would otherwise have lacked, but I feel this description despite my attempt at precision communicates this micro-cosmos of flavor rather inadequately.
Often the third course of a meal like this – what many people would call the entree – fails to excite as much as the dishes which preceded it, because the chef feels obliged to, “give the customer what he wants”, or is obsessed with making some kind of statement about how gastro-macho he is. But Sean Brock obviously doesn’t feel that he has anything to prove and applied the same creative combination of ingredients and preparations to this duo of lamb (pan-fried, i.e. cooked fast plus pot-roated, i.e. cooked slow). The “layer cake” of wilted Dandelion leaves and shiitake mushrooms topped with flowers and sprouted grains was literally breathtaking in itself (the textural contrasts were something else!), but more importantly it provided a stunning foil for the lamb.
By this point I was reeling with delight, and looking back from this distance it strikes me that I never enjoyed dining alone as much as I did yesterday. To be fair, this was also because the barman (thanks Morton) and the woman from Michigan dining alone to my right (thanks Christie) provided as much company as I needed. I then paused to devour the bread, but I will report on that another time in my series ‘The Story of Peter Klann’.
All the sweet stuff at the end of fancy dinners (I think that description is often fair) usually leaves me completely cold and hinders digestion, but the parfait of grits hidden under this crisp and delicate chip swimming in a rose-scented liquor made form juiced geraniums was a creamy-dreamy end to the meal. That is until I tasted that blob of dewberry on that chip, which was outrageously aromatic and intense; another taste experience that was completely new for me. All of this for just $65; totally amazing!
For all of those who are wondering, this was an extremely Riesling-friendly series of dishes, although for the lamb would demand something mature and muscular like the 1991 Hochheimer Hölle Spätlese from Schloss Schönborn we poured at our evening tasting in the belly of Riesling Whale parked in front of Husk restaurant, another Sean Brock establishment. The small, but extremely interested group of somms, included Cappie Peete, the outrageously young (for what she does) wine director responsible for that great list at McCrady’s. For further information see:
PS we are now en route to Raleigh/NC, named after the failed British colonizer of North America Sir Walter Raleigh, one of my childhood heroes.
