Masa's

The Prelude
About three years ago I went to Masa's and an evening of uninspired food, indifferent service, and a high price tag ended with a very disappointing petit-four experience. I love petit-fours. I love stuffing my mouth with a dozen little gems even though dinner is packed tightly halfway up my esophagus and, at the same time, pushing lunch out the other end. I love the variety of petit-fours and how they symbolize the restaurant's extravagance. It's as if they're asking you to stay a few more minutes and eat carefully crafted treats even though you've just had two dessert courses, an offer that seems so generous and over-the-top that it leaves some visitors giddy with disbelief. So I was disappointed when the cart came by a few years ago and the server placed just a few pieces on a shiny tray and walked off robotically, leaving me wondering if I'd been a bad guest. I felt half guilty and half angry. I could've used about nine more pieces. I wanted some more petit-fours but the evening was over. And now, three years later, I sat alone at the restaurant, curious to see if things had improved.

The Review, in Twelve Parts
1. There was some fumbling in the beginning. The bartender brought me the menu as soon as I sat, and after I ordered the first runner delivering the canape nearly collided with another waiter who, holding a menu, didn't know I had already placed my order. When things settled and and the dust cleared, I found a small espresso cup in front of me. Mushroom bisque - a favorite of mine. I looked at it for a moment, the white foam, the latte color underneath. I smelled it, the aroma rich and earthy. I tasted it... but too much cream. Cream brings body and silkiness to a soup, but put one drop too many and at some unmeasured point the cream dampens the intensity of the theme ingredient. And dampened it was.

2. Fried tofu on seaweed salad? Perhaps it's because I grew up on the stuff, but I was hardly amused by this amuse-bouche. Imagine if you were served a square of peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich on white bread at the Ritz Carlton dining room.

3. I only recently began appreciating caviar (I hear that lady from Neiman Marcus calling me a snob again). It tastes and feels the way pearls look - smooth, silky, minerally. It's surprisingly versatile - serve it on salmon, oysters, potato blinis, use it as garnish on soups even. Here it was served on a brioche toast with a poached quail egg. The very slight crisp of the brioche and the creamy body of the egg went perfectly with the caviar, adding the warmth that caviar, served naked, can't deliver. I could've made an entire breakfast out of this.

4. Call me a purist, but I don't like sushi served at French or American restaurants. Don't get me wrong - I'm a huge sushi fan. But it's one thing to enjoy it in a proper sushi restaurant, and quite another in a Western restaurant serving haute cuisine, where the whole point is transformation of raw ingredients into something greater. There must be an emergent quality to the end product. You and I can both slice a piece of nice sashimi-grade tuna and it will taste just as good as it would if Thomas Keller himself sliced it. Which is why he once said that he loves preparing organ meats (offal) because they don't naturally taste good. It requires a tremendous amount of technique and creativity to soften, stretch, and pull the flavors so that something that doesn't taste so good tastes good - and that's the whole point of great cooking. So why was I served sashimi of big-eyed tuna on hearts of palm and daikon sprouts with a wasabi-soy dressing here at Masa's? It tasted good enough, but I have to question its purpose.

5. The crab salad was special. Lumps of chilled maine crab were served on fava beans, waterchestnuts, and croutons, and accented with two drops of chili oil. The flavors were light, a breeze carrying the cool coastal air of Maine in your mouth. The chili oil, an ingredient that caused me to raise an eyebrow at first, proved to be a clever and imaginative counterpoint to the crab. The variety of texture really made the dish fly. The soft meatiness of the crab, the firm density of the beans, the vibrant crunch of the waterchestnuts would have done well by themselves. But the tiny croutons that stayed crispy for the 30 seconds it took me to inhale the dish added a stunning quality of genius to the construction of the course.

6. The fish course was sturgeon on wilted spinach, raisins, cauliflowers, and madras curry. The fish was firm and moist, the quality of a ripe savory fruit. The raisins went surprisingly well, punctuating the unfocused run-on flavor that often characterize fish, no matter how well it's cooked. The spinach played its role dutifully and without surprise. The cauliflower added body. The curry was superfluous.

