Medium Raw

It’s true I walked in the door at Per Se with a sense of trepidation very different from the feelings of child-like awe I’d felt at the French Laundry all those years ago—when the twenty-course meal was all fresh and new. I’m a romantic, I guess. I wanted to believe that love conquers all.

Understand this: I respect no American chef above Thomas Keller. I believe him to be America’s “greatest” chef—in every sense of that word.

The single best fine-dining, white-tablecloth meal of my life was at his French Laundry.

I’m quite sure that it would be unlikely in the extreme that one could find better, more technically accomplished, generally gifted, harder-working chefs than the Laundry’s Corey Lee or Per Se’s Jonathan Benno (or whoever follows them in those positions).

I think that Keller long ago achieved that ideal state of haute nirvana where it matters not at all to the quality of food or service whether or not he is in attendance on any given night at any particular restaurant—and I’m happy for him about that. It is a testament to his excellence, his unwavering standards, and to the excellence of the teams and systems and institutions he’s created, that this is so.

Per Se in New York City has four New York Times stars—along with three from Michelin. They deserve every one of them. You’d have a very difficult time making the argument that there is a “better” restaurant in America.

So, why, I ask myself, did I come home from Per Se heartbroken last night? And why, in the hours since, has an unarticulated, indefinable sadness hung over me—a cloud that followed me home, an evil imp on my shoulder whispering terrible things into my skull? Like the spare tire around my waist—something I just don’t want to acknowledge.

Maybe if I creep up on this thing slowly—this spirit-destroying guinea worm wriggling around inside me, threatening my happiness, making me a bad person—maybe if I stab blindly at him with a cocktail fork, with a lucky shot I can reel the whole fucker out and resume life as it was before.

Why are there voices in my head—making me ask…questions?

Like this one:

At the end of the day, would a good and useful criterion for evaluating a meal be “Was it fun?”

Meaning: after many courses of food, sitting in the taxi on the way home, when you ask yourself or your dinner companion, “Was that a good time?” is the answer a resounding “Yes! Yes! My God, yes!”—or would it, on balance, have been more fun spending the evening at home on the couch with a good movie and a pizza?

Perhaps, given the expense and seriousness of the enterprise—and the fact that, presumably, you had to dress for dinner—a fairer question might be “Was it better than a really good blow job?” As this is the intended result of so many planned nights on the town, would you—having achieved touchdown before even getting up from the couch—have then bothered to go out to dinner at all?

Okay. It’s apples and oranges. How can you compare two completely different experiences? It’s situational. It’s unfair. It’s like asking if you’d prefer a back massage now—or a life without ever having seen a Cézanne or Renoir.

How about this, then? Same situation. You’re on your way home from the menu dégustation (or whatever they’re calling it). You’re sitting in the back of that same taxi, and you ask yourself an even simpler question:

“How do I feel?”

That’s fair, isn’t it?

Do you feel good?

How’s your stomach?

Could what you just had—assuming you’re with a date—be described, by any stretch of the imagination, as a “romantic” experience? Honestly now. I know you spent a lot of money. But look across the seat at the woman with you. Do you really think she’s breathlessly anticipating getting back to your apartment to ride you like the Pony Express? Or do you think it far more likely that (like you) she’s counting the seconds till she can get away for a private moment or two and discreetly let loose with a backlog of painfully suppressed farts? That what she’d much prefer to do right now, rather than submit to your gentle thrusting, is to roll, groaning and miserable, into bed, praying she’s not going to heave up four hundred dollars worth of fine food and wine?

And you—are you even up to the job? Any thoughts of sexual athleticism likely disappeared well before the cheese course.

That’s a fair criterion, right? Least you could ask of a meal—by classical standards, anyway.

To establish precedent, let’s take Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli in Spain—perhaps the longest and most famous of the tasting menus. After the full-on experience there—about five sustained hours of eating and drinking—I felt pretty good. I hung around drinking gin and tonics for another two hours—after which I could, I believe, have performed sexually and then happily gone out for a snack.