Good Taste is the Worst Vice

A birthday and a farewell at Avenues

For my birthday this year, D gave me a dining experience I’ve been wanting to try for a while – the chef’s bar at Avenues, at the Peninsula.  I’ve had some excellent meals at Avenues, but never had the chance to sit at the bar and look into the kitchen… until now.

It turns out that we had lucky timing, since the chef, Curtis Duffy, has now officially left Avenues to start his own place (like Graham Elliot before him).  

As soon as we climbed up onto our stools, the rather ungainly champagne cart came trundling over so that we could look over the selection of bottles within.  (The cart always makes me smile.)  We chose Billecart Salmon, which was a crisp, effervescent beginning to our dinner along with an uni and caviar amuse bouche.

Since this was not only a birthday celebration, but a last hurrah for the restaurant, we asked to have an extended tasting menu – a combination of the regular and vegetable tastings, both comprised of favorite courses from Chef Duffy’s three years at Avenues.

The first course was the Alaskan king crab, a dish so popular that I heard a guest at the Peninsula Hong Kong once asked the restaurant there to serve it (and of course, they found a way!)  The morsels of crab are at the bottom of the glass, in a bright green cucumber broth, and the garnishes are arranged like a still life atop a paper-thin sugar tuile.  It takes just a moment to shatter the sugar and collapse everything into a delicious jumble – sweet, salty, refreshing.

Alaskan King Crab
Heirloom tomatoes
From our seats, we had an excellent view of the plating process; it was truly amazing to see the attention to detail that goes into the preparation of each plate.  The heirloom tomato course was a tiny landscape of tomatoes, cylinders of golden watermelon, batons of cheese, and the thinnest toasted slices of bread, atop tomato-water foam.  We watched one of the chefs make thin, sculptural strands of frozen herb puree with the help of liquid nitrogen; these were added to the plates as a final dramatic touch.

Another creative and lovely presentation arrived after the tomatoes – a rich, sweet corn soup poured over a coconuty dome, which covered a collection of garnishes beneath. Meanwhile, I was enjoying the bread service, and especially the butter, which crisscrosses the plate in an elegant ribbon.  There are also two olive oil spreads, one dark with green herbs, and the other light and lemony.  

Our next course was scallops, cool and velvety, swimming in faintly nutty poppy seed milk and scallion oil.  This was subtle but incredibly flavorful, and the texture of the scallops was perfect; I still remember every detail of the dish, days later.

Next came one of the standout dishes of the evening, winter truffles with creamy, truffle-y tapioca pearls and chives.  Winter truffles in August?  Yes indeed, if they come from Australia.  The aroma was perhaps a bit less potent than the European varieties, but the texture and flavor were spot on, and the tapioca provided an unexpected foil to the thinly shaved truffle.

Black Truffle

Over the years, Avenues has featured several dishes built around grains – I’ll always remember “Grains, Seeds, Nuts” not only because of its interestingly complex flavors and textures, but also because it’s so rare to see something so seemingly “granola” on the menu at a fine restaurant.  This time, it was hatomugi, a barley-like Japanese grass seed, with the thinnest possible sheet of melted idiazabal cheese layered atop.

Hatomugi

After the hatomugi, we moved to the fish and meat courses – first, another elaborately plated dish of hamachi topped with lardo.  I was quite happy to be at the chef’s bar as I watched this come together; one chef was preparing the protein while Chef Duffy piped and bruleed a stripe of marshmallow and laid out the garnishes along with a third chef. Together they quickly created a colorful, precise arrangement of carrots, kumquats, and green herbs.

Hamachi

Usually by this point in a tasting menu, I’m starting to slow down – and indeed, my fork was moving slowly as I took my first bite of the wagyu ribeye.  It was wonderfully tender and nowhere near as fatty as wagyu can sometimes be, and the best part was the seared and flavorful crust.

Wagyu Ribeye

A palate cleanser arrived next, a golden sphere carried upon a beautifully curved branch. The wafer-thin shell of white chocolate ruptures instantly in the mouth, releasing a surprising burst of cold, tart, citrusy sudachi juice.

Sudachi

We were now ready for dessert: first, a white peach ice cream surprisingly paired with a taleggio mousse beneath a pile of shortbread crumbs.  A classic combination of fruit and cheese, yes, but it seemed novel in this presentation.

Next, we had a sheep’s milk custard in the bottom of a torpedo-shaped glass vessel, with a drift of spun honey across its top.  Our waiter poured a sauce through the spun honey, which melted away like cotton candy, revealing the custard and green strawberries beneath.  It was a bit savory, a bit sweet, and altogether harmonious.

The final dessert was a chocolate cylinder filled with a liquidy mixture of chocolate, cherry, and sassafras flavors, which flowed into the dish and mingled with fennel and crumbles of dark chocolate cake.  It’s a fitting end to a meal that seems woven through with a theme of breaking through to reveal the full flavors of a dish – whether the sugar shell of the crab, the dome atop the corn dish, the sudachi sphere, or even the spun sugar of the sheep’s milk custard.

White Peach
Liquid Chocolate

When the chocolate plates were cleared, we each received a small slate tray with three single-origin truffles – mine bearing a celebratory candle.  We savored them with the last drops of our dessert wine, while watching the chefs carry on their careful choreography in the kitchen as the orders continued to flow in.

I read the handwritten note on the blue tape on the counter, which asked, “What does ‘three stars’ mean to you?”  Avenues achieved an impressive and well-deserved two Michelin stars, but clearly Curtis Duffy has his sights set higher.  I can’t wait to try his new place when it opens, and to watch him capture that third star.

And meanwhile, I’ll keep my fingers crossed that Avenues finds a talented new chef to carry on an impressive legacy.


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Comments

  1. Edward says

    I love this sentence, and read it out loud to Aunt D.: it brought a smile to her face.

    "As soon as we climbed up onto our stools, the rather ungainly champagne cart came trundling over so that we could look over the selection of bottles within. (The cart always makes me smile.) "