906 replies to this topic

[Orik]

Really they serve proteins in little cylinders at as trad a place as Adour. And Daniel. I do find it annoying.

In my restaurant everything will be served as milkshakes.

[Sneakeater]

Could you teach me?

[Wilfrid]

So-called manipulation into shapes not resembling the food in its natural state is very, very old school. I mean, Careme old.

[Suzanne F]

Yes, but a meat or fish medallion is still visually identifiable as meat or fish. The grain of the muscles is still visible. Is that the case with the partridge? (serious question; I can't tell from the photo.)

And a coating of sauce can always be scraped off (I'm thinking of demi-deuil as a worst offender) to reveal the actual thing under it.

I just hope Ori's restaurant is still open when I'm old and toothless.

[Orik]

So-called manipulation into shapes not resembling the food in its natural state is very, very old school. I mean, Careme old.

Like pop music, innit?

I think what distinguishes this style is that practically everything is manipulated this way and that the results from gluing proteins are seamless (so as Suzanne suggests - you don't really cut the thing open and have it unfold into pieces of meat).

[Chambolle]

Chambo goes on the record re Paul Liebrandt.

Paul Liebrandt is an incredible culinary phenomenon.

His dishes and meals are conceptual and visual art.

His compositions are wildly imaginative, bafflingly complex and meticulously constructed.

His progression of dishes wink backwards to others and forwards to themselves.

He is operating a sleek showy spaceship that is orbiting at a very high altitude as most other fine dining chefs go through the monotonous motions and move their gastronomic ferries back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

Whoooooooshhhhhhhhhh !

Look ... up in the sky ... it's a bird, it's a plane ...

No, there went Paul.


Whoooooooaaaaa ! That was close !

Did you see that near collision ? Paul almost collided with a waving Wiley !

No, that was just an optical illusion.


When you observe things from Earth, and if you aren't real careful, you can be easily fooled by distances and difficulty.

Paul is operating way higher up in the conceptual stratosphere and he is managing way more complexity.

Paul isn't hawking (and has no need for lame) gimmicks like reuben sandwiches, liquid noodles, foie-lafels or lox and bagels.

Paul is careening freeform towards his own food-infused fantasyland and he prefers to conceive of things through an abstract play of geometry, colors and textures.

He is an artist of the ephemeral. His domain is the conceptual and the abstract. His medium is food. That also makes him a chef.

But Paul is actually a pioneering chef astronaut.

And outer space can sometimes be a lonely place.

Corton ain't for everyone.

Corton has real issues, not just service issues*, but food issues.

Dishes can be exquisite, but they can also be exasperatingly average if you are one who doesn't get bamboozled by the pyrotechnics.

And space travel is still pretty expensive, especially considering how bare bones is the Corton capsule.



* The below was posted elsewhere in September.

Off-topic venting: Just to blow off some steam, the service that we had at Craigie and at Bondir was about 500% better than the unhappy, useless wench of a server that I had a couple days ago at Corton in NYC. Just so unacceptable. I was wondering if she just got fired from her day job. It affected the meal significantly. She was pained when asked to repeat what was in a dish. Hey wench, when you speak your words to the wall as opposed to informing the diners, those diners may ask you to repeat yourself so they can hear what you said. And Liebrandt operates on a different multi-ingredient plane (not necessarily an all-positive thing unless you are automatically wowed by the complexity of it all), and having some remote idea of what you are actually eating is kind of useful. It might add to the experience. Look wench, it was clear that we wanted to hear those ingredients after the first dish. If it is really so painful for you to speak to human beings and enunciate words so that the people that you are serving can actually hear what you are saying, just go get another job. (And her command of the English language was NOT an issue whatsoever) And I watched you at our neighboring table. Your fake-forced-smile when those folks were being friendly pained me as much as it pained you. You have the wrong job, my dear. And who the hell hired her and allows her to continue in this role? This restaurant simply fails on many accounts despite a chef-genius working there. I think that Drew is simply in over his head in attempting to run a restaurant at that level. I don't think he understands what it takes. I watched the service carefully the whole evening. It wasn't a happy or joyous or fun evening there.

Service at Corton this night: Chambo dislikes.

[Anthony Bonner]

So.Fucking.Close.

