Photos by Laurie Proffitt
1. Tramonto's Caviar Staircase
2. Cherry Charlotte with Port Vanilla and Sour-Cherry Reduction, Confit Lemon and Mint Syrup
3. Roasted Rack of Pennsylvania Lamb with Malaysian Crust and Truffle Bread Pudding
|
Photos by Laurie Proffitt
1. Tramonto's Caviar Staircase
|
|
TRU
Moment of Tru: If you want to know the difference between eating and dining, try Tru where everything - decor, service, food - defines fine dining. By Nancy Ross Ryan
To eat, perchance to dine: Ay, there's the rub (to paraphrase the Bard) -- for fine dining carries responsibilities. It's not like eating a big bowl of pasta washed down with a bottle of house wine at your favorite Trattoria, all delivered by a cheerful (hopefully competent) wait person. To eat is to enjoy the conversation as much as the food. But the food won't stop you in your tracks, and the service won't make you feel like a lord of the universe. At Tru, one dines. And one is served. And paying close attention to the presentation, textures, aromas and tastes of the food carries its own rewards, for husband-and-wife chef-owners Gale Gand and Rick Tramonto (backed by Richard Melman and Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, Inc.) have gone to great lengths (since the restaurant opened in May) to create some food that will stop you in your tracks. Work with them, sweetheart.
The moment of Tru: Most of the time, I simply eat. I cook well and a lot, and when I eat out, frankly, it's for the fun of it, because I could make the same kind of food at home. But when my companion and I decided to go to Tru (the name is an acronym for Tramonto + Unlimited) it was for food I could never cook at home, wines (matched with the food) that I do not stock and cannot buy (many are allocated to the restaurant), and a level of professional service that enhances both. Besides, my vestibule does not have mosaic tile floors and three square recesses in the wall that hold seasonal objets (on this occasion pumpkins) that are bathed in indirect light. And my vestibule does not lead into a room with a curved polished black granite bar that begins with a single vase of calla lilies and ends in a recessed ice bucket filled with three bottles of fine Champagne, waiting to be picked and popped. And my bar does not come with a ceiling-high back lighted glass panel fitted with glass shelves holding bottles of fine spirits that look suspended in space.
True, I don't have to climb on a ladder to reach the top bottles as did the bartender at Tru, and true, he did not stock my favorite aperitif, Cynar, or my companion's favorite vodkas, Grey Goose and Sundsvall, and, also true, none of my chairs are as uncomfortable -- or as chic -- as the bar stools. But, more to the point, at home I don't have a host who greets me with "The party at your table is preparing to leave and it should not be a long wait," and then -- a mere 15 minutes after the time our reservation was booked -- appears saying, "Thank you so much for your patience, your table is prepared, please follow me." And at home I don't follow this host (who is discreetly wired with a microphone that connects with, one must assume, various nerve centers of the 154 -seat restaurant) into a dining room with soaring white translucent drapes that swoop from floor to ceiling, deep blue velvet banquets and widely spaced tables covered in crisp white linen.
Hit me with your best shot: When I dine anywhere for the first time I always choose a degustation menu, if there is one. Friends and fellow professionals protest this practice: "But you know the chef pays special attention to that kind of menu and you don't get a balanced picture." I disagree. A chef and a restaurant can always perform below their capabilities, but they can never be better than their best -- so why not judge them on their best shot? At Tru you may select a three-course prix fixe $70 dinner with choices of appetizers, main courses and dessert. A cheese course is $17 extra and there is a supplement for the Caviar Staircase: $15 for sevruga, $25 for Osetra and $35 and $45 for Beluga. Because my companion ordered the crème de la crème of the Collections (Tru's term for the four degustation menus -- vegetable, $75; seafood, $90; grand, $100, and Chef Tramonto's, $125), the caviar staircase came with Chef Tramonto's Collection. I ordered the Vegetable Collection, because it's truly an art to prepare an all-vegetable menu that really looks and tastes terrific.
Wines are offered from a daunting 400-bottle wine list but there are two great alternatives: You may order from an exceptional wines-by-the glass list with 3-ounce tasting pours of each wines, or you may simply place yourself in the hands of your wait person -- which is what we did. And she did an impeccable job of matching each of our many and varied courses -- from foie gras (his) to a portobello mushroom timbale (mine) with full and half pours of perfectly paced, perfectly chosen wines. At the end of the meal, for the penultimate course, she managed to engineer a full glass of red wine so that I had half left to enjoy with the cheese course. It doesn't get any better than that.
