On Nothing Much
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Silence of the Lam Last night, two friends and I ate dinner in a glass cube – one of four that anchors the bar within Blue Duck Tavern in the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C.’s West End neighborhood. The restaurant calls these cubes “Capitol Hill glass-enclosed booths,” as if transparency was a hallmark of Congress. Hah, what a thought! Our cube reminded me of Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. One of my dining companions, who suffered from fleeting dementia or distraction, made a dinner reservation for 6:30 a.m. instead of 6:30 p.m. On arrival at the restaurant, we learned that we had been listed as a “no show” for that morning’s pre-sunrise breakfast. Having no table in the dining room to offer us, the manager briskly ushered us into a cube. There was certainly a fish tank quality about it – somewhat odd, but also beguiling. Three Omnivores Blue Duck Tavern is deemed by many above my culinary pay grade to be among the best contemporary American restaurants in the country. “Tavern” is more than an appellation. The word defines the essence of the place – open kitchen and pantry, wood-fired ovens, unadorned dark wooden tables and handcrafted furniture, and silver-rimmed oval white china plates. The cooking emphasizes traditional techniques like roasting, braising, baking, preserving and smoking. No sous-vide water baths or molecular gastronomy here. And sauces are deep and rich, grainy and earthy. The service at Blue Duck Tavern is colonial family-style, which encourages sharing. We ordered in threes the entire night. For appetizers, we settled on the oven-roasted bone marrow (certified Black Angus Beef sourced from Creekstone Farms, Arkansas City, Kansas), the braised lamb belly (Jamison Farm, Latrobe, Pennsylvania), and the house-smoked Columbia River sturgeon rillette (Pierless Fish, Brooklyn Navy Yard, New York). The bone marrow was like a salt lick that oozed bovine fat, and the lamb belly was a brilliant adaptation of the classic porcine version. The rillette arrived as a small chilled layered casserole of white fish, stiffened cream, and pickled root vegetables. I think. It was a very mysterious concoction of ancient inspirations. I’m fairly certain of the fish, because of the menu listing, but not much else. Alas, the Tavern did not offer the one dish that I keep hoping and returning for – a delicate savory flan flecked with tiny morsels of seared fois gras. So simple, so sublime, so good, so memorable. |
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Or Three Piggies For the main courses, we ordered a braised beef rib with homemade steak sauce (Creekstone Farms), a roasted 42-day aged strip loin of beef with roasted-mushrooms and a forestiere sauce (Four Story Hill Farm, Honesdale, Pennsylvania), and a roasted whole black bass with a mustard grain cream sauce (Pierless Fish). The rib meat was tender and succulent, the steak had incredibly nuanced rustic flavors due to its extended aging, and the fish was perfectly cooked with a crusty skin. Our three sides were a potato puree with braised oxtail (Path Valley Farms, Pennsylvania), a whole grain mustard spaetzle “mac-n-cheese” with duck confit (Path Valley Farms), and Champion collard greens “low country” style (Whisper Hill Farm, Rapidan, Virignia). The spaetzle was a surprising disappointment – the flavors and texture were muddled. In contrast, the collard greens sung with bold yet balanced flavors of bitterness, smoke, red pepper heat, and vinegary tang. Oh, and somewhere in there was pork. High Tea or Tea Elevated? The Park Hyatt’s Tea Cellar serves rare and limited-production single-estate teas from around the world. It is the equivalent of a high-end wine cellar with single vineyard and single varietal wines, and allows the hotel to elevate not only its afternoon tea service but also the service of tea in Blue Duck Tavern. We sampled three teas – a Flowery Earl Gray, an Emporer’s Himalayan Lavendar, and a delicate mint tea that wasn’t on the menu and that we didn’t order but that was delivered to our table and we drank nonetheless. All three teas had an undefinable quality about them not found in commercial-off-the-shelf teas – more complexity to the bouquet and flavor, richer roasting, and more depth of character. The Earl Gray was my favorite, and there was both a clarity and subtleness about it that set it apart from every other Earl Gray I’ve ever tasted. Next visit, I’m going to try one of the truly exotic teas that costs as much as a nice bottle of wine. The teas steep in glass tea pots set upon candled glass tea pot warmers so that you can see the color of the teas as the hot water extracts flavors from the tea leaves. And I loved the fact that others could watch us through the glass cube watching the teas brew through the glass pots. Now, that’s transparency. Brian
Lam On Nothing Much is a periodic feature of this website that considers life about us. I wish to thank those of you who are reading these postings and sending me notes of encouragement, gentle criticism, or otherwise. |
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