Monday           August 4           Fried Chicken with Silver Corn and Avocado Salad 9.95

Tuesday           August 5           Orange Thyme Shrimp with Pesto Penne 14.25

Wednesday      August 6           Grilled Flank Steak with
                                               “Chimichurri” Spicy Green Sauce 11.25

Thursday          August 7           Special Women Chefs and Restaurateurs Dinner

                                            (* see below)

Elsie’s “Kikui Fuji’s” Chinese Spare Ribs with Caper                 Fried Rice and Lemon Gingerbread Shortcake 14.25

Friday              August 8           Roast Salmon, New Potatoes and Sorrel Sauce 14.25

Wednesday,  August 6

Summer Squash Casserole with Fried Green Tomatoes

Full: 29.50

Half: 14.75

August 2, 2008

Cheers to you on a sunny and hot Saturday morning.

Last week I was on my way to Chicago.  Next week I’ll be on my way to a big catering.  Welcome to my world. 

So.  The big dinner.  Wow!  Alinea is an amazing place.  As I said, my clients thought I’d like it and invited me and a guest of my choice to visit.  I picked Jaime, our director of catering, and we picked Bele Chere weekend – I mean, Bele Chere is a fun street festival but it can also get wildly crowded and I often just stay home where it is quiet so the timing was perfect.

Our friends had arranged for the 24 course Tour, with wines to accompany the tastes. Many courses had just one bite, though some had three or four.  Some courses came on a plate, some came on a single fork or a special spoon or some came perched on a tiny skewer that balanced perfectly on a rocking stainless steel disc.  In 24 courses not one dish, one vessel, was repeated.  We ate and visited and were dazzled for 6 hours – which flew by.

Let’s see if I can explain one of the courses.  Perhaps this was my favorite.  A “Caprese Salad.”  Based on the traditional favorite from that island off Naples, these folks turned layered mozzarella and tomato and basil into something entirely memorable.

The mozzarella was a cloud, whipped, flash frozen and hovering over the plate.  Lighter than air, it crunched and melted, retaining its mozzarella-ness, but also resembling nothing I’d ever seen.  Underneath the cloud, a small spire of basil sorbet perched on a paper-thin disc of exquisite real tomato.  All of this took up one half of a shallow white bowl.  On the other half, red or yellow or green or orange blobs of color shone.  Tomato essences all, they were odd, unusual, extraordinary.  The yellow – a frozen and now almost thawed yellow tomato “water” that melted on my tongue. The orange, a pile of tomato seed, curiously not “seedy” at all.  The red, oh I can’t even remember.  Taken all as one – dazzling.  And, taken as one of 24 courses – head-shakingly overwhelming.

After our dinner we were invited to go into the kitchen, to stand in a corner as the staff kept up with a full dining room, each table enjoying a 12 or 24 course evening.  The shear logistics of keeping up with all of this boggle the mind.  And that each course came out visually and gustatorily perfect, well, Jaime and I spun, exulted, stared.

Our hosts, meantime, seemed to enjoy our enjoyment as much as they were enjoying their own experience.  They are regulars at this place (it amazed me that the staff remembered what he liked to drink what courses were new to them) and that made it even more fun for us.  They had told us about some of the courses they’d had, but they kept quiet as the waiters brought things to us.  His eyes twinkled as a particularly wild course got set in front of us.  “Wait’ll you try THIS one!” they seemed to say.

So now I’m home and it’s good.  It took a few days before eating more than one bite of anything made sense, though I have, finally, adjusted.  But now, just one week from this dinner, I kind of feel like things are no longer as they once were.  It was truly, truly amazing.  What a fun, fun experience.