Diary 08|13|2014: Introduction To Square Root.

[title type="h5"]Thursday, August 14, 2014. Introduction To Square Root. [/title] The first part of this diary entry ran in yesterday's newsletter. I'm repeating it here a) for your convenience and 2) because I revised it a little. Twice during my run as chronicler of the New Orleans restaurant galaxy, I had the feeling that a new era in dining out had begun. The first was in the early 1980s, when Mr. B's, Bouligny, Clancy's, Gautreau's and the Upperline created the gourmet Creole bistro. They had new but recognizably local food from new chefs in casual, cool environments, with a lot of grilling and much better wines by the glass than we had known. Such restaurants became by far the most popular kind of white-tablecloth restaurants in New Orleans, and they still are. The second time was during the summer of 1990, when Emeril's opened, followed quickly by Bayona and the Pelican Club. In those restaurants the provenance of the ingredients became the most important issue, and the chefs pushed the guys in suits into the background. Once again, the rest of the fine-dining restaurants followed suit. I had my first dinner at Square Root tonight, and I have that feeling again. I also have the feeling I'm going out on a limb by saying so. So let's go: Chef Philip Lopez's new, highly innovative, sixteen-seat restaurant will fire off enough new restaurants like it that a decade from now, after some evolution, this will be the kind of restaurant where people will eat avidly. [caption id="attachment_43498" align="alignnone" width="480"] Square Root[/caption] In command of an astonishing sense of taste and encyclopedic knowledge of local and world cuisine, Lopez cooks food that is in equal parts fascinating to think about and lusty to taste. Those two restaurant entities--the dish with the great backstory and the one with the irresistible flavor and aroma--only occasionally coincide. You either have the yard duck egg cooked at 141 degrees for exactly one hour and seven minutes, or you have the standard eggs benedict with month-old supermarket eggs, pre-sliced Canadian bacon, hollandaise made by the five gallons, on an English muffin. I would not take a bet on which of those would be the more enjoyable to eat. A good story is not a reliable predictor of good taste. [caption id="attachment_43497" align="alignnone" width="480"] Lobster mole at Square Root[/caption] That word lusty I used above is the one I need to describe the best dish in my dinner tonight. The chef says that it's lobster chilaquiles verde--a dry, pan-seared combination of little morsels of this and that, with charred onion dust (the grey-looking stuff at the top of the photo) bergamot crema (sour cream flavored with a citrus used mostly for hot tea), and lobster molé. That last element is one of my favorite flavors, so I pursue its use further. Chef tells that it's in the tradition the extra-dark, almost black molé they make around Oaxaca, Mexico. Eating this--even in the small amounts served in each of the twelve courses we had tonight--I found myself struggling to put together the right words to explain just how marvelous this was. I keep coming back to banalities like "fantastic" and "unbelievably good" and "it's the best ever." This failure of words reminded me of other times when the same thing happened, but for totally different reasons. During the best sex of my life, I was comparably bereft of words. Nothing said in those times came close to capturing what should have been said--whatever, indeed, that was. It was both a supreme mental and physical experience, simultaneously, each of them escalating the other. The dinner tonight is a run-through for another, bigger Square Root dinner my friendly dermatologist Dr. Bob plans to hold in two weeks. He will fill all sixteen seats with friends with whom he dines often (fortunately, I am one of them), and equip the menu with some wines he's looking to taste from his own cellar. I think he wanted me to get my picture-taking out of the way so I could concentrate on the sensual aspects of the food and wine. To make sure the wines tonight are up to the level of the dinner (and vice-versa), he brings a Montrachet and a Chateau Lynch-Bages--two wines not exactly from hunger. All but one of the stools at the bar (which is also the kitchen and dining room, all designed by the chef) are filled with people we didn't know, some of them from out of town. They didn't arrive all at the same time, which surprised me. Philip says that's not one of the rules. Other non-existent rules allow full permission to take photographs, to ask about dishes in detail and expect detailed replies, and to talk with other people at the triangular table. There is no sense that our palates or our minds are slaves of the chef. No feeling that this is a religious rite. [caption id="attachment_43517" align="alignnone" width="480"] Fried chicken cotton candy.[/caption] We begin with what looks like cotton candy atop a box filled with fried okra and an ooze identified as fermented mustard seeds. The cotton, it turns out, is also fried-chicken flavor, in what is surely the most unusual transmogrification in my long lifetime of eating fried chicken. [caption id="attachment_43518" align="alignnone" width="480"] Oyster with watermelon at Square Root.[/caption] Next comes a raw oyster on its shell, doused with mignonette sauce. Not the familiar kind with finely-diced onions and vinegar, but with watermelon morsels and juice. Snow made by freezing mixture of buttermilk and horseradish with liquid nitrogen covers and chills the oyster. Okay. Clearly they are playing games back there. My antennae, tuned to the foolishness frequency, vibrate. But wait! The fried chicken thing was a fine first taste, with protein and sharpness working together to make that second (third, perhaps?) first mouthful of Montrachet better than the one before. Ditto on the oyster. Here are two appetizers in the literal sense of that word. I couldn't think of anything about these two bites that I didn't like. Dr. Bob felt the same way. [caption id="attachment_43519" align="alignnone" width="480"] "Egg Sardou," step one. . . [/caption] [caption id="attachment_43520" align="alignnone" width="480"] . . . and step two, at Square Root.