Last night I went to a birthday dinner (my birthday! Mine all mine!) at Bouchon in Beverly Hills. Thomas Keller opened the restaurant in November, and I’d been dying to go; maybe everybody who tries to cook at home and becomes a little hooked has a chef on whom they have a big cooking crush, and mine are Thomas Keller and Alice Waters. My parents got me the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook, which I can already tell will be one of my favorites. Something that’s tough when you’re cooking a lot is hitting a kind of boring pattern of cooking things you’re comfortable with, and probably the best way to get around this is to occasionally eat some food at a restaurant to give yourself ideas.
As someone who’s only been cooking for the past five years or so, I’m just getting to the point where I can recognize ingredients in food I eat at restaurants. Some of them are kind of obvious, but it’s (embarrassingly) exciting to get to the point where you think, “Oh, that must be tarragon.” What a great skill to develop (she said sarcastically), but it really does help you re-create things you like when you have dinner out, and it gives you ideas. You’re not dumb so I’m articulating this more because it’s good for me to remind myself: if you want to be a good cook, you have to give yourself a break every so often and eat somebody else’s food. Cooking is the most fun game: everybody wins. It’s collaborative and it has a narrative and ANYWAY THIS BRINGS ME TO MY BIRTHDAY DINNER AT BOUCHON.
Some of the Bouchon reviews are really, really harsh. I think the reason for this is that people love to be “wowed.” When you go to Katsu-ya, you’re like, dazzled by combinations and crazytalk on the menu and hey — I am with you. But Thomas Keller is doing something else, something that I appreciate: eating at one of his restaurants gives you an arsenal of things to try. He cooks things forever (the short ribs, which I had) or unconventionally fast (like his roast chicken recipe, which is the best roast chicken in the world — no added fat, no added anything really — it almost tastes fried. It’s exquisite), but he uses traditional French methods and ingredients. Thomas Keller is kind of the next generation’s Julia Child: I’m making a chicken recipe from the Joy of Cooking tonight, and all of the ingredients are straight-forward and dealt with in a very logical way. It is not the only way to make great food, but it’s probably the easiest way to learn to cook, because it allows you to taste every ingredient and understand how it was used. This is the kind of food I love to make, because the innovation comes more from how to do it without letting it overwhelm you than doing something that hasn’t been done before.
Bouchon is beautiful, but I can understand how its decor could be criticized (as it has been on Yelp and OpenTable), because its capacity (large) and lighting (pinky-violet?) are a stark contrast to its whole vibe/decor. Bistros are generally small and dark, and this space is pretty cavernous — though to be honest, I found it really welcoming and would probably only change the lighting. The bar menu is impressive and the wine was terrific. We had:
- Escargot. I know this seems horrible but I can’t eat escargot. When I was very young and impressionable I had a snail named Millie, who grew from a tiny little speck of nothing to an impressive golf-ball size and who I fed mostly iceberg lettuce. I just can’t do it. I did, however, eat lots of the butter at the bottom of their little cups. And it was great.
- A frisee, lardons and poached egg salad; it was great. I might have scaled back a little on the frisee but that doesn’t mean I didn’t finish it. For the record, I finished everything.
- White bean puree/crostini/bread and butter: I finished all of this as well. The white bean puree had (I think) some lemon juice, garlic and flat-leaf parsley. If I could make this at home, I’d sell it to you and you would pay me and you know why? Because it’s A DELIGHT.
- Pork belly with risotto: get this. I think it was braised in ham stock. You have never met a texture like this in your life. You’ll fall over and die.
- Short ribs with parsnip puree: I have never seen a short rib this large. It was like a dinosaur’s short rib. Big points for that. Also, these short ribs are not as traditionally sweet (I usually braise in sherry but even when I use red wine, there’s a sweetness there — I like it, but it can sometimes be cloying), nor did they have a thick reduction. I liked this about them, because it was a much cleaner presentation of short ribs than I’ve seen, and not quite as rich.
- Beignets: filled with pastry cream and rolled in sugar and cinnamon, these were one of my favorite desserts I’ve had in recent memory. There were two, and they came with excellent chocolate ice cream.
- Chocolate mousse, which was served with small butter cookies and covered with a layer of ganache. This was also a great choice — the chocolate was very, very dark and the mousse was dense but airy. I almost got the pot de creme (the special was orange), but I was glad we went with this.
I highly recommend.
