Garlic and Sapphires (21 page)

RESTAURANTS

POW!

The food at Lespinasse comes out shooting. With your first bite you know that you are in for an exciting adventure. These are flavors you have never tasted before.

This aggressive food is particularly shocking because it is served in such sedate surroundings. The dining room, all soaring ceilings, creamy gilded columns, chandeliers and luxurious chairs, makes you feel that you have walked into an 18th-century chateau, and the service makes you feel that you belong there. The restaurant, which was named for a French literary patron, overlooks no opportunity to pamper its own patrons.

“You don't need a check,” says the hostess as she relieves you of your coat. Sure enough, when you leave, there she is, standing at the door with your coat in her arms. An evening here is constructed of so many small, considerate gestures that by the time it ends you feel entirely relaxed.

Waiters work unobtrusively, anticipating every wish. Cutlery comes and goes in the elegant ballet of fine service. Wine is quietly put in and out of the wine bucket to keep it at the perfect temperature. When Lespinasse (pronounced less-peen-AHSS) opened in 1991, there were complaints about the service, but the restaurant now runs seamlessly. The staff has become so familiar with the food that in five visits I never came up with a single question the waiters were unable to answer.

If you care about food, you will ask a lot of them; nothing at Lespinasse ever tastes the way you expect it to. Sour-spicy shimeji mushroom broth arrives looking like an austere Japanese still life. It is a surprise to dip your spoon into this mild-mannered soup and experience an explosion of flavor. Mushroom is at the base of the taste sensation, but it is haunted by citric tones—lemongrass, lime perhaps—and high at the top, a resonant note of sweetness. What is it?

“Pineapple juice,” says the waiter. We dip our spoons again, taste. Yes, of course, there it is. Then, even though we know it is there, the elusive flavor begins to fade and disappear into the mushroom broth.

Silky bits of raw tuna are tumbled with two kinds of caviar that add an intensity to the flavor and an edge to the texture. The fish sits on a disk of diced vegetables surrounded by spears of leek and colorful dots that get brighter as they dance around the plate. Between the colors are little dabs of black. Balsamic vinegar? No; you taste again. They are dense, unctuous, vaguely mysterious. And then it hits you: squid ink!

Braised salmon and crisped artichokes with a syrah wine reduction sounds like a dish you may have tasted before. It even looks vaguely familiar, a fat slice of salmon on a bed of crisply fried strips of artichoke in a deep purple sauce. There are bread crumbs on top and a sprig of chervil. Take a taste, however, and you know you are in new territory. Yes, there is a bit of chestnut, and you can taste the wine and the tricky flavor of artichokes. But there is something else. You taste it again. Olive? Not quite. So you ask.

“Oh,” says the waiter offhandedly. “That is kokum. It is a fruit used a great deal in Indian cooking.”

Crisply coated snapper arrives in a shallow bowl of broth. The first taste is tarragon. It is replaced by fennel, which gives way to something that is definitely Chinese. You taste again. The tarragon is gone and what comes through is the elusive flavor of five-spice powder. In a minute all these flavors have come together so that you cannot separate them. You take another bite, and then another. Suddenly, disappointingly, the fish is gone.

It is no surprise, of course, to find Thai, Chinese and Indian foods turning up in your favorite French restaurant. They have become so chic that chefs sprinkle them ostentatiously through their dishes. But Gray Kunz, the chef at Lespinasse, is ahead of the curve. A Singapore-born Swiss who trained in the kitchen of Frédy Gi rardet near Lausanne, Mr. Kunz uses these herbs and spices with extraordinary confidence. His cooking was impressive at his last post, Adrienne in the Peninsula Hotel in Manhattan, but it has matured; he now cooks as if he had an instinctive understanding of each of his ingredients. He combines them, coaxes new tastes from them and yet maintains such firm control that no single flavor ever dominates a dish. At first you find yourself searching for flavors in this complex tapestry, fascinated by the way they are woven together. In the end, you just give in and allow yourself to be seduced; these dishes are too delicious to dissect.

Each meal is a roller coaster of sensations. Mr. Kunz has an almost Asian fascination with texture, and he loves to play with temperature as well. His risotto always comes with a contrasting dish: one night the creamy rice was slicked with white truffle oil and served with a tiny casserole of sliced salsify and black truffles. The creaminess of the rice was emphasized by the crunchiness of the black truffles just as the delicate perfume of the white truffles emphasized the deep musky flavor of the black ones.

Mr. Kunz is even inspired by simple bistro dishes. He cooks a single meaty short rib of beef until it melts into a gingery, slightly spicy tomato sauce. He sets it upright on a bed of mousseline potatoes, then spikes all that softness with shreds of fried potatoes that crunch invitingly each time you take a bite.

The short rib can stand up to a full red wine, but much of Mr. Kunz's food demands a bright white. Because the flavors are always unexpected, I usually ask for recommendations about wine. The staff has never let me down.

One night I ordered a 1992 Chassagne-Montrachet La Romanée from Verget. “I'm so sorry,” said the captain with an apologetic look. “I sold the last bottle five minutes ago. Can I offer you this one at the same price?” He held out a '91 Chassagne-Montrachet from Colin-Deleger, a better wine. Half an hour later when I asked to see the wine list again, it had been reprinted: the Verget was no longer on the list.

Some chefs fade at dessert, contenting themselves with sweet, pretty things. Not Mr. Kunz. His desserts are as vivid as all his other dishes. Chocolate-banana soufflé is accompanied by banana-topped chocolate ice cream, a collision of hot and cold. Baked apples are set on fire and served with an astonishingly alcoholic ice cream. And crème brûlée slides sexily into your mouth, its smoothness set off by the little pot of berries at its side. Even the petits fours are exotic. What is that strange yellow fruit with the twisted husk? A gooseberry.

Do these food fireworks become exhausting? Perhaps they might in a lesser restaurant. But at Lespinasse, the pyrotechnics in the kitchen are tempered by the lack of them in the dining room. As each meal comes to a close, you find you are both exhilarated and soothed.

It's quite a show.