Christopher Burns, the chef de cuisine at JeanRo Bistro, has caught the nose-to-tail fever. This philosophy of cooking is about using all of an animal, not just the filet and the other choice muscle meats, but exploiting organ meats, tougher cuts, fattier cuts - pork belly, tongue, brain, heart, sweet breads.i became fixated on this meal and started talking about it constantly. however, i could not afford it, and i did not know who the hell would want to go with me even if i could. so i just speculatively dissected it at length with whoever would listen.
well apparently the flying spaghetti monster has got my back, because a couple weeks ago this conversation miraculously appeared in my life:
kieran: i have a business proposition.
me: haha.
kieran: no, seriously.
me: ok, what? (note: neither one of us knows anything about business)
kieran: i have to get these bios translated for my trip to chile. it's going to cost a lot. so here is my proposition. if you do it for me, i'll take you to the nose to tail dinner.
me: are you serious?!?!
kieran: i'm serious.
me: oh my god! yes! wow! definitely!
and that is the story of how poor liz with no money who is saving pretty much her entire monthly eating out budget on dinner at pigall's tomorrow night (i have to go before it closes!) got to go to the nose to tail dinner.
ok. i am sorry. can you tell that i am avoiding at all costs actually writing about the dinner? readers, i know i am about to lose you here if i don't get to writing about the food, but please first let me explain myself. i really really really looked forward to this dinner. i mean i was talking about it nonstop before i even knew i was going to it! and the thing is... i don't think i liked it. i have been battling with myself for two days straight to figure out why. i have even been talking to people about how nervous i am about writing about this dinner on my blog.
my dilemma: how can i write about this meal, which was clearly prepared with so much thought and effort, and which involved foods that i was honestly afraid of, and say that i didn't like it? but i didn't. i went into this meal with high hopes but also more than a bit of anxiety, and i did not come out of it reassured. was it my fault for just not being open enough as an eater? or was it really just not that good? i wanted to be able to answer that question before i started writing, but i just don't have an answer. so i have decided that i'm just going to write. judge me as you will.
we will go course by course and i will bare my soul (and my stomach). the meal started at 7 pm on february 23. we drank a few beers ahead of time to calm our nerves and then plunged into the meal.
(note: you could have gotten wine pairings but we didn't. 8 courses of unfamiliar meats seemed like enough. add 8 glasses of wine to that and i don't know what would have happened.)
first course: veal sweet bread torchon with sauce gribiche and celery leaf salad
this was the first course so we started strong, but i was scared. i knew what sweet bread was and i knew i was going to have to actively not think about what it was in order to really focus on the flavors of the dish. i let kieran taste it first. "it tastes like bratwurst. i like it," he said.
so i took a taste. to me it didn't taste like bratwurst. it tasted... bland. and the texture was odd. it was like a coarse pate almost. or homemade play-doh. it sort of stuck together but sort of didn't, and it was all ground up.
the flavor was just blah. that made it hard for me because it made me focus so much on the texture, and all i could think was "body parts in a food processor." as if that wasn't gross enough, apparently sauce gribiche = egg salad. bleah. kieran: "mmmm, sweet breads good." (note: this is foreshadowing)
second course: seared lamb heart with roasted golden beets, apple quince puree, and lovage herb salad
this was probably my hardest dish to get through, partly because i absolutely loathe beets. they are the one food that instantly makes me gag. beets combined with heart seared to barely rare. "how am i going to eat this?" i wondered. i stared at it for a while. it stared back.
i decided to eat a bite of the beet first since honestly it seemed like the less scary option. bad choice. the beet as usual made me gag and then i was even less prepared to put a slice of rare heart in my mouth. not that the heart looked that bad... it looked kind of like beef carpaccio, which i love. i focused on that, closed my eyes, and popped it in my mouth.
kieran liked the heart: "you have to get over the texture and then it's really good. the flavor is very delicate." but i was hung up on texture and the idea of eating heart. it was so weird to chew. it would not break up. it was rubbery almost, without being tough, if that is possible. plus it was so rare it was almost raw. the fact that i had to chew and chew and chew disturbed me. i kept thinking about heart and it kept being in my mouth. then i thought about bloody hearts pumping blood. then i had to stop thinking about that. i was still chewing.
eventually i swallowed it. i told kieran he could have the rest of mine since he liked it so much. he put it in his mouth. "ewww... yours is weird. it's not like mine was. it's super raw. gross."
