Phillyist Framed Returns!
Across the Ist-a-Verse
Yo, Philly in the News
Last week, Lenny Campello wrote about Viva Chile in Philadelphia, nine days of Chilean art and culture in Philadelphia. Included in the event's line-up would be a special menu (PDF) at The Restaurant School in University City, and I was invited to the kick-off dinner, held last Friday.
As the name would indicate, the actual restaurant part of The Restaurant School is staffed entirely by students, with a limited amount of supervision. The table service leaves very little to be desired, but I got the feeling that the school's curriculum doesn't include a lesson on the cocktail hour: most of the guests in the Disney-like dining room—largely restaurant critics—were left standing, during this period, with empty wine glasses that were neither collected nor replaced by the abundant student-staff present. Although wine was offered to guests as they entered the event, there was no effort to check in on them until shortly before the dinner began.
Fortunately, once we were seated, the wine was served with great efficiency. Unfortunately, it was the same wine we'd been drinking: a young, steel-aged Sauvignon Blanc (Santa Rita 2008) that had a nice acidic finish on the glass, but which, when paired with the food before us, nearly disappeared. That may have been the problem of the fermentation process, the age, or the food: a confused but pretty plating (see photo above) that contained one steamed mussel (cold, but that may have been the fault of the very long thank you speech that we had to sit through before we were allowed to touch our quickly-cooling plates), an under-seasoned and rock-hard risotto-ish fritter, two dishes that seemed to have crab meat (also one over-salted, one under-salted, but otherwise practically indistinguishable from one another), and a shot glass with some sort of tomato puree—the best thing on the plate. Things were not off to an especially promising start.
Next up, the same Sauv we'd been drinking for some time (thereby losing all vestiges of taste that may have remained after our first course) was paired with sauteed shrimp and scallops, by far the best savory course we had all night. The plating on the dish was simple: a row of scallops, a row of shrimp, a delicious, light pumpkin fritter, and some fresh carica salsa. The table was split on the texture of the carica, but it didn't bother me. After the first course, I'd expected the shellfish to be overcooked as it's too easy to turn scallops into rubber, but the preparation on this dish was really spot-on.
The next seafood course, however, wasn't nearly as good. The wine paired with it, a surprisingly light, un-oaky 2007 Viña san Pedro Chardonnay was practically wasted on the course: a too-large-for-a-tasting-menu sauteed salmon fillet with tangerine-chardonnay white vinegar, beurre blanc sauce, and a cilantro-Fiji apple salad. The acid from the vinegar and apples clashed with the sweet beurre blanc and strongly affected the flavor of the wine (am I the only one who's read Roald Dahl's "The Butler"?). The salmon, while perfectly cooked, had no flavor at all, even when dragged through the beurre blanc and eaten together with the apples. I'm dieting. It wasn't worth the calories. I left most of it on my plate.
Maybe I shouldn't've. While the next wine up, a smoky, peppery Carmenère (Viña Requingua, 2006) was quite good after we'd given it a few minutes to breathe (it should have been decanted half an hour earlier than it was), the course served with it looked almost as if it had already been digested once. Everything on the plate was brown: the over-cooked leg of lamb, the olives, the carmelized onions, the unseasoned potatoes. The lamb's flavor was all right, but it was cooked to the point of a gamey toughness that made it it difficult to enjoy, especially with the noticeable absence of steak knives on the table. As the plate cooled, the sauce on it began to congeal, making the preparation look even less appealing than it had originally (an impressive feat!) and the food itself less edible.
After some confusion about the number of wine glasses on our table, we received glasses of the final wine on the table, a late harvest (possibly even ice) 2007 Gewürztraminer from Aresti Vineyards. Late harvest wines are an acquired taste, but I happen to love them and found this one to be an excellent example of their promise: sweet, but not cloyingly so; thick without being syrupy; complementary to rich deserts, but only if they're not too acidic. Fortunately, this one came with a perfectly-browned creme brulee that had been mixed with myrtle berries (also an acquired taste, and one which I've not fully developed—easily resolved by eating around the small round fruit). Judging from the plates and glasses around me, I'm sure I wouldn't be alone in declaring this the most successful—and successfully paired—course of the evening. At least things ended on a high note.
Until last Friday, my sole experience with The Restaurant School had been its (really rather excellent) pastry shop; I'd been wanting to try the restaurant, but hadn't gotten around to it. Unfortunately, if their regular menus are anything like their special Chilean menu, I'm not sure I still want to go.
Image Credit: Ross Currie (all rights reserved)
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