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| An Egg Thing Dish with Potato Chip |
I don’t live to eat. Don’t get me wrong,
I know good food from bad food and I like good food, it’s just not high on my
priority list of things to do. If I had to choose between going to a nice
restaurant and going to a writer’s conference, I’d pick the writer’s conference
and happily eat crackers and protein bars. So, when I told my friend I was
invited to eat at The French Laundry in Napa Valley, California I didn’t
understand her reaction it was somewhere between awe and disgust. The disgust
came from the fact that I didn’t actually remember the restaurant’s name and
she had to help me out. She begged me to take pictures of every course. Every
course? Really? Okay, I told her, I’ll take pictures. Strange woman.
The restaurant didn’t stand out when we
drove up to it, in fact there were no visible signs telling us it was anything
other than an old building on a corner across the street from a garden, that
was later told to me by our waiter provided the veggies for our meal. There was
no valet service for the line of limos and fancy cars parked around it in
gravel. It was as unassuming as me.
My family parked our car and I followed, in
painfully high heels, into the restaurant. It was quaint and no different than
a lot of restaurants I’ve been to that were formerly something else, like a
barn, or a gas station, or a mini-mart. Its tiny staircase reminded me of the
one in my grandfather’s house that was too small even for my feet, and if I
didn’t take each step carefully I knew I’d trip in the fancy heels of mine and
show everyone the color of my undies.
But I made it to the top of the stairs
without so much as a flip of my dress. We were ushered into a private room
where our party of eight could celebrate my mother-in-law’s birthday. The
reservation for the room was set up a year in advance by my sister-in-law who
had to speed dial for days between Noon and 1:30 p.m., the only time the reservation
line opened. Still, really? It was that hard to get into this place? Yeah, I
know I’d just seen a commercial for the American Express card a few days
before, celebrating the guy, whose name I still don’t remember, and his amazing
French Laundry restaurant. But I eat to live, food is food.
As we sat waiting for the rest of our
party to arrive I surveyed the room. The small lamps scattered around us caught
my eye and I laughed. Their translucent shades had the wash, tumble dry, iron-safe
symbols on them. I appreciated their humor and subtlety. At each of our place
settings an old fashioned clothes pin, with The French Laundry name burned into
it, sat on top of a menu printed just that day, since every day was special
enough to get its own menu, with a birthday wish emblazed to my mother-in-law.
Okay, I’m starting to think this place is pretty cool.
We were ready for the first course, one
of eight. The four hour parade of food began with bread the size of a golf
ball. It balanced alone in the middle of my teacup plate. Huh. The waiter
described the bread. It was made using blah, blah, blah, and cheese. Cheese? My
ears perked up when I heard one of my favorite ingredients mentioned. I ate the
bread ball in two bites, which I was glad of since the flavors electrified my
mouth. It was unlike anything my finely tuned Wisconsin cheesehead taste buds
had ever, well, tasted.
Our plates were cleared without so much
as a tinkling of glass. A soup cup was placed in front of me. Course two. I
glanced in the liquid-free cup and found a few dry ingredients and a purple
flower. Hard not to think, and? Four waiters entered the room in Matrix-like
suits. They stood behind each lady and in perfect unison poured the soup until
the purple flower floated gracefully to the top of a sea of cream.
Breathtaking.
Each of the eight, yeah eight, courses
were all the same kind of choreographed dance, lifting lids at the same time to
reveal display after display of edible art. I wondered early on in the meal how
portions that small over four hours could fill me up. I mean I’m used to
grazing all day at home and with two kids I rarely sit down to eat. But at the
end of the performance, called dinner at The French Laundry, I was relieved to
be wearing a dress and not pants with a button and a waist band because surely
the button would have popped off.
At nearly midnight we ended the epoch
meal with the last of the four desert offerings, an assortment of truffles. I
only managed one bite and then suffered a moment of nausea. I was officially
full. I can’t say that I have ever been so satisfied calorically in my life.
As the charming restaurant lights receded
in my rearview mirror I smiled. I eat to live, and yet that food experience
will forever be one of my topics of conversation. And as for pictures, I made a
book of them. There are pages dedicated to the edible art, and each photo still
makes my mouth tingle.
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