A small slab of Arctic char was cooked sous-vide, garnished with a little shaved fennel, and placed on a large river rock set in a bowl. Seared foie gras (a $10 supplement) garnished with beet meringues, dots of rhubarb coulis, and oxalis leaves - beautiful flavors marred by a gummy mass of connective tissue that one of the chefs had forgotten to remove from the liver.
Interspersed around the plate were flecks of squid-ink paper, wisps of lemon foam, and sesame oil and anchovy transformed into a silky powder with tapioca starch.įor every moment of delight, a jarring one: a "Walk in the Forest" of beautifully cooked mushrooms, chickpea crisps, and tiny greens was arranged on an unnecessarily sweet pine meringue. More often, like the winter garden, the dishes were formed of many elements, such as "The Sea," a ring of thimble-sized cuttlefish gnocchi interspersed with rock shrimp, a lobe of uni, and a smoked oyster. The meat had a stunning texture to it, so juice-infused it almost seemed to pop with each bite.
Occasionally, a straightforward dish such as the salt-baked squab appeared: two small strips of deep-red breast meat flanking a nubbin of liver and garnished with rose petals and coffee oil. While the delays between courses often exceeded a half-hour, we were occasionally entertained with flourishes as we waited: foie gras pearls and vanilla gelée heaped onto rose petals, smoked potato chips displayed on a bare tree branch, a ball of frozen Meyer lemon "air" that dissolved into mist as we crunched.
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My meals progressed as a series of miniature tableaux, paired with glasses or half-glasses of wines chosen for their discretion. The diners had bathed in the money that flows from Pacific Heights down to the bay, and the mood, while not stilted, was formal. The small room rang with conversation by 8 o'clock, with waiters slipping sideways between chairs to tour the room, pirouetting at the end of their routes and returning, peering at every table they passed to see what needed to be done. A lit ceiling washed the tight clusters of tables in 24-carat light, and more gold dust leached out of wire-wrapped pendant lamps to speckle the upholstered chairs. Did the childhood memory represent a cluster of grassy, snowy rocks lying in a pool of melted ice, or a motherly, cold-weather dinner? That it did both: Exquisite. A few marble-sized potatoes, which had been roasted in their own soil (then cleaned of all dirt), floated in a clear, deep ham broth, garnished with a tuft of Comté fondue and a few chives. Across the table from the garden: a "Mémoire d'Enfance" (childhood memory). The "Jardin d'Hiver" (winter garden) turned out to be fetal parsnips, beets, and radishes sprouting out of quinoa rice "soil" dusted in goat cheese "snow." The crackle of toasted grains, the firm crunch of a baby carrot, the way the tang of the cheese evaporated before I could properly taste it - the flavors shifted and shimmered as our forks dismantled the illusion. My first meal at Atelier Creen began with two of the dishes that best evoke Crenn's poetic blend of memory, mystery, and delight.
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But I think, for Atelier Crenn to succeed artistically, the chef will have to resolve how to balance her food-as-art intentions with the food-as-meal expectations of patrons. Terrence Malick films and Orhan Pamuk novels have the same mixed appeal, which doesn't stop me from devouring as much as those artists can produce. Over the course of two meals at Atelier Crenn, I found the beauty of some dishes eviscerating, while other dishes came off as overwrought or barely palatable. And Crenn's plates are landscapes in themselves, terraced in soils, gardens, and honest-to-god rocks. The menu descriptions, with titles like "The Sea" and "Walk in the Forest," read like Debussy préludes.
The restaurant's format: to serve three- ($59), five- ($75), or 10-course ($95) tasting meals whose dishes are odes to the season. Atelier Crenn gives her even more freedom to pursue her modernist, garden-centric cuisine, which she's developing in partnership with Gouge Eye Farm, north of Sacramento, which currently supplies her with 60 percent of her vegetables and meats and will eventually provide more, including exotics such as peacock and Iraqi watermelon. At Atelier Crenn, which opened in Cow Hollow two months ago, she calls her response to what makes food an art, "poetic culinaria."Īmbitious, no? That ambition earned Crenn the executive chef role at Luce, followed by an Iron Chef win and a Michelin star. While you and I might sit here, mulling over the right words, Dominique Crenn one-upped us all with her response: opening up an entire restaurant.
Here's a question I hesitate to type, for fear of its nausea-inducing effect: What makes food art, and not just a meal? The cynic might answer "$300 and a good suit jacket," while the romantic might talk about how art engages the senses in tandem with the intellect.
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