Invest here, it's sublime
A down-to-earth reader emailed me to lament
the profusion of flash expressions on menus.
She asked about "degustation" – a
word that restaurants here use for a tasting
menu; in France it is applied to a set menu.
But she also introduced me to "Liaison".
My research revealed that, to a chef, it means a thickening agent, usually of egg yolks and cream, but the pretentious wallies at the place where she had eaten had used it to mean the sauce thus thickened.
At The Grove there is a "financier" on the desert menu. The Blonde asked the waitress what it meant.
"Yes, I get asked that a lot," the waitress said ("You don't say," I thought) and went into a long and pretty handy explanation.
It turns out that it salutes neither
a particular member of the investment community
nor the entire occupational group (which must
have contributed more than its share to the
restaurant's success). Google it and you will
find that it is "sometimes called a friand".
Well, actually, if you'll forgive me for saying
so, it is almost invariably called a friand;
financier sounds, well, fancier, but if you
want people to stop asking what's for pudding,
it will would make sense to call it a friand.
I'm not having a go at The Grove here, you understand. The restaurant world is full of fancy terminology.
I love "large-format wines", which The Grove is not alone in listing: a large-format wine comes in a big bottle, like a magnum or jeroboam, but because the big bottles contain really, really nice wine and they cost an arm and a leg, you can't call them big bottles because that's common.
Likewise the vegetarian
main at The Grove is called an "assiette" of
vegetables; if you did French at school you
learned in the third form that "assiette" means
plate, but who wants to watch the rest of the
table eat milk-fed veal loin or duck breast
with caramelised pork while settling for a "plate" of
vegetables. The you deserve if you're paying
$32 is an assiette.
In point of fact The Grove is so damn good
that they can call food anything they want.
Since Michael Meredith moved on to start up
his eponymous establishment in Dominion Rd,
Sis Sahrawat has been turning heads all over
town, winning Lewisham Awards in successive
years – at the George in Parnell and
now here.
In a simple long room – blond
wooden floor, white linen, black padded walls – waiting
staff of consummate intelligence and professionalism
attend to the delivery of some of the best
food in town: goat's-curd-and-chive tortellini
with roasted beetroot; medium-rare slices of
creamy-white veal loin with escargot and saffron
foam.
The sweet-toothed can skip a main course and
save room for a dessert degustation – a
New Zealand first, I think – for
$50.
Description of individual dishes seems superfluous, particularly since I went. In any case, someone without words like financier and assiette at his disposal might have difficulty doing them justice.
My advice, addressed in
particular to the bloke who wrote to ask what
the point is of reviewing restaurants no one
can afford to go to: skip a couple of weeks
of $120 disappointments and eat in.
Then pick up the phone and make a booking. You'll be glad you did.