2 courses down.
third course: corned beef tongue hash with pommes lyonnaise, red wine poached egg and bordelaise
the problem for me at this point was that the earlier two courses had been so hard to get through that i really felt like i needed a break. and yet here was tongue slapping me in the face and calling my sister a whore. my hang up with tongue was that it comes from another creature's mouth. the idea of this organ that spends its life marinating in cow saliva being cooked up and then placed in my saliva really creeped me out. a dead tongue in direct contact with my live tongue. bleah. kieran meanwhile was waxing poetic about his grandma's tongue sandwiches or something.
the good thing about this dish was that it was mostly potatoes. a rich potato hash with tiny slivers of tongue sprinkled throughout and bathed in a thick rich brown sauce, with a poached quail (i think) egg on top. i focused on the potatoes and took a bite. to my surprise, it was delicious. i ate a piece of tongue by itself. it tasted like roasted pork, like you would find in chinese food. it was actually really good and i think i got over my fear of tongue!
we both loved this dish and ate every bite. but... did i love it because it was really good, or did i love it because it wasn't as frightening as the others? in hindsight, i'm not sure.
fourth course: brined and roasted pork belly with spiced oatmeal, henderson compote, and rioja reduction
finally something familiar. i have known and loved pork belly for years, so i was really looking forward to this course. the pork belly was good but not great. tasty and flavorful but slightly tough. henderson compote turned out to be a thick cherry and apple concoction that resembled cranberry sauce.
with this dish, i definitely liked it because it was familiar. comparing it to the scores of other pork bellies i've eaten, it's nowhere near as good. it didn't melt in my mouth, it was kind of tough, and i didn't like the oatmeal with the pork. but it was much better than other things i had eaten earlier on.
palate cleanser: fennel sorbet with champagne gelee
when i think palate cleanser, i think of something that is going to help my tongue relax and take a break from a meal. this fennel sorbet did not do that. it was overpoweringly strong... like taking a shot of ouzo or something. and i am not a fan of ouzo. i hate the flavor of anise and while i do like a little bit of fennel seeds in breads or rolls, it turns out that when you make a sorbet out of fennel it basically tastes like anise. i badly needed a break at this point and the fennel sorbet did not provide it.
champagne gelee... it was bitter, alcohol-ey jello. bleah. the palate cleanser left us on edge.
fifth course: lamb brain ravioli with lamb's head ragout
lamb brain was kieran's downfall. there is no other way to put it. before the meal we had been discussing what we were most scared of eating. for me it was the heart, and for him it was the brain. fortunately we both already had courage. get it? wizard of oz joke? wait, come back! i promise i will never do that to you again.
as i was saying, before the meal we were obsessing over what we most feared and kieran kept going on and on about the brain. maybe my repeated viewings of that nasty brain eating scene in hannibal left me desensitized to the idea of eating brain. but kieran kept talking about "gray matter" and "it's not really meat" and "eating the animal's soul" and all this crazy shit. he could not get over it.
when it came, it was weird. i had expected ground brain in place of ground beef inside a ravioli. what we got was more like a won ton wrapper filled with creamy cheese and bits of green vegetables and carrots. here and there was a tiny speck of something gray. yes, gray. then there was the chunky, gamy, lamby, carroty, lemony ragout.
altogether the flavors and textures were just too much. for me, it was overpowering and just not good. but this dish pretty much broke kieran's soul. he could not deal with it. he somehow managed to eat it all, but at the end he started muttering like a crazy person: "if only i could have actually tasted the brain, then it would be ok... but all that cheese... i don't even know what i was eating... what does brain taste like? if only i could know for sure that the weird flavor was the brain... where was the brain? what does it even look like?"
i pulled out a bit of brain and showed him. he couldn't take it. "ewwww... brain... get it away from me. i think i just threw up in my mouth a little bit. fuuuck... i just ate an animal's soul..." he then pulled out his blackberry and started posting on facebook about how he was eating lamb brains. then he announced that he was burping up sweetbreads and turned kind of green. and then he went outside to smoke a cigarette to calm his nerves.
at this point i am sitting here sipping my beer and i realize oh shit, we still have 3 more courses to go. and it was 9:30.
sixth course: hay scented ham with bacon broth, roasted enoki mushrooms, baby carrots, scallions, and crispy pig's ear
the mushroom was the best part of this course. that may not sound that impressive to you, but then you would need to know that i do not like mushrooms. they do not send waves of nausea over me the way beets do, but i don't like them. that should give you a little insight into this course.
