Getting fat in style

As I've mentioned previously, I collect great restaurants. On the way to Balticon, we stopped today at one I'd visited once previously, Michel Richard Citronelle. If the name sounds vaguely familiar, it's because the chef, Michel Richard, just won the 2007 Beard award for Outstanding Chef. (The restaurant's sommelier, Mark Slater, won for Outstanding Wine Service, but as a non-drinker, I didn't interact with him.)

Richard was sitting outside when we first walked by the restaurant, and he was later sitting in the kitchen when we sat down to eat, but he was not, of course, cooking. I'm not sure how rich or famous I'd have to be to get that level of service, but I wouldn't mind finding out.

His presence in the active kitchen is not key, of course, because you're very rarely going to find the great and famous chefs actually preparing your meal. The great restaurants live and die on a daily basis by the work of their non-celebrity cooks, and this team did not let Richard down.

We had the ten-course tasting menu, and from the three-part amuse bouche, which featured the best escargot dish I've ever tasted, three tiny bites of food joy, to the five small cheese portions accompanied by five small slices of homemade raisin pistachio bread, from the veal with sweetbreads to the two dessert rounds, everything was top-drawer. I wouldn't rate the meal as flawless--the sweetbreads were a bit strong for my taste and the veal a tiny bit past where I'd have liked them to stop cooking, for example--but it was nonetheless a great meal. I feel privileged to have been able to eat it.

I also feel (and am) fat, but at least I'm getting fat in style.

Collecting restaurants, Portland, and rain on skylights

I collect restaurants. Well, to be accurate, I collect memories, and sometimes notes, of meals at great restaurants. (The restaurants themselves simply wouldn't fit in my office, even though it is a big room). On my trip to Portland, OR last week, I ate at three I recommend: Higgins, Paley's Place, and the restaurant at the Heathman Hotel. All three emphasize the use of locally grown, raised, and caught ingredients, and all three meals were quite good. I have to give the nod overall to Paley's Place, but that might change in the future: our server at the Heathman swore that he would arrange a tasting menu the next time I was in town. I look forward to it.

It's raining tonight, and the sound of the rain on the skylights in my office always makes me smile and remember my childhood in Florida, when showers often came around six o'clock and brought the evening cool with them. Good sounds for writing, to which I must return.