I got to talking with a guest at Casa SaltShaker last evening. She’s a former fulltime pastry chef, who now works in the hotel world, though not as a chef. Still, she travels widely, and loves to dine out, and we quickly found that we had some common ground on many thoughts about restaurants and dining. She had just dined at Boragó, which I covered in this post, and at least several of the courses were the same or similar enough to the ones that I had, that we had some comparing to do. I have to admit I was at least momentarily taken aback, and surprised, when she waxed poetic about the richness and depth of flavor in the “stone soup” that I disparaged above. I mean, I like to think I have a pretty discerning palate, but the nuances she was able to express, that even came down to, “after I finished the amazing broth, I just wanted to lick each of the stones to take in more of those flavors”, were a complete surprise. Then again, the place has an amazing reputation, and certainly she’s not the only one who has the opinion. Just a reminder that tastes are not universal!

I think it’s certainly become that. The interesting thing is that I found Chef Aduriz to be a really humble sort of guy, at least in the brief interaction with him at the restaurant. He’s certainly intense, and passionately believes in what he’s doing. He reminded me a lot of Charlie Trotter, who I liked quite a bit.

And intellectually, I can see how he’s stretching boundaries and such, but that’s the kind of thing you do in the laboratory, in the stages where you’re experimenting and coming up with dishes. Then you take those experiments and refine them and make them taste good and make people want to eat more of each thing, or at least that ought to be the goal. It felt almost like we were trying things that were still in the “let’s see if this works” stage.

The interesting thing about the San Pellegrino 50 best awards is that originally they were sort of a joke. The first year it was a list of 50 of their top customers, and it was put out there, okay, not really as a joke, but as a parody, of things like the much awaited Michelin stars and such. I’m not really sure how it took on such a huge importance in the world, other than perhaps it really is because it’s more of a popularity vote than the critiques of professional reviewers that result in the awards, so it meant there was a chance for places (like the steakhouse I mentioned in yesterday’s post) to get on the list simply because they’re a beloved institution, without meeting some sort of higher critical bar.