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It used to be that people talked about dishes.  Now, they talk about names.

Those of you who read this blog or follow me on social media know that I have been fairly critical of the way the restaurant industry has shifted the focus away from the diner, and has, in general, devolved into a media circus.  This subject is well-covered ground on this blog, so I won’t burden you with more of it here. Just read my last four or five ruminations, and you’ll get a good sense of my frustration and complaints.

But let me not be that guy in cyberspace who’s always whining about something.  All is not lost.

There are many chefs and restaurants that are doing great things, despite the over-hype.  As I confided to my friend Andreas recently over dinner in Copenhagen, I’ve found a renewed excitement in using this blog to cheer on the great experiences I have, and, more importantly, to champion those that might otherwise be lost amidst all the noise.

The restaurant where Andreas works doesn’t exactly need a champion.  Far from it, Kong Hans Kælder is a storied institution in Denmark.  Founded in 1976 by the Grønlykke family, it was the first Danish restaurant to earn a Michelin star, a rating that it kept until 2014, when Thomas Rode, its chef of 18 years left.  A new team was brought in, and with it, a breath of fresh air.  After a brief closure, Kong Hans Kælder reopened in September of last year with Mark Lundgaard Nielsen at the head of the kitchen and Peter Pepke at the head of the house.

My dinner there in early March of this year demonstrated the type focus on cooking and service that I value and sorely miss.  So, in the spirit of celebrating the good, I would like to tell you about it here and now, in this, my first dedicated restaurant post since I wrote about Ifuki last year (the kaiseki restaurant in Kyoto, where, as it turned out, I had my favorite meal of 2014).

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Having practiced law as an attorney for a good portion of my adult life, I am used to it.  And, as someone who distrusts food media for the lack of transparency, I demand it. So, first, a few disclaimers and disclosures:

As I hinted above, I know the sous chef of Kong Hans Kælder.  Although I didn’t actually meet Andreas Bagh until he was hired for the reopening (he gave me a brief tour of the restaurant in September, 2014, just days before its recent reopening), I first became acquainted with him through a mutual friend, Will King-Smith, when they worked together at Rasmus Kofoed’s Geranium.

Andreas and the team at Kong Hans Kælder showed me great favor and attention, and I think it’s only fair that you know about it.

Chef Nielsen, offered to cook for me.  He went off script, augmenting my dinner with dishes from both the tasting menu and the à la carte menu, quite a few of which were intended for two people (I was dining alone).  As well, he presented me a dish that wasn’t on the menu at all.  They gave me a terrific table facing the pass; poured me a glass of red wine to pair with my meat dishes (in turn, I shared with them a bottle of white wine that I had brought); and after dinner, invited me into the private dining room for a drink and a chat.  When all was said and done, there was no bill.

Those of you who are wary of food writers who have relationships within the restaurant industry (as you should be) know that this kind of special treatment isn’t uncommon.  And I assume that most of you who visit this blog regularly know that I benefit from it, since you see the disclosures I make here (and I suspect most of my readers are affiliated with the restaurant industry anyway).

However, hopefully, you also know that I am not easily wooed by such frills.  At the fear of sounding boastful (but, in reality, I’m just being frank) I am treated very well in many restaurants.  And the vast majority of them don’t get mentioned here on my blog.  I find favor often enough that I have to believe that chefs are sincere when they tell me that they enjoy going the extra mile for guests who truly appreciate their effort and talent – without expecting any favors in return.  To be considered in that category of diner is far more meaningful to me than any trick a chef could turn in the dining room.  Respect is what I’m after, not platitudes.

But for all the distance that effort and sincerity gain, a lack of quality undoes.  To me, quality is what counts most.  And you’ll find it at Kong Hans Kælder; a caliber of quality that is increasingly rare in restaurants these days, and the kind that inspires me write about this restaurant now.

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As its name suggests, Kong Hans Kælder is located in an underground “cellar.” (Kong Hans Kælder translates to “King John’s Cellar.” The Danish “d” is soft, almost to the point of being swallowed, hence sounding very much like “keller,” the German word for cellar.)  Yet the name is misleading in almost every way: according to the history of the restaurant that I found on Kong Hans Kælder’s website (and other online sources), originally, this modern-day “cellar,” located in the oldest building in Copenhagen, was neither underground, nor was it ever King John’s (instead, it is merely attributed to the time of King John’s reign).

But that doesn’t detract from the character of the space, which testifies to the quality of craftsmanship of a mighty era. Its low and squat groin vaulting, and especially the thickness of its frame give the dining room a distinctly medieval look, which has been softened by table skirts and the flicker of candlelight on its whitewashed walls.  Given how spare the room is, lined with inelegantly thick wood planks, it’s surprisingly cozy.  I think it’s beautiful.

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From what I understand, Kong Hans Kælder has always leaned classically French.  Nielsen has not departed from this tradition.  And neither has the restaurant’s manager, Peter Pepke, who subscribes to a complementary, Continental style of service.  (Kong Hans Kælder is a Relais & Châteaux property.)

Pepke told me that, in reopening Kong Hans Kælder, his focus was on bringing service back into the dining room.  And he seems to lead this charge by example.  Pepke manages, yes.  But he also serves.  And he serves with dignity, without pandering or pampering.  That’s not to say that service at Kong Hans Kælder lacks warmth, or is short in any way.  Far from it.  But the primary focus here is on the practical needs of the diner, and not on the emotional needs of the staff.  I like that.

But this refreshingly simple and direct style of service relies on having a good product to sell.  And Nielsen and his kitchen make it so.

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Unlike his more “relevant” Scandinavian peers, chef Nielsen isn’t a martyr to regionalism, preferring, instead, to pursue character and quality in his ingredients.  Showcasing them in a classically French frame, he dusts off familiar subjects and paints them with renewed vigor, demonstrating that good, old-fashioned cooking is always relevant – exciting, even – if it’s done well.

Here, Nielsen narrows the gap between himself and the diner, presenting dishes that not only require an understanding of the ingredients, but demand a sense of timing and presence: to my surprise, a nicely seared scallop, sliced and fanned out in its shell, was still attached to it.  Realizing that the scallop had never left its home, I gently scraped each slice away, marveling at how well it had been cooked – still warm and silky on the inside, with a golden brown crust on the outside.

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Instead of assembling dishes, like so many contemporary kitchens do, Nielsen actually cooks them and presents them to order.  This leaves little room for do-overs.  The table side presentations at Kong Hans Kælder aren’t just for show – some sauce, a garnish, or a final flourish to dazzle the common diner.  Here, they serve a far more meaningful and practical purpose, an age-old rite in commercial exchange: inspect this genuine article that has been selected and cooked for you.  Note the quality of the product, and the care with which it has been prepared.  And watch as I personally finish it for you.

Vanity?  Perhaps elsewhere.  Here, it is done out of respect, both for tradition and the customer.

Danish black lobster (black when alive, like most lobsters, this variety blushes orange when it’s cooked), for example, arrived whole and hot. Pepke de-armored the creature before me, pulling out its fat tail, and plating it with some dried purple carrots that bled beautifully into a buttery sauce.

Uncapping the golden dome of a baked, salt-dough crust, Neilsen revealed a steaming tranche of turbot.  He gently filleted the meat off the bone, plated it with some melted leeks, and smothered it all with velvety, white sauce.  Would I like black truffles?  The season was running late but strong.  Or would I rather have bianchetto, a small, rusty-hued truffle that is often considered the poor man’s white truffle?  The bianchetto season conveniently picks up right when the white truffle season ends in early January, and runs until spring.  He would normally never buy such a second-rate ingredient, Nielsen told me. But these were particularly good, he thought.  I appreciated his pragmatism and agreed with his assessment (although, I would say that, whereas I usually smell white truffles more than I taste them, the opposite was true of the bianchetto).  The bianchetteo magnified the grassiness of the olive oil in this lighter version of “blanquette” sauce to produce a flavor almost indistinguishable from white truffles.

And duck, roasted whole, arrived at my table bronzed and burnished.  The bird, with its long neck curving towards me, was carved and plated with a dollop of celeriac purée, the rounded sweetness of which was cut short of a full circle by the bitter fragrance of orange in a sauce that glowed with warming spices.  I’ve never had duck à l’orange so vibrant, so alive before.  The outstanding sauce work made it so.  [I feel that sauces are instrumental in separating good classical cooking from bad classical cooking.  Here, at Kong Hans Kælder, the sauces were light and bright, giving classic preparations – like blanquette and à l’orange - a particularly exciting, new voice.]

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Nielsen told me about a peculiar method of raising lamb in Greenland (or was it Iceland?) that produces a particularly flavorful meat.  It wasn’t the right season for it, so, instead of telling you about it now, I’ll hope to return for it and describe it at a later date.  Instead, he presented lamb from the Pyrenees Mountains, a particularly small, but intensely flavorful variety.  He came to my table with a rack of its ribs and sliced two of them off, and covered them with an alluring sauce of mustard seeds, preserved lemons, and whole pistachios.  It was the South of France, sunny and warm, and just a bit rustic.  It was delicious.

On the side, he presented the lamb’s kidney, still encased in its fat.  The flavor was shockingly clean.  Its texture was like delicate foie gras.  It was just one of the many highlights of the night.

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There was a trolley of cheeses accompanied by a rainbow of condiments.  Every one I tried was great; especially a fragrant elderflower jelly that paired wonderfully with Brie de Meaux, and prunes macerated in Madeira, rightfully served with some Danish blue.  The cheeses were also served with a dense cocoa bread choked with nuts and dried fruits. That was awesome.

Following, there was a trolley of ice creams and sorbets.  And finally, a dark chocolate ganache tart topped with rich, custardy vanilla ice cream.

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As I mentioned earlier, after dinner, I was invited into the private dining room, where I whiled away too much of the night talking with Nielsen, Pepke, and Bagh over a sprawl of sweets and postprandial drinks.*  At the fear of having overstayed my welcome, I enjoyed ending the night, and my trip to Denmark, with such like-minded people, whose talents and grounded sense of purpose I admire.  Together, they preserve and practice a high caliber of cooking and care that is rare these days.

Kong Hans Kælder is located at Vingårdstræde 6, where it has been for half a millennium and more.  Starless for now, I’m positive that it will not be starless for long.  I hope to return to it soon, and often.  I commend it to you.

The following is the menu I was served at Kong Hans Kælder.  Each course is hyperlinked to a photo of the dish.  You will also find the link to the entire album at the bottom of the menu.

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Canapés
Oyster with Dehydrated Cucumber
Beef Tartare in Beet Cornet
Tartlet of Lumpfish Roe
Gruyere Croquette
Gougère with Black Truffle
Mini Tarte Flambée
Quail Egg with Caviar

1st Course
Rossini Gold Selection Caviar
Danish squid, lardo, Champagne sauce.

2nd Course
Scallop in the Shell
Apples, ginger, and finger lime.

3rd Course
Salt-Baked Turbot
Blanquette de turbot.
With baby organic leeks and bianchetto truffles.

4th Course
Danish Black Lobster
Dried carrots.

5th Course 
Pyranees Lamb
Ribs and kidney.
With a sauce of pistachios, preserved lemons, and mustard seeds.

6th Course 
Whole Duck
Glazed in orange sauce, with celeriac purée.

7th Course
Cheese

8th Course
“Chocolate Tart”
Vanilla ice cream.

Petits Fours

Click here to see all of the photos from my dinner at Kong Hans Kælder.

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* The private dining room offers a more communal experience, I was told.  The menu for the private dining room is composed at the chef’s whim, and often centers around roasting a whole beast.  There isn’t a minimum booking (I think the room seats up to 10, or a dozen at most), so diners should be prepared to share the table with strangers.  I like the idea, and hope to return to Kong Hans Kælder for it.

Photos: The sunken door of Kong Hans Kælder on Vingårdstræde, just off of Kongens Nytorv in Copenhagen, Denmark; candle and centerpiece on the table at Kong Hans Kælder; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen carving salt-baked turbot, table side; Peter Pepke carving a Danish black lobster, table side; a butter sauce over Danish black lobster and dried carrots; Andreas Bagh carving a glazed duck; Mark Lundgaard Nielsen carving Pyrenees lamb; the chocolate tart with vanilla ice cream; postprandial sweets and drinks; a box of truffles and a bowl of madeleines.

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The Norwegian Airline strike was a refrain during the latest Friends of Lysverket weekend in Bergen.  It came up repeatedly in conversation.

The strike had gone on way too long, keeping thousands of people, including me, suspended in travel limbo.  I had two connecting flights on the airline that week: one to Copenhagen, and one to Oslo, where Christopher Haatuft (chef of Lysverket), his wife Annette, and I had a dinner reservation at Maaemo.  Unless the strike ended, we’d have to find another way to get there.

Not willing to take chances, we booked train tickets.  And seeing that the strike was still on when we woke early that Tuesday morning, we headed to the station to catch a ride to Oslo.

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One year ago, in March of 2014, I had entered the Schengen in Paris without having my passport checked at French immigration control. When I protested to my European friends, they laughed and accused me of being a “paranoid American.” One year ago, flight M370 disappeared into the vastness of Southeast Asia. And one year ago, I first came to Bergen, Norway.

One year later, none of my European friends think I’m paranoid anymore.  In fact, for the first time ever, I was pulled out of line at European immigration control on a random check this past March. And one year later, the fate of flight M370 still remains a mystery, just one of the incredible headlines of the past twelve months, which have included Putin in the Crimea, ISIS in the desert, Kanye at the Grammys, Kerry in Cairo, terrorists in Copenhagen, Bibi on the Hill, Birdman at the Oscars, hostages in Paris, and Hillary in hot water (it’s time Billy Joel does a sequel to “We Didn’t Start the Fire”).

All of these thoughts swirled through my head as history seemed to repeat itself on this, my fifth trip to Norway in a year. My friend Solveig, who, in many ways, first brought me to Bergen last March, was in Bergen again by coincidence.  Meeting where we had last left off, we had a lot of catching up to do.  So, we met for coffee at Kaffemisjonen, my favorite coffee shop in Bergen; grabbed a light lunch at Paradis, the relatively new deli opened by the Colonialen restaurant group; and took a refreshingly long walk in the cold rain.  We had the whole city to ourselves.

And, just like last March, this year, I left Bergen on a train bound for Oslo to have dinner at Maaemo.  The journey was just as peaceful and breathtaking as I remembered.  I watched the rainy landscape of western Norway turn progressively colder and snowier as we ascended eastward into the interior mountains that lay between us and capital city at the other end.

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Oslo was perfect.  It was sunny and bright, and the air was crisp. The city seemed to hum with anticipation of spring.

It was Christopher Haatuft’s birthday, and we were there to celebrate it.

Having been cooped up in a train all day – normally, it’s a seven hour ride, but we were detained an extra hour near Finse due to heavy snow – we spent what little time we had before dinner stretching our legs in the shops up and down Karl Johans gate.

On our way to dinner, Christopher insisted that we stop at his favorite dive bar for a drink.  Teddy’s Softbar is a time capsule from the 1950s.  I got the sense that not much has changed in the intervening decades, not even the clientele.  An old jukebox glowed against one wall.  The interior was papered with fliers. And a chalkboard menu of short-order items (a hamburger for the equivalent of USD$20, for example) hung by the door, as it probably always has.

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As we climbed the steps to Maaemo, Pontus Dahlgren, the restaurant’s manager appeared.  Having somehow seen us arriving from afar, he came out to greet us in the night.  As surely as chef Esben Holmboe Bang’s cooking has made Maaemo the toast of Norwegian fine dining, so has Pontus’s charm and grace.  He is a consummate maitre d’, one of the few I have met who seems sincerely invested in the diner’s experience.

Dinner at Maaemo was great.  I liked this meal more than the one I had there last year.

Quite a few of the same dishes reappeared – fat langoustines nestled in boughs of spruce; rømmegrøt, a traditional porridge of sour cream over which Holmboe Bang shaved cured reindeer heart; a tangy vinaigrette of fenalår (aged lamb) with charred onions, bone marrow, and quail egg; and that toasty, caramel-like brown butter ice cream with hazelnut crumble and molasses that was one of my favorite desserts last year, just to name a few.  But I didn’t mind all of the repeats. Because everything was better this time.  The flavors were more balanced.  And, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure we had more food at this dinner than my last one (for example, Holmboe Bang served us two langoustines this time, a sizable 2 to 3 ounces each), overall, it felt lighter.

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The highlight of this dinner, for me, was a slice of salted sheep rib (a traditional Christmastime meat for Norwegians) that had been glazed with a tangy vinegar sauce.  We used our fingers to pick the meat off the bone.  It was dense and salty, and funky in the way that I like sheep meat to be.  I especially loved the flavorful pockets of fat in between, which were even more pungent than the meat.  This dish was a compelling rebuttal to my earlier complaints about the thinness of modern Scandinavian cooking at the high end.  Here was a dish that was grounded in tradition, and yet refaced to great affect.  It was not repackaged beyond recognition.  Nor did it come with a social studies lesson (I had the benefit of knowing the cultural significance of the cured sheep meat in Norwegian cookery only because I stumbled upon it at a market in Bergen and inquired about it out of curiosity). The story wasn’t in its ties to Norwegian nationalism, or some other geeky footnote.  The story was, simply, its deliciousness.

I also appreciated having a second go at what Holmboe Bang calls “The Smell of the Black Currant Bush.”  He had served this whimsical-looking dessert at the Twelve Days of Christmas last December at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  But I found the “branches” – a piped tuile – too hard, almost impenetrable there.  Here, in his own kitchen, they were light and crispy, and added just the right amount of crunch to the fragrant black currant bush ice cream, which had an alluring flavor that I can only describe as a meeting between lychee and banana.

Holmboe Bang and Dahlgren had graciously given us the private dining room upstairs, where I ate last year.  From that glass-enclosed perch, we had a full view of the kitchen and a nice survey of Oslo, which glittered in the night beyond.  There were some gifts for the birthday boy to unwrap, and much conversation afterwards.  It was a terrific night of good cheer and good food with good people, perhaps best captured by Homboe Bang in a group selfie that he snuck onto my camera when I stepped outside (to take a phone call with Norwegian Airline – news broke that the strike had ended).  I found it the next day as I sifted through my photos of dinner.

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Barely 24 hours after we arrived in Oslo, Haatuft, his wife and I were back at Oslo station. They hopped on a train bound for Bergen, and I boarded the airport express to catch my flight to Copenhagen.

This was my fourth time in the Danish capital, and my third visit in three years.  And I have fallen in love with it.  Easily navigable on foot, by bicycle, and by public transportation, Copenhagen is an extremely accessible city.  It is clean and safe.  And the only people who don’t speak English there are likely to be tourists.

I don’t think Copenhagen offers the grandeur of its Scandinavian rival, Stockholm.  But, I think it’s the more handsome of the two cities.  Like its denizens, Copenhagen is far from the cutting edge of fashion, but it is incredibly well-groomed, preferring tidiness to trendiness (a stylistic sensibility that I share).  Preserving the look of previous centuries, the city has managed to escape the ugliness of modernism without losing out on all of the benefits that come with it.  Despite being a hub of commercial activity Copenhagen hasn’t been scarred by it the way so many other European cities have.

I hope to eventually acquire the same facile familiarity with Copenhagen that I have earned with the other cities in which I have worked or lived, or have visited repeatedly. In the meantime, I am quickly learning my way around it.  Gifted with a keen sense of direction, I have purposefully chosen to explore new restaurants every time I visit, and have sought out the unseen corners of the city.

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Copenhagen was blessed with unbelievably good weather.  Spring had arrived, and I could feel its welcome.  Shopkeepers were leaving their doors and windows open, and sidewalk cafés filled with locals and tourists alike.

I took advantage of the clear, crisp days by spending as much time outside as possible.

I explored the hive of shops and alleyways that radiate from Amagertorv (pausing at the posh department store Magasin du Nord to stock up on Johan Bülow licorice candies).  I criss-crossed the many bridges that stitch Copenhagen together, admiring the city’s open network of waterways.  And, I went running with a friend.

Nudging me through pedestrian-heavy streets, and weaving our way around bicyclists, he pointed us in the direction of a series of parks, where we found lovers and friends, young and old, gossiping on benches, chasing frisbees, and strolling along, hand-in-hand.  We passed by a carpet of crocuses unfurling before Rosenborg Castle – purple and white, just like the ones that heralded spring in my school’s colors in front of University Hall at my alma mater.  And we arrived to canons and cobblestones at the Kastellet, an old military fortress hemmed in by a star-shaped moat.  From its ramparts, we had a clear view of the harbor and Refshleøen beyond.

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I spent the better half of one day with Kim Dolva, who I had met the week before at the latest Friends of Lysverket dinner in Bergen.

He took me to his wood workshop and furniture design studio, the København Mobelsnedkeri, located in a warehousey part of Islands Brygge. The relatively low overhead associated with this traditionally industrial, but now slowly gentrifying section of the city allowed him and his partners to get their company up and running a few years ago.  Now, their business is really taking off.

As the company’s name suggests (it translates to the “Copenhagen Joinery”), København Mobelsnedkeri focuses mostly on woodworking.  Its furniture and fixtures have a recognizably Scandinavian simplicity to them, with wide, flat surfaces supported by straightforward lines and gently sloping curves.  Dolva and his team design for the privately wealthy.  But they also outfit commercial retail shops and restaurants, a couple of which he took me to visit.

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Resourceful and gregarious, Dolva befriends artisans and craftsmen around him, and finds ways of collaborating with them.  For example, next door, he found a metalworker, who now makes fasteners and lampshades for København Mobelsnedkeri (I recognized these lampshades; they are a part of the interior of Lysverket, which Dolva designed).

He also found NanaKi Bonfils, founder of Made A Mano, a company that specializes in making high-quality, Italian lava rock tiles.  When I mentioned how much I admired the tilework in his studio, Dolva insisted that I visit Bonfils.  I’m glad I did. Her studio near Kongens Nytorv was a small but bright showcase for her beautiful work.

Moving in on the other side of Dolva’s workshop is Henrik Storland, who had tagged along on our weekend in Bergen.  Storland is in the process of opening a cycling and coffee shop.  We stopped in to say hello.

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Porridge is the focus of Grød (by the sound of this word in Danish, I assume it’s the equivalent of “gruel” in English), a newcomer to the short but super-hip Jægersborggade.  Here, you’ll find hot breakfast cereals during the day, and comforting grain porridges, like risotto and congee, at night.  Dolva loves the food here, so we swung by for a taste.  I had a bowl of barley, spelt and rye cooked in soy milk and topped with bananas, walnuts, and licorice sugar.  His porridge had apples, raisins, and flaxseeds, and was sweetened with ginger syrup.  Offering a healthful, reasonably priced, and delicious product, I don’t see why Grød won’t catch on quickly, or replicate.  I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before Grød, or a copycat opens in Brooklyn, or Berkeley, or Seattle, or Hollywood…

Afterwards, we walked across the street to Christian Puglisi’s restaurant Relæ, where Dolva showed me the utensil drawers that he custom-designed for the restaurant’s dining tables.  I recalled getting my own silverware out of those drawers when I ate there in 2013.  It was nice to revisit them with their maker.

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I have Zac Efron to thank for pointing me to Bror.  Last year, at our friends’ wedding, he glowed about his dinner there and urged me to go.  After hearing good things about it from other friends as well, I decided to give it a try.

Opened two years ago by Noma alumni Samuel Nutter (British) and Victor Wågman (Swedish), Bror (which means “brother” in Danish) is located in a split-level space near Nørreport.  Nutter was out the night I ate there.  But Wågman was in.  With Springsteen and Blondie rocking it out on the speakers, he and his crew presented me with a multi-course tasting menu.*

I was slightly skeptical going into dinner. I had heard that the restaurant could be too heavy-handed with meat, verging on the grotesque.  Was this just another senseless display of testosterone?**

Thankfully, it was not.  I will admit, there was a lot of meat.  And, it definitely flirted with that line bordering on excess.  But, despite the fact that my dinner seemed like it was foraged from the culinary island of misfit toys, it didn’t cross it. Bookended by bull testicles and an entire, stewed lamb head, with a cod eyeball staring at me from another course in between, it could so easily have been a freakshow (how’s that for a statement?).  Instead, Bror walked that line deftly, celebrating the strange and odd by making it truly delicious instead of merely gawking at it.

Zac was right: everything was cooked so well that I overlooked the spectacle of it all.  That bull testicle was tender and juicy, breaded and deep-fried until its shell turned golden-brown.  It was served with tartare sauce.  The cod head had been cooked until it was melting with gelatin. It glistened green with dill oil and was served with a creamy horseradish sauce.  I picked the bones clean and stripped its lips of sticky collagen.  And that lamb: everything was pulled from the skull and served to me in three parts, my favorite of which was a stew of the meat presented with giant crêpe and condiments.  I wrapped it all up and ate it like a burrito.  It was great.

Bror is not pretty.  The interior, and everything in it, is mismatched.  And service seemed a bit chaotic the night I was in (Wågman even admitted as much).  But, I got the sense that creating good food is really all that matters here.  It is honest.  And that’s why, despite my initial misgivings, I liked it so much.

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A couple of days later, I dropped by Café Lillebror (so named because it is, literally and figuratively, Bror’s “little brother”), Nutter’s and Wågman’s second restaurant.  Located on a corner near Bror in the city’s Latin Quarter, it serves pastries and coffee in the morning (I had a doughnut filled with lingonberry jam) and sandwiches at lunchtime.  At night, there’s a more serious, three-course prix-fixe menu.

Like its older brother, Lillebror is also slightly mismatched, although it has a far more finished look to it. The space is a collision of old and new, with chandeliers hanging from halos of crown molding, suspended above a bank of tables and chairs of a more modern, Scandinavian style.  Natural light flooded through its storefront windows, giving the café a deceptively spacious appearance.  I loved it.

Wågman saw me having breakfast, and joined me for a brief chat.  He told me that they hadn’t changed the interior much from its previous ownership, except to add a bathroom to meet the city’s building code.  He also told me that Café Lillebror was born out of a desire to make really great bread, which it does (the head baker here now is an American named Brit).  You’ll find it served at both Bror and Lillebror.

I’ll have to go back for dinner sometime.

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I met my friend Pelle for lunch at Uformel near the Tivoli Gardens. It’s the more casual, sister restaurant to Formel B.

What I loved most about this restaurant was that the lunch menu was like a small plates menu, without feeling like a small plates menu.  That is to say,  the dishes had the seriousness of main courses without requiring you to commit to main course portion sizes.  And they were all priced at 100DKK (desserts too), making it rather affordable to cover a lot of ground.***  Everything was cooked nicely, and was beautifully presented. The flavors were bold and good.  I especially loved a juicy slice of French duck breast with a scarlet run of beet sauce and garlicky ramson.  I’d go back.

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The highlight of my eating tour of Copenhagen this time was my dinner at Kong Hans Kælder, which I already recorded in this previous post.

Located in a sunken vault, one similar to Kong Hans Kælder, is a|o|c.

Whereas Kong Hans Kælder is small and intimate, a|o|c is cavernous, generously spread across a honeycomb of arched rooms. And, instead of being moody and romantic, a|o|c is brightly lit.

The restaurant has been on my bucket list ever since Ronny Emborg was chef there (Emborg just announced his departure from Restaurant Marchal at the Hotel d’Angleterre to take over the kitchen at Atera).  Its recent promotion to two stars under its current chef, Søren Selin, in the inaugural Nordic Cities Michelin Guide reminded me that I still hadn’t eaten there.

My friend and I ordered the top tasting menu, which included 10 courses, plus snacks and petits fours.

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Delicious?  Yes.  Pretty?  Yes.  Precise?  Definitely.

But I’ll be honest, I’m having a hard time telling you what, beyond the consistency of the cooking, made the food at a|o|c unique.  I don’t mean to pick on this restaurant alone.  It’s a problem that I’ve noticed at the high end of dining in general, especially in Scandinavia.   Fine dining restaurant experiences are starting to bleed together into a blur of ceramic plates and nicely cooked meats and vegetables with colorful sauces.  Strip away all of these aesthetics and superficialities, and what is left of them?  Where’s the voice?  What’s the purpose?

In contrasting his own European culture to the Asian culture, a chef, who recently returned from Japan, noted how little cynicism there is in the food culture there compared to the West.  I think it’s because the Asian food culture focuses more on craftsmanship and quality.  More significantly, Asian chefs backseat themselves to the more important business of finding meaning, purpose, and pleasure in everything they cook and serve.  This sort of altruistic pursuit of discipline, understanding, and self-inspection grounds them, and is instrumental in building trust between the kitchen and the dining room. Diners trust that the chef is devoted entirely to creating the best dining experience possible for them.  And the chef trusts that his guests will recognize and appreciate his dedication.  From this, grows mutual respect.  And respect is everything.

Western food culture, on the other hand, seems to be focusing more on form, fame, and fortune nowadays.  This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As I’ve said time and again, I appreciate that restaurants are businesses, and businesses must make money.  But, inherently, relationships based on commercial exchange are thinner, more superficial than those that grow out of mutual respect.

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I’ll probably get roasted for making this comment, but it’s an honest one: I have a hard time giving the same level of respect to chefs who are known more for making guest appearances or opening new restaurants than spending time in their own kitchens as I do to those who are in their kitchens night after night.  This is not to say that I can’t appreciate or respect a chef for his talent, or his business acumen, despite his absence from the pass.  But that type of respect is different than the kind that I have for a chef who offers his presence – himself – to his guests on a daily basis.  There’s a difference in motivation.  The business-focused chef has divided allegiances.  And as practical and realistic as this type of chef is, it shouldn’t surprise him that his business choices have left the door open to cynicism.

Of course, the dining public and the food media in the West are partly responsible for this cynicism as well.  Just as voters deserve the governments they elect, so too, the dining public deserves the food culture it supports.  I’ve written about this before.

I’m not here to change all of that (although, I would if I could). Sadly, I count myself as a member of the cynical West, one who longs for the altruism and respect of the East.

I’m also not here to condemn any chefs.  I don’t mean to suggest that there is anything wrong with building empires, or chasing financial security, or even fame (after all, I am American), so long as everyone acknowledges the implications that come with those things.  I also don’t mean to suggest that there aren’t any Western chefs or restaurants that engender the type of mutual respect that we admire about the East. They’re just less common.

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Is a|o|c worthy of two Michelin stars?  Probably.  From what I could tell, the ingredients are good, and the cooking is consistent.  It’s certainly on par with, or even outperforms half of the three Michelin-starred restaurants in America.  But, among its Scandinavian peers, it does not stand out to me.

There are now seven two-Michelin starred restaurants in the “Nordic Cities.”  I have been to six of them (once each to a|o|c, Frantzén, noma and Oaxen Krog, and twice to Geranium and Maaemo).  And I’ve eaten the food of the seventh chef – Mathias Dahlgren – at his former restaurant Bon Lloc in Stockholm (although I have not eaten at his current restaurant Matsalen).   I am far from being an expert in this region.  But based on my experience, these restaurants (and others of this ilk, like Amass, Ekstedt, Fäviken, Kadeau, Relæ, Studio, and Ylajali, all of which I have visited) have all done an excellent job of capturing and conveying a sense a time of place – the new Nordic, now.  The problem is, they all occupy relatively the same time and place.  And so there’s a considerable amount of overlap among them, stylistically and substantively.

As I have said before on this blog, what separates good chefs from great chefs is that the latter go beyond simply conveying a sense of time and place. The truly great chefs create time and place of their own.  That’s because they’re not merely telling a story about a time and place, they’re telling their story: Stephen Harris at the Sportsman, Victor Arguinzoniz at Asador Etxebarri, Ferran Adrià at elBulli, Alain Ducasse at Louis XV, Norio Yamamoto at Ifuki, Bernard Pacaud at l’Ambroisie, Joshua Skenes at Saison, Carme Ruscalleda at Sant Pau, Hideki Ishikawa at Ishikawa, Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck, Tadayoshi Matsukawa at Matsukawa, Enrique Dacosta at Quique Dacosta…

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I’ve been getting an increasing number of emails asking for my advice and opinion on Scandinavian fine dining.  So, if all of the foregoing thoughts, gathered from my travels and eating in Scandinavia, can be put to good use, I can at least give you this:

Setting aside the fact that the Michelin Guide has yet to award a third star in Scandinavia, I do think that what the region boasts in quality ingredients and technical prowess, it lacks in vision and voice (for a more in-depth consideration of this, read this earlier post).  That said, Scandinavia remains one of the most exciting places to be eating at the high end right now.  With few exceptions, the caliber of cooking is unparalleled, and so is the level of service.  If you’re headed to Scandinavia, these are the restaurants that I think should be highest on your list:

Of the top-end restaurants that I’ve visited in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, I think that noma and Fäviken offer the most compelling perspectives within the new Nordic set.  At these restaurants, you’ll discover original and unique ways of thinking about food.

Maaemo, Frantzén, Studio, and Geranium merit most in precision and beauty.  Although the food at these restaurants can be incredibly delicious too, go to be dazzled by their polish and finesse.

And Kong Hans Kælder, which I don’t include as a new Nordic restaurant, I do include for its thoughtful approach to cooking and service.  Go here to experience a standard of quality and respect that I haven’t met elsewhere in Scandinavia.  For that reason, Kong Has Kælder, alone here, has won my heart.

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I’ll be back in Scandinavia at least four more times this year.  I’m excited about the discoveries that await, and for the opportunity to continue reaching toward a facile familiarity with this region of the world, one with which I have fallen deeply in love.

To see all of the photos from the meals from this trip to Norway and Denmark, click on the links below:

Oslo
Maaemo

Copenhagen
a|o|c
Bror
Café Lillebror
Grød
Kong Hans Kælder
Uformel

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* From Bror’s website, it appears that the restaurant offers a few menu choices.  But my server told me that the chef had a menu planned for me, and I went with it.  So I’m unsure how my menu differed from the normal course of business.

** The pronunciation of Bror is awfully similar to that term of endearment used by American dudes, jocks, and surfers for one another…

*** At the time, the U.S. Dollar was performing unusually well against European currencies.  My trip coincided with a spike in the U.S. Dollar, which was trading at just over 7 DKK per U.S. Dollar.

Photos: A night cyclist passes by a display of light fixtures in Copenhagen, Denmark; a blizzard of snow on the platform of Finse, Norway; Christopher Haatuft at the jukebox at Teddy’s Softbar in Oslo, Norway; giant scallops, cooked on its shell at Maaemo in Oslo, Norway; Christopher Haatuft, Esben Holmboe Bang, Annette Tveit, and Pontus Dahlgren at Maaemo; a night scene from Christianshavn in Copenhagen; an alleyway at night in Copenhagen; Kim Dolva at his København Mobelsnedkeri studio in Copenhagen; Henrik Storland builds a bicycle in his upcoming cycling and coffee shop in Copenhagen; breakfast porridges at Grød in Copenhagen; chicken hearts and cabbage at Bror in Copenhagen; coffee and a lingonberry jam-filled doughnut at Café Lillebror; French duck breast with beet sauce at Uformel in Copenhagen; the skirted tables in the white-washed and arched dining room of a|o|c in Copenhagen; cucumbers at a|o|c in Copenhagen; stools at Grød in Copenhagen; Bror at night, Copenhagen; a magazine rack and chair at the København Mobelsnedkeri in Copenhagen; Copenhagen at night; and traditional Norwegian pastries at Maaemo in Oslo, Norway.

One of my biggest criticisms about food media today is that they tell us what is “good,” instead of telling us what we need to know in order to determine what is good, for ourselves.  They tell us where to eat and who to know, without a deeper conversation as to why.

My recent blog post about my meal at Kong Hans Kælder touched upon this, and opened a thought thread that I’d like to chase further down the line.  It has to do with quality, and the difference between craftsmanship and artistry, and personal preferences.

Those of you who have read my blog for some time know that I have – with a few exceptions – been fairly critical of Modernist cooking (or, what is otherwise referred to as “Molecular Gastronomy”).

It’s not that I don’t like Modernist cuisine (although a lot of what I encounter nowadays is just not good).  Like anything else, there are good examples, and there are bad examples of it.  But, generally, I find that Modernist cuisine puts too much distance between the chef and the diner.  There are wide gaps in time and space between the concepts, the prep work, and the plate. Often, what lands in front of the diner is the product of an assembly line.  Much of the work is done ahead of time so that everything can be tweezered into place within a matter of seconds – not that speed seems to matter, since much of it’s cold anyway.  And as a result, flavors are compartmentalized, segregated, instead of suffused together with heat and time, that wonderful coupling that produces soul.  As a chef once quipped, “It’s like eating mis en place.”

But these are all practical matters.  On a more philosophical, big-picture plane, a lot of Modernist cooking is conceptual.  And, while concepts drive innovation, and innovation brings progress, they are often detached from the basic, emotional satisfaction that I desire most from food.  A few, truly great thinkers have managed to trigger nostalgia or evoke emotion on a plate through conceptual cooking (giving rise to the alternative name for Modernist cuisine: “Techno-Emotional”).  These are the masters, and they are rare: Ferran Adrià at elBulli; Heston Blumenthal at The Fat Duck; Enrique Dacosta at Quique Dacosta; Jordi Roca at el Cellar de Can Roca.  But, as innovative as these chefs are in creating a sense of nostalgia, or evoking emotion at the table, ultimately, the experiences they create are fabricated – proxies for actual memories, actual feelings.  And, in my opinion, these chefs’ greatest legacy is not the deliciousness of their food, but rather, their ability to communicate their ideas, their thinking, and their perspective through their cooking.  They inspired a whole generation of cooks to imagine, to reach, and to approach food in new ways.  That’s powerful.  That’s important.  But sadly, in so doing, they also (inadvertently) distracted a whole generation of cooks from actually cooking.

Fixated on the cleverness and showmanship of Modernist cuisine, the second wave of Modernist chefs diluted the message and devolved the movement into a shallow shadow of the original.  Either because they completely missed the point, or allowed themselves to be misguided by food writers who missed the point – or, more likely, a combination of the two – these chefs (and restaurateurs) focused on the superficial aesthetics of Modernist cooking – the stylized plating, the table-side tricks, the transformation of ingredients with additives, and the ceaseless stories that seemed forced into being for the sake of putting on a good show.  The conversation was no longer about a different way of thinking about food, it became about a different way of presenting food.

And why shouldn’t these chefs have capitalized upon this exciting, new movement?  Led astray by food media into a cloud of hype, the dining public missed the point too.  And it became an eager audience for the good theatre these chefs could provide.

But, even if you filter out all the noise, the premise of Modernist cuisine is largely untenable.  As I said years ago (and, was ostracized by some for saying so), it cannot last.  Modernist cooking is a movement, not a foundation.  It is more art than craft.  This is not to say that Modernists have contributed nothing to the canon of culinary knowledge.  But, with the exception of a few, key take-aways – like the original spark of thinking about food in a different way – which, are worthy conversations to have with the existing body of classical work, most of what we associate with the Modernist movement will not endure.  Going back to a point I made earlier, this is because Modernist cooking is driven more by concepts than by basic, human needs.

As with all good theatre, this show must end.  Ultimately, we must return to reality, and focus on the pleasures therein.

This is why I have always been a proponent of classical cooking.  (It is important to note: my use of the term “classical cooking” here is not limited to traditional, Continental European cuisine. Rather, I refer broadly to an approach to cooking that I further define in the following sentences.)  Driven by techniques that have been refined and tested over time, its “philosophical, big-picture goal” is practical – satisfying universal human needs – not conceptual.

Classical cooking tends to focus on deliciousness and satisfaction.  This requires a focus on quality of ingredient and quality of care, as well as attention to timing.  Food is prepared according to ripeness and readiness to maximize flavor, texture, and pleasure.  And it’s cooked to order – à la minute – so that it’s hot and fresh for the eating.  This kind of cooking narrows the gap between chef and diner, because it demands the presence of both in close proximity.  And, it demands a more sophisticated, more personalized skill set – one that requires an intuition that can only be acquired through a thoughtful application of time and experience, and not by rote repetition alone.  It requires the attention of all senses – touch, smell, sight, and sound – not just the ability to follow a formula.  These fundamental skills and knowledge must be mastered before anything else can be attempted.  Thus, classical cooking is first a craft before it is an art.  And because of that, it serves as a strong foundation upon which those who have mastered it may build.

In my post about Kong Hans Kælder, I anecdotally mentioned a conversation that I had with a chef about the differences between Eastern and Western food culture, and specifically, about the role cynicism plays in each.  The chef questioned why there seems to be far less cynicism in Asian food culture than in Western food culture.  While I attempted an explanation in that earlier post, I’d like to piggy-back on the foregoing discussion here to expand my answer.

Often, when Westerners speak admiringly about Asian food culture, we focus on the dedication of Asian chefs to their craft, and the quality of their work: their attention to detail, knowledge of their ingredients and their ability to showcase them.  We talk about their philosophy, their dedication, and the flavors they create.  We think of them as craftsmen.  We marvel at their place in a long line of craftsmen before them, and their role in preserving their craft by training their successors.  But rarely do we talk about them.  And rarely, do they talk about themselves.

Contrast that with the way we, Westerners, talk about our own food, restaurant, and chef culture.

I opened my post about Kong Hans Kælder with this observation: “It used to be that people talked about dishes.  Now, they talk about names.”   Or, in other words, instead of talking about the craft and its craftsmen, we now talk about the artistry and its artists.  It has always been easier to make icons out of iconoclasts, hasn’t it?  Naturally, we are excited by the pioneers, we gravitate to the bold and the brave.  They’re easy heroes for us to make and admire.  So it’s not hard to understand why the more artistic, culinary movements, like the Modernists, or the New Nordic cuisines, and their chefs have occupied an increasingly larger portion of the culinary limelight in our age of commercialized, mass media.*

Ours is a capitalist culture of self-promotion and enterprise.  As I’ve said before, there’s nothing wrong with profit. Artists must eat too.  But it’s awfully hard to be a martyr and a millionaire.  And even harder not to be cynical about it.

Why do we – as foreigners – celebrate the classicism of Asian cuisine and the craftsmanship of Asian chefs, but fail to celebrate classicism and craftsmanship in our own Western culture?

Why do we seek out the quiet, diligent craftsmen in Kyoto, Hong Kong, Chang Mai, Shanghai, who have practiced their trade for decades?  We call them masters, and deify them for their dedication and expertise.  And yet, here at home, we reward the loudmouths for their derring-do and visibility, talents notwithstanding.

And why do some of the greatest chefs of our time and culture – including many of the great Modernist and New Nordic chefs – have a solid foundation in classical cooking, yet we don’t talk about it as being an important part of why these craftsmen have become great artists?

I’m not saying that classical cooking is superior, per se.  Just like everything else, there is good classical cooking, and there is bad classical cooking (at its worst, it sacrifices creativity and artistry entirely in favor of technique).

What I am saying is that the tenets of classical cooking are essential.  Its standards are established and unfailing.  Without them, there can be no artistry.  And without them, the rest is just temporary.

Story, meaning, creativity, nostalgia and wit: great.  But first, give me quality and deliciousness.

Classical cooking never left us.  We have left it.  Let’s go back.

* I find many parallels between Modernist cooking and the New Nordic movement, about which I have also been fairly skeptical, if not also critical.  As with the Modernist school of cooking, there are good examples among the New Nordic chefs – those original voices, who first dared to think outside the box within the borders of their region.  But, as with Modernists, there are far more bad examples – the copycats, who have quickly taken over the movement (supported by bloviating food writers and groupies that, seeing the sun setting on the Modernists, have turned to dote on this new culinary movement au courant), stripping it of its uniqueness and spirit.  And, like the Modernist movement, the New Nordic movement has become susceptible to the hype machine of food media and shameless groupie-ism, creating a bit of deluded grandeur.  That said, I think that the New Nordic movement offers a far more compelling and permanent culinary conversation than the Modernists did because it’s far more grounded in classical cooking.   New Nordic chefs focus on showcasing the quality of their ingredients.  And, New Nordic chefs put an emphasis on deliciousness (even if I don’t always think that their flavors are sophisticated or balanced).  Where I find the New Nordic movement weak is in its lack of voice and direction.  There are a lot of New Nordic chefs who clamor for recognition and respect, but have, in my opinion, done little to differentiate themselves from the pack.

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This year marks the seventeenth annual Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant in Kansas City, the longest-running fundraising dinner for the foundation in the country.  Over the past decade and a half, this event has brought some of America’s most respected chefs to my hometown to raise money for the James Beard Foundation (I’ve included a list of the chefs who have come to cook at The American Restaurant since I became involved with this event at the end of this post).

For the sixth year, I have been asked by the hosting chef – now, Michael Corvino –  to help invite the guest chefs and organize the dinner.  Having just finalized this year’s guest chefs list, I am pleased to share it with you now and to announce that this year’s Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant will take place on Monday, September 28, 2015.  Please save the date.

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This year, each of the following chefs will present one course, paired with wine, at this year’s Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant.  I hope to see you there.  (Please call 816-545-8001 to make your reservation.  Dinner is $195 per person, all-inclusive.)

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NATE APPLEMAN

MICHAEL CORVINO
(The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)

CHRISTOPHER HAATUFT
(Lysverket; Bergen, Norway)

MOURAD LAHLOU
(Mourad and Aziza; San Francisco, California)

NICK MUNCY
(Coi; San Francisco, California)

JUSTIN YU
(Oxheart; Houston, Texas)

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The chefs from the past four Friends of James Beard Foundation dinners at The American Restaurant (below) are listed with the restaurants where they were cooking at the time they came to Kansas City; a few of them have moved on to different restaurants since.

2014 

Michael Corvino (The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)
Colby Garrelts (Bluestem and Rye; Kansas City, Missouri)
Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Matthew McCallister (FT33; Dallas, Texas)
Anthony Sasso (Casa Mono; New York, New York)
Michael Tusk (Quince and Cotogna; San Francisco, California)
Justin Woodward (Castagna; Portland, Oregon)

(You can view the photos from Friends of James Beard Foundation Dinner 2014 here.)

2013 

Antonio Bachour (St. Regis Bal Harbor; Bal Harbor, Florida)
Justin Cogley (Aubergine; Carmel, California)
Michael Corvino (The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)
Bruno Davaillon (The Mansion on Turtle Creek; Dallas, Texas)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Bryan Voltaggio (VOLT and Aggio; in Fredricksburg, Maryland and Bethesda, Maryland)

(You can view the photos from the Friends of James Beard Foundation Dinner 2013 here.)

2012

Michael Cimarusti (Providence; Los Angeles, California)
Michael Ginor (Hudson Valley Foie Gras on Long Island, New York)
Debbie Gold (The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)
Paul Qui (Qui; Austin, Texas)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Nick Wesemann (The American Restaurant; Kansas City, Missouri)

(You can read about the Friends of James Beard Foundation Dinner 2012 here.)

2011

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
Marc Aumont (The Modern; New York, New York)
Curtis Duffy (Grace; Chicago, Illinois)
George Mendes (Aldea; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)
John Shields (Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)

(You can read about the Friends of James Beard Foundation Dinner 2011 here.)

Photos: Anthony Sasso and Justin Woodward after service at the 2014 Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant; Michael Corvino and Andy McCormick plating at the 2014 Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant; Colby Garrelts, Anthony Sasso, Nick Wesemann, Michael Tusk, Brooks Headley, Justin Woodward, Michael Corvino, and Matthew McCallister, the guest chefs for the 2014 Friends of James Beard Foundation dinner at The American Restaurant.

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My first trip to Finland was in 2005, when I took an overnight cruise from Stockholm to the ancient capital of Turku on the country’s west coast.  That day-stop – which only gave me enough time to run through a museum (the copy of the haunting, self-portrait of Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck that I bought there still stares at me from across my study today) and a couple of churches before embarking for the trip back to Stockholm – was hardly an introduction to the country.

Sadly, my recent trip to the modern-day capital of Finland, could hardly count as more.

With barely 48 hours on the ground, I hit Helsinki running.

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I’m a firm believer that you get out of life what you put into it.  So, I’ll be the first to admit that it was most likely my own fault that I felt a little lost in Helsinki when I got there. I had done very little research about the city, its points of interest, restaurants, or layout before my trip there in early June of this year.

Actually, to be fair, I did do some poking around online, mostly for restaurants. And, from my limited search, the outlook was bleak.  There were a handful of one Michelin-starred restaurants, which, from a quick glance at their websites (the ones that were functional anyway), seemed to be minor variations of second-wave New Nordic cooking.  This, in itself, was not necessarily a bad thing. But it certainly wasn’t helpful in deciding which of them I should visit.  This was compounded by the fact that, upon casting a wider net to my friends, most of them received mixed reviews.

The rest of the field appeared just as unpromising. From a cursory glance, little else on Helsinki’s dining scene stood out.

The one restaurant that seemed to earn the most positive feedback – Sasu Laukkonen’s Chef & Sommelier – happened to be hosting a guest chef dinner with Daniel Berlin both of the nights I was in Helsinki (Berlin’s restaurant is Daniel Berlin Krog in Sweden, which was listed on my 2014 year-end bucket list).  But, as interesting as that seemed, I wasn’t traveling all the way to Helsinki to eat Daniel Berlin’s food at Chef & Sommelier.

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But, the practical realities of being unprepared while on the road caught up with me.  I arrived in Helsinki (from a long weekend in Norway) with no dining reservations, and no game plan.  So, faced with a choice between exploring the unknown and relying on what little information I did have, I went with the latter.  I phoned Chef & Sommelier, and was lucky to find a last-minute seat on the second night of Berlin’s two-night guest appearance.

Despite my disappointment at missing out on a full Chef & Sommelier dining experience, the dinner turned out to be quite lovely (and at 80€ for 8 courses, quite a good deal too).  Laukkonen cooked about half of the courses, including a dish of tender, Finnish beef tartare with honey and parsnip, and another one featuring a generous portion of pike perch from local waters. When I asked him to clarify how pike perch, a freshwater fish, could come from the ocean (by local waters, he meant the Gulf of Finland, an arm of the Baltic Sea) Laukkonen explained that the sea water surrounding Helsinki was extremely low in salinity; as low as 0.3% near the surface, compared to the North Sea’s 3.5%, making it possible for some freshwater fish to thrive.

Berlin’s dishes were particularly polished.  He started the meal with a glittering dome of vendace roe rising above a moat of dill.  I particularly liked the crunchy bits of toasted grain he added to help offset the otherwise creamy and rich texture of the rest.  Towards the end of dinner, he presented a quenelle of violet sorbet dotted with the purple flowers.  It tasted as pretty as it looked.  Laukkonen hopped from table to table showing guests a photo of his daughter in a field of wild violets helping to collect the flowers for the dessert.  I thought it was an endearing end to the meal.

Chef & Sommelier is tiny.  The dining room is spartan, but cozy.  And the night I went, it was packed (it’s unclear to me whether they added tables and chairs to accommodate the extra demand for the Berlin dinner, or if this was the restaurant’s normal seating arrangement).  Particularly, I was impressed by the size of the kitchen – or rather, impressed by how much they could accomplish in such a small space.

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Around the corner from my hotel, which, was situated near the city’s “Esplanadi” – a generous, parkway that runs through the posh, retail hub of Helsinki to the harbor – I stumbled upon Olo, one of the Michelin-starred restaurants I had glanced at online.  Since I had no plans for dinner that first night in Helsinki, I walked in and asked for a reservation.

I returned a few hours later to a packed restaurant of Finnish couples and English-speaking businessmen. Olo served a set menu of about a dozen courses (that’s including a cheese supplement).  At its best, the food was simple and delicious with a touch of local flavor – like lamb tartare with young spruce in a meaty bouillon that was sweet with onion and opalescent with spruce oil.  There was also a wonderfully cooked piece of Finnish beef with veal sweetbreads, carrots, and a schmaltzy chicken sauce.  And I especially loved a plate of Finnish cheeses, ranging from an oozing, bloomy rind to a creamy, veined blue.

But Olo’s weaknesses seemed symptomatic of second-wave movement cooking.  Some of the food focused more on form than function.  Take, for example, a beautiful strip of pickled herring, all dolled up with roe, sea beans, and squiggly chips made of malt.  It perched on a rock above a pool of olive oil.  As lovely as this diorama was, without utensils, the herring was far too large and far too soft to pick up and eat in one bite, especially if the toppings were to be kept intact.  This kind of thoughtlessness in restaurant presentations nowadays irritates me.  There was also an orb of yogurt and lingonberry that appeared like a speckled egg, nestled among some pebbles and pine cones (I wasn’t sure how they created the shell – perhaps the yogurt had been turned into a waxy substance that functioned as a shell, or something like cocoa butter was stiffened to create a shell). Setting aside the “novelty” of this mini foraging exercise for a moment, this ball of fruity yogurt was, by far, my least favorite part of dinner. The filling, which was tepid, was more gelatinous than creamy, and the flavor was far from the tangy tease intended for this opening volley.

Yet, as uneven as my meal at Olo was, I can’t help but recognize that, in a market as small and new as Helsinki’s – and especially, one where there doesn’t seem to be a strong dining culture – courage and effort count for a lot.  So I applaud Olo, and the small band of fine dining restaurants in Helsinki – like Chef & Sommelier – for spearheading the fine dining movement there.  Hopefully, in the years to come, they’ll focus more on quality, and start looking inward for a voice and perspective of their own, ones that makes Helsinki a unique and compelling destination for eating.

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I spent one morning walking around Helsinki’s “design district,” which seemed to be comprised mostly of hair salons and women’s boutiques.  Noticing a severe lack of men’s clothing, I asked, repeatedly, where all the men in Helsinki shop. The response was always the same: “online.”

I stopped in at Gaijin for lunch. It’s part of the BW Restaurant group, a collection of highly stylized concept restaurants offering a taste of foreign lands.  Whereas Farang focuses on Southeast Asian cuisine (there’s one in Helsinki and one in Stockholm), and Boulevard Social focuses on Mediterranean cooking, Gaijin’s menu is inspired by Northern Asia – China, Korea, and Japan.  I normally wouldn’t choose to eat in a “foreign concept restaurant.”  But, given that I had found few compelling alternatives, I thought I’d give it a try.

I happened to be seated next to a table of Chinese diplomats, who, aching for a taste of their own culture, had come to Gaijin out of curiosity.  They studied the menu quizzically, their thought process mirroring my own: first, identify the culture that each dish purports to represent, and then choose the ones that left the least room for “translation error.”

Perhaps we chose wisely.  Or, perhaps Gaijin did its homework well.  We were all pleasantly surprised by the food.  Despite the glossiness of the design, and the ridiculous names that they came up with for some of the menu items (“Red Dragon Sauce,” or a dessert called “Almond Geisha,” for example), the flavors were quite good.  And, most of what I had was cooked very well.  I ended up choosing the smaller of the two lunch tasting menus (which, at 37€ for four courses, was a steal, especially given how large the portions were).  The steamed buns – one with pork belly, the other with a crispy half of a softshell crab – were fluffy.  The “goma chicken” – fried chicken in a sesame broth with choy sum – was ultra crispy, and the broth was nice and clean.  And the ribs I ordered, as an extra plate, were sticky with a soy-mirin “caramel” glaze that was just the right balance between salty and sweet.  Only an overwrought plate of tuna “tataki” was disappointing in all the predictable ways.  The tuna was of middling quality, and dressed with way too many condiments.  The point of eating raw fish, in my opinion, is to taste the fish – its quality, its freshness, or, in some cases, the care someone took in aging it.  Here, I couldn’t help but think they were trying to obscure it.  Or, it’s possible, they simply didn’t understand it.

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Corey Lena Kingston and Samantha Viktoria Albert spent three months visiting coffee shops in five Nordic countries (Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Denmark).  The culmination of their travels is the book TAKK: Explorations of Nordic Cafe Culture.  It’s quite a lovely collection of stories, faces, and places that offered them a taste of local coffee culture along their Scandinavian journey.  While many of the cafés they feature are third wave coffee shops that everyone talks about, and, as a result, many of which I’ve visited – Tim Wendelboe in Oslo, the Coffee Collective in Copenhagen, and Kaffemisjonen in Bergen, for example – what I love most about their book are the places they include that are unexpectedly “local,” like Café Regatta in Helsinki.

Never mind that I walked about four miles from lunch – stopping briefly to admire the copper coil dome of the Temppeliaukio Church along the way – to the seaside park where Café Regatta sits, nestled near a wharf, or the fact that I discovered upon arrival that it’s cash only (with not a Euro on me, I sent myself on a 4o minute detour in search of a cash machine).  And, I’ll disregard the fact that it was an exceedingly windy day, which made sitting on the café’s sprawling, dock-side patio, at times, a challenge. None of that makes me regret visiting this quirky red hut for its pre-brewed coffee (dispensed from large thermoses) and giant cinnamon rolls, for which it is probably better known.  I couldn’t decide if the cinnamon in Cafe Regatta’s rolls was particularly red-hot, or, if the cinnamon’s flavor was magnified by a heavy dose of cardamom and other spices (I sensed a touch of clove).  Either way, the spiciness of those golden buns, topped with pearl sugar and some almond slivers, was a perfect complement to the bitter coffee they serve there.

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On the recommendation of TAKK, I also spent a morning on the sidewalk of Good Life Coffee enjoying a bowl of granola and luscious Turkish yogurt with a frothy cortado pulled from the café’s own roast.  I sat there alone, half-shielded by the eaves between brief episodes of light rain, taking in the brisk air and the quiet morning street scene.  I’m sure the people inside the coffee shop thought I was banana pancakes for taking my breakfast in the cold rain.  But I didn’t care.  I absolutely relished that morning of solitude and letting my thoughts take over that empty stretch of sidewalk.

That’s one thing I particularly loved about Helsinki – at times, I felt like I had the entire city to myself.  And, outside of the small, commercial hub of the city’s center, Helsinki seemed relatively untouched by foreigners (or, maybe, the wave of summer tourism hadn’t yet arrive), allowing me to feel very much a part of local life.  I especially loved walking around the city at night after dinner, when the streets emptied and everything went silent.

Around midnight on my last night in Helsinki, walking home from dinner, I happened upon a young Finnish couple toasting each other with Champagne and strawberries on a park bench in the Esplanadi.  It was strange, they admitted, to be out so late.  But, it was their last night on holiday, and they wanted to make it last as long as possible.  I took their picture, we exchanged emails, and I bid them goodnight.  It was a lovely way to end my time in Helsinki.

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Below is a list of the restaurants I visited on this trip to Helsinki.  Each one is hyperlinked to a set of photos from that meal.

Chef & Sommelier
Gaijin
Olo

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Photos: Havis Amanda, a fountain at the end of the Esplanadi in Helsinki; Helsinki cathedral lit up at night; Daniel Berlin’s violet sorbet at a guest dinner at Chef & Sommelier; Ravintola Olo lit up at night in Helsinki; the “goma chicken” at Gaijin in Helsinki; a cinnamon roll and coffee on the patio at Café Regatta in Helsinki; granola, yogurt, and a cortado at Good Life Coffee in Helsinki; and a young couple toast each other with Champagne and strawberries at midnight on a park bench in the Esplanadi in Helsinki.

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I might die in this car.  And if I don’t, I’ll probably miss my flight. And if I miss this flight, then I’m probably going to miss my connecting flights. And that means that I won’t get to New York in time for my photoshoot tomorrow night.

Or, I might die in this car.

But hey, at least I had one hell of a breakfast.

These thoughts swirled through my head as we raced down a snow-covered road in the Swedish countryside. Consumed in conversation, we had somehow missed a crucial turn that would have set us on the highway to Trondheim.  Instead, we found ourselves furiously back-peddling to recover lost ground.

By a stroke of luck, the car rental company had upgraded us to an X5. So if, for some reason, my friend Christopher lost control (say, a moose decided to cross the road unexpectedly, as one did the day before) and we went flying into a snow bank – or worse, a row of pines – at least we’d do so in German-engineered style.

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This morbid (and probably slightly over-dramatized) reality suddenly hijacked my morning, one that had started so peacefully in a red barn some kilometers away.  I had awakened under a cozy stack of furs, and moved on to a candlelit breakfast with my friends (in this northern corner of the world, daybreak during the winter months is closer to noon).

Given that our outbound flight was so early, and the conditions of the roads were so rough, the staff at Fäviken Magasinet told us that we should allow ourselves three hours to get to Trondheim airport, from where we were departing.  They were even kind enough to move breakfast up by half an hour so that we could actually enjoy it.

Breakfast was served in the upstairs dining room, where we had dinner the night before.

The tables had been reset for their respective parties, which, like us, had stayed the night in the accommodations next door.

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There were slices of smoked moose heart (given the size of the slices, moose hearts are a lot larger than I would have thought), cured hams, and wedges of cheese.  There was potted smoked trout capped in brown butter caramel, fowl liver mousse, cured cod roe, and cream cheese.  A selection of bread was presented with that deep, golden-yellow butter we had at dinner.  Soft-boiled eggs nested in hay.  There was fresh coffee, black currant and rhubarb juices, and milk.

