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| Industrial Chic |
Chef Matt McCallister has redefined the term chef driven kitchen. Every plate, every ingredient, every nuance is his artistic self-expression. The dishes hitting the table that night were like highly stylized, personal gifts from his kitchen. His "season inspired modern cuisine" soars with freshness, balance and originality. Okay, I am going to stop now because I am gushing so sweetly I am in danger of early onset diabetes.
Six apps, six mains, six desserts. I guess the devil is in the details because two of those 666s were absolutely flawless. The menu is presented on a rectangular piece of press board, cleverly held in place by bindings on either side snugly fitting into top and bottom notches. Down alongside the left margin of the page are the numbers 1 through 31, with a hole punched through that night's date. A little later we discovered previous nights' menus had been cut into thirds and were used as coasters. Clever and Green have never enjoyed a more symbiotic relationship.
Our crisply professional yet amusing waiter ran us through the short menu, highlighting certain items and explaining unusual ingredients we may not recognize. (As restaurant savvy as I think I am, that comprised about half the menu, but I nodded along knowingly as he intoned exotic words and phrases like tassione greens and speculoos.) He gave us a few minutes to ponder and then returned to the table with an inquisitive smile. "Gentlemen, are you ready to order?" he asked politely. I said what do you think I should have and without hesitating he suggested pork sugo, confit matsutake & hand-cut tagliardi as a first course and general tso's duck breast, lemongrass sausage, kimchi & fried wheatberries as my main course. (I said fine after quickly checking the menu to see if he had just quoted the highest priced item in each category to boost his tip from the newby rube. He hadn't.)
I never order duck. I don't even think about duck. And if I do, I don't like to think of them with breasts. I couldn't quite picture pork sugo, had forgotten what he said matsutake was, and wheatberries sounded like something you'd find in the grocery store between Fruity Pebbles and Raisin Bran.
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| Matsutake is the Madonna of Mushrooms |
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| Everybody Jump to the Left |
Fine me $1,000 for all the duck dissing I've done in my life. Those tender, medium rare slices of heaven kissed my tongue good night and then slid down my throat to cuddle lovingly in my stomach. The dry sausage and pungent kimchi were welcome, tangy counterpoints to the rich duck breast, and the fried wheatberries provided a crunchy, fun alternative to a more plebeian rice offering. My dessert (I know, I know, I don't eat dessert but the food was so good here I had to try it) was the only dish to disappoint. It was an okay chocolate torchon--a dense, fudgy disc with bergamot (isn't that a perfume?) earl gray (tea?) and cocoa nibs (the word nibs makes me giggle?) The menu had informed me the pastry chef was Josh Valentine, the twirly mustachioed villain poseur on Top Chef Seattle this season, so maybe I was predisposed to dislike it since it came from him. I don't know, maybe I've skipped so many desserts I've forgotten how to enjoy them.
At any rate, FT33 was and will remain a highlight in my dining repertoire. Chef McCallister, I pudgily salute you.
