Crush

note : This post is a little late, we went to the test kitchen on Jully 22 2007.

Crush has a monthly test kitchen where they try out their dishes on a few people willing to put up with potential weirdness. You may think that going is some kind of priviledge, but at $60 a person, I find that arguable. 

This was something new for us, the chance to see behind the magic curtain of the kitchen. We don't often recognized how much work goes into the development of art, we tend to think that things just come out, like Athena out of Zeus' head, fully formed.  We thought that this would give us insight into the process. We gave it two chances at Crush, I don't think we're doing it again.

The first time we went the crowd was mixed, the next time it seemed like the place was filled with a presumptuous group of people that I didn't like.  Everytime my attention would go towards them I winced, they were demanding and not very knowledgable.  Old foggies that seem to come from some place of abject entitlement.  I guess fancy-pants restaurants is their natural habiat, but dammit, did you have to sit next to me so I could hear your idiot noises?

The food, three dishes and a desert were over the top. Very rich and strange flavor combinations that perhaps in the imagination may have worked but in the execution didn't pan out very well.   I guess that's why they call it a test kitchen. 

The second dish called "Herb Grilled Albacore & Chile Tomato Powder" had the weirdest sauce I've had in a high end restaurant. A yellowish paste spread accross the plate. It strongly tasted of avocado and banana.  For a "TOMATOES!!!" theme there wasn't as much as you would expect. The aforementioned dish had "Tomato Powder" as an ingredient.  The other dishes didn't have much more than than a powder or a smidgen of tomatoes. 

Before the meal started, the Chef came out and explained the dishes a little and the purpose of the evening.  As he explained and the grey hairs were appreciating the attention (they must not get enough attention from well known Chefs in their lives)  I started realize that this was more marketing and show than it was a food test.  Really can you trust a bunch of off the street customers to evaluate your creations? Actually you can, we do that at work, we have volunteers looking at our work and we learn a lot from them (we don't charge them for playing the game by the way). Instead of giving them a little peice of paper at the end of the meal, we tape them answering questions and playing the game. We also tape the screen they see, so we can match anything they say or do with what is happening.  It's an important part of our development process.   Is there planted microphones at each table? Are we asked before we eat what other places we like to go, if we've been to Crush normally. What our favorite wine is, our favorite food?  

As part of the show, the food is pretty adventurous for that class of restaurant. A little richer than it should have been, a little weirder than normal.  

At some point in the meal I realized that the $60 is really going into the wine.   Paired with each dish is a generously poured glass of an accompanying wine.  Some of which are really good (Aigle Blanc Vouvray, 1990?) .   

In the end I was dissapointed in the event. It was less test kitchen than I expected and more just regular meal. And as a meal, it wasn't that great, even though the ingredients and the execution was flawless. 

I imagine Tom Douglas running a different type of test kitchen. Dishes flying around, Tom Douglas presenting and explaining each dish before and after degustation. Things are tasted, not eaten. The wine is there to rinse the flavor out your mouth, if they serve wine at all. Things are more informal, the service is there to place and remove the dishes, not "serve". They participate, explain, note displeasure and appreciation. They ask questions right there, not wait till you've swilled a gallon of expensive wine and are wondering if your adult diaper is holding up.  

We just went to the Palace Kitchen recently,  I had a garlic custard, over potatoes and toast with chopped chard on it. Fantastic. I wanted to know how they got to that dish. Alone each would be weird, together magical.  The dish was simple, meanwhile at Crush all the components where rich rich rich. The Avocado paste competed with the fish, which struggled with the other sauce that shared the plate.