As if this spread wasn’t already overwhelming, halfway through our morning feast, our server appeared at our table stirring a steaming pot of porridge of flaxseed and grains. She divided the porridge into bowls, and topped them with dollops of thick, creamy yogurt.  Served with it was a cocotte of cloudberry jam; its tartness was needed to needle through the richness of the rest.

Towards the end of breakfast, they dropped off a plate of incredibly buttery, moist cookies (I think they were made of cornmeal) topped with raspberry jam. I had two of them.

It was a lot of food.  And all of it was very, very good.

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When I first started blogging about restaurants a decade ago, I would research the hell out of them. What I lacked in dining experience I tried to make up for with information.  I’d canvass the internet and gather as much of it as possible. Often, I’d have the chef’s bio and menu memorized before I even made the reservation.

Now that I’ve been around the block a few times, I approach restaurants from a totally different angle.  I try not to read about them – especially ones as highly hyped as Fäviken – before I visit them, and prefer to walk into a meal with as few expectations as possible.  As a result, names and faces – and especially the opinion of the increasingly worthless food media – have become less and less important to me.  Instead, I now rely on the quality of the cooking and my own senses to guide my direction and interest.

So, I had largely avoided reading or seeing anything about Magnus Nilsson, or his restaurant in print and online before I visited Fäviken.  And, although I had bought Magnus Nilsson’s Fäviken cookbook a while ago, it sat, unopened, on my shelf.

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After I returned from Sweden, I pulled the book and read it.  I thought it provided a surprisingly articulate, and rather accurate description of the world that Magnus Nilsson has created in his extreme corner of the globe.  He weaves the context of local lore and mysticism nicely into the practical realities of sourcing food and preserving it.  And it captured, with great expression, Nilsson’s personality and passion.  He’s clearly a very thoughtful and intelligent visionary, who lives in an incredible place, and who has an incredible story to tell.  Since the Fäviken cookbook does such a great job of telling that story – and since the internet is already saturated with plenty of details about the Fäviken experience – I’ll spare you a retelling of what you probably already know about this place, or, can easily find elsewhere (Nilsson was also the subject of the 2014 season of Mind of a Chef on PBS).

Instead, I’m devoting the remainder of this post to answering the question that I’ve been asked the most about Fäviken: whether the meal and overall experience of visiting Fäviken outweighed the time, trouble, and expense of getting there.

In other words, was it worth it?

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I had a relatively easy trip to Fäviken.  I was already in Bergen (Norway).  So, all I had to do was take a two-hour, nonstop flight to Trondheim (Norway), rent a car, and drive two-and-a-half hours, over the border into Sweden, to the restaurant. For most Europeans, the same journey would probably require at least one connecting flight, and for most Americans at least two (and many more hours).

But travel time is an expected part of the journey.  What many don’t consider are complications and limitations due to flight schedules. Flights to Trondheim [or Östersund (Sweden), which is closer to Fäviken] are limited.  The only viable option for us was to leave early in the morning, which, including the ground travel once we got to Trondheim, gave us an estimated arrival at Fäviken around noon.  The next flight would have gotten us to the restaurant around 18.00, which was cutting it close.  A slight delay at any point in the journey could easily have caused us to miss the 19.00 start time for dinner, which, I have heard, is strictly enforced (all of the guests are seated at the same time; latecomers are, as Nilsson describes in his book, turned away – although he makes a 30 minute allowance for guests who are considerate enough to notify the restaurant of their tardiness).

Thankfully, our trip was uneventful, and we arrived, as we estimated, around noon.

But, as we soon discovered, neither the restaurant nor the inn was open at noon.  As it was explained to us – by a cook who came out to greet us when he saw us pull up prematurely outside his kitchen window – they simply do not have the resources to attend to guests who arrive before the 16.00 check-in time.

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Admittedly, it was my fault for not having taken the restaurant’s “welcome” email at face value, and for not doing more due diligence (this is a rare instance where doing absolutely no research worked against me).  The email said that check-in was between 16.00 and 17.00.  But I had foolishly assumed that, since Fäviken was located in wasteland, that there would be somewhere on property where we could park ourselves for a few hours before being allowed into our rooms. Surely, the restaurant was accustomed to dealing with long-distance travelers, who, like us, were forced to arrive early due to limited flight schedules.

Now, having been to Fäviken, I have learned that (a) the restaurant’s location isn’t as remote as I had thought – there’s a ski resort about twenty minutes away, and a half dozen sleepy hamlets dot the countryside within an hour’s drive; and (b) indeed, we weren’t the only travelers who have arrived early.  I have been assured many times since, by others who have been to Fäviken, that they, too, were left in limbo for a few hours in the Swedish outback.

But the staff at Fäviken was as helpful as it could be.  We were pointed in the direction of a restaurant in a nearby village, where we could get some lunch and kill some time. Unfortunately, when we arrived at the restaurant, we discovered that it was closed that day of the week. But, a few miles down the road, we found a bakery.  So we lingered over coffee and pastries there.

To kill more time, we found a supermarket and walked all of its aisles, stopping to admire the rainbow of tubed “meats” of which Scandinavians are so fond.

Across the parking lot was a Salvation Army. We rummaged around there for a while too.

And then we whiled away the balance of our time driving around Lake Kallsjön, near Fäviken, until, finally, the sun had set and the time had come to check in.

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Factoring in the amount of time I spent traveling on the homebound journey (which included the three-hour drive to Trondheim, plus three flights to get me to New York – there would have been a fourth flight had I been traveling all the way home to Kansas City that day), altogether, I spent more than twice as much time traveling to and from Fäviken as I actually spent at Fäviken.

Unlike most restaurants that might be considered “worth a special journey,” Fäviken is not near or on the way to any other likely destination.  So even if you’re piggy-backing Fäviken onto existing travel plans in the region, a trip to Fäviken still requires hours of planes, trains, and automobiles.

And that’s just the time and distance part of the equation.  Then, there’s the financial commitment.

As you know, travel isn’t cheap.  The least expensive part of the whole trip was Fäviken itself.  Dinner and a room, which included breakfast, rang in at $500 (and that’s with the U.S. Dollar trading like a champ against the Scandinavian currencies at the time), which I thought was exceptionally reasonable – especially when you consider that we were offered wine and Champagne upon arrival, and were kept well-lubricated and snacked until dinner.  (Wine at dinner was extra.)

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I record the foregoing not as a string of complaints, but rather as a thorough accounting and consideration.

Is any meal worth such effort?   What kind of cookery could possible live up to the expectations that such time and expense create?

In my opinion, none, really.  That’s why it’s called “destination dining.”  Hopefully, the implied journey helps make up for what the meal, alone, could not possibly deliver.  Eating expeditions, like this one to Fäviken, are about managing expectations, keeping eyes wide-open to the realities of all that they require, and, if done correctly, they’re about the things and places you experience along the way, and the people with whom you share those moments.  Although these are very important aspects of destination dining, they’re rarely mentioned or discussed.  As much as I love to eat, and, although eating is the main focus of my travels, it’s only part of the story.  It has to be.  Otherwise, depressingly few (none?) faraway meals in my life have been truly “worth it.”

Although this blog has always been about my relationship with food, hopefully, you’ll see that my thoughts about it have always been framed within the context of the wider, richer universe in which the starlets and darlings of the restaurant industry play but a bit part.

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Was I disappointed that Fäviken wasn’t more prepared to receive us upon our early arrival?  Yes.

After surveying the situation, could I understand why they weren’t able to be more accommodating?  Sure, of course.

Was my dinner at Fäviken one of the best meals I’ve had in 2015?  Without a doubt, it was.  Stripping away all else, the quality of the ingredients and the level of cooking, by themselves, were extremely impressive.

Was it one of the most memorable meals of my life?  Maybe. It certainly sits, with few peers, atop my list of Scandinavian dining experiences.  And, as I alluded at the top of this post, it provoked enough thought and discussion afterwards that my friends and I were distracted from realizing that we were completely off-course, sending us into our tailspin of recovery.

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Would I go again?  As much as I would love to experience Fäviken again (perhaps in a different season – the prospect of sitting in the midnight sun after dinner is alluring), the honest answer is: unless a compelling opportunity presents itself – one that makes it convenient for me to do so – probably not.

But to answer the question that I first asked above: Am I glad I went?  Was Fäviken worth it?

Absolutely.

However, I’ll remember this trip as much for the dinner and breakfast, as I will for the friends with whom I shared it, and the many, colorful memories that we collected along the way: the magical, frosted forests of northern Sweden, where all sound is deadened against the sheer footage of snow; the gentle tap, tap, tap of the fat hitting the floor boards in the dining room at Fäviken as it dripped from the ham, strung up to cure; the joy and surprise of unexpectedly finding Swedish kroners in my camera bag (leftover from my previous trip to Sweden last November), when we realized the bakery we found was cash-only; the lynx painted on the door of my room at Fäviken (instead of numbers or letters, the rooms are assigned animals); belting out cheesy Eighties songs with my friends while fishtailing around the deserted curves of snowy Lake Kallsjön; sharing Champagne and charcuterie with a Swedish woman in the communal bathroom at Fäviken, with silhouettes of a Spanish couple blurred in the steamy glass door to the sauna (it was way more innocent than it sounds); the reindeer pizzas at the airport in Trondheim; the glow and flicker of fire against the snow in the inky night as I stepped out for a draw of fresh air after dinner…

And, I’ll especially remember the notification I got, as we swerved onto the highway to Trondheim, having finally gotten back on the right track after a few tense moments of driving, that my flight had been delayed.  We all breathed a sigh of relief, and went back to torching ourselves with our favorite, sappy, Eighties anthems.

You’ll find all the information you need about my dinner and breakfast at Fäviken in late January of 2015 in the captions of this photo album.

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Photos: the red, barn-like structure, dating to the 1700s, that houses both the restaurant and inn at Fäviken Magasinet; an icy lake in the stillness of the Jamtland of Sweden; candlelit breakfast at Fäviken; Magnus Nilsson’s fur coat; the fireplace at Fäviken; Lake Kallsjön; Magnus Nilsson cutting honey pie; scallops; Magnus Nilsson carrying trays of food up to the dining room during service – how all food is brought into the dining room; ham curing in the dining room at Fäviken; fire in the night outside Fäviken.

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If the clouds are just so, and if you happen to look at the right time – just before midnight in a mid-calendar month – the skies over Bergen, Norway will appear as if they’re on fire.

Summer had arrived on the northern brow of the world, and the sun had become restless, lingering well past bedtime.

But I wasn’t in bed.  At one in the morning, I was standing on the cobblestone sidewalk under the flicker of florescence wiping sauce from my mouth and trading hot dogs with friends. This was becoming a familiar street scene on my visits to Bergen.

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This was my third trip to Norway this year, and my sixth since I first met Christopher Haatuft in March of 2014.  Since that first meeting, Haatuft and his team at his restaurant Lysverket have created a series of collaborative dinners, of which I have been a lucky partner and participant.

My latest visit, in early June, marked our fifth Friends of Lysverket dinner, featuring guest chef Paul Qui (he of multiple restaurants in Austin, Texas; and soon, in Miami, Florida); British concert violinist Peter Sheppard Skærved; the design firm Odd Standard (from Stavanger, Norway); and bartender James Grieg (who is currently working at Bar Babylon in Oslo, Norway).

This dinner coincided with the Festspillene i Bergen – an annual classical music festival that brings world-class musicians and tens of thousands of connoisseurs from all over the world to the city over a two-week period.  It’s Bergen’s largest event.

So, since the city was saturated with classical musicians and classical music that weekend, Haatuft incorporate all of it thematically into this fifth dinner.

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On the Sunday before the Friends of Lysverket dinner (which always takes place on a Monday), the staff of Lysverket, the guest chef, and I take a field trip.

This time, Haatuft enlisted the help of Knut Magnus Persson, a diver who has been a part of previous Friends of Lysverket dinners (I went SCUBA diving for scallops with him on my trip in March), and Knut Magnus’s brother, Rune Persson.  The brothers Persson picked us up from the docks of Bergen’s harbor in a beautiful sailboat, and we headed south into the crisp, blue Norwegian waters.

After a couple of hours of navigating through the splintered land that lies shattered along the North Sea coast of western Norway, we arrived at a heavily wooded island known as Lysøen.  Rising proudly from the greenery, fully visible from the water as we rounded the bend, was a peculiar-looking Victorian house with an onion dome.  This was the house that Norwegian violinist Ole Bull had built for his retirement, when he purchased the island in 1872.  This “villa,” which has been donated to the Norwegian Ancient Monuments Conservation, is now maintained and operated as a museum by the Kode, an umbrella organization that oversees a collection of museums in and near Bergen.  (In addition to the museum that houses Lysverket, and Ole Bull’s villa, the Kode also manages the preservation of the homes of two other notable, local musicians, Edvard Grieg and Harald Sæverud).

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Haatuft had arranged a private tour of the house for us.  Leading us to a grand hall on the second floor, with a stunning, vaulted ceiling, two docents in traditional, Norwegian dresses gave us a brief introduction to Bull’s life and career, which was fascinating.  A synopsis from their retelling: “By the age of 8, he was admitted to the Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra, which had to amend its rules to allow such a young member to join. By age 9, he became first chair violin… As an adult, he was incredibly handsome. He stood 6′ tall, had a 44″ chest, and a 26″ waist. He carried smelling salts with him, to revive the ladies who would faint upon his arrival at the concert hall… In his seventies, he retired to this private island with his second wife, an American. Here, he built this home from monies earned from two performances… And here he died.”

Bull was one of the most well-traveled musicians of his time. And it’s reflected in the eccentric – verging on gaudy (in my opinion) – design of his villa, which incorporates architectural styles from all points on the compass.  A friend to America, a country that he visited often, Bull married an American in his later years, and even lived part-time in Maine, until he returned to this quiet island permanently.  I wished we had more time to explore Lysøen, which offers hiking trails all over its rocky, forested landscape.

On our return to Bergen, we paused for a few, breathtaking sessions on the jet ski that we had towed behind us.  At one point, Qui, and Swedish forager Anton Olausson jetted off with Persson to a small, rocky island to gather vegetation for the dinner the next night.

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Back in Bergen, we hit a number of local places that have become a part of my routine when I’m in town.

I took Qui and his business partner, Deana Saukam, who joined us in Norway, to Kaffemisjonen, where I’m often found in the mornings having coffee and pastries. We also checked out Blom, the café’s newer, second location near the opera.

One day, we ducked into Paradis, a delicatessen opened by the Colonialen group, to escape the rain, and to share a couple of sandwiches.

We had lunch at Café Don Pippo, a cubbyhole wine bar popular with the local college students.  I love the ciabatta panini here. The fillings are simple – tomato, mozzarella, and basil; salami if I’m feeling for it – and the crust is always ultra crisp.  It’s great.

And, we spent some time rummaging through the junk food aisles at convenient stores around town.  This is always a rewarding and insightful way of learning about local culture.  In particular, I’ve fallen in love with the Norwegian snack “Kvikk Lunsj” (or “quick lunch”).  The name is slightly misleading – or maybe not, if you consider Kit Kats a meal. That’s basically what they are – chocolate-covered wafers.  But the Norwegian Kvikk Lunsj, in my opinion, is milkier than the American Kit Kat (my assessment is corroborated in this very thorough and informative review of Kvikk Lunsj on Series Eats).  I’ve had cherry blossom and matcha Kit Kats in Japan, and Kvikk Lunsj in Norway, and as interesting as those international versions of Kit Kats are, the American version is still the one I love best (proving, perhaps, that nostalgia and habit record themselves in permanent ink).

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Since Qui, Saukam, and I all love to shop (in fact, the three of us spent a week in Hong Kong last year on a food and fashion feature), I took them to some of my favorite spots in Bergen.  Our first stop was at T. Michael’s haberdashery at Skostredet 9A.  A British transplant to this rainy corner of Norway, he has established a fantastic line of rainwear under the label Norwegian Rain.  I own one of his couture coats, and now Qui and Saukam do too.

Diagonally across from Kaffemisjonen is Lot 333, a clothing shop run by Marcus Smith Hvidsten, a former hip-hop club owner.  I was first introduced to Hvidsten by Haatuft and his business partner Fredrik Saroea, who both knew Hvidsten through the music world.  Quite a few years ago, Hvidsten came into a couple of original Banksy works of art, which he later sold to finance the opening of Lot333 (they were sold at Sotheby’s as a part of lot 333, hence the store’s name; you will find a more detailed rendering of this story on the Well Dressed Dad). His store carries a collection of popular, international brands, in addition to less mainstream fashion labels, including a couple of local, Bergen-based designers, like T. Michael’s Norwegian Rain, and Kaibosh.

The Kaibosh headquarters and retail shop is actually only a few blocks away from Lot333.  Kaibosh makes eyewear that is both fashionable (some of it too fashionable for me) and very affordable.  You can get a pair of prescription glasses for under $300 (unfortunately, I don’t think they ship to the U.S., yet).  I really like their new line of Biblio glasses.  I bought a black pair of Biblio sunglasses with mirrored lenses, and a pair of prescription Biblios in “dirty olive,” which I can’t wait to pick up on my next trip to Bergen.

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As luck would have it, we caught the monthly market in Bergen on Saturday morning.  Not since the first Friends of Lysverket weekend, when Justin Cogley and I grazed our way through these food stalls along the city’s charming bryggen (wharf), have I had the chance to redeem myself at the pancake stand.  Uninitiated gringos, Cogley and I made a buffet out of the condiments, using our giant pancake as a palette for a rainbow of jams and spreads.  Since then, I have learned that Norwegians are not into sampling.  They prefer commitment.  So, this time, I made sure to limit myself to one jam, and a smear of sour cream.

The woman at the pancake stand was also selling a Norwegian parfait called “tilslørte bondepiker” (or “the veiled peasant girl”), in which cooked apples – apparently, standing in as proxy for the peasant girl – hide coquettishly beneath a cloud of whipped cream and breadcrumbs.

A dairyman that Haatuft knew was selling rømmegrøt, a slimming Norwegian porridge of stewed sour cream capped with a generous layer of clarified butter.  Annette Tveit, Haatuft’s wife, showed me how to do it up right: topping the buttery porridge with cinnamon, sugar, and raisins.  We Americans watched with both awe and horror as the Norwegians lapped up the rich gruel with speed and delight.

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Unlike previous guest chefs, who have all collaborated with Haatuft, Qui wrote the entire menu for this fifth Friends of Lysverket dinner.  He presented nine courses on plates and vessels made by Constance Kristiansen and Tonje Sandberg of Odd Standard (these two women had also made the serviceware for the first Friends of Lysverket dinner with Justin Cogley).

Qui really captured the spirit of the Friends of Lysverket series by bringing his own cultural perspective and voice to the table and incorporating what he saw, tasted, and learned in Norway. For example, he was inspired by the fish cakes that Norwegians eat (heavy on the nutmeg) and was reminded of the fish cakes of his own Asian background.  So, he served us his version, which included asparagus,

He loved the grilled sucrine salad that we had at Lysverket a couple of nights before, when Haatuft had cooked for us.  So, Qui grilled the lettuces for his menu, and coated them in a sauce made of pork blood – an adaptation of the Filipino dinuguan that he serves at Qui (here is a version that he served me in Austin, with pig’s head, black trumpet mushrooms, and as side of steamed buns).

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Qui presented other quirky adaptations of the food he serves in Austin, including the Filipino dessert “halo halo.”  Traditionally, it’s a parfait of shaved ice with sweetened, condensed milk and various toppings (including fruits, boiled beans, nuts, cheese, and jello).  His version at Lysverket included local, Norwegian ingredients, like cloudberry and brunost (Norwegian brown cheese).

But, perhaps my favorite dish was the roasted chicken “with a bang” that Qui served alongside a spread of lettuces, fresh herbs, fish sauce, and bowls of pickled and fermented vegetables.  The chicken was juicy and flavorful. And I loved using my hands to roll the meat in the lettuces with herbs, and dipping all of it in the fish sauce.

In collaboration with Lysverket’s beverage team (Stein Berge Berntsen, Elias Vega, and John Miller), guest bartender James Grieg paired a number of cocktails with the meal, including a brown butter-infused rye whiskey with bitters that was poured into imaginative glassware (balancing precariously on sticks) made by Odd Standard.  (That cocktail was paired with buttermilk-sea urchin ice cream with toasted barley.)