[/caption] Any doubts I have about whether Philip Lopez is my kind of chef vanishes when he brings "eggs Sardou." The current punctuation usage is that when a chef encloses a dish name with quotation marks, he is saying that it isn't really what it says it is. In this case, it's a reconstruction of the classic ingredients for that famous New Orleans (Antoine's, to be exact) fancy egg dish: eggs and spinach. The egg is warm, suggesting hollandaise. The spinach goes into the making of an unearthly green gazpacho, poured over the egg at the table. Tarragon and shavings of black truffle finish the dish. This was--to quote Richard Collin's comment about the same dish at Brennan's in 1969--food for the gods. The palate is enclosed in pleasure, and the mind reels with delight, the way it does when it processes brilliant music or sculpture. I know I sound effusive, but I am not exaggerating. Here is the brilliance of this chef and his inspirations. Nothing is so bizarre that the average person would write it off as "gourmet food." [caption id="attachment_43521" align="alignnone" width="480"] Foie gras with pickled blueberries.[/caption] Onward. Foie gras looks like a miniature stick of butter, with about the same texture. Chef reveals that this is made in sort of the same way that a foie gras torchon is. A little better, too. Coconut ad caraway seeds ground down to "gravel" is part of a scattering of pickled blueberries and dribs and drabs of very old balsamic vinegar. Okay. None of the above is the sort of thing casual diners are likely to order in a casual restaurant. But foie gras appears to be required by law in any ambitious dinner. [caption id="attachment_43522" align="alignnone" width="480"] Chanterelles and huitlacoche, step one. . . [/caption] Now a kind of salad, topped by the most beautiful mushroom in the world (chanterelles, which I know are very fresh because they're coming up at the Cool Water Ranch right now) and huitlacoche--"corn smut," to use its familiar name. Dr. Bob and I said it almost in unison: "Wait a minute! I just had corn smut last week!" We had indeed, at the same dinner at Restaurant August. What were the chances? In this manifestation, the corn fungus (a delicacy in Mexico, a scourge in America; the Mexicans have it right) was made into a veloute, plopped right onto the top of the fresh leaves and pappardelle noodles. Dr. Bob thought it was time to open the Chateau Lynch-Bages. This is a great Bordeaux from Pauillac, a wines I have not had in ages, although they rank near the top of my preferences. I didn't catch the vintage, but it had developed classic Bordeaux bouquet since whenever Dr. Bob bought it. [caption id="attachment_43524" align="alignnone" width="480"] Blueberry ice at Square Root.[/caption] At the same time, the chef sent out what I think is the most unusual plate I've seen in a formal dinner. It looked as if it had been made for serving Sugar Pops. Inside it was a fun course: blueberry ice flavored with fennel fronds, lemon balm, watermelon (it's in season!) and Egyptian (so what?) chamomile. (Again with the hot-tea flavorings.) This is here not to advance the cause so much as to cleanse our palates, as they say. Back to work. The dish of the night, the one I described above with the black Oaxacan molé and lobster, is here. The one that reminded me of--not sex, certainly, but that speechlessness you get when it comes to that with the partner of your life. Really. [caption id="attachment_43525" align="alignnone" width="480"] Wagyu beef short rib steak, Square Root.[/caption] If foie gras is required of all gourmet dinners, then some kind of beef steak is mandatory at any other banquet attended by people of typical tastes. And here it is, a cuboid of steak cut from Wagyu beef (so what?) short ribs, seared just the way I like (black here and there, juicy in the center). Inside and outside an oval drawn in a gastrique-thick sauce soubise (oniony) are what look like miniature eggs made of miso. Interesting dish: after I ate it, it occurred to me that here was the parallel to the menu at Chef Philip's other restaurant, Root. Over there, the more a dish resembles a standard restaurant entree, the less interesting to eat it is. That seems to be true here, too--if I can say such a thing based on only one eating. It was far from mediocre, but stopped well short of the magic we saw the rest of the evening. [caption id="attachment_43526" align="alignnone" width="480"] Nitrogen macaroons, Square Root.[/caption] The final course brought out the liquid nitrogen again, used to solidify an egg yolk caramel and milks. It all came out white--whether from the supercooled temperatures or the ingredients, I don't know. I do know that I shoved a spoonful into my mouth before the nitro had warmed completely into a gas, and smoke is pouring out of my mouth. (No damage done.) We poured some of the Montrachet and the Lunch Bags for the chef, the dining room boss (he was the only one in the magic stainless-steel triangle who was wearing a suit instead of a chef's jacket) and the lady sommelier. We sit around and watch the later customers come in and be served what we'd just finished, deja-vu style. I noticed two large shelves of cookbooks along the tops of the windows. I don't see one of mine. I go out to the car and fetch a copy. "I have a copy already!" says the chef. This guy really knows what to say to a customer. [title type="h5"]Square Root. Garden District Environs: 1800 Magazine St. 504-309-7800. [/title]