[title type="h6"]Thursday, September 12, 2013.[/title]
At the Eat Club dinner we held at Le Foret last month, 120 people filled the restaurant. They were not all Eat Clubbers, but a lot of them were. And Danny Millan, who runs the place, said that he turned away seventy would-be diners. I can hear him now: "Oh, I'm so very sorry we have no more room!" I'm sure he said to them. "We will have another dinner soon and we will put you at the top of the list. I am so sorry!"
I knew he wasn't kidding about that. What I would not have guessed was that he would stage this make-up dinner only a month later. That's too soon for me to get behind it with full force. Besides, we have five of our regular run of dinners scheduled already. And in September, yet--a notoriously soft month for restaurants.
He would not need a lot of help filling the room tonight. Ninety people signed up. Many who were here for the first one were also at Le Foret tonight. The menu and the wines were different, and the wines were even more alluring than last month's.
Mary Ann has lunch with Danny once every two months to keep him happy as an advertising client. And because she enjoys his company, and that of Danny's his right-hand woman at the restaurant. Danny made it clear that he would be very disappointed if we didn't show up. How could I bear such guilt?
Mary Ann didn't see the menu until she arrived. When I joined her, she asked me how she possibly could explain to Danny that she didn't eat any of the food. This I knew had nothing to do with the merits of the cooking but with MA's very narrow list of acceptable eats. Scallops, foie gras, sweetbreads, and lobster are not on her list. That left only a filet mignon to carry the meal.
Danny, of course, smiled at her and said, "Sit down! What would you like to eat? We have several other people who want something different. How about a nice crabmeat salad, then some barbecue shrimp?" Problem solved.
I thought the menu sounded marvelous. We started with a mousseline of shrimp and scallops, made into what looked like sliced sausages. (Curious: this was a lot like the quenelles we had last night at N'Tini's, but more elegant and better.) The light disks were scattered across a salad. In the glass was Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc, one of the finest wines made with that grape anywhere. We were off and running.
Veal sweetbreads.[/caption]
Now sweetbreads. The usual hubbub at the table as to what exactly sweetbreads are ensued. A surprising number of people believe that they are testicles. That might be true in England, where the usage of the word "sweetbreads" is much more generic. These were just good old veal thymus glands, rich and wonderful and buttery, but lacking the sexy exotica of the suspected variety meat.
The wine had balls, though. Rosenblum Petite Sirah is a wine so dark that I keep thinking about sucking it into one of my fountain pens and using it for ink. I'll try that someday. For tonight, it was merely the best wine of the evening.
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Filet mignon and lobster.[/caption]
I may have mentioned this before, but I think it's time for chefs to back away from the automatic inclusion in dinners like this of a filet mignon. I know why they do it: it has a good reputation, everybody likes it, and it lends perceived value to the meal. But I'm sure I'm not the only one who is bored stiff with this as the entree in wine dinners. I'd guess that at least half of our Eat Club dinners wind up in that rut.
This one was pretty good, though, as served steakhouse size. Hardly necessary with all the food that had come already, plus the butter-poached lobster tail atop the steak. (That's another current trick I think is about ready to go on sabbatical.)
The wine here was Provenance Merlot. Provenance was, when I first tried it in the 1980s, an insignificant wine that every visitor to Napa knew, because they had a nice welcome and tasting room, and a field where you could have a picnic. It's now owned by a big outfit--Chalone, I think--that has transformed Provenance's big red wines into serious juice.
We ended up with a small dessert, which was about all anyone wanted. The feature of that course was the wine: Moet et Chandon Imperial Nectar. It's made in the sweet style popular among Champagnes in the early years of the genre. It's way out of vogue now, what with brut and even drier bubbly in charge. That hardly makes it bad, though.
A funny thing happened during this dinner. As I always do, I moved around to join Eat Clubbers at our several tables. Al Seicshnaydre--a guy with whom I have shared hundreds of wines at tastings and dinners going back decades--was at the next table. It sported an open chair. I sat there and we compared notes. I didn't realize it at the time--Mary Ann told me the story on the way home--but one of the people at the table was displeased that I dared do this. Apparently she doesn't like me. Or my work. I'm always happy to hear such news, because it means that I'm not being too namby-pamby.
I have decided--and everyone I could hear agreed--that Le Foret needs some noise-abatement work. The floors are wood, the walls are brick, the ceilings hard and shiny, and the windows large and many. At least they have tablecloths. But they need to think, perhaps, about curtains.
[title type="h6"]Le Foret. CBD: 129 Camp. 504-553-6738.[/title]