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After dinner, the man with whom I had the pleasure of sitting – Peter Sheppard Skærved – pulled out a violin made by Nicolò Amati, the famous Italian luthier who reputedly passed his craft on to Antonio Stradivari, and played a few tunes.  This violin, which dates to 1647, was, at one point, owned by the Norwegian violinist Ole Bull, whose island home we had visited the day before. Bull referred to this violin as his “pearl.”  In this video, you will hear violinist Sheppard Skærved (who was in Bergen for the Festspillen i Bergen) play Bull’s Amati pearl and trace its amazing provenance through centuries of certainty and obscurity (a story no less incredible than the tale told of “The Red Violin“).  [As it so happens, I was, at the time, reading Antonia Fraser’s laborsome, but informative and authoritative biography of Oliver Cromwell.  I marveled that this violin was made two years before Cromwell signed the death warrant for the beheading of Charles I.  As Sheppard Skærved recounted, two centuries and six monarchs later, George IV attempted to buy this violin.]

And with that melodic circle being nicely rung around our weekend, the fifth Friends of Lysverket drew to a lovely end.

We have two more Friends of Lysverket dinners scheduled this year.  As I had mentioned in a previous post that in late August, we will welcome Danish chef Esben Holmboe Bang (of Maaemo in Oslo) to Bergen.  And in mid-October, I will be traveling with my friends Colby and Megan Garrelts (of Bluestem and Rye in Kansas City) to Norway for the seventh Friends of Lysverket.  I look forward to learning much more about the Norwegian culture with the terrific company that I will share in the upcoming trips to Bergen.

You will find all of the photos from this fifth Friends of Lysverket weekend in this album.

You may also read about the first two Friends of Lysverket dinners here, and the third and fourth dinners here.

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Photos: The midnight sun setting the sky over Bergen harbor afire; Paul Qui, with Rune Persson sailing the crisp, blue Norwegian North Sea; Ole Bull’s villa on the island of Lysøen; an American flag is draped proudly in one corner of Ole Bull’s house on the island of Lysøen; Knut Magnus Persson rides alongside our sailboat; jumping with Deana Saukam and Paul Qui in their Norwegian raincoats in the historic, Hanseatic Bryggen of Bergen; Annette Tveit and Deana Saukam dress their pancakes, as Paul Qui and Christopher Haatuft look on and wait their turn; Paul Qui dresses his grilled sucrine in pork blood at the Friends of Lysverket dinner; building Paul Qui’s Norwegian take on “halo halo” at the Friends of Lysverket dinner; Peter Sheppard Skærved playing a tune on an Amati violin dating to 1647; a midnight hot dog run to Tre Kroneren in Bergen, Norway.

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In 1559, while sailing through the Dano-Norwegian kingdom (at the time, the two were united under the Danish crown), a Scottish admiral fell in love with the daughter of the Danish admiral (who was Norwegian).  They married, and he whisked this Norwegian noblewoman off to his faraway land.

But be not misled.  This deceptively romantic scene – what sounds like the start to a Renaissance fairytale – was merely an overture to what was surely one of the most bizarre dramas in history involving a cast of the most unlikely and unlovable creatures.

After marrying the Norwegian Anna Throndsen, James Hepburn, the 4th Earl of Bothwell and Scotland’s Lord High Admiral, abandoned her, and married a Scottish noblewoman, Jean Gordon (daughter of the Earl of Huntly).  Barely a year into that second marriage, Bothwell filed for divorce (on shady terms).  In the meantime, he was implicated in the famous Kirk O’Field plot that resulted in the murder of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, the young consort to Queen Mary of Scotland (and father to her only heir, who would later found the Stuart line on the English throne as James I).

Perhaps emboldened by his acquittal for the murder of Darnley (for which most historians agree he is guilty), Bothwell then abducted the newly widowed Queen Mary and raped her. Despite his detestable behavior – or, perhaps threatened by it – the Queen bestowed more titles on Bothwell, elevating him to the Duke of Orkney and the Marquis of Fife.  Even more shocking, a few days later, after Bothwell finalized his divorce from Gordon, the Queen married him.

Things began unravelling quickly thereafter for Bothwell and the Queen, as the Scottish nobility rose up against them. The two were forced to separate. Queen Mary was captured and imprisoned in the island castle of Loch Leven (from which she eventually escaped to England, only to be imprisoned for the rest of her life there by her cousin, Elizabeth I). Bothwell took to the sea, whereby he hoped to gain support from the Danish king for his cause.  It was during this spirited maritime campaign that the long, vengeful arm of the Danish admiral’s daughter – Bothwell’s abandoned first wife – reached out from the icy waters of the North Sea and caught him off the coast of Norway.  He was hauled into the port of Bergen and clapped into the prison at Rosenkrantz Tower.

After settling accounts with Throndsen (he owed her the dowry of which he defrauded her in abandonment), Bothwell probably would have been set free had Frederick II, the king of Denmark, not received word that Elizabeth I was hunting Bothwell for the murder of Darnley. Realizing that he had a potentially valuable pawn in his possession, Frederick II had Bothwell transferred out of Bergen to Denmark, where the Scotsman eventually ended up prisoner in the dreaded Dragsholm Slot, where he died in 1578 (after some reports of having gone insane).

Why am I telling you this ridiculous story?*

Because, it is the backdrop and context for my latest trip to Denmark.

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I love history. I always have.  It verges on obsession.

So, knowing well the story of this overly ambitious Scottish nobleman and his ill-fated demise, I have naturally taken an interest to Rosenkrantz Tower on my many, recent trips to Bergen, Norway.  It still stands, proud and gloomy, overlooking the mouth of Bergen harbor (today, the sprawling lawn behind the fortress serves as one of Bergen’s largest outdoor concert venues).

But what about Dragsholm Slot, the castle where prisoners of the Danish crown were sent, and where Bothwell died?

It must have been my morbid interest in this creep from the pages of history, stirring in my sub-conscience, that prompted me to mention it, off-handedly, one day in a text exchange with my friend Will.  Will is an Australian who has been living and working in Denmark (at Restaurant Geranium) for some time.  In sorting out my plans for an upcoming trip to Copenhagen, I told him that I’d like to get out of the city for a change.  And that’s when, wondering aloud, I mentioned Dragsholm Slot.  Not expecting Will to catch my aside about this obscure castle or my interest in its even more obscure inmate, you can only imagine my surprise when Will not only confirmed that the castle still exists, but that it has been restored and converted into a nice hotel, with a nice restaurant.  In fact, his friend works there.

Unfortunately, Will also said that a recent fire in the kitchen had shut down the operation for a few months, and it would not reopen until after my impending trip.  Luckily, another opportunity to visit Denmark arose shortly thereafter, and this past June, I finally got to Dragsholm.

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Landing at Copenhagen’s Kastrup airport in the morning, I rented a car and went straight into the city to meet Will and our friend Andreas for lunch at Schønnemann, a restaurant that I have only mentioned in passing on this blog before.  This institution, dating to 1877, is known for its “herring, beer, and snaps,” and traditional, Danish smørrebrød, which the restaurant serves on beautiful, Danish-blue china.  Unaware that Danish smørrebrød is such a hearty fare, the first time I ate here, I unintentionally ordered too much.  Having not learned my lesson, apparently, I managed to do so again on this, my second visit.

Schønnemann’s smørrebrød menu rambles on for pages, but is helpfully divided into sections: herring, shellfish & eel, salmon & halibut, veal & beef, pork, duck & chicken, tartlets, and so on.  As the word smørrebrød (“buttered bread”) suggests, it’s an open-faced sandwich served on bread (most often rye, or brown bread) with a generous smear of butter.

The amount of butter consumed by Danes is remarkable, if not horrifying to this American. Done properly, Danish bread should be spread so generously as to promise the appearance of tandsmør. Literally translated as “tooth butter,” the Danes use this word to refer to the teeth marks that can only be achieved with an adequate pavement of butter.

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Everything that I’ve tried at Schønnemann is great.

The pickled herring is wonderful – the tangy sweetness of its pickling juice is cut with the sharper edges of warming spices – served with capers, red onions, and sour cream. The smoked eel is terrific as well, especially with fluffy, scrambled eggs.

This time, I ordered a “tartlet,” which my friend Andreas said is quite traditional.  The order came with not one, but twin, fluted pastry shells filled with shrimp and dill swimming in Hollandaise (tartlets can be ordered with other fillings, like salmon, chicken, and vegetables).  Just as I was about to comment on how generous they had been with the sauce, our server – an older gentleman with a dry wit – arrived with a small pot of yet more Hollandaise, which he liberally ladled over the tartlets before I could express any sign of hesitation, completely drowning them. Without missing a beat, he turned to me and asked, “would the gentleman like to change his order and have me select something lighter for his second smørrebrød?”

I had ordered “Simon’s Favorite,” a daunting combination of smoked salmon, creamed spinach, and poached eggs on butter-fried toast.  But, given the lake of Hollandaise I now owned, I thought it prudent to scale back.  So, for my second course, my server brought out a simple smoked salmon smørrebrød with little more than some dill, asparagus, and a tandsmør of butter.  Slimming in comparison to Simon’s Favorite, this was still a feast.

The tartlet shells were thick and sturdy, but ultra flakey – the type of flakiness you only get with a lot butter baked into the crust.  The shrimp – these were small shrimp – were plump, and the Hollandaise in which they were enrobed was warm and velvety.  It was a decadent dish.  And I loved it.

Following tradition, snaps (or schnapps), which my two friends ordered and drank as if water, was streamed from a bottle held high above our table. Our server poured until the liqueur crested above the tops of the snaps glasses in a quivering dome, held from breaking over the sides by just the right amount of tension.  He did this repeatedly, and never missed a drop, always bidding us “skål” as he retreated.  In order to drink it without spilling, my friends had to crane their necks down and bring their lips to the glasses to sip off the top, careful not to breathe too hard, or shake the table.

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While my friends napped off the snaps, I drove us west, out of Copenhagen, towards Dragsholm Slot, which is about 40 kilometers (or an hour and a half driving) west.

The castle feels as medieval as its origins in the 13th century, although it has been rebuilt many times since.   It’s not a particularly pretty structure.  Square and chunky with high, thick walls, it squats like a block of chalk on a small hill, circled by a moat. Given this look, it’s not hard to understand why it was the preferred keep for state prisoners.

But, from the castle’s front gates, looking west, the land sprawls, uninhibited, into the shimmering sea, not more than a mile away.  This view and the castle’s grounds are, by far, Dragsholm Slot’s most handsome assets.

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A number of ghosts are said to haunt the castle, seen often by staff and guests alike.  We were reassured by all that they are “friendly” ghosts, who never interfere, only observe.  One of them is the man who led me to this corner of Denmark: the 4th Earl of Bothwell, who reportedly appears in the courtyard at night.

Two other ghosts, who appear with more frequency, are the “grey lady” and the “in-wall girl,” so named because she was bricked into a wall of the castle alive – not with a cask of amontillado, but with her baby – by her “noble” parents when they discovered that she had been impregnated by the “help” with whom she had fallen in love.  What was passed along like a campfire myth for centuries was discovered to be true when, in the last century, her remains were discovered between two walls during a round of renovations.  The hole in the wall where she was found has been left open to commemorate the horrible incident.  Her bones, having been removed for a proper burial, have been replaced by fake ones.  My lucky friends were assigned to a room directly across the hall from this sad grave.

Despite the reminders of its more savage past, the interior of Dragsholm Slot is quite lovely.  It’s clearly the product of renovation, restoration, and redecoration.  And it’s all tastefully done, with an eye towards authenticity, though certainly not blinded by it.  As a hotel, it offers all the conveniences and amenities required by modern guests.

My room was in a more remote corner of the castle, tucked behind the theater.  I loved my backstage quarters, with windows that looked out over the moat across a generous lawn that disappeared into forestland.  But, I did not love getting to and from my room late at night, when the vast labyrinth of halls inside the castle went pitch black, lit only on the command of motion sensors.  Spooked I don’t easily get.  But that night, there were moments when I had to resist the urge to go running down the halls like mad King George to hurry the lights.

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It was a beautiful, blue-sky day. So, my friends and I spent the afternoon on the castle’s generous patio overlooking a beautiful herb garden maintained by the hotel’s two restaurants.  Will’s friend – Adrien Norwood, an American who works at the Gourmet Restaurant, the higher-end of the two restaurants at Dragsholm Slot – generously brought out a plate of housemade charcuterie, and some beer for us.

As the sun dropped towards the horizon, we moved around to the front of the castle, popped a bottle of Champagne, and watched it set into the sea.

Afterwards, we moved inside to the Gourmet Restaurant, which is located in a sunken part of the castle, for dinner.  The kitchen cooked for us, taking us through about a dozen courses between snacks, main courses, and desserts.

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The cooking at the Gourmet Restaurant was surprisingly ambitious. I would describe the style of food here as New Nordic.

At times, I thought the plates were a bit busy, fraught with too many competing flavors – the course with raw scallops, smoked lamb brains, and squid ink sauce pushed the limits for me. But, at its best, the cooking was wonderfully simple, like a rosy round of beef served with little more than coins of fermented carrots and some young pine shoots.  That was a delicious dish, my favorite course.  And, I particularly admired the terrific display of vegetables at dinner here: asparagus, onions, new potatoes (the size of marbles), salsify, and ramps, which we would find carpeting the forest floor on a walk the next morning.

After dinner, my friends and I took in some fresh air outside.  The night was as clear as the day had been.  And despite the almost blinding, full moon hanging low in the sky like a spotlight, the inky canopy above sparkled with stars. 

Haunted the castle is, and, that night, haunted the castle looked.

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Apparently, we three passed the night uneventfully.

With no ghost sightings to report the next morning (and despite the warning, I found no evidence of them in my photos either), we met for breakfast outside on the patio (cold cuts, cheese, and a selection of breads and spreads).  Afterwards, we took a walk through the castle grounds.

We crossed the lawn that I had admired from my room, towards the forest, where the air became suddenly musky with the smell of garlic.  As I mentioned above, we stumbled upon a field of flowering ramps; it stretched into the woods as far as we could see.

In a clearing, we arrived at the giant rhododendron that we had been encouraged to find.  The enormous plants were in full bloom, an explosion of pink and white pom-poms that seemed to capture the enthusiasm with which summer had arrived. 

It was another beautiful day.

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After dropping Will and Andreas off in the city, I headed to the airport to pick up my friends Paul Qui and Deana Saukam, with whom I had been but a few days before in Bergen for the fifth Friends of Lysverket dinner.  In the days that I had spent in Helsinki and at Dragsholm in between, they made a quick, three-day tour of Stockholm.  Now, we met back up in Copenhagen.

With our car full of luggage, we left the city and headed north to Helsingør.  Perhaps better known to English-speakers as Elsinore, this breathtaking promontory, jutting out into the narrow strait that separates Denmark and Sweden, is home to Krongborg, the fabled setting of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet.

With its rows of cannons, high turrets, a sturdy, fortress base, and the blue sea beyond, Kronborg is as winsome as it is imposing. And yet, despite its intimidating presence, there’s something unexpectedly peaceful and modest about it.  Strategically positioned on the water for defense purposes, the castle’s seaside site also guarantees the type of galloping gale required of scenes in which charming princes rescue damsels distressing under banners ripping heroically in the wind.

Kronborg is picturesque and perfect. I loved it.

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Not far from Kronborg is the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (the Danes pronounce it LOO-see-an-na).  This stunning complex of buildings, branching off from a seaside summer home built by a Danish nobleman (who happened to marry three women all named Louise, hence the name of the museum today), is, to me, a magnificent study of negative space.

While the art here was certainly impressive, the museum, taken as a whole, was the main attraction for me.  Its campus spreads over a considerable amount of land, which has been thoughtfully designed to give visitors the feeling of intimacy and discovery.  Yet, as I tried to make sense of the seemingly random use of space, and the seemingly endless choices with which it presented me, I began to realize that the space had, in fact,  been subtly framed for me.  The museum offered countless proscenia in the round that dictated where I went and how I saw things.   I wasn’t just wandering aimlessly. I was wandering aimlessly in a prescribed manner, with my eyes being directed this way and that.

If you go, allow yourself ample of time to linger on the lawn. There’s also a café with a huge deck looking out over the water.  It offers cold food – smørrebrød and cakes, coffee and Champagne – and a convenient excuse to pause for a mid-day snack, as we did.**

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Paul, Deana, and I ended our long day of sightseeing at Søllerød Kro, a restaurant that, I was told, has been in operation since 1677 – the date that, along with its name, stretches in large, iron figures across the outside of this ancient tavern.

I had heard much praise for this restaurant, which is still celebrated as one of the original standard bearers of fine dining in the country.  The era of its glory is unmistakable from its interior, which is a short page-turn back to the Michelin-starred houses of France just a decade or two ago.  It is the familiar look of traditional fine dining, with elegant, linen-draped tables, flickering tapers, and simple, classy, Federal style furnishings that happen to appeal to me tremendously.

Not that these superficial dressings should prejudice me.  But, like the clever use of space at Louisiana, I both wanted and hoped that they would serve as visual cues, nudging me toward a certain style of cooking and experience – that is, the Continental style, leaning heavily on classic French cooking, for which Søllerød Kro became so revered.

This was not the case.

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The influence that New Nordic cooking has apparently had on Søllerød Kro was unexpected. It was perplexing, and somewhat worrisome.

On the one hand, it is perhaps unfair of me to expect that a restaurant that is older than my country should resist the call of progress and change, that it should stay forever loyal to one style of cooking – especially since it is so close the epicenter of the new, culinary order.  On the other hand, it is hard for me to refrain from cynicism when I encounter a style of cooking where it has not naturally evolved, and does not seem to belong.

But my chief complaint isn’t that Søllerød Kro seems to have done a culinary volte-face, abandoning its former style of cooking for a newer, shinier one. I wouldn’t have minded if Søllerød Kro had served me a compelling New Nordic meal, even if it might have seemed misplaced in its surroundings. In fact, done well, it would have been welcomed. 

Rather, I was more bothered that Søllerød Kro did not seem to commit to either style of cooking, new or old.  Instead, our tasting menu see-sawed schizophrenically between courses that seemed New Nordic – raw scallops with cucumber, cauliflower, and horseradish ice, for example; or a dessert of lemongrass sorbet with woodruff ice and wild flowers – and those that were more classically based – like a beautiful strip of pork with sage and jus, or roasted lamb with olives and potatoes (the insertion of a cheese course – an all-French selection – also fell heavily in this camp).

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Perhaps I caught the restaurant in a particularly awkward phase of transition.  Or, maybe, the tasting menu we ordered that night happened to be a poor representation of the restaurant’s normal service.  Or, maybe I misread the situation entirely.  These are all possibilities.

But, from what I observed, experienced, and ate, I left Søllerød Kro feeling that the restaurant was struggling with its identity.  If this is so, I hope that it is being prompted by a desire for change and not by a pressure to conform.

Please note: the competency with which the food was cooked and the service we received are not among my complaints here.  To the restaurant’s credit, the front of the house staff was well-trained and gracious.  And the food – all of it – was cooked with care (especially a pan-fried strip of sole that was so light and delicate that it had the texture of soufflé).  The kitchen here is clearly talented.  I just wished it had shown a little more resolve and direction.

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After two adventurous days on the road, filled with history, fairytales, some good food, and lots of laughter, I returned to Copenhagen that night with Paul and Deana.  I had a couple of more nights in the city, and a few more that I spent on a hunting trip on the Danish island of Fyn. I’ll record those parts of my trip in the next two blog posts.

Here are the photo albums for the places and restaurants that I mentioned in this post.

Gourmet Restaurant at Dragsholm Slot
Kronborg
Louisiana Museum of Art
Schønnemann
Søllerød Kro

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* All of this, and more, is recounted in painstaking detail by Antonia Fraser in her incredible rendering of the Scottish queen’s life, “Mary Queen of Scots.”  I highly recommend it.

** Kronborg and the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art can be easily coupled into a day trip out of Copenhagen. If you don’t have a car, both the museum and the castle can be reached by train (on the same line) from Copenhagen’s Central Station.  I have heard that both sites are within walking distance of the nearest station.

