February 19, 2011
On Friday night, I met up with Kerstin for dinner at the new culinary hotspot,
Atelier Crenn, solo venture from hot chef
Dominique Crenn. The restaurant is in the sophisticated and minimally-designed former Plumpjack space on Fillmore (Union Street neighborhood), and features Crenn's "poetic" tasting menu.
The menu includes Crenn's poetic stylings, with each dish described in prose. Kerstin and I chose the "Three Savory Courses" route (for $59), with the option to add a cheese and dessert course after if we still had space ($75 for 5 courses).
To start, we were treated to the "Amusements: An Introduction to Winter", featuring five different amuse bouches to start the meal. The different choices included potato pockets, hamachi crudo, foie gras pellets, deep-fried seaweed, and goose liver pate. This was a fantastic beginning to the meal and every bite was delicious. Thankfully, we chose the right order of bites to try, as we started light with the potato pockets and ended with the goose liver pate.
We each chose the Foie Gras to start, served with "winter nuances", which was the best serving of this delicacy that I've ever had, balanced nicely with the "nuances":
We both also chose the Arctic Char as our second course, with rose, horseradish and fennel. The presentation included the server pouring the rose essence on dry ice to create the effect below (the char is sitting on a large decorative rock):
The Char was delightful and perfectly cooked.
In between courses, we were treated with two palate cleansers, the first was a meyer lemon foam:
The second palate cleanser of grapefruit sorbet, and some other fixin's that I can't remember:
Of note, the second palate cleanser was served as the kitchen made a mistake on Kerstin's third course and they wanted to keep us happy while they fixed their error. I was impressed by the serving staff, who recognized immediately the error and helped us continue to enjoy our dinner without interruption.
For the third course, I chose "The Sea, an interpretation of aquatic flavors", which included morsels of oysters, scallops, rock shrimp, uni, and "sand". It was so delicious.
In the end, there was no room for cheese or dessert, but just as well, an excuse to come back.
As I had posted in my post-food-heaven Facebook post, this was one of the best meals that I've ever had in SF. I can't wait to go back.
