Farrah Olivia by Morou

I've been a huge Iron Chef fan for years, and, while Iron Chef America doesn't quite live up to the original, it is nonetheless entertaining. If anything, The Next Iron Chef is even more fun: watching these eight really accomplished chefs go through a gruelling series of challenges.

Two of the judges -- Michael Ruhlman and Andrew Knowlten -- have blogged about the show. The latest casualty is Morou (he has a last name, but prefers the single-name moniker, like Cher), chef at Farrah Olivia in Alexandria, Virginia. Both Knowlten and Ruhlman had problems with Morou's plating style. You see, he makes a lot of "deconstructed" dishes -- small piles of food with artistic splashes of sauces and powders and the like. His plates really do look gorgeous -- like works of art, more than plates of food. Knowlten criticized Morou for "for consistently (and tediously) plating his dishes with all sorts of swishes, spurts, and splashes." Despite his apparent annoyance with the plating style, Knowlten said that Morou's dishes were "complex and full of interesting flavors and techniques." Ruhlman was even more harsh, saying Morou's food was "too fussy, dainty, and compartmentalized."

Well, nothing like judging for yourself. So, the Main Squeeze and I headed out to Farrah Olivia the fairly complex dishes -- . It's a smallish place, tastefully decorated, with some onsite parking. Our waiter wasn't going to ever win a "world's best waiter" award, but he had the basics down: he got to our table, took our orders in a timely manner, brought us more bread and water when we needed more, got the orders right, and generally did his job. If he had a weakness, it was in explaningMorou uses foams and powders and sauces and the like spread all over the plate, and a "world's best waiter" candidate would have it all down cold. You could tell he'd been trained on it, but he didn't quite, have it down the way he should. For example, he didn't know what the foam on my lobster was -- in fact it was "banana air." Yes, it was on my menu, but I had forgotten.

But the food itself came in a timely manner, and it was every bit as gorgeous as it seemed on TV. Yes, Morou's style includes unusual combinations -- butter poached lobster with tapioca and banana air, for example. And yes a lot of his dishes are deconstructed. But you know what? Butter poached lobster with tapioca and banana air happens to be really good, at least when Morou is preparing it. I suspect that if I tried it, it would be a disaster. And isn't that the point of a fancy restaurant? To get something you can't do at home yourself? The Main Squeeze's scallops with bacon powder were likewise delicious -- I just wished she had been more generous with her loving husband.

I'll take issue with Ruhlman's characterization of Morou's cuisine as being "dainty." Yes, it is complex -- if all you want is a big slab of meat on a plate, go to Outback, or, for a better slab, go to the Capital Grille. He uses really high quality ingredients -- my steak was very tender -- and he works magic to impart flavor. But the meat was hearty and well-seasoned, the opposite of dainty. And yes, he puts sauce on using artistic splashes and spurts. But that allows the diner to taste the meat first without any sauce at all. It was great -- tasted like steak, but with a layer of complex flavors to let you know that you were paying for more than just a seared chunk of animal flesh. And, when dipped in the sauce, it added additional complexity and flavor. Whatever you say about his flashy plating, the man knows how to cook meat.

And his deserts. Well, all I can say is "hang on to that pastry chef -- you have a winner." Amazing, fun, interesting flavors.

Truth be told, I like the way Morou plates his dishes, and I like the way the guy cooks. The food was uniformly excellent, with some really nice flavor combinations. It's unique and interesting -- he follows his own vision, sort of like Howard Roark in the kitchen. Maybe he won't be the Next Iron Chef, but the man can cook, and his restaurant is well worth a visit.

I will add, in the interest of full disclosure, that our waiter mentioned to Morou that we had seen him on The Next Iron Chef, and that we liked his plating style. He was nice enough to come out of the kitchen and say hello as we were leaving. Does that affect my judgment as a critic? Possibly, although I was a pretty happy well-fed camper when I got up from the table, before I had met him. Morou seems like a really great guy, and I hope that being a losing Next Iron Chef contestant gives him a boost. Would I like to see every restaurant plate its food like he does? Well, no. But his cuisine is unique and interesting, and well worth a try.

Morimoto

We finally got a chance to sample Morimoto, the Philadelphia outpost of Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto, and it really is an experience. Sleek and modern, the interior looks like something from a sci-fi movie. Upon entering the restaurant, one is greeted by attractive hostesses in short skirts, always a welcome sight. It's almost like going into a cave, because it's dark and the blond wood ceiling is so low. The undulating ceiling rises up as one enters the restaurant proper, almost like you are entering another world. In a way, the ceiling struck me as being reminiscent of the bamboo rollers used to roll sushi, while the dividers between the tables were reminiscent of Bento boxes. The tables and chairs are really funky looking, and each table has upon it a strangely phallic electric "candle." The place was loud and packed with people. Nonetheless, we were seated promptly at the time of our reservation, which suggests they run the front of the house pretty well.

We got the "Omakase" menu, which I am given to understand is Japanese for "trust me." Ideally, for an Omakase menu, you'd want Morimoto himself standing there, picking stuff and fixing it for you. But the guy has three restaurants, the Iron Chef gig, cookbooks and the like, so I think it's fair enough that he has, supposedly, personally designed the Omakase menu to highlight his cuisine. There are actually three different price levels for the Omakase, we got the highest one, at $120 a pop. We were told that the number of courses actually remains constant, but that price of the ingredients goes up at higher prices. So with the high-end menu you get the toro and lobster and wagyu beef and such, while if you pay $45, it's the dog food for you.

Part of the fun of the Omakase menu is that it's a surprise. Unlike the normal tasting menu, they don't tell you in advance what's coming up. Or even how many courses there are. So if you are thinking about enjoying the Omakase menu at Morimoto, the bottom line is that it's great, and it's well worth the (high) price, if you enjoy that sort of cuisine. Don't read any further if you want to be surprised.

We also got the medium beverage omakase, which was mostly wine -- one dish came with a Morimoto Martini, and the sushi course came with sake. At the highest end, you can have all sake. The beverages were good, and they paired well with the main courses, but at Morimoto the food is definitely the star, and the beverages are a very good supporting player.

The first four courses were effectively the appetizers for the meal. All pretty small servings of some form of raw fish. To me, the item that stood out the least of this bunch were the three oysters topped with different sorts of gunk. I slurped 'em down and enjoyed them, and Morimoto showed a bit with the different toppings for the oysters, but they didn't blow me away. They were raw oysters. Good raw oysters, topped with some pretty interesting gunk on the top, but nothing to write home about. The second least appealing of the first four items was, believe it or not, a sashimi sampler. Again, it was good, and I cleaned my plate, but it wasn't knock-your-socks off good. I expected Morimoto's sashimi to really stand out, and it didn't.

The other two items in the first group were more than good -- they were incredible. One was the first item served, and it was heck of a way to begin the meal. The ubiquitous tuna tartare, something you see a lot these days. But this wasn't your average tuna tