Destination Dining: Private Social

Top Chef Tiffany Derry has left the building, and although the signage still says Private Social, the new restaurant that has emerged in the same space on McKinney Avenue in Dallas is now called P/S, which is weird since P/S connotes an afterthought, and this place is anything but.  Morocco-born, Spain-bred Chef Najat Kaanache has actually over thought this wonderful mess of a dining spot.  My mother's voice admonishing me to stop playing with my food echoed in my head the entire time we were there Saturday night.

Eye of Newt

Things started off swell enough, I suppose.  We were seated in the main dining room at a nice two-top beside a dizzying, double-stranded beaded curtain that would certainly be the pride and joy of any drag queen's bedazzled boudoir.  The earnest, oddly sinister busboy vamped for our apparently errant server, efficiently filling water glasses and fetching cocktails while he waxed rhapsodic about stimulated senses and heightened food realities.  This 30-second elevator speech was punctuated with the arrival of a "magic cauldron"--a Pier 1 copper vessel smoking with aromatic dry ice that was supposed to envelope us in the chef's approach to sustenance.  Say what?

Time to Make the Doughnuts

Every item on the somewhat limited menu has its own schtick, kind of like a vaudeville line up minus the pretty girl in a tutu changing title posters.  We started with three Savory Doughnuts suspended on copper wire attached to a pendulous iron arc.  (FYI You can't eat the doughnuts unless you dismantle the whole thing--there were strands of copper wire strewn throughout the dining room floor like the remnants a bomb-making cabal would leave behind if suddenly raided by the Gestapo.)  They were served with a truffled curry dip and some other word I can't spell or pronounce and were pretty tasty.  We also had some Candied Fried BBQ Chicken Lollipops, which is a deliberately confusing description for decent Chicken McNuggets smeared with some white garlicky foam and impaled on a stick.

Hello, Dali

Then we shared the Edible Dali, Truffled Phyllo Canvas.  We were amused when they brought tiny easels, paintbrushes, and a china palette dotted with sweet and savory globs of foodstuffs which we were to paint onto tiny canvasses of puff pastry.  It was so contrived it would have been goofy fun if the canvas hadn't broken in two when I dabbed it with something that looked like thermonuclear waste.  At this point a threesome who had been seated to our right just moments before abruptly departed and somebody in the display kitchen dropped something heavy, cursing loudly.

Then an entire hour and a half passed by.  We'd finished our cocktails and had a glass of wine.  We drank some water.  We nibbled at some eerie bread that had been dyed a mysterious shade of red with beet juice.  We played a hand of gin rummy.  D went out for a long walk and I went to the men's room even though I didn't really need to so I made grotesque faces in the mirror while I trimmed my moustache with manicure scissors.  We took naps.  I composed a song in my head, sadly realizing later it was simply a forgotten chorus from Handel's Messiah.  Another diner offered to teach us how to tango but we politely declined.  Our server apologized 113 times and the Maitre D' reported for duty and waved his hands over our table.  Then he declared that the wine was free and bowed stiffly before departing.  Ceremoniously.

Artsy Ketchup

At long last our entrees finally arrived.  D's Dallas Star Burger, Fringe Fries, Rustic Roots was an over-the-top hot mess of medium rare, Moroccan-spiced meat.  My Scallop Stew, Precious Veggies was delightfully delicious.  I am not sure why it came with a vial of hot, rosemary-infused Limoncello.  Are sea scallops traditionally paired with warm, lemon-flavored vodka liqueur?

The website for P/S natters on about Chef Najat's global accomplishments and kitchen genius certificates.   To quote:  "Her food art is like beauty, it simply feeds the soul."  And it just very well might.  But only if that soul is lost in Purgatory and has nothing but time on its vaporous hands.

To sum up:  The food is really good here but all the molecular gastronomy hocus pocus is unnecessary and distracting. It's like watching way too many episodes of Wiccans Gone Wild on an empty stomach.