Photos: The front gate at Dragsholm Slot, Denmark; Rosenkrantz Tower in Bergen, Norway; the old, tavern-like interior of Schønnemann in Copenhagen, Denmark; Andreas Bagh and Will King-Smith sipping snaps at Schønnemann; the moat surrounding Dragsholm Slot; a clock in Dragsholm Slot; a plate of house-made charcuterie on the patio at Dragsholm Slot; skyr (an Icelandic yogurt) dessert at the Gourmet Restaurant at Dragsholm Slot; the great, rhododendron on the grounds of Dragsholm Slot; Kronborg, Helsingør, Denmark; smørrebrød and drinks on the café deck at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebæk, Denmark; the interior of Søllerød Kro in Søllerød, Denmark; Ibérico pork with sage, honey, and jus at Søllerød Kro; ginger sorbet with white chocolate at Søllerød Kro; an awesome statue of the sleeping giant Holger Dankse in the casements at Kronborg; and Andreas Bagh and Will King-Smith popping a bottle of Champagne as the sun sets on Dragsholm Slot.

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Thirty-six meals and tens of thousands of photos ago, I arrived at Meadowood Napa Valley for my first Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  In the three, short years since, I have had the pleasure of watching it grow into a celebrated event with an increasingly global reach.

For twelve truly enviable nights of food and drink, the international culinary spotlight moves to this quiet, wooded corner of California, highlighting a cultural exchange among chefs, and bringing awareness to a couple of great causes.

Like last year, this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas benefits two local charities, the Holly Cranston Memorial Fund, as well as the Napa Emergency Women’s Services (NEWS).

And, as in past years, this year’s roster of guest chefs represents a diverse number of culinary perspectives.  Not only do they comprise the most internationally diverse group of chefs in the event’s history (with seven countries represented), but, from what I know of them, they offer twelve very different styles of cooking.

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Although quite a few of this year’s guest chefs are familiar to me – acquaintances and friends, even; I’ve been to the restaurants of seven of this year’s twelve chefs – more than any other year that I’ve attended the Twelve Days of Christmas, this year’s list includes quite a few strangers.  So, I look forward to being reacquainted and reunited with those chefs whom I know, and meeting the ones I do not.

I have the immense pleasure of photographing and attending this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas again.  And, as in years past, I intend to report about all of the dinners here.   Perhaps I’ll see you in Napa in December.  [For reservation information, please see Paolo Lucchesi’s post about this year’s event at Inside Scoop SF.]

Below, you’ll find the schedule and roster of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood hosted by chef Christopher Kostow and his team, as well as a hyperlinked index to all thirty-six past dinners that I have recorded on my blog.

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Friday, December 4
DANIEL HUMM
Eleven Madison Park
New York, New York

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Saturday, December 5
NENAD MLINAREVIC
Restaurant Focus
Vitznau, Switzerland

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Tuesday, December 8
CHRISTIAN PUGLISI
Relæ
Copenhagen, Denmark

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Wednesday, December 9
JORGE VALLEJO
Quintonil
Mexico City, Mexico

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Thursday, December 10
JOSHUA SKENES
Saison
San Francisco, California

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Friday, December 11
MATT WILKINSON
Pope Joan
Melbourne, Australia

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Saturday, December 12
KIM FLORESCA and DANIEL RYAN
[ONE] restaurant
Chapel Hill, North Carolina

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Tuesday, December 15
ISAAC McHALE
The Clove Club
London, The United Kingdom

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Wednesday, December 16
KYLE CONNAUGHTON and KATINA CONNAUGHTON
Single Thread (opening fall 2015)
Healdsburg, California

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Thursday, December 17
ATSUSHI TANAKA
Restaurant A.T.
Paris, France

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Friday, December 18
JUSTIN YU
Oxheart Restaurant
Houston, Texas

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Saturday, December 19
CHRISTOPHER KOSTOW
The Restaurant at Meadowood
Saint Helena, California

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The following is a list of all thirty-six Twelve Days of Christmas dinners that I have attended in the past three years at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  The name of each chef is hyperlinked to my blog post about their respective dinner.

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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Photos: The misty green at Meadowood Napa Valley, St. Helena, California; Corey Lee presents his menu, along with Christopher Kostow, at the 2014 Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood in St. Helena, California.

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There are few restaurants about which I have been more enthusiastic than Eleven Madison Park in the first couple of years that Daniel Humm became head chef there.  If you look back on this blog, you’ll find many posts cheering him and his team in those transformative days of dining in New York City.  While restaurants and critics began shrugging off the linens and white coats of formality, Humm began donning layers of luxury, defying the trend and demonstrating that fine dining could both be refined and fun.  And I loved it.

In subsequent years, I have been a faithful visitor.  I have eaten at Eleven Madison Park at least once every year since Humm arrived.  And just when I thought this would be the first year I’d go without an Eleven Madison Park show, Daniel Humm appeared at the eleventh hour.  Together with Christopher Kostow, who worked under Humm at Campton Place in San Francisco, he, the Swiss chef who built an empire on the corner of Madison Square Park, cooked the first dinner of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas at Meadowood Napa Valley.

For the fourth year, I’m the lucky guy who gets to photograph and eat all twelve dinners at this year’s event. And I’ll be reporting about them here over the next two weeks.

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In his address to the staff at line-up, Humm said that he had arrived at a place in his career where he has begun to think in simpler terms.  He marveled, for example, at the intensity, and yet simplicity of Joan Miró’s art (I have long been an admirer of Miró’s work and style, and even wrote about the references to his art that I noticed in the cooking of another, great Swiss chef).

While Humm’s cooking has always been relatively clean and simple, I did notice a particular type of simplicity in the dishes he chose to present at the Twelve Days of Christmas.

He reduced, for example, a piece of celery root to an orb, served with little more than a drizzle of meat jus with black truffle, and a pool of black truffle purée, capped with a frothy celery root purée.   This monochromatic and geometric presentation was almost presaged in the famous “black and white” cookie, which has been a fixture on the Eleven Madison Park menu for quite some time, and which awaited diners as they were seated at The Restaurant at Meadowood; a pre-meal snack.

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I will never forget the “Elevages de Perigord” torchon au foie gras I had at my first meal at Eleven Madison Park in 2007, marbled with veins of cocoa.  And I will not forget the stunning foie gras layered in red cabbage that Humm presented at this dinner.  Like the celery root dish, this too was meted out in simple, circular terms: a crescent of foie gras threaded with dark purple; and to the side, a disc of magenta.  It was beautiful, and delicious.

Three-hundred and sixty degrees was the theme of another dish – chopped raw scallop laced with caviar and topped with a seared slice of scallop and a quivering spoonful of translucent apple gelée.

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Christopher Kostow was been working with whelks for some time now.  I’ve had a few version of whelk dishes at The Restaurant at Meadowood, but the one Kostow served on this first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas has been my favorite one so far.  He made a velvety mousseline of whelks and stuffed it inside of an onion, which was melted until soft.  This gorgeous, silky torpedo was garnished with bright, floppy nasturtium flowers, and finished with a warm broth of whelks.

At course six arrived the rich, musty smell of dry-aged beef – a slice of tender bavette topped with a seared slice of porcini, and finished with a luxurious sauce of foie gras.

Unlike in previous years, where a specific Napa Valley vintner and their wines were paired with each guest chef at the Twelve Days of Christmas, this year, the wine team at The Restaurant at Meaodowod is working with Kostow and the guest chefs to tailor the wine pairings to each meal and each course.  So, over the next two weeks, we will see a wide range of California wines.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Daniel Humm.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Oysters
Mignonette snow and sorrel.

Smoked Sturgeon Sabayon
(Humm)

Chips of Sea Lettuce and Brown Rice

(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

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First Course 
Scallop
Apple and caviar.
(Humm)

Second Course
Whelk, Onion, Nasturtium
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Third Course 
Trout
Buckwheat, fermented turnip
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fourth Course 
Foei Gras and Cabbage
(Humm)

Fifth Course 
Celery Root
Cooked en vessie, with black truffle.
(Humm)

Sixth Course 
Beef Marrow
Dry-aged bavette, porcini.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Seventh Course 
Brillat “Butter”
Cultured butter with Brillat Savarin,
Green apple jam, bread.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Eighth Course 
“Milk & Honey”
(Humm)

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Kongsgaard
Albarino, 2014

The Hilt
Chardonnay, “Vanguard,” 2013

Beckstoffer Melée Wines
Grenache, 2013

Dominus
Cabernet Sauvignon, “Napanook,” 2012

Bedrock Wine Company
Syrah, Hudson Vineyards, 2013

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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Photos: Daniel Humm’s foie gras in cabbage; Daniel Humm and Christopher Kostow in the kitchen before service; Kostow’s Brillat “Butter,” Daniel Humm basting a pig bladder in which he cooked celery root; the wines paired with this dinner.

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A last-minute trip to Switzerland earlier this year landed me within commuting distance of Focus, a two Michelin-starred restaurant at the Park Hotel Vitznau on the quiet banks of Lake Lucerne.  Although I had seen pictures of the resort online, no photo could have prepared me for its breathtaking setting, nestled among the Alps with an enormous bear and bull staging their age-old rivalry on a field of green that stretched to the water’s edge. (Here are the photos from that meal at Focus.)

Nenad Mlinarevic, chef of Focus, was one of only two names unknown to me when The Restaurant at Meadowood sent me the final roster for this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas.  Since, I have enjoyed getting to know him through is cooking at his restaurant in Switzerland, as well as at Meadowood Napa Valley, where he was the second chef to cook this year with Christopher Kostow.

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As the name of his restaurant suggests, Mlinarevic’s cooking is precise.  His presentations are simple and clean. The colors on the plate are bright, and generally, his dishes were light.

At Focus, Mlinarevic only uses Swiss products, a testament to how resourceful he is given the breadth and depth of his menu.  Not able to maintain that sort of exclusivity in Napa, he did try to convey a sense of his homeland.

Into one of the canapés, he incorporated maluns, a traditional Swiss dish of grated potato tossed in flour and pan-fried in butter (it looks like a golden-brown love child of rösti and spætzle). Although it’s usually eaten with cheese and apple sauce, he served the crispy bits of potato here with trout roe, crème fraîche, and dill.

Another canapé that Mlinarevic served was a potato dumpling inside of which was a Swiss saucisson filling with leeks and mustard.

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Both of Mlinarevic’s fish dishes were very light – an alabaster slice of ocean perch with salsify and mushroom; and a painterly, pastel plate of trout with an incredibly fragrant nasturtium cream rolled in a thin veil of shaved kohlrabi.

As at Focus, his meat dish at Twelve Days of Christmas was heftier, a meltingly soft fist of braised beef cheek with charred onions and tarragon.

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The Restaurant at Meadowood has been serving a dish of whipped alpine cheese with roasted kuri squash glazed with black truffle honey.  I had it during regular service the night before the Twelve Days of Christmas started.  So, for this dinner with Mlinarevic, Kostow switched out the hard mountain cheese he had been using for Sbrinz, a specifically Swiss alpine cheese.

Perhaps the highlight of the night for me was a bowl of thinly sliced lardo stuffed with geoduck belly, rolled like a tortellini, and served with thinly sliced pieces geoduck and a broth of geoduck tinted with concentrated broccoli juice.  The geoduck was so silky, sweet, and clean that where the pork fat ended and the geoduck began I could not tell.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Nenad Mlinarevic.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Sunchokes
Brown butter and black truffles.

Potato
Trout roe, dill, and crème fraîche.

Swiss Saucisson
Leek and mustard in a potato dumpling.

(Mlinarevic)

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First Course 
Ocean Perch
Salsify, mushroom.
(Mlinarevic)

Second Course
Geoduck
Broccoli, caviar.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Third Course 
Trout
Kohlrabi, nasturtium.
(Mlinarevic)

Fourth Course 
Beef Cheek
Onion, tarragon. (Mlinarevic)

Fifth Course 
Alpine Cheese
Sbrinz with pumpkin, truffle, and honey.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Sixth Course 
Pear Sorbet
Roasted pear, pear molasses, malt, and yeast.
(Mlinarevic)

Seventh Course 
Black Walnut Marzipan
Preserved cherry, beet.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

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Joseph Phelps
Sauvignon Blanc, 2014

Leo Steen Wines
Chenin Blanc, 2012

Brick and Mortar
Chardonnay, 2013

Enfield Wine Company
Syrah, 2013

Dunn Howell Mountain
Cabernet Sauvignon, 1999

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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Photos: Nenad Mlinarevic in The Restaurant at Meadowood’s garden with head gardener Christine Kim; braised beef cheek with charred onion by Mlinarevic; Mlinarevic plating during service; Christopher Kostow at staff line-up with guest chef Nenad Mlinarevic and sous chef Miles Pundsack-Poe; Nenad Mlinarevic with the kitchen staff of The Restaurant at Meadowood; the wines paired with this dinner.

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At a dinner at relæ in Copenhagen a few months ago, I marveled at the amount of flavor coaxed out of carrots and seaweed – an unexpectedly dynamic marriage – and how simple and delicious chicken could be with little more than its crispy skin, blitzed into a crunchy crumble, and some cabbage (here are the photos from that meal).

Having had the pleasure of eating at Christian Puglisi‘s restaurant twice, I looked forward to seeing him cook at the Twelve Days of Christmas this year, where he was the third chef to collaborate with hosting Christopher Kostow at The Restaurant at Meadowood.

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Since Puglisi’s cooking is so ingredient-focused, I was particularly interested to see what he would do with the products he would find in northern California.  While the flavor and integrity of the ingredients remained a driving force of his cooking at The Restaurant at Meadowood, I was particularly taken with the textures he highlighted in his dishes.

That chicken skin crackling reappeared, this time, with barely cooked trout from McFarland Springs and a haystack of raw, julienned mushrooms.

Inspired by the spot prawns of northern California, Puglisi chopped them up raw, flashed them in the oven, and then warmed them up with a table-side pour of a broth made from prawn heads.  The meat was relaxed and silky, so tender, so sweet.

And he shaved kuri squash into paper-thin ribbons, coiled them into rosettes, and then baked them until tender.  Out of the oven, they were glazed with brown butter and served as “steak” on a bed of blanched walnuts and sea buckthorns.

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The Restaurant at Meadowood served a number of particularly memorable dishes at this dinner.

During the hour before dinner, in which guests are invited in the kitchen for sparkling wine and canapés, Kostow served a warm sweet potato blini (with teff flour) topped with chopped raw mackerel and a heaping spoonful of pickled okra seeds dressed with dill.  It was salty and sweet, meaty and fluffy, warm, and cold.  I loved it.

La ratte potatoes, unearthed in the morning at The Restaurant at Meadowood’s garden just a couple of miles down the Silverado Trail, were cooked and nestled in a rich pool of melted beef tendons dotted with trout roe and brightened with dill.  The potatoes were incredibly tender and creamy. But it was the tissue-thin skins, which burst with every bite, that stole the show.

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Kostow and Puglisi each presented a dessert.  The former combined lovage and apples, serving a dried Sierra Beauty varietal (the apple had been rendered into a shriveled, meaty prune-like state, the result of baking and dehydrating  process that takes over 60 days) with some apple vinegar, lovage oil, fresh lovage, and a turn of gjetost ice cream.  This was fantastic.

Puglisi served a lemon cream tart in a shortbread shell. This he crowned with a cloud of ember-infused milk ice cream bejeweled with a rainbow of dehydrated winter citrus suprêmes and finished with a dusting of ashes grated from charcoal. Cutting through the fattiness of the curd and ice cream was a unique coupling of bitter and bright flavors.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Christian Puglisi.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Tempura Sunchoke
Seaweed powder.

Lettuce.
Goat cheese and fermented lettuce.

(Puglisi)

Mackerel
Pickled okra seeds, dill, sweet potato blini.

(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

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First Course 
Trout
Mushroom, crispy chicken skin.
(Puglisi)

Second Course
Abalone
Bean, fermented onion.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Third Course 
Spot Prawn Chowder
A sauce of its grilled head.
(Puglisi)

Fourth Course 
Squash Steak
Sea buckthorn, walnuts.
(Puglisi)

Fifth Course 
Freshly Dug Potato
Tendon, trout roe, dill.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Sixth Course 
Dried Beef
Green juniper, poridge.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Seventh Course 
Gjetost
Black apple, lovage.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Eighth Course 
Smoked Cream
Lemon tart.
(Puglisi)

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Ryme
“Hers,” Vermintino, 2014

The Scholium Project
“Prince in his Caves,” 2014

Clos Saron
“Out of the Blue,” 2014

Forlorn Horn
“Ost-Intrigen,” St. Laurent, 2014

Beta
“Chuy,” Cabernet Sauvignon, 2011

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

Photos: Christian Puglisi’s smoked lemon tart; Christian Puglisi plating with Christopher Kostow, and Nathaniel Dorn; Lisa Lov making kuri squash rosettes; the wines paired with this dinner; sauté line of abalone; Christian Puglisi, Lisa Lov, with the kitchen of The Restaurant at Meadowood.

~

One of the most memorable meals I’ve had in Mexico City was at Quintonil in the city’s posh Polanco district. The cooking there combined the saturated flavors and colors of Mexican cookery with the ingredients and sentiments of cultures abroad.  In particular, I remember blushing slices of ahi tuna with warm pico de gallo and an inky sauce made from pig ears, and a bowl of Iberian pork jowl marinated in achiote with beans and pickled onions (see all of the photos from that meal here).

Not having had the chance to return to Quintonil since, I was particularly excited to see chef Jorge Vallejo on the list of guest chefs for this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas, where he was the fourth to cook with Christopher Kostow at The Restaurant at Meadowood.

~

~

Vallejo brought his colorful cuisine to The Restaurant at Meadowood.

He collected a rainbow of herbs and blossoms and put them in a garlicky bowl of nopale ceviche with milky burrata.  This was a terrific canapé that he served at the pre-dinner reception.

In another bowl, he blanketed tomatoes and garden herbs with a generous grating of cotija cheese.  Over this he poured a warm, emerald green cactus sauce brightened with the fragrance of cilantro and lime.

~

~

There were some dishes that were more recognizable to me as Mexican, like a crab tostada with avocado that Vallejo served as a canapé, or a salbute (a masa tortilla fried until puffed and crispy) filled with wild mushrooms and creamy escamoles (ant eggs).

Perhaps my favorite dish from Vallejo at this dinner was his chicken in almondrado. The chicken had been baked in bread, keeping it especially moist and juicy.  It was brushed with schmaltz, and served with an incredible mole that was sweetened with raisins and thickened with almonds.

~

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In the spirit of collaboration, Kostow worked to reflect a bit of Vallejo’s Mexican spirit in his cooking.

In the afternoon, Kostow roasted slabs of pork belly on a rotisserie spit set up outside the restaurant. This pork “rostizado” was served with leeks and wild mushrooms. Kostow also served tripe with a sauce of clam, chorizo, and celery.

Cheesecake is one of the last things I’d normally order voluntarily.  But the queso fresco cake that Kostow served this night, with a crust made from ground peanuts and topped with preserved cherries and a raspado (shaved ice, like granité) of the preserved cherry juice spiked with mezcal, was fantastic.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Jorge Vallejo.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

~

Canapés
Nopale Ceviche
Leche de tigre.

Corner “Truffle”
White truffle.

Crab Tostada
Avocado, radish, and burnt onion

(Vallejo)

First Course 
Tomato
Onion, cotija, garden herbs.
(Vallejo)

Second Course
Tripe
Clam, celery, chorizo.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Third Course 
Salbute
Wild mushrooms, escamoles.
(Vallejo)

Fourth Course 
Potato and Sturgeon
En “chinga.”
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
Chicken in Almondrado
Mole, raisins.
(Vallejo)

Sixth Course 
Pork “Rostizado”
Leek, black trumpet mushrooms.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Seventh Course 
Queso Fresco
Peanut, raspado of preserved cherries.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Eighth Course 
Poached Gooseberries
Grapes, rhubarb, cream lemongrass, and lemon thyme.
(Vallejo)

~

Ferdinand
Albarino, 2014

Arietta
White Blend, “On the White Keys,” 2012

The Scholium Project
“The Sylphs,” Chardonnay, 2012

Mocking Bird
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006
(Magnum)

Larkmead
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2011

~

~

Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

Photos: The colorful mise en place for Vallejo’s nopale ceviche canapé; Jorge Vallejo tableside; pork belly on the spit for pork “rostizado;” Jorge Vallejo, with Christopher Kostow, at kitchen line-up; wine pairings; and Jorge Vallejo, with Jorge Lara Goribo, Christopher Kostow, and the kitchen staff of The Restaurant at Meadowood.

~

I have eaten at Saison (San Francisco) nearly twenty times, and at The Restaurant at Meadowood (St. Helena) nearly fifty times.  With only one exception*, I have eaten at these two restaurants more than all others around the world. I have also photographed in both of their kitchens many times, and have, over the years become intimately familiar with the ethos, service, and food of these two restaurants.

