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| From the Master |
When we first moved to Chicago and asked about great places
to eat, one place continued to be extolled: Charlie Trotters. Of course at the
time The Husband and I were fresh out of college and couldn’t imagine spending
more than $200 for dinner. Even that was breathtakingly expensive (we went to
the now closed Opera for our first anniversary and purchased a bottle of wine.
Our dinner was $250 and that was the most either of us had EVER spent on food
and it was so delicious).
As we started getting more and more interested in dining in
Chicago, our gazes moved towards the rising stars, Graham Elliot, Paul Kahn,
Michael Carlson and the powerhouse Grant Achetz and away from the old school
Trotter. When we would speak with people about the restaurants we’ve been to
and someone would say “Oh, I haven’t heard of that place…but I’ve been to
Charlie Trotters and it was really great!” I would internally roll my eyes and
think “Neophite!” Yes, I judged you.
In my mind Trotters was of the Old Guard. It was a
restaurant of white table cloths, waiters in tuxedos, lacquered chairs and silk
wall paper. If I was going out to eat an expensive dinner, I wanted to not only
have amazing food, but I also wanted it to be an experience. One that I didn’t
feel as though I had to speak with hushed tones and sit with my legs crossed
and a rigid back while I dine, else I be judged by the wait-staff for being
gouache.
However, when Charlie Trotter announced on New Years Eve
that he was going to be shutting his restaurant after 25 years in August, The
Husband and I had to second guess our choice to avoid. How could we say we’re
in touch with the Chicago Food Scene if we had never been to the Grandfather of
Chicago Haute Cuisine?
I realize I just spent the last three paragraphs bagging on the
man. And it isn’t fair. Charlie Trotter did some amazing things for fine
dining. To start, he and a few other
chefs in the country started a Degustation Menu, otherwise known as a Tasting
Menu or a Pre-Fix menu. While other
restaurants were offering a la carte menus, where dinners could pick and choose
what they wanted from a larger menu, Trotter decided to focus his menu on a few
dishes. This way he could perfect them all. It was brilliant and became his
signature. Currently Trotter’s only has two menus: The Grand Cru and the
Vegetable menu.
Which brings his next big thing for dinning: The Vegetable!
Trotter wasn’t the first to cook them, obviously, but he was one of the first
to make them the center piece for a meal. Alan Richman, the food critic from
the New York Times said, “A plate arrives bearing what looks like a cross
section of slab bacon, but it’s really a terrine of three separate beet purées
— red, golden and chioggia — that have been set in a mold and then sauced with
another purée, of horseradish and roasted parsnips: a root-crop tour of the
five taste sensations…. Charlie Trotter’s offers a more traditional grand menu,
but it’s the vegetable menu — an ever-changing, never-boring meatless
dégustation — that is his crowning culinary achievement.”
Finally, he also was a huge proponent of Seasonal
Dinning. Trotter’s never has a set menu,
their menu changes every day based upon what the seasonal vegetables they
receive that day. For the most part the concept of the menu remains similar
during seasons, parts of each dish changes, but even still, that is impressive.
If one component changes in a dish, the flavor profile changes and the
sommelier has to change the wine pairings as well. White asparagus tastes different than green,
which tastes different from baby asparagus, ect… The trickle-down effect of ONE
ingredient in ONE dish is challenging, let alone doing this every single day
for nine or ten courses.
Many big name chefs in Chicago have, at one point or
another, worked with Trotter. Grant Achatz (of Alinea), Homaro Cantu (of Moto), Giuseppe Tentori (of
Boka), Graham Elliot (of Graham Elliot), and Bill Kim (of Urban Belly) and many
other chefs and sous chefs throughout Chicago and the United States have worked
under Trotter.
Okay, so now I’ve spent four paragraphs making up for my
first three. So when Trotter announced that during the final nine months of his
restaurant, he was bringing the old band back together (award winning sommelier
Larry Stone returned!), we couldn’t resist.
