But Is It Art?
Minimalism goes to radical extremes at the Four Seasons.
We put ourselves in the chef’s hands and out trotted our waiter with ponzu sauce, wasabi cream, and chipotle vinaigrette. Immediately the deficits of the sauce delivery system made themselves apparent. “Hmmm, the ponzu’s heavenly on the scallops, but I can’t get enough on with the paintbrush,” complained my friend. “And you can’t clean it off between sauces!” What’s more, the sauce that worked with the scallops did nothing for the salmon—and the chipotle vinaigrette did nothing for either.
Sear’s simplicity, too, had vivid limitations. A starter bowl of maitake mushrooms were shreds of maitake mushrooms—period. Slices of roast duck breast, diminutively livened with a dollop of winter fruit compote, trudged across their narrow white plate like the Long March of the Red Army. Baked free range chicken, and not a very flavorful one at that, rolled in with a little paint pot of truffle jam that added more in the way of color than flavor. Even the house-ground miniburgers on the bar menu—Sear’s signature from Cascadia’s memorable Happy Hour—were amply meaty, but nude, with none of the sauces that made them so festive at Cascadia. This food wasn’t simple, it was desolate.
It’s possible that side dishes and sauces might not have provided the missing oomph—on sides we were one for one, with one order of mealy and bland fingerling potatoes (what a place for no salt on the table!), and another of roasted heirloom carrots enchanted with wildflower honey and cumin pods. But servers should at least have clued us that accessories were essential. Instead the servers darted around with effervescence and industry, displaying impressive knowledge of things both important and not so. Asked about honshimeji mushrooms, one server launched into a lyrical description of the fungus as tall and tan-colored and found in clumps, like mushrooms from a fairy tale. Beautiful, really. But what do they taste like?
They tasted nutty and fine with a hunk of steamed rockfish, it turned out: a dish that put me in mind of Sear’s considerable skill.
When I consulted my old review notes from Cascadia I found phrases like “party on a plate,” and “intriguing idea which got the better of his common sense.” Hard to believe this is the same guy. In our visits to Art he delivered on exactly two dishes—a bowl of rich chicken soup, fathomless, with soba noodles and a hen’s egg; and the geoduck pasta, which with its briney backbone had real courage of its flavor convictions. Both were terrific—but neither for reasons of inventiveness. Perhaps this talented chef is relaxing his creative standards because his cushy post lets him think more like a steward than an innovator. Perhaps the three-meals-a-day, seven-days-a-week gig of the hotel chef has tamped down the wild streak. All I know is entrées this uninteresting have no business clocking in at $32 and $36. Between these homespun triumphs and the lackluster failures—it’s clear that much of that newfangled noise at the end of Union Street ain’t so new at all.
Cue the colored lights.
READ MORE RESTAURANT REVIEWS.
Published: February 2009