So it was with immense pleasure and delight that I found the highly talented chefs of both of these restaurants together in the same kitchen on the fifth night of the Twelve Days of Christmas this year.  What was surely one of the most anticipated dinners of this series, and the second time this year that six Michelin stars have cooked together at the Twelve Days of Christmas, chefs Joshua Skenes and Christopher Kostow produced a meal that was every bit as consistent and good as I have come to expect from their restaurants.
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Skenes and Kostow sprinted out of the gate with three incredible canapés that are among the most delicious things I’ve had at their restaurants.

Skenes served his famous “Liquid Toast” – a tranche of crusty bread soaked in a rich, viscous sauce of grilled bread, dusted with river vegetable powder, topped with giant Fort Bragg sea urchins, and then glazed in a mixture of egg yolk and Saison’s house-made fermented sauce.  He also served strips of Battle Creek trout topped with its own roe and crispy skin.

Kostow served eel, wrapped in thin slivers of veal tongue and grape leaves.  The little packet was grilled in the Josper (wood-fired oven) over Cabernet Sauvignon barrel staves.  I’ve had this before, but never this good.  The packet was tightly constructed, making it easy to pick up and eat.  And, the grape leaf wrapping on the outside was nice and crisp.

~

~

We were not short on luxury ingredients at this dinner.

Skenes served Saison Reserve Caviar, which is cured with Saison’s smoked salt, over melted leeks in a buttery broth with grilled Parker House rolls.

There was spiny lobster with thinly shaved chestnuts in a light broth perfumed with spice bush, a dish by Christopher Kostow.  Kostow also served Brillat Savarin cheese – a whole cake of it – layered with white truffles and butter made from the cheese.  This was sliced into wedges and served with warm bread and spoonfuls of honey from a behemoth, six-pound honeycomb that a local beekeeper brought in.

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Kostow presented whole chickens baked in bread flecked with nigella seeds.  The chicken was carved and plated with a sauces made from the bread and nasturtium, as well as melted onions.  Over years of eating at The Restaurant at Meadowood, Kostow has proven to be a wizard with birds.  This version of bread-baked chicken was no exception.  The meat was exceedingly tender and moist, and the bread, which was served with the bird, was crispy and flavorful with chicken fat.

At Saison, Skenes serves a broth course using the bones of whatever meat he has used on the menu.  In keeping with that tradition, here, Skenes made a broth from the bones of Kostow’s baked birds and served it as a chaser to the chicken course.

The only dish that was unfamiliar to me at this dinner was a “barbecued” slice of celeriac, tented under a crispy sheet of celeriac skin, that Skenes served. Representative of the hearth cooking for which Skenes has been celebrated, this meaty slice of root vegetable was grilled over the embers and served with a housemade hot sauce.  It seemed to be a crowd favorite.

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Skenes ended dinner with two of my favorite desserts from Saison.

A simple milk ice cream he speckled with crunchy, smoked cocoa nibs and coated with a drizzle of caramel sauce that had been smoked in the fireplace.  I’ve been known to go to Saison late at night just to have this dessert at the restaurant’s bar.

Dug-out orange peels were filled with a sherbet of citrus, the texture of which was more akin to marshmallow fluff than ice cream.  It’s like a spoonable creamsicle, a light and refreshing way to end dinner.

~

~

Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Joshua Skenes.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

~

Canapés
Liquid Toast
Fort Bragg Sea Urchin.

Trout
With its roe and skin.

(Skenes)

Eel
Veal tongue, grape leaves.

(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

First Course 
Spiny Lobster
Chestnut, spicebush.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Second Course
Saison Reserve Caviar
Leek, grilled Parker House rolls.
(Skenes)

Third Course 
BBQ Celeriac
Hot sauce, herbs.
(Skenes)

Fourth Course 
Bird in Bread
Chicken baked in bread with nigella seeds.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
Broth of the Grilled Bird Bones
(Skenes)

Sixth Course 
Brillat
White truffle, honeycomb.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Seventh Course 
Milk Ice Cream
Smoked cocoa nibs, caramel cooked in the fireplace.
(Skenes)

Eighth Course 
Citrus Sherbet
(Skenes)

~

Massican
Sauvignon Blanc, 2014

Corison
Gewürztraminer, 2012

The Hilt
“Vanguard,” Pinot Noir, 2012

Ferdinand
Tempranillo, 2013

Vine Hill Ranch Estate
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2012

~

~

Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

*

With the exception of Bluestem in my hometown of Kansas City, where I have eaten so many times, I’ve lost count.

Photos: Kostow’s eel wrapped in grape leaves being grilled over hot, Cabernet Sauvignon barrel staves; liquid toast being glazed; Saison Reserve Caviar; David Guilloty with chickens baked in bread; Skenes’s milk ice cream with cocoa nibs and smoked caramel; the wine pairings at this dinner; and Skenes’s citrus sherbet dessert.

~

At the start of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood, there was only one chef with whom I was not familiar at all.

I had neither heard of Matt Wilkinson, nor his restaurant Pope Joan in Melbourne, Australia.  And for this reason, when I was asked, as I always am, which dinner I most anticipated this year, I replied that it was his.  Halfway through this dinner series, on the sixth day, I finally got to discover Wilkinson’s cooking when he presented a seven-course dinner with hosting chef Christopher Kostow.

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Originally from Yorkshire, England, Wilkinson seemed to have adopted a quirky Australian kick to his accent. Coupled with his irreverent sense of humor (suggested in his restaurant’s name), it made for a dynamic presentation.  A prankster and jokester in the kitchen from the get-go, he was very popular among the cooks and staff at The Restaurant at Meadowood.

Wilkinson’s carefree, big-hearted way with people was reflected in his food, which was simple, hearty, and flavorful.  Painted with broad strokes and finished with a wink, his cooking was a departure from the more measured plates normally presented at the Twelve Days of Christmas.  It reminded me of Joshua McFadden’s cooking, and the Frankies boys’ (Castranovo & Falcinelli) dinner last year.

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~

Like the melting pot of cultures that Wilkinson described of Melbourne, his food was stylistically diverse.  The only common thread was immense flavor.  His four canapés were a good example of this.  They ranged from silky buffalo’s milk cheese – scooped fresh out of the pot in which it had been set – served with bright, grassy Australian olive oil and salt, to broccoli florets, which were sautéed with maple syrup until slightly caramelized, and then veiled with tissue-thin slices of guanciale.

There was a mini biscuit, which he served with crème fraîche and a spot of Yarra Valley salmon roe.  And clams he presented raw, in their shells, with two different sauces.  One was a fermented black beans sauce.  The other was a homemade “XO sauce.  Both represented the culinary influences from nearby Asia, and the high Asian immigrant presence in Australia.

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~

Wilkinson recalled being a poor cook in England, and eating potatoes, simply heated up and mixed with some yogurt and tinned clams. In remembrance of this meagre days, for this dinner, he cooked what he called “freshly dug today” potatoes (from the restaurant’s garden) in clam juice, mixed them with yogurt and clams, creating a milky sauce, and finished them with fistfuls of chopped herbs.  These potatoes he served as a side dish to a family-style beef dinner, along with plates of “Waldorf” salad, mixed full of colorful nasturtium blossoms.  He readily admitted that there was very little about his salad that was actually Waldorf.  But, cooking in America, he liked the idea of it.

From the garden, he also plucked some carrots, which he served with little more than some smoked yogurt and wattle seeds (from the tree, not the bird, as he joked to diners after the dinner).

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~

Kostow showed up with what was, perhaps, my favorite dish from the entire Twelve Days of Christmas.  It was a bowl of house-milled grits made from corn grown in the restaurant’s garden just a mile down the road.  It had simply been cooked in water and fortified with dairy, and then topped with butter and sheets of thinly shaved white truffle.

I’m generally not inclined towards the soft, creamy, spoonable family of foods.  But, these grits – even without the butter and white truffles – were incredibly flavorful, suspending the warmth summer in its milky sweetness.  It was fantastic.

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“When winter comes around, you Americans love everything pumpkin,” Wilkinson observed with a touch of sarcasm.  So, for dessert, he served a parfait pitched to please what he perceived to be a distinctly Yankee preference.  This included cubes of cooked pumpkin, pumpkin seeds, and a frothy top of warm white chocolate foam.

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~

Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Matt Wilkinson.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

~

Canapés
Warm Biscuits
Yarra Valley salmon roe, crème fraîche.

Fresh Buffalo’s Milk Cheese
Olive oil and salt.

Pan-Fried Broccoli
Maple syrup, guanciale.

Clams
With fermented black beans,
And housemade “XO sauce.”

(Matt Wilkinson)

First Course 
Fermented Kohlrabi
Oyster.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Second Course
Charred Leek
Macadamia, mustard.
(Wilkinson)

Third Course 
Medicinal Chicken Broth
Abalone.
(Wilkinson)

Fourth Course 
Our Corn
Butter, white truffles.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
Carrots
Smoked yoghurt, wattle seed.
(Wilkinson)

Sixth Course 
Beef
Freshly dug today potatoes, “Waldorf” from the garden.
(Wilkinson)

Seventh Course 
Cindarella Pumpkin
Gingerbread, hot white chocolate.
(Wilkinson)

~

Scribe
Sylvaner, 2012

Hudson
White Blend, 2014

Staglin Family Vineyards
Chardonnay, 2010

Dalle Valle
Cabernet Sauvignon, 1996

Hourglass
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2013

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~

Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

Photos: Oysters with fermented kohlrabi; Matt Wilkinson pranking Eloiy Perez with some spot prawns; Matt Wilkinson and Eloiy Perez scooping freshly made buffalo’s milk cheese out of the pot; Vanessa Mateus mixing herbs into warm potatoes with yogurt; beef, potatoes with clams and yogurt, and “Waldorf” salad, served family-style; the wine pairings; Christopher Kostow and Matt Wilkinson.

~

Two more impressive culinary resumés you will hardly find in a pair than Kim Floresca‘s and Daniel Ryan‘s.  (It’d also be a challenge to find two more lovely and generous people.) Between the two of them, they’ve worked at The French Laundry, Alinea, per se, Alain Ducasse NY, and Eleven Madison Park; and together, they worked at el Bulli, Mugaritz, and, most recently, The Restaurant at Meadowood, where she was executive sous chef and he was the pastry chef.  That last stop is where I met the couple four years ago, at the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Since then, the two have left Napa to head their own kitchen and restaurant on the other side of the country.  Floresca and Ryan are now cooking at [one] in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where I had the opportunity to eat in 2013.  Sadly, I had not seen them since then.

So, I was particularly happy when I learned that Christopher Kostow was calling them home to Meadowood Napa Valley for a reunion on the seventh night of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas.

~

~

Unlike many of their peers, both Floresca and Ryan have a solid background in classical cooking, as well as a legitimate stake at the frontier of modernest cuisine. You’ll find this duality reflected in their cooking, which uses traditional techniques to leverage creative, out-of-the-box thinking.

They’ll take familiar classics, and make them anew, unexpected.  Dutch stroopwafels, for example, they filled with creamy foie gras instead of caramel (which I never liked anyway, because it always sticks to my teeth).   They also used foie gras to make the dough for their version of the Fig Newton.  The filling was made from figs and black truffles.  It was rich.  It was great.  Both of these were served as canapés.

Sometimes, their food reminds you of other things, and yet are entirely different.  Their potato dumplings, for example, were boiled first before frying, giving them a distinctly pretzel-like chew. These dumplings were split in half and topped with crème fraîche and caviar.  You’ve seen all of these ingredients together before, but not quite like this.

Daniel Ryan’s desserts are just as creative. His version of “red velvet” at this dinner included adzuki beans, peanuts, and clabbered milk.  It was red.  And it was velvety.  But that’s about all it had in common with the more familiar dessert by the same name.

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~

Unexpected, but delicious was the theme of this dinner.

Kostow presented silky spot prawns with their “shells,” which were actually house-made prawn crackers.  They were ultra-crispy and packed a lot of flavor.  They were terrific.

Floresca and Ryan presented roasted rutabaga, carved into perfect spheres, coated in a milky “butterscotch” sauce, described to me as caramelized lactose.  They also served broccoli dumplings – like gnudi, but firmer – on a bed of field peas that had been fried until crispy and mixed with spices associated with the everything bagel (poppy seeds, sesame seeds, dried onion, and dried garlic).  That was great too.

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One of the highlights of this dinner was a plate of four cuts of lamb – the heart, the tongue, a morcilla sausage, and a piece that Floresca called “lamb SPAM.”  These “best ends and bits” were served over a bed of Carolina gold rice and tented with a crispy sheet of moorish kale.  Although the rice was cooked a bit too soft for my liking, the fragrance of it, together with the crispiness of the kale and the super-flavorful cuts of lamb, were terrific. This course was a little postcard from the couple’s new home in the South.  (The lamb was from Border Springs Farm in Virginia.  I’ve had Craig Rogers’s lamb numerous times before, including at the Twelve Days of Christmas, when Ashley Christiansen presented lamb cassoulet two years ago, and most recently at Music to Your Mouth in South Carolina, where he cooked lamb ribs over the fire and glazed them with honey.)

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Kostow roasted beautiful pumpkins over the coals and presented them table side. The hot, steaming flesh was scooped from the gourds and spooned over bowls of black tea jelly and sheep’s milk yogurt.

Kostow also revived one of my favorite dishes from The Restaurant at Meadowood.  He coated strips of black cod with a powder of dried sunflower petals, and then basted them with hot oil until they were buttery and glowing-yellow.  He served the fish with a piece of pickled sunflower choke (from the blossom, not the root) and a creamy dollop of sunflower seed butter.  I love this dish.

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One of the most visually stunning and unique desserts I’ve had at The Restaurant at Meadowood was served this night.  It was, simply, a scoop of lily bulb ice cream topped with candied lily petals that were so thin and crispy, they shattered with a light tap of the spoon.  It was like eating Frosted Flakes cereal with ice cream, but with a faint, lily fragrance.  This was beautiful.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Venison Tartare
Watermelon radish, oxalis, crème fraîche.

Potato Dumplings
Caviar, crème fraîche.

Foie Gras “Stroopwafel”

“Foie Newtons”
Fig, foie gras, black truffle.

(Floresca & Ryan)

First Course 
Spot Prawn and Its Shell
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Second Course
Rutabaga
“Butterscotch,” vegetable jus.
(Floresca & Ryan)

Third Course 
Coal-Roasted Pumpkin
Black tea jelly, sheep’s milk yogurt.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fourth Course 
Black Cod
Cooked in sunflower.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
Broccoli Dumplings
Chevre, “everything” field peas.
(Floresca & Ryan)

Sixth Course 
Lamb “Best Ends and Bits”
Carolina gold rice, moorish kale.
(Floresca & Ryan)

Seventh Course 
Lily Bulb
Lily bulb ice cream, candied lily petals.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Eighth Course 
“Red Velvet”
Adzuki bean, peanut, clabbered milk.
(Floresca & Ryan)

~

Abrente
Albarino, 2014

Hourglass
Sauvignon Blanc, 2014

Hudson
Chardonnay, 2013

Matthiasson
Cabernet Franc, 2013

Joseph Phelps
“Insignia,” Cabernet Sauvignon, 2005

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~

Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

Photos: Coating balls of rutabaga with “butterscotch” made of caramelized lactose; Daniel Ryan, Kim Floresca, and Christopher Kostow at line-up; venison tartare with watermelon radish, oxalis, and crème fraîche; Frederico MacMaster scooping out coal-roasted pumpkin table-side; Nathaniel Dorn saucing Border Springs Farm lamb best ends and bits; basting black cod with hot sunflower-infused oil; the wine pairings; current executive sous chef Katianna Hong with former pastry chef Daniel Ryan and former executive sous chef Kim Floresca.

~

One of the three guest chefs at this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas whose restaurants I have not visited is Isaac McHale and his Clove Club in London, England.*  I know of him, of course, from his short stint with his merry band of Young Turks, which included James Lowe (now chef of Lyle’s in London) and Ben Greeno, who left the group to become head chef of momofuku Seiobo in Sydney, Australia (Greeno has since left Seiobo to become head chef of The Paddington in Woollahra, a neighborhood in Sydney).  But neither did I eat at their pop up at the Ten Bells, nor had I met any of them, or had any of their food.

So, I very much looked forward to this eighth night, when McHale cooked with Christopher Kostow at The Twelve Days of Christmas.

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McHale cooks full-tilt with flavor.  With the exception of his scallop dish – which I found cloying and heavy with truffle oil (probably magnified by hazelnuts) – most of it was great.

I loved his buttermilk-fried chicken nuggets, dusted with pine salt.  These were served piping-hot out of the fryer on a bed of pine boughs as a canapé.

I loved his “little blood pancake,” which he used as a mini tortilla for a delicious morsel of pork belly dusted with what McHale called “devil’s spice.”  This was great.

And I even loved his “flamed mackerel,” to which I hesitated at first.  I winced when it landed in front of me, the flesh looking raw and the skin blackened by a good torching.  Fatty fish, especially the skin, often give off a metallic, fishy flavor when prepared this way.  And I hate that. Perhaps the jarringly hot English mustard McHale served on the side was meant to bring relief, I thought.  But not in this version.  The fish was surprisingly clean, particularly the skin, which tasted much more of char than fish. And the only relief the mustard provided was the thin line it cut through the delicious, flavorful fattiness of the mackerel.

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The best thing that McHale served, in my opinion, came in a glass.  First, he had servers pour 100-year-old Port into our glasses.  We were asked to sniff and taste it.  A few moments later, the servers came around with steaming carafes of duck consommé and poured them into the madeira, fogging up the glass and producing a wonderful, fragrant smell.  I was surprised how the meatiness of the broth chased away the sweetness of the wine, both enriching the each other.  It was perfect for a chilly, winter night.

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Kostow presented two truly stunning courses this night.

I’ve had his cod with crispy sunchoke skin before.  And I didn’t mind having it again.  It’s one of my favorites.

He also served a tender cut of lamb topped with a dried plum. All of this was sauced with a minty lamb jus table side. Together, it was a simple, but extraordinary course.

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After McHale’s dessert of warm citrus and fennel, he served a couple of petits fours.  One was an ode to Dr. Henderson, who loved Fernet Branca with crème de menthe.  McHale mixed the two according to Henderson’s recipe, made them into liqueur-filled bon bons, and served them on trays lined with pages from the Dr. Henderson’s son’s cookbook, whence the recipe: “The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating.”

The other petit four was a tribute to McHale’s Scottish heritage (which can be detected in the slight lilt in his accent).  He served mini barley cakes, redolent with peat. They weren’t very sweet, and even a bit salty.  I especially loved this warm little ending to the night.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the first night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Isaac McHale.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Buttermilk-Fried Chicken
Pine salt.

Oat chip.
Cod roe.

(McHale)

Potato & Matsutake
Butter.

(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

First Course 
Flamed Mackerel
Chrysanthemum, English mustard.
(McHale)

Second Course
Scallop
Périgord truffles, hazelnut, mandarin.
(McHale)

Third Course 
Chestnuts and Oyster Broth
Local seaweed and caviar.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fourth Course 
Cod
Brown butter, sunchoke.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
A Little Blood Pancake of Pork Belly
Devil’s spice.
(McHale)

Sixth Course 
Duck & Morel Consommé
One-hundred year-old Port.
(McHale)

Seventh Course 
Lamb
Dried plum.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Eighth Course 
Cheddar
Quince, peppers.
(McHale)

Ninth Course 
Warm Blood Orange
Sheep’s milk yogurt, wild fennel granité.
(McHale)

~

Dr. Henderson’s Bon Bons
Peated Barley Cakes
(McHale)

~

Stony Hill
White Riesling, 2014

Massican
“Annia”
Ribolla Gialla, Tocai Friulano, Chardonnay, 2012

El Molino
Chardonnay, 2011

Brick and Mortar
“Cougar Rock Vineyard”
Pinot Noir, 2013

Lazy Susan Ranch
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2012

~

~

Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

* Since Kyle Connaughton, who cooked on the ninth night of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas, has not yet opened his anticipated restaurant Single Thread, I am not counting it as a fourth.

Photos: Dusting oat cakes piped with creamy cod roe; buttermilk-fried chicken dusted with pine salt; Isaac McHale dusting little blood pancakes with “devil’s spice;” Christopher Kostow piping sunchoke purée onto his cod dish; Frederico MacMaster pouring vintage Madeira; the wine pairings; and petits fours trays lined with pages from Fergus Henderson’s “The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating” cookbook.