Our dinner reservation was made eight weeks in advance (we
were seating five people on a Friday night) however if you are interested in
going there are still tables left and they can be found on Open Table. If you’re interesting in learning more about
Mr. Stone,
Eater
had a great interview with him.
When making the reservation, we were informed that men were
required to wear jackets, ties were optional. I groaned. Again, I prefer an
environment where eating is an experience and I’m not required to look a
certain way (although it irks me to NO end that people walk into nice
restaurants in something I wouldn’t
dream of running to the grocery store in).
As the dinner approached, I was walking in with some
apprehension. I was prepared to spend the money, but I wasn’t expecting to be
blown away. I thought of it like something I had to do.
Before the dinner, the group decided that rather than do the
normal wine pairing, we were going to work with the Somm and find some
interesting bottles to go with our dinner(we learned later that at that point,
they had over 4,000 bottles of wine in the cellar). The goal was to keep the
wine at the same per person price point as the wine pairing.
We spent some time trying to decide what bottle to start
with and who was going to do the Vegetable Tasting verses the Grand
Tasting. The Husband and I knew walking
in we were planning on the Vegetable, since we had heard amazing things about
it. The Vegetable Tasting is NOT vegetarian, but can be made to be so. I think
that is important to note. The idea is to highlight the vegetable and there can
be components of meat (we had a vegetarian with us, so the melon sorbet with
iberco consume was changed to a melon sorbet with eucalyptus consume).
We were seated on the second floor in front of a wine cooler
that spanned the entire wall of the room.
It was my view during our three and a half hour dinner. The other thing
we noted was how relaxed we all were. For a restaurant that demanded its male
dinners to wear jackets, we didn’t feel that we were in a stuffy environment at
all. Neither did the table of eight that was seated in our same room. They were
at the end of their dinner and were rather boisterous (we were grateful when
they had finished dinner and left). We all spoke in normal tone, felt
comfortable to take pictures and made sure to seat ourselves in a comfortable
manner.
Sadly Trotters didn’t allow us to take our menu’s home, which stinks because I didn't get a picture of one. Luckily someone from our table did.
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| The Vegetable Menu |
Each of the menus built upon flavor profiles. The first four
dishes were savory and the level of saltiness, the three dessert dishes built
up richness levels, starting with a light melon course that cleansed the palate
and finishing with a rich chocolate dish.
The savory courses on the Vegetable menu were fantastic. We
had toyed with getting the Grand menu simply for the lamb saddle and the
venison, but were grateful that we made the choice to go with the
Vegetable. What I can say though, was
that a PERFECT menu would have been the savory from the Vegetable and the sweet
from the Grand. The three desserts on the Grand menu were spot on (although I
did love the second dessert).
Our dinner started with a terrine of roasted heirloom beets
with wild celery and petite fennel. It’s
impressive if you look closely at the picture, because he presses the beets into
distinct layers to make the terrine. The
dish consisted of yellow beet, red beets, crushed pistachios and goat
cheese. We found out later that this
dish was considered the amuse bouche. We found it interesting, as typically
amuses are single bites. And this was a multi-bite dish. Delicious, really wonderful,
but technically not an amuse.
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| I'm sorry it's sideways! |
During our dinner, we had three separate breads to nosh on as we waited for the next course to come out. Our first bread was a
delicious home-made pretzel roll with fresh made butter that was sprinkled with
smoked salt. I love pretzel rolls, so it’s hard for me to find any fault in the
bread and the butter was simply delicious. And you must remember, this is
coming from someone who avoids eating butter 99% of the time. But I have
learned, if it’s fresh, you can’t go wrong.
Our second course was a perfectly prepared poached white
asparagus over a puree of broccolini, piquillo peppers and Manchego Cheese. The
asparagus, while poached, wasn’t soggy and paired extremely well with the
pureed broccolini.
Our third dish of the evening was a homemade tofu dish.
Normally I shy away from tofu; I’m not a fan of the spongy like texture (unless
it’s in my hot and sour soup). It was served alongside grilled peaches in a red
curry. The curry flavors played perfectly with the peaches and the house-made
tofu was really wonderful. The texture wasn’t spongy, rather it reminded me a
little of the texture of a scrambled egg. Light, fluffy, but obviously with
some substance.
