Grace Notes
Club Culinaire is speed dating for foodies
By Richard Foss
Consider the chef, working in a hot, hectic, dangerous environment to create a masterpiece, but never talking with the dining room patrons who pay to enjoy it. It’s like being in a TV sitcom as opposed to live theater, giving your all for an audience you never see. Small wonder that when they get a chance to meet with people who appreciate good food, top chefs leap at the opportunity.
I met several stars of the kitchen at a “Chef a Table” dinner, a regular event run by the Club Culinaire of French Cuisine. These dinners are like speed dating – you begin each meal with a famous chef at your table, and as each course is served, the chef moves and another takes his place. I had hesitated to attend events because the name Club Culinaire sounded daunting – surely everyone would speak perfect French and look down their noses at my accent. Then came a dinner at Grace, a restaurant I have always wanted to visit, and assurance from a friend that the events weren’t stuffy at all. I decided I had to go.
At Grace, the small bar area was packed with people chatting merrily while quaffing Champagne, and while the wine was French, the first conversations I heard were in English. (Much better than vice-versa.) My friend hailed me to a conversation she was having with the owner of a boutique bakery, and we discussed the art of pastry until dinner was called.
Grace is famous for intricately constructed dishes, so the first course, a simple corn chowder with shrimp toast, was something of a surprise. It was actually a fine starter, warm vegetable sweetness with delicate seafood overtone. We ate it while meeting our tablemates – three female attorneys, an artist, and Chef Akira Hirose of Maison Akira. Like all the chefs we spoke with that evening, Hirose was happy to be out of the kitchen and enjoying someone else’s cooking, and he told us about a chef’s life along with commentary about the food and wine. We were getting to know each other when he excused himself – the scallops over goat cheese risotto with wild mushrooms were arriving, and he needed to change tables. Andre Angles of Frenchy’s Bistro took his place, and the conversation resumed. It was all about the food this time, because the unlikely combination knocked our socks off. Everyone knows you don’t combine delicate seafood with full flavored cheese – but every once in a while you break a rule and it pays off big. This was one of those cases – the sweet scallop, musky cheese, and mushrooms were amazing together, and perfectly paired with a crisp Alsatian Pinot Gris. Everyone at the table, chef included, had a moment of silent awe when they first tasted the combination.
Though the following chef, Jean Francois Mettinger, was every bit as good company, I was less enamored of the next dish – wild boar shoulder over fried green tomato with corn cream. The flavors were excellent, but the boar had been cooked to a texture similar to carnitas. Everyone likes carnitas, but we can have it any time, and the delicate difference in flavor between wild boar and pork was obscured. It was fine on its own merits, but not up to the standard of the rest of the meal.
Things picked up again with braised lamb shank over socca, a kind of chickpea pancake peculiar to the city of Nice. I had never tried socca before; it has just a hint of the flavor of falafel but a soft texture. Since the lamb was topped with a chopped tomato that is common in both French and Middle Eastern cooking, it was like an Arabic/Provencal fusion, though the robust, lightly seasoned lamb stock put it firmly in the French column. I would have liked to hear what the chef at our table had to say about it, but he was the only shy one of the night, a soft-spoken fellow whose name I didn’t catch.
At this point we finally got a chance to see the star of the evening, Neal Fraser of Grace, who made a brief foray from his kitchen to wave at the throng. The applause from his peers must have been gratifying, and my friend and I mused afterward about how much pressure he must have been under. Serving as daring a dish as those scallops to an audience that would notice any misstep, even if they were too polite to say anything about it, must have been stressful. After a moment to bask in the appreciation, Fraser retreated into his kitchen to make the chocolate almond crepes with Grand Marnier-soaked cherries that finished our meal.
After dinner, we lingered over coffee and conversations in both French and English, and I laughed at my fears. I chatted with hospitable people who didn’t care where we were from – we shared a passion for fine French food, and that was quite enough.
Club Culinaire is a nonprofit educational foundation – event listings are at www.clubculinaire.org. Chef a Table dinners are $115, including wine. Grace is at 7360 Beverly Blvd., Los Angeles, (323) 934-4400.
Published: 09/17/2008
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