Some 5 years ago I was watching an episode of The Food Network’s Iron Chef and the chefs started using some high tech gear to create dishes that were far from your average Julia Child cookery. Instead, the dishes were shaped in manners that were illogical, almost impossible, and downright weird. Welcome to the world of Molecular Gastronomy. I could devote an entire posting or two to this subject, but today’s post is not about me – it is about two extraordinary individuals, Steven Long, the head chef at The Kitchen Table and Jeff Morgan, the head wine maker of Covenant Wines.

As I posted earlier, the event started at 7 PM promptly. We all arrived at 7 PM, and as the proverb states; the early bird gets the worm, was as true as day, as we had the pick of the tables. The first obvious thing to hit you upon seating was the wait staff. Are you kidding me! There must have been 14 wait staff for some 40 or so guests! We were waited on ALL night like royalty. I can remember only once throughout the entire evening, when I raised my hand and there was not a scrum of staff in front of our table. The other aspect that hits you was the mood. The mood was set by the wonderful wait staff, the wine and food enthusiastic guests, while the Pièce de résistance was the dulcet tones and musical abilities of Hot Kugel!

Hot Kugel is a San Francisco Bay area Klezmer ensemble. Their music is a  blend of traditional Klezmer with the musical styles of old time jazz, ethnic folk, theater and American popular music, as well as blues, rock and reggae. Both Suska and Mordecai were playing a mixture of instruments and music that were both wonderful to listen to and wonderful to have in the background, in the nicest way. The beauty of a well executed offensive play in football always leads back to the offensive line, the unsung heroes, that go unnoticed, unless they make a penalty, and then all you hear is boos. When you are at a fine dining experience you want to enjoy the time with friends, family, and new acquaintances, while still being stimulated and entertained. That is exactly what Hot Kugel delivered. When I wanted to tune them in and listen, I was impressed and highly entertained, and when I was talking to my friends, they never imposed; instead they just lifted the atmosphere as a whole. On an aside, when I was listening and tuning in, I could not help but be mesmerized by Suska’s voice that really did not sound like a voice, but rather an instrument. The varied instruments, music abilities, along with music sensibility, and song choices truly did add to the already wonderful mood.

On our table was a basket of, what I can only guess to be, freshly baked beer and rosemary dinner rolls, along with a bowl of lovely olive oil to dip them in. They were quite a treat and a boon for me, as I had not eaten anything since the morning. I listened well to my mother, who always told me (many times), do not fill up on the challah, there is much more food on its way. Sure enough, almost immediate after satiating my immediate appetite, Mr. Long and his staff came out to serve the very first dish – the Amuse Bouche. The first thing I noticed was that Mr. Long had changed his chef’s jacket, from when we saw him walking around before the dish was served, this was something he did throughout the night. When asked by a guest, at the end of the evening, about the apparent attempt to channel Nicole Richie’s dress code (same day by the way!), Mr. Long was partly shocked and unready with a response, however Mr. Morgan stepped in and stated that he needed to keep a clean look, and it is pretty busy back there.

In either case, the first dish hit our tables, and the Amuse Bouche looked interesting, to say the least. The term Amuse Bouche loosely translated means amuse your mouth or palate. The dish came served on a platter of Chinese Soup spoons, for the entire table. Each soup spoon held what Mr. Long called Hot Roast Squash Gel Cube with Apple Caviar. This was the first of many examples of Molecular Gastronomy that Mr. Long would showcase during the evening and most definitely his weakest attempt. I do not want to get on my soap box about the ideals of Molecular Gastronomy, however, throughout the night there would be hits and misses, and some were clear strikeouts. This was one of them, the idea behind Molecular Gastronomy is simple, in the words of Grant Achatz, the head chef at Alinea where he daily melds technology and Haute Cuisine, “The technology allows us to get to the essence of food, it allows you to be more true with flavor, not less true.” We are supposed to feel the food, taste its raw essence, without all the trappings and machinations of Thomas Keller and his French Laundry restaurant. In this dish, Mr. Long succeeded in losing the trappings, but missed on extracting the essence and feel of the dish. The hot roast squash gel cube had nice flavors, with clear sign posts leading to roasted squash, but the road ended rather abruptly. The Apple caviar, felt more like an early warning system for “all things molecular” coming your way, without actually showcasing the apples or helping to tie the two flavors together. What was missing was a bit of salt to balance the flavors, instead, we had a shot of sweet and a shot of bland apples and not much else. To be honest, I told my table mates, who did not care for the dish much more than I did, that I really hope that this is not harbinger for what else is to come tonight. And to that I scream loud and clear – Heck NO! It was an aberration and one I am sure that maybe we did not get, but let it be clear from my pen to your eyes; the evening held many wonderful surprises and this was the one and only real miss.

Around the same time as the Amuse Bouche was being passed out, Jonathan Hajdu, the associate wine maker and on-site kosher supervisor was pouring out the first of the four wines that we would be tasting this evening; the 2008 Covenant Lavan Chardonnay. When I tasted it earlier this year at the 2010 Herzog Food and Wine Festival in Oxnard, it actually showed more ripe fruit and tannin – from the oak. It was still young then and crazy fun. Now when we tasted it, the wine seems to be hitting its stride. The tannin is gone or covered over with a blanket of toasty rich oak and butterscotch, along with a bit of fruit. Clearly this is a bottle that is ready to party and one that really was not meant to pair with the Amuse Bouche, but heck it was there so we tasted it. Again, the gel cube barely survived the oak attack, while the poor apple caviar was gutted from the inside out, never had a chance. Again to be fair, it was not a real pairing, but we tried for the fun of it.

Since we tasted the wine at this point – I will post the note here. I wanted to compare it against the notes I have from earlier this year, so here is my previous note and my newest one as well:

2008 Covenant Lavan Chardonnay, Napa Valley – Score: A- to A
The nose on this vibrant yellow colored wine is screaming with lychee, green apple, guava, peach, oak, and almonds.  The mouth on this full bodied wine is creamy and hopping with butterscotch, apple, peach, and oak.  The mid palate is balanced and structured with bracing acidity, spicy oak, oak tannins, and mineral.  The finish is long and creamy, with more butterscotch, almonds, oak, peach, and lychee. (Tasted February 2010)

2008 Covenant Lavan Chardonnay, Napa Valley – Score: A- to A
The nose on this lemon to straw colored wine is screaming with toasty oak, green apple, guava, butterscotch, peach, Crème brûlée, lemon, and almonds.  The mouth on this full bodied wine is creamy and hopping with butterscotch, apple, peach, lemon, and oak.  The mid palate is balanced and structured with bracing acidity, rich toasty oak, Crème brûlée, and butterscotch.  The finish is long and luscious, with more butterscotch, peach, lemon, almonds, and guava. The butterscotch, lemon, and almonds linger long on the palate. (Tasted December 2010) Read the rest of this entry →