5-15-10

HAPPY BELLY

THE LOCAL FOOD RESTAURANT HOLY GRAIL

When you have such great expectations for anything, it is challenging for "it" to live up to all of your hopes and dreams. Remember your first kiss? Probably thought it was going to be really amazing. Was it? Or was it kind of awkward and weird because neither of you knew what to do?

As some may already know, during our last two weeks living in NYC, we were on a quest to find the absolute best pizza the city had to offer. We went to Grimaldis, DiFaras, John's, Artichoke, etc, etc. They are all delicious in their own way, and if you happened upon any of them by luck or chance, you'd probably think "boy, that was a damn good slice of pizza." But when you bite into it hoping it will be THE BEST slice of your entire life, well, that's pretty hard to live up to.

Chez Panisse is where Alice Waters made her mark, and it is really the holy grail of local food restaurants. Like "Gusteau's, it is booked three months in advance." We knew if we were in northern California WWOOFing and didn't go to this restaurant, we'd be short changing ourselves and the movement. We called weeks ago to make a reservation and arrived with empty bellies and high hopes at 3pm, the only time we could get a table. Downstairs is the main restaurant featuring a daily prix fixe dinner menu. Since the selection for tonight was an all fish menu costing $95 per head, we opted to dine in the upstairs cafe, with an à la carte menu to select from.

For all their talk of using local ingredients, their "controversial" wine list is comprised almost entirely of French and Italian wines. That's sort of bogus if you ask us, especially since we're in the heart of US wine country with plenty of excellent, local wines to choose from. There should be local wines to complement the local foods. Fine dining shouldn't exclusively go with European wine.

Vegetarianism is not for the feint of heart. Sour sports moan and groan about what they "can't" eat, but the truth is, anyone can eat anything. However, our choice of diet meant that roughly 50% of the menu was off limits, and 5 of the 6 main entrees fell into that restricted section. It's hard for a restaurant to showcase its culinary skills when its customers refuse to eat the signature dishes, and so it was hard for them to impress us. We shared 4 and a half dishes: a beet and artichoke salad with a cumin and cucumber raita, a wild rocket salad with toasted pine nuts and shaved pecorino cheese, a salad of mixed greens with two small rounds of baked crusted artisanal goat cheese, homemade rigatoni served with asparagus in a cream sauce and a small plate of olives. The food was good. The bread and butter were really good. Every dish was solid, but the beet dish really shined. The waitstaff was superb, and the atmosphere was pleasant, but was it the best restaurant either of us have ever been in? No. But naming the best anything you've ever had is a pretty tall task. Don't get us wrong, the meal was really good. But we were hoping it would blow our minds. We walked out content and happy we went. But like that first kiss, not as magical as you always hoped it would be. Overall, we give Chez Panisse a 7 out of 10.

***THE CAPTION CONTEST IS OFFICIALLY OVER. ALL THOSE WHO PARTICIPATED WILL RECEIVE A PRIZE IN THE MAIL SOON, AS IT WAS A 3-WAY DRAW.***