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| Silky Tofu |
The next two courses have popped into my dreams since our
dinner last month. To start, course four was a one-hour poached Hen egg, over a
bed or morel mushrooms and Swiss chard. From my previous posts, you know how much I
enjoy morel mushrooms. This one was no exception. The combination of the salty sautéed chard,
the earthy mushroom and the creamy egg was divine.
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| Hen Egg and Morel Mushroom |
As I said previously, each of the savory courses increased
in their level of salty. The final savory course, Miso tortellini with Red
Cabbage was mind-blowing. The tortellini was cooked to perfection and filled
with the salty deliciousness of miso and was placed over a bed of red cabbage. If it wasn’t wildly improper, I would have
licked this plate clean and asked for another round. A week later The Husband and I were at a gathering
and were on opposite sides of the room, and I vaguely heard him speaking about
what we had been up to since we had last seen him a few weeks ago. The Husband called my name and I immediately replied
“Miso Tortellini”. The person The Husband was speaking with looked at the both
of us with shock and said “How did you know that we were speaking about your
dinner and moreover, how did you know that he had just spent five minutes
speaking just about that dish?” My response (pointing to The Husband) “He would
only call me over if I was in the middle of a conversation to emphasis a point.
And it was just.that.good.”
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| Miso Tortellini |
From here we moved onto the first of three desserts; cantaloupe
sorbet with Anise shortbread in a eucalyptus consume. We had a vegetarian in the group and so
instead of the iberco ham consume, we got the eucalyptus. This was our palate
cleanser before moving onto the richer desserts and it did do its job well. Unfortunately
I’m not a huge melon fan and on top of that, I found the dish to be a little
sweet due, in part, to the eucalyptus. I would have been interested to try it
with the ham consume, but I wouldn’t jump to it.
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| Melon |
The second dessert was my favorite by far. This is interesting because it was not the
chocolate dessert. This course was a zucchini cake with basil and saffron
reduction. Honestly, they had me at the basil reduction. The cake was well prepared; the icing was
perfect, not overly rich and complemented the light cake really well.
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| Zucchini Cake |
The final dish was a mocha ice cream with hazelnut dacquoise
and steamed coffee cake. It was a solid dessert, but nothing I would write home
about. The Grand Menu’s final dessert however, was spectacular- a molten
chocolate cake with chocolate sauce poured over it.
Other than our savory dishes, the one thing I must say that
blew me away was our Somm. He did a spectacular job of pairing various bottles
of wine with two totally different menus.
We started with champagne, moved onto two very lovely and very different
whites, from there had two reds and finished the evening with a dessert wine. Sadly, I didn’t get a picture of the bottles,
so I can’t tell you what we had. You'll have to trust me though, it was good.
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| I did, however get a picture of my favorite decanter, the Reidel Mambo. |
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| Note the wine glass fort I surrounded myself with |
After our dinner we were invited down to the kitchen for a
tour. As many top restaurants do, they literally take apart the entire kitchen
every single night and wash it- ceiling to floor- to ensure the utmost cleanliness.
Since our reservation was at 9:30pm, we
were able to see the kitchen finishing up the breakdown when we went in. We were also able to see the sheer volume of
bottles of wine drank that evening. A counter, two feet deep and four feet
wide, was full of empty wine bottles. If
I was smart, I would have taken a picture, alas, I was not. From the kitchen we then proceeded in the
studio area where Trotter used to film his cooking show and then back out to
the front, where we chatted with our Somm as well as the Master Somm and thanked them for the perfect pairings and
for the lovely evening. Before we walked out of the door, we asked where they
were headed once the doors were closed in August (less of a “hey, what are you
up to next” and more of a “You’re so good, I will go wherever you’re working”
type thing). Both plan on heading to Napa and aren’t sure what their next steps
will be. But I imagine if you’re coming
from a place like Charlie Trotters, you really don’t have to worry much.