bacon broth tasted to me like pork ramen broth. the ham was a thin square that was brown, flavorless, dry, and reminded me of something i would have found on an elementary school lunch tray. the bits of pig ear were so hard that i was afraid i would break a tooth just trying to chew them. we ate about 2 bites of this and gave up. kieran continued to burp up sweetbreads.
seventh course: 24-hour braised beef short rib with sauteed bone marrow, wheat berry risotto, and parsley salad
finally something else familiar, yet it was not at all comforting. the short rib was unforgivably dry. so dry it was almost beef jerky. i don't even understand how it could be this dry. 24 hours of braising should make that physically impossible. i don't know what happened. aside from the distracting dryness, it was bland.
bone marrow. we had both had it and liked it before. but we didn't like this bone marrow. it was served in a round slice on the plate, removed from the bone. it was like jello and not nearly as soft as it should have been. and it was totally bland.
by the time i got to wheat berry risotto, i just gave up. i was so full and i didn't care anymore. it was 10:30 at night and i wanted to go home and go to bed. at this point kieran announced that he didn't like the sweetbreads or the heart and had simply been deluding himself at the time. then he burped up more sweetbreads and went to smoke another cigarette.
eighth course: smoked honey gelato with spice cake and foie gras cotton candy
ok, seriously. we've been sitting here eating crazy shit for almost four hours at this point. the least we could have gotten is a delicious, rewarding dessert. but it was not to be.
kieran was so tired and emotionally drained by lamb brains and burping up sweetbreads that the minute he saw ice cream, he got really excited and scooped it up and shoved it into his mouth without a second thought... until it hit his tongue. then he was stuck battling with himself, trying not to spit it out.
i was scared watching this but i tasted a bit. the only way i can describe it is that it tasted like someone had taken some perfectly good gelato and poured an entire bottle of liquid smoke into it. straight up disgusting. honestly, this might have been even worse than hearts and brains and sweetbreads. in terms of flavor anyway it was the worst part of the meal. so nasty.
kieran could not even consider touching the foie gras cotton candy. i put a bit in my mouth and it just tasted like cotton candy. the spice cake was fine but by that point my palate and my stomach were begging for mercy. they could not handle one more strongly flavored food item, no matter how familiar it might be.
at 11 pm we finally finished this marathon of a meal. never before had i been exposed to so many challenging food items in one sitting, let alone such a long sitting. as we waited to pay, we noticed some people who had been ooohing and aaahing over the entire meal (they got the wine pairings, which i am convinced did a lot to help them enjoy their meal so energetically). they got up from their table and went into the kitchen.
kieran: why are they going in the kitchen?
me: maybe they are going to thank the chef for the meal.
kieran: we should go talk to the chef too.
me: why? what the hell would we say?
kieran: i would tell him that some of his dishes were ok, and the others just made me want to kill myself.
we left the restaurant completely exhausted. never in my life has a meal been so long and so draining. the sheer length of the meal (4 hours!). the long waits between courses. dish after dish of strangely flavored and textured food items which i just did not really enjoy (for the most part). unsettling preparations of even those foods that should have been familiar and comforting. for me as an eater, it was a test of will and endurance.
however, that does not fully describe why the meal was so challenging for me. what i realized is that the meal also lacked comfort. if i am going to try a bunch of foods that quite frankly i am afraid of, i need to have some rest stops along the way. i can't go for four hours without a break. the palate cleanser should have been a break. it wasn't. the dishes that were familiar (pork belly, short rib, ice cream) should have been prepared well. they weren't. the servers should have been doting. they weren't. the lights should have been dim. they were bright. the dishes should have come out quickly. we waited at least 15 minutes between every course.
i'm still trying to process the meal. i learned that i am an adventurous eater compared to most people, but i am not quite as adventurous as i thought i was. i learned that i like tongue. i learned that 8 courses is too much for me. i learned about the importance of texture in food. i learned about my own mental limitations with respect to my eating.
the nose to tail dinner was not just a meal, it was an experience. it was an entire evening which consumed your senses and your energy. and i just don't think the restaurant was prepared to meet the needs of the diners. but maybe it is me who was not prepared to meet the demands of the meal?
i still don't have any answers, but what i do know is that this was without question one of the most fascinating and challenging meals of my life. despite the fact that i really don't think i liked what i ate, i learned a lot about myself as an eater and i am very glad i had the opportunity to experience the meal.
