Sorry for the delay folks, finishing this now I regret not finishing it before my hiatus–some details have escaped me, and the piece suffers.
The guise was that one of Tabla’s cooks, Sean Coryell (exact position unknown) has been whispering about doing a vegan supper thing, and they gave him his shot. I’d never been to tabla before this, but it receives repeated, if casual praise, so this event I couldn’t miss.
Tabla, as a space, is nicely designed, modernistic-elegant space with about 20 tables–for the supper they’d been organized into long tables to facilitate sharing. Merlot and ecru colored walls, attractive but odd lighting, eclectic art and strange, large vases of dead branches decorate the space. A larger than usual open kitchen is at the back, gleaming of clean stainless steel.
The first course was fried shallots and onions wrapped in cooked kale. ‘Twas yummy, but there is something about fried shallots and onions that will always remind me of French’s Onions in a can and their ghetto younger brother, Funions. The little bite strongly resembled a dolma in appearance and was gone to fast. mmmmmmmmmm, funions. If this were a dish on a restaurant menu, I’d pair it with some sort of dipping sauce, but it was a tasty morsel. mmmmm funions.
(N.B. everything below was written after my vacation, so my memories are not as keen–you’ll notice I will skip describing a few dishes a straight-up don’t remember. better to say nothing than to be wrong, no?)
Second course was a trio of cabbages: the only one I recall was the Red Cabbage with pink peppercorns–I love me some red cabbage, but the fresh, bitter snap overwhelmed the delicate pink peppercorn dressing–I tasted it separately, and it was delicious, but lost on the shredded redness. I recall the other two being tasty, but not much beyond that.
Two salads followed, a mess of field greens with a sharp lemon dressing, and a fantastic concoction of Arugula (or rocket, as the brits like to call it) with a delicious garlic pistachio vinaigrette. Intensely garlic, with the sweet and satisfying flavor of pistachios, the dressing held on to the leaves of arugula amazingly well. Top notch stuff, this one.
champagne sorbet–it tasted exactly like frozen champagne. I thought it was pretty tasty; my dining partner thought it tasted too much of alcohol and pushed it away. I’m not sure what type of champagne was used, but I think the different freezing points of alcohol and water led this to taste very strongly of alcohol, and thus very cheap. I’m not one to shy away from things that taste of alcohol, really the opposite, but I think it’d have been better denatured.
Before the delivery of the next dish, the servers placed a small ramekin of smoked salt on each table, to be used for each dish. I’ve a little history with smoked salt, but not much. That said, the salt crystals were HUGE, and intensely smoked–to black. I used them in a few dishes for the rest of the meal, and always found they didn’t add salinity to the dish, just rather crunchy, palette clearing chunks of smokiness, which was a shame because most, if not all the dishes I found to be undersalted.
the second zone of the menu was roasted things– root vegetables, cooked to perfection, burdock, undercooked and glazed with intense oranginess I didn’t dig, and a plate of grilled celery. At least, I think this is when they happened. I don’t remember, and I didn’t steal a menu. Stupid me. Sorry, folks.
Next up was a Merlot Risotto with roasted cauliflower with breadcrumbs and crushed nuts–maybe just crushed nuts. The risotto was perfectly cooked, but tasted incredibly strongly of raw wine–too much so. The cauliflower was well cooked as well, but fairly unseasoned and got to our plates lukewarm–a danger of family-style meals.
Cassoulet with mushrooms, topped with wilted greens arrived next. I’ll take this opportunity to note that I really liked the china at Tabla. Nice stuff. Anyway, I think maybe our table got shortchanged, because I didn’t spot a single mushroom–perhaps it was mushroom broth? The beans were a little more grey-brown than the average, but there wasn’t any strong hint of mushrooms to me or my dining partner. I would have asked the people next to us, but they were too busy being as critical as possible of their friends’ personalities and proclivities. Really people, think a bit when you’re eating family style–some of us just can’t zone out voices that close.
third on the entree parlay was an ‘extra virgin olive oil whipped potato pancake with forest mushrooms. First, I’d like to point out that ‘extra virgin olive oil whipped potato pancake’ is a ridiculously long noun. Second, this was another example of the hazards of family-style dining: moving the pancakes, topped with delicious and perfectly sauteed foraged (what I gathered ‘forest’ meant) mushrooms was a messy affair. The pancakes were crispy on the outer edge, but suffered from mushroom-liquid-goodness overload and were soggy in the center and thus fell apart from our feeble attempts to transfer them from the serving platters to the plate.
dessert followed.
barley-malt lemon sorbet.
process that for a minute.
ready? It was really, really quite tasty, but it took a few tries to come accustomed to the intense lemon undercut by this nutty, rich, warm flavor that no one expects to encounter frozen. I’d have more.
drunken fruit was the last offering, but by then, I’d eaten far too much.
All in all, I have three things to say–1. This guy can cook, but a few dishes suffered from the Family-style preparation. I’m sure that can be sorted out with a little practice. 2. Everything could have used some salt. 3. there were several things on the menu I would hesitate to eat again. It’s hard to offer up criticism of any tractable value, and I have tried very hard to keep my SCUDS-side down; after all this was their first try. The quibbles I had have been deliberately denatured of the ‘WTF is this?’ diatribe they usually get–for this meal I felt those are out of place, especially since my taste-memories faded so much between tasting and writing.
I’ll go back, next time I feel I can afford it.