~

Single Thread Farms Restaurant & Inn was conceived long before I first met Kyle Connaughton in March of 2014 at the Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine event in Carmel, California.  I know this because I had heard murmurings of it before I heard about it from Connaughton himself.  Now, nearly two years later, the multi-faceted enterprise – which, as suggested by its name, includes a farm, a restaurant, and a five-room inn – is about to open in Healdsburg in Sonoma County.

Having worked for Michel Bras (in Japan), Heston Blumenthal (at The Fat Duck), and having contributed to Nathan Myhrvold’s multi-tomed “Modernist Cuisine,” it’s understandable why Connaughton has attracted so much attention for this upcoming project. So, his timely appearance on the ninth night of this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas at the invitation of hosting chef Christopher Kostow offered a glimpse into what we might expect from him at Single Thread.

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Connaughton arrived with a suite of cookware, utensils, and plates, many of which were custom-made for him.  Used in table-side presentations, they were put to great effect; among the most impressive at this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas.

From my limited exposure to Connaughton’s cooking, it’s pretty clear that he draws a lot of influence from the time he has spent in Japan.  I’m sure his knowledge and repertoire of Japanese cuisine far exceeds that which I have seen of his cooking. But, much of what he had presented in Carmel last year and at the Twelve Days of Christmas this year seemed to center around the Japanese claypot, or donabe, a subject upon which he has recently written in “Donabe: Classic and Modern Japanese Clay Pot Cooking,” a cookbook he released earlier this year.*  

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At this dinner, he showed off the versatility and virtues of the donabe.

He used it to smoke Mount Lassen trout with cherry wood chips.  Connaughton and his wife Katina (who will be running the farm side of the Single Thread operation) set up a station in the center of the kitchen for this showy canapé during the pre-dinner reception. Guests were invited into center court to see the sight and to smell the smoke.  The warm fish, barely cooked, was served with koji made from Buddha’s hand and some salty shio koji vinaigrette.

Connaughton baked cod with root vegetables in a larger donabe. Once cooked, the alabaster filets were tented with a pané topping, which was laminated to the fish under the broiler.  Presented family-style in the donabe, the fish and its accompaniments, including a delicious walnut-nori “pesto,” were portioned individually at the table.

And, the donabe was used to steam chestnut cake. Like many Asian cakes, this one was almost jarringly unsweetened. Connaughton balanced out the dessert with a marshmallow sherbet of fromage blanc and a syrupy, warm pear broth, which was poured out of a beautiful, copper vessel that arrived in its own heated carrier (photo below).

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One of the most visually arresting dishes of the night was Connaughton’s sea urchin course.  Aaron Koseba, Connaughton’s chef de cuisine at Single Thread, had gone diving off the Sonoma Coast for these urchins the day before.  Koseba hauled in a giant cooler brimming with sea water and over a hundred of these spiny creatures.  The spines were pared back and the tops carefully cut open to reveal the star-shaped gonads inside.

Leaving the gonads intact, the urchins were cleaned out.  For service, negi (scallion) panna cotta was spooned into the shell, which was then piped full of warm, frothy potato purée.  All of this was crowned, generously, with caviar.  As you can imagine, altogether, this was incredibly rich.

The urchins were presented on a diorama of rock, sand, and “seawater” (dyed water set with lots of gelatin).

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Kostow echoed Connaughton’s Japanese-style dessert with a dessert of mochi (pounded glutinous rice) and persimmons (both ripe and dried).  All of it glistened with a warm syrup sweetened with piloncillo.

Kostow also served wedges of Contralto cheese (from Andante Dairy in Petaluma, California) brushed with acorn miso and lightly sautéed rabe.  It’s a combination I never would have thought would work together.  But it did, incredibly well.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the ninth night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Kyle Connaughton.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Mount Lassen Trout
Smoked in a donabe with cherry wood, served with
Buddha’s hand koji and shio koji vinaigrette.

Seared Aji
Umeboshi.

(Connaughton)

“Chips & Dip”
Alpine cheese, onion, and yeast.

(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

First Course 
Sea Urchins from the Sonoma Coast
Onion panna cotta, roasted potato, caviar.
(Connaughton)

Second Course
Sweet Potato Dumpling
Speck, pine nut, white truffle.
(Connaughton)

Third Course 
Kohlrabi
Rye, mustard.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fourth Course 
Black Cod “Fukkura-San”
Root vegetable, walnut nori pesto.
(Connaughton)

Fifth Course 
Hokkaido Beef
Matsutake, sansho, chrysanthemum.
(Connaughton)

Sixth Course 
Contralto
Acorn miso, sesame.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Seventh Course 
Chestnut Steam Cake
Fromage blanc marshmallow, pear broth.
(Connaughton)

Eighth Course 
Rice
Hoshigaki, piloncillo, pecan.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

~

The Paring
Sauvignon Blanc, 2013

Stony Hill
Gewürztraminer, 2013

Kongsgaard
Chardonnay, 2013

Jonata
“Todos”
Red Blend, 2011

Château Montalena
Cabernet Sauvignon, 1996

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~

Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

~

* Connaughton gifted me a copy of this cookbook when he arrived at the Twelve Days of Christmas.

Photos: Cleaning sea urchins; Kyle Connaughton smoking Mount Lassen trout in a donabe; baked black cod in a donabe waiting to be flashed under the broiler; Connaughton’s sea urchin course, with negi panna cotta, warm potato purée, and caviar; Kostow’s dessert of pounded glutinous rice, with pecans, persimmons and piloncillo; the wine pairings; and Kyle Connaughton pouring warm pear syrup into a bowl of steamed chestnut cake and fromage blanc sherbet.

~

He speaks Japanese, of course.  But he also speaks Spanish, French, and more English than I speak in any of those languages.  His name is Atsushi Tanaka, and I ate at his Restaurant A.T. in Paris last year (here are the photos from that dinner in September of 2014).  At the time, I had not heard of him – I was urged to eat there by my friend Laurent Vanparys (ironically, a Belgian whose Flemish name means “from Paris”).  And, judging by the clientele in his restaurant that night, neither had the rest of Paris.  I think I was the only non-Japanese person in that small dining room.

But in the year since, I have seen Tanaka’s name billed at culinary events around the world, including this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas, where he was the tenth chef to cook with Christopher Kostow at The Restaurant at Meadowood.

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Tanaka has worked for chefs, who have dynamic plating styles (Pierre Gagnaire, Quique Dacosta, and Bart de Pooter, among others), and it shows.  In introducing Tanaka to his staff at line-up, Kostow even highlighted Tanaka’s unique and particularly eye-catching presentations. They’re artful, and colorful.

One dish, for example, recreated the effect of camouflage with a patchwork of green and grey crisps made from bamboo charcoal powder and parsley.  Underneath these wafer-thin chips was raw horse mackerel.  All of this was showered with a frozen powder of juniper berry cream table-side.  It was very dramatic.

So was an austere-looking plate of hinoki (Japanese cypress) cream, “sponged” onto the plate with the underside of a side plate.  With it came a hillock of milk crumble, ashen with charcoal, atop which sat a turn of hinoki ice cream, also tinted grey with charcoal.  Next to this lunar landscape was the accompanying side plate, with the counterpart hinoki cream smear on its upturned side.  This side dish was finished with a stamped out round of blueberry cake, inky with the fruit’s juices, and topped with a single, fresh blueberry.  

I had never had hinoki before.  In this dessert, its flavor was faint, but discernible, its fragrance mellow and sweet, tasting of wood. (Four Magazine published the recipe for this dessert.  Note, it is plated slightly differently in the magazine photo than it was at the Twelve Days of Christmas.)

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Amadai, Tanaka served with its crispy scales and celeriac.  Duck, he served with beets.

More interesting to me was a bowl of quince and apple cooked in butter, topped with pine ice cream, and then veiled in a translucent sheet of pine “paper.”  A frozen powder of pine cream was scattered over all of it.  

I have to admit that at first, the pine paper was kind of annoying.  The papery plastic wrap-like sheet was nearly impenetrable.  I had to use my fork to shred my way to the ingredients underneath it, and even then, I largely just folded it up and mixed it in with the rest.  But, all together, the flavor of the pine, apple, and quince was extraordinary.  And, I even liked the chewiness of the paper, which dissolved quickly in my mouth.

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Kostow’s side of the menu was full of great hits this night.  He gave his corn porridge a much-deserved encore appearance (I wrote about this dish on the sixth night).  I find it both admirable and amazing that Kostow doesn’t like to repeat any dishes during the Twelve Days of Christmas, even though he has to cook three or four courses each night for eleven nights in a row, followed by an entire tasting menu on the twelfth night (you do the math).  But of all of the courses that came out of his kitchen at this year’s Twelve Days of Christmas, this is the one I would have most wanted to have again (so thanks, Christopher!).

Kostow also marinated whole lobes of foie gras with herbs and then seared them – the entire surface – with glowing-hot embers of white oak.  I watched David Guilloty, one of the cooks, do this earlier in the day and was mesmerized by the smoke, which billowed from the fatty livers as he methodically worked his way around them with a log of hot coal.  The lobe was sliced across, and the thick slabs – blushing in the center, ringed with a delicious rim of char – were served with some winter pea tendrils and buttery slices of toasted brioche.  Foie gras is usually something that I happily forego.  First, it’s hard to find anyone who can cook it properly.  Secondly, it’s hard to find anyone doing anything interesting with it anymore.  This dish succeeded on both counts.

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Kostow anchored the dinner with a beautiful cut of pork collar, which and been rolled and marinated in cherry leaves.  This tender round of meat was topped with a preserved cherry and a rich meat sauce with fennel.  It was so simple, but so flavorful.  I loved it.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the tenth night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Atsushi Tanaka.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Leek
Brown butter.

Fried Salsify
Honey gel, broccoli blossoms.

(Tanaka)

First Course 
Oyster
Kohlrabi, sudachi.
(Tanaka)

Second Course
Coal-Roasted Foie Gras
Winter pea.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Third Course 
Amadai & Celeriac
(Tanaka)

Fourth Course 
Our Corn
Butter, white truffle.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
Duck & Beet
(Tanaka)

Sixth Course 
Pork
Preserved cherries, wild fennel.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Seventh Course 
Hinoki
Blueberry.
(Tanaka)

Eighth Course 
Pine, Apple, Quince
(Tanaka)

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Forlorn Hope
Semillon, 2011

Scribe
Riesling, 2012

Stony Hill
Chardonnay, 2009

Matthiasson
Ribolla Gialla, 2013

The Scholium Project
“Androkteinos”
Syrah, 2010

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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Photos: Tanaka’s striking “camouflage” dish; Tanaka’s duck and beet course; Tanaka, with Katianna Hong plating the Hinoki dessert; David Guilloty searing foie gras with hot coals; Tanaka’s pine, apple, quince course; the wine pairings; Nick Speth with Tanaka in The Restaurant at Meadowood garden.

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A dinner series called the Twelve Days of Christmas hosted by a Jewish chef wouldn’t be complete without Chinese food, right?

Enter: Justin Yu.

He’s the chef and co-owner of Oxheart, a restaurant in Houston where he has earned national acclaim for his vegetable-focused menu.

The last time I was in Houston was in 1988.  So, unfortunately, I haven’t eaten at Oxheart yet.  But, by coincidence, I’ve had quite a few opportunities to taste Yu’s food this year.

In late September, Yu came to Kansas City to cook at a charity dinner that I help organize every year.  Then, in November, I saw him in Carmel, where he cooked at this year’s Rediscovering Coastal Cuisine dinner.  And, if the third time is supposed to be a charm, then Christopher Kostow had impeccable timing in inviting Yu to the eleventh night of the Twelve Days of Christmas at The Restaurant at Meadowood to fulfill all of our holiday hopes and stereotypes by cooking what Yu and I irreverently refer to as “our people’s food.”  (Yu, his co-owner and pastry chef Karen Man, his cook Sam Chang, and I are all children of Chinese immigrants, causing me to joke that BravoTV has the “Shahs of Sunset,” and The Twelve Days of Christmas have the Mandarins of Meadowood.)

I jest. Sort of.

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I walked into the kitchen and Karen Man was making scallion pancakes.

Scallion pancakes!

I love scallion pancakes.

She was spreading the sticky, bubbly dough with a scallion paste made with pork fat.  One by one, she rolled them up, forming them into little rounds to rest.

On the other side of the kitchen, Katianna Hong, the executive sous chef at The Restaurant at Meadowood, was also rolling out dough.  Onto it, she was spreading a green paste made from random cuttings of winter greens from the garden.  Hong rolled the sheet of dough into a log and tucked the entire strip snuggly into a buttered babka mold.  She patted a strip of parchment paper on top of the dough, making sure the top was even, and then weighted it all down with rocks.

Back and forth Man and Hong moved, between their floured countertops, with their rolling pins, and their babka molds and sheet trays.

It was great, this synergy, between East and West, Yu and Kostow.  It became a running thread that tied this dinner together nicely, placing it among my favorite dinners this years.

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On the night before the Twelve Days of Christmas started, I had dinner at The Restaurant at Meadowood.  At the end of my meal, Kostow served a miniature chocolate babka, topped with a thin plaque of chocolate that was melting onto the warm cake.

At this dinner, he turned those babkas into canapés.  Now swirled with winter greens instead of chocolate, they were quickly toasted and topped with a slice of goat butter.  I might have had a two or three of them (don’t worry, I made sure everyone else got one first).

Along with the vegetable-filled crystal dumplings (a.k.a. har gow) in warm kohlrabi broth that Justin Yu served, and his mung bean crêpes, the three canapés presented on this night were among my favorite canapés this year.  Those mung bean crêpes were folded over a Gulf shrimp filling pungent with “Gulf shrimp sofrito,” which Yu made from dried Gulf shrimp in the style of Chinese dried shrimp.  I especially loved the bit of cilantro tucked into the wrap, providing a bright, grassy relief from the rich, flavorful sofrito. It was a fantastic combination of textures and flavors.

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Back to those scallion pancakes: they were pan-fried, and then dusted with a powder of dried scallions and collard greens.  Golden and crispy on the outside, they were hot and flavorful on the inside.  Infused with pork fat and scallion, there were fatty without being soggy or greasy.  The cakes were quartered and sent out to tables to share.  On the side, Yu served a relish of radishes cooked down in pork fat.

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The highlight of this dinner for me was Yu’s smoked beef ribs.  These Flintstone-sized plate ribs, which are commonly used in Texas barbecue, were rubbed with black pepper and smoked on the bone.

For service, the ribs were removed and the beef sliced thick, the way Texas brisket is.  The meat was served with nothing more than a warm beef broth spiked with tangy Chinese black vinegar.  The simplicity of it was a confident statement; it really needed nothing more.  The meeting of ashy, black pepper heat with the sweet, musty acidity of the vinegar was a combination that was both new, and yet familiar to me.  It was at once Texas barbecue, and Chinese beef; common ground between two seemingly different cultures and cuisines.  Exceedingly moist and fatty, the meat was perfectly cooked, served with only a fork and spoon.

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On Kostow’s side of the menu was a tartine of herbs and seaweed, served with a jar of whelk conserva.  The tender whelk meat was suspended in a flavorful fat, which I spooned liberally over the buttered strip of bread.

Kostow also served a rosy slice of duck breast with vegetables from the garden.

And for dessert, Kostow presented a crowd favorite: a rich purée of grilled dates anointed with a touch of walnut oil.

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Below, you’ll find the menu from the eleventh night of the Twelve Days of Christmas featuring Justin Yu.   To see all of the photos from this dinner, CLICK HERE.

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Canapés
Mung Bean Crêpe
Gulf shrimp, “sofrito,” cilantro.

Crystal Dumplings
Kohlrabi broth, citrus oil.

(Yu)

Winter Greens Babka
Goat butter.

(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

First Course 
Fermented Alliums
Pork fat, radish.
(Yu)

Second Course
Tartine of Herbs & Seaweed
Whelk conserva.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Third Course 
Pink-Eyed Pea
Green peanut, mushrooms.
(Yu)

Fourth Course 
Duck & Vegetables
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

Fifth Course 
Beef Rib
Black pepper, black vinegar.
(Yu)

Sixth Course 
Carrot-Fennel Cake.
(Man)

Seventh Course 
Grilled Dates
Walnut Oil.
(The Restaurant at Meadowood)

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Wei Chi
Semillon, 2012

Larkmead
Tocai Friulano, 2013

Enfield Wine Co.
Chardonnay, 2013

Stalin Family Vineyard
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2006

Corison
Cabernet Sauvignon, 2010

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Below are links to my posts and photos from all of the Twelve Days of Christmas dinners I have attended over the past four years at the Restaurant at Meadowood.  Each chef is listed with the restaurant with which they were cooking at the time they participated in the event (some have moved on to other projects and restaurants).

2012

Scott Anderson (Elements; Princeton, New Jersey)
John & Karen Shields (Formerly of Townhouse; Chilhowie, Virginia)
Phillip Foss (EL Ideas; Chicago, Illinois)
Stuart Brioza & Nicole Krasinski (State Bird Provisions; San Francisco, California)
Jason Franey (Canlis Restaurant; Seattle, Washinton)
Matthias Merges (Yusho; Chicago, Illinois)
Mori Onodera (Formerly of Mori Sushi; Los Angeles, California)
James Syhabout (Commis; Oakland, California)
Nick Anderer (Maialino; New York, New York)
David Toutain (Agapé Substance; Paris, France)
Josh Habiger & Erik Anderson (The Catbird Seat; Nashville Tennessee)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2013

Andy Ricker (Pok Pok, Portland, Oregon & New York, New York)
Rodolfo Guzman (Boragó; Santiago, Chile)
Carlo Mirarchi (Blanca and Roberta’s; Brooklyn, New York)
Tim Cushman (O Ya; Boston, Massachusetts)
Ashley Christensen (Poole’s Diner; Raleigh, North Carolina)
David Chang (Momofuku; New York, New York)
Matthew Accarrino (SPQR; San Francisco, California)
Mark Ladner & Brooks Headley (Del Posto; New York, New York)
Rasmus Kofoed (Geranium; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Nicolaus Balla & Cortney Burns (Bar Tartine; San Francisco, California)
David Kinch (Manresa; Los Gatos, California)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2014

Matthew Orlando (Amass; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Frank Castranovo & Frank Falcinelli (Frankies 457, Prime Meats; New York, New York)
Kobe Desramaults (In de Wulf; Dranouter, Belgium)
Alexandre Gauthier (La Grenouillère; La Madelaine-sous-Montreuil, France)
Blaine Wetzel (Willows Inn; Lummi Island, Washington)
Joshua McFadden (Ava Gene’s; Portland, Oregon)
Virgilio Martinez (Central; Lima, Peru)
Grant Achatz (Alinea; Chicago, Illinois)
Corey Lee (Benu; San Francisco, California)
Esben Holmboe Bang (Maaemo; Oslo, Norway)
Ignacio Mattos (Estela; New York, New York)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

2015

Daniel Humm (Eleven Madison Park, NoMad; New York, New York)
Nenad Mlinarevic (Focus; Vitznau, Switzerland)
Christian Puglisi (relæ; Copenhagen, Denmark)
Jorge Vallejo (Quintonil; Mexico City, Mexico)
Joshua Skenes (Saison; San Francisco, California)
Matthew Wilkinson (Pope Joan; Melbourne, Australia)
Kim Floresca and Daniel Ryan ([One]; Chapel Hill, North Carolina)
Isaac McHale (The Clove Club; London, The United Kingdom)
Kyle Connaughton (Single Thread; Healdsburg, California)
Atsushi Tanaka (A.T. Restaurant; Paris, France)
Justin Yu (Oxheart; Houston, Texas)
Christopher Kostow (The Restaurant at Meadowood; St. Helena, California)

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Photos: Yu’s beef ribs with black pepper and black vinegar; Karen Man making scallion pancakes; Katianna Hong slicing a log of babka of winter greens; Sam Chang serving Yu’s mung bean crêpe with Gulf shrimp; Kostow’s winter greens babka topped with melting goat butter; Justin Yu and a Flintstone-sized smoked beef rib;  Christopher Kostow dusting his tartines of herbs and seaweed, served with whelk conserva; the wine pairings; Christopher Kostow, Justin Yu, Karen Man, Sam Chang, and the staff of The Restaurant at Meadowood.