So what about the food? The presentation of every course was spectacular, the food itself was imaginative and for the most part perfectly prepared and delicious. For example, the caviar staircase ascends in a curve from a glass platform. Each "step" is hollowed out to hold all the accompaniments -- capers, chopped onion, egg yolk, egg white, crème fraîche, and the last steps are reserved for various kinds of caviar. I was particularly enamored of the caviar flavored with wasabi, but the salmon, sevruga and smoked sturgeon weren't too shabby. (Yes, of course I tasted everything my companion was served.) Breads (some baked in house and some from Labriola Bakery) are presented on a linen-lined tray. All are delicious (don't ask how I know) but favorites were the potato focaccia and the rosemary sourdough.
My first vegetable course came in a Japanese Obento box, a stack of lacquer-like trays each holding an exquisite composition: a celeriac remoulade, a Chenel goat cheese terrine with golden beets, and a timbale of grains with tender mache lettuce and dabs of hazelnut vinaigrette with dots of balsamico.
His courses included a seafood medley of scallops, mussels and lobsters with a citrusy sauce, a seared Hudson Valley foie gras with house-dried fruits and a grappa-port reduction, hand-harvest diver scallops, rabbit loin with liver and red rice -- all complemented with small artistic sauces, all intense reductions.
My courses included an eggplant-phyllo-potato-tomato Napoleon, roasted baby carrots in a to-die-for orange glaze with lavender, a ratatouille on a black-truffled potato cake with a brandy wine tomato coulis -- and who knows what else? After awhile I simply abandoned myself to pleasure. But some memories remain: the sumptuous, silky soups, each presented in a small Rosenthal China cup with golden wings for handles. His soup was porcini garnished with black truffle and a Parmesan tuile; mine was a squash bisque garnished with pumpkin seeds (more about them later). And the cheese course, presented on a marble-topped and domed cheese cart, included artisinal cheese made from cow's, goat's and sheep's milk.
Who could forget Gand's desserts -- we each had a plated selection of four small desserts. Standouts: Gooey Chocolate Fudge Tart with peanut butter ice cream and a tiny rice krispy treat, Tarte Tatin with cardamom ice cream, and double vanilla crème brûlée. And then came trays full of Gand's inimitable petits fours (some on a bed of krispy cereal): pineapple cheesecakes, raspberry vacherin, strawberry short cakes -- and her homemade wax paper wrapped Tootsie rolls.
One also remembers details: The perfect pace of the meal and wines (it took three hours from start to finish), the exquisite glasses and plates, and details that delight: the little bee on the handle of the steak knife, the thimble-sized cups with fragrant chilled apple and plum soup, the beautiful silver coffee server that looked like something from Arabian Nights.
So where's the rub? The garnishes and perhaps the price. Only one course in the many that we ate had a preparation flaw: the top slice of eggplant on my eggplant Napoleon was tough and leathery. But the rest of the vegetables sang with flavor and the crisp phyllo layers were an inspired textural contrast. But I do have a bone to pick with Tramonto's garnishes. The foie gras was garnished with what our server told us was a thyme blossom. My companion (O.K., he's a savage and doesn't know from thyme blossoms) ate it and spit it out complaining bitterly. It was indeed very bitter. And my divine squash bisque was garnished with unhulled pumpkin seeds. Not cool. The hulls were too tough and fibrous to eat so I wound up scooping them out of the soup. I don't like garnishes that are inedible or are there just for looks. And the price: Including drinks at the bar, our two collections, wines by the glass and a 20% well-earned tip, the evening cost $400. Was it worth it? Probably yes. Will we return? Absolutely. Often? Not unless we win the lottery. But on very special occasions, when we want to be reminded of the difference between to eat and to dine.
But no bad dreams: Unlike the prince in Shakespeare's Hamlet who complained "I could be bounded by a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space -- were it not that I have bad dreams," Tru's food is not heavy, the sauces although reduced are served as accents, and even the multiple courses did not add up to so much food that we felt uncomfortable or stuffed. Although we toddled out at 1:15 a.m., we slept like babies. (And that was amazing considering that yours truly not only ate my four-on-one-plate dessert but hit those little trays of petits fours every time they came my way.) |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
TRU 676 St. Clair Street (312) 202-0001
DINNER HOURS:
|
|
 |
|
 |
DINING OUT - Jan.-Feb. 2000
BACK TO CS INDEX
BACK TO NRA 2000 ARTICLE click here
