oxalis

I just came across news of Chef Grant Achatz’s new Alinea book, by way of the good people over at Ideas In Food. I don’t know how I missed the post originally (actually I do, there wasn’t a photo near the post so I just skimmed over it, being a sucker for pretty pictures!). I think it goes without saying that I so pre-ordered a copy of the cookbook. Is it just me or does $50 dollars sound like a pretty good deal? It is much more affordable than the Michael Bras cookbook I have been lusting after for the past year…

The ordering process got me thinking about the dinner we had at Alinea in May, and especially the oxalis course(pod, leaf, Cyprus black sea salt). This course was the culinary equivalent of a clear and cool spring morning, suffused with shafts of sunlight filtered through tree branches. In the four intervening months since that dinner, I have occasionally found myself thinking about that course. I’m not kidding, it has had to have been at least once a week. It wasn’t until just recently that I figured out why that particular dish, out of so many memorable dishes stuck with me so long, and why I kept playing the sensations of eating the course over and over again in my mind.

On that night we had dinner at Alinea the dish was still, by their own admission, a work-in-progress. At the time I remember the head Sommelier, Craig, asking what our table thought of the dish, and I said something totally fucking stupid like, “well I think the flavors are very clean and delicate.” What I was really thinking then was that the dish wasn’t very exciting, and so I promptly moved on to the more exciting courses that followed, like the duck and rhubarb, and immersed myself in the more imediate gratification of those dishes, but I was still thinking of the oxalis 4 hours later when we got back to the hotel.  After a month had passed I had decided that the dish was in fact great, but maybe had been served at the wrong point in the meal. This notion stuck for a few months, but I still wasn’t able to let the dish and the experience of eating it come to rest in my mind.

I think that I’ve now come to the realization that the dish was amazing in its subtlety, and that it did not come at the wrong point in the meal but came precisely when the Chef/Kitchen wanted it to. With the dish the guest was being asked to consider something totally different, to change perspective. It actually falls perfectly in line with what I gather is the idea behind the cuisine at Alinea, that the experience of eating should be one that sends you a bit off-balance. The oxalis course did that for me, as did all of the other courses (well except for the chocolate, that sort of just made me gag), it’s just that the oxalis had done it in a really coded sort of way. The other dishes were like being turned lose in zero-gravity, where things are weird but you totally understand why. Whereas the oxalis was more like having an episode of deja vu, very fleeting and only semi-transparent.

I so hope that Chef Achatz remains well and whole, so that I have the opportunity to thank him in person for the oxalis.