Seriously this should be the most interesting place in town to eat at. A dinner last night sort of showed why it isn't. Execution isn't perfect - some proteins were rubbery, some components were served at the wrong temp. I'd suggest a chawanmushi was possibly broken - although that could have been because the ratio of crab:egg & dashi was so high. But you know - the chawanmushi was topped with an incredibly subtle orange flower water foam - and if any of you have ever fiddled around with orange flower water you recognize the skill that takes. A salmon course was just super to my taste.

And yeah there is still too high a % of ideas that flew too close to the sun as Chambo alludes - especially in the secondary and tertiary components.

It should be fixable. I hope it gets fixed. I'd still rather eat here with imperfect execution though then a bunch of other places around town where the execution flawless.

ETA: Service maybe a little dour, but nothing like the shitshow others have received.

[Rail Paul]

Sneakeater linked to an interview with Paul Liebrandt on another thread, but I thought a cross link here might be interesting.

--I don't want to cook once for you. I want you as a regular, to taste the seasons, etc.

--A chef has to be in tiers of restaurants, at various price points. Being in just one restaurant isn't good enough anymore. I wonder if this is a hint of a Drew Nieporent expansion, a Liebrant "lite" restaurant, some wanderlust setting in, or what?

I mean, I think that these days you need different tiers of restaurants as a chef and as a brand. I don't plan on being a solo chef at one restaurant for the rest of my life, no, but it has to be the right thing. It's a lot of work, so it has to be the fit. I'm very picky. The days of the chef-proprietor with the solo restaurant who is there at all hours doesn't really exist anymore. You have to promote yourself and go out to the wider public. They have to know who you are, so you can't necessarily be tied to your kitchen 24/7. Well, anyway, if the restaurant can't function without you then it's not really a business. It's about finding a balance.

--Liebrandt just returned from doing events in Japan and China, and understands his "brand" isn't as well known as other highly competent chefs

Yeah, absolutely. When I first came here, I am sure. But I was young, and young people say and do dumb shit without thinking. I am guilty of that, but again, I was young. I got three stars at Atlas when I was 24. It wasn't that it was overwhelming, it was just that I was a kid. Maybe I stuck my foot in my mouth, but that's life and I take responsibility for it.

As I learned, there was a game to be played and a way to approach things, people. I say to the kids in the kitchen that of course it's a business, but most importantly it's about connections between people. It's about the connections between the cooks, the customers and us, the investors and the restaurant, the media — all of it. It's about encouraging that connection and getting someone to embrace what you do.

From Eater, via Sneakeater

[Orik]

He's improving at this talking to the press business, isn't he? Still too honest but far more verbose.

[marauder]

He's improving at this talking to the press business, isn't he? Still too honest but far more verbose.

I thought the same thing. He has definitely matured at the business person side of being a chef. Comes off much less prick-ish than before.

He and I have a mutual friend who made a call for me when we ate there. In all honesty, PL couldn't have been more gracious. Took time to stop garnishing plates to chat and show my wife and I the kitchen, etc. Also treated us very well when it came to mid-courses, etc. I was expecting the giant cry baby he always appeared to be in the press. And it turned out he was a good dude. I'm actually quite happy for his continued success. And I've always been a Drew fan, so it's an easy team to root for in my view.

[Suzanne F]

What marauder said (except the part about eating there ). Given that Liebrandt used to be a real shit (I've seen him in action bossing a girlfriend around, in addition to reading his pronouncements), this is definitely a sign of maturation.

Maybe there's hope for Eddie Huang and Joe Dobias and all of their ilk?

[taion]

If Corton can barely execute at a sufficient level to match the target food concept with Liebrandt in the kitchen, isn't it a bearish sign for the quality of the food that he wants to expand?

ETA: I mean in the sense that they are extremely ambitious, not that execution is generally not good.

[Rail Paul]

If Corton can barely execute at a sufficient level to match the target food concept with Liebrandt in the kitchen, isn't it a bearish sign for the quality of the food that he wants to expand?

ETA: I mean in the sense that they are extremely ambitious, not that execution is generally not good.

I've often thought that many of the best chefs are enabled to compete at a high level by the quality of the teams they assemble. Keeping exceptionally gifted people engaged and contributing raises the restaurant's game, and attracts more people who seek to work with "the best" chefs.

What's his experience in developing top notch staff and placing grads in other high profile chef positions? In theory, with the Myriad muscle and marketing acumen behind Corton, up and coming chefs should be marching out and into other jobs on a fairly predictable pace.

[Sneakeater]

taion!

[marauder]

I wouldn't expect the expansion of the Liebrandt brand to be at the Corton level of ambition.