7. The service was, for the most part, excellent. Because I sat at the bar near the entrance, I was entertained not only by my bartender/waiter, but by the hostess also. As I put my fork down on the plate that once carried the sturgeon, the waiter asked if I would be okay with the foie gras course. I said no, I wouldn't like to eat the organs of tortured geese. He proudly brought me a bowl of agnolotti served with carrots and sweet English peas. With most vegetarian dishes, I like to sample the individual vegetables first to appreciate the full effect of each flavor. The sweet peas sang with the green flavors of Spring; the carrots were mute, utterly flavorless. The dish turned out to disappoint, especially since the sauce was simple beurre monte with an offensive amount of minced parsley, and the chef would've done better by serving me a bowl of those peas.

8. The squab was pleasant, as all 11 week old pigeons tend to be. It was served with spinach (didn't I just have that with the sturgeon? Were they having a special at Costco?), applewood bacon, shallot jus, and again, lots of parsley.

9. The Colorado lamb had a nice strong flavor - a bit stronger than I like, but still pleasant. The loin was served on spinach (definitely a sale at Costco) and root vegetables, finished with a little simple lamb jus. Perhaps I've dined out too many times, but the squab and the lamb were so expected. I was craving more revelations like the croutons in the crab salad. Croutons with crab! So clever.

10. Pineapple sorbet on coconut "noodles." A palette cleanser before the dessert course. I had a bite or two of the sorbet, but the "noodles" were left untouched. I didn't want more.

11. After the first bite of the dessert, I wanted more of the pineapple sorbet. Hell, I would've eaten the coconut "noodles" as well. I was served "lime wontons" over mangoes with a mint dressing and lemon churros. What a disaster of flavors. It tasted like Trix cereal except not as palatable. I ate a few bites and left it alone, not caring whether they'd be offended or not. No, actually, I wished that they would notice, and I imagined a heated argument among the chefs and the owner, one of them tasting one of the "wontons" for himself and spitting it out and another throwing his chefs hat down in protest. I imagined someone leaving, everyone not quite sure if he had quit just before he was fired. But instead a waiter strolled by and quietly carried the plate away without a peep.

12. The check arrived. I was anxious, but not at the price. I knew how much the dinner cost. This was an issue far more grave. It was that the check arrived without the petit-four cart, that dreaded cart. So I asked the waiter if there would be petit-fours (tacky, I know, but I really wanted petit-fours, but you know that by now). He grew a large smile, and the hostess hearing our conversation as she walked by grew one as well. With eyebrows raised, the waiter said that of course the petit-fours were arriving, and that in fact, Alex would be serving it. The hostess, as if playing the second voice in a fugue, raised her brows in similar fashion, nodded and said, yes, Alex WAS the best at it and would be serving me petit-fours. Was she really as good as they all said she was? Could this be the new and improved Masa's where they were actually generous with petit-fours? Alex finally arrived with the cart, this beautiful cart with tiny little cakes and chocolates and truffles and fancy lollipops. I wasn't sure, so I asked. Can I have this one and this one and this one AND this one? She didn't flinch. And then... this one and this one and this one and this one AND this one? She placed them all on the fancy little tray and smiled. I couldn't believe it. I ate them all quickly, afraid that surely someone would see that I'd been given too many petit-fours, would apologize for Alex as she's new and doesn't know the limit of four petit-fours per customer, would take them away from me, my little preciouses. Then something remarkable happened. The hostess came by and said that if there were any others I would like, she could prepare me a to-go box with whatever I wished. My jaw nearly unhinged. I leaned over and whispered if I could have five more of those delicious canalis. She leaned in herself as if still in the fugue and whispered that those were her favorites too. Then I told her about my last visit to Masa's and that I was grateful for her generosity. She laughed with genuine excitement at having done her job well. You could tell she felt good, but not as good as that guy in the black suit and untucked shirt, the one walking to his car with four canalis in a box and one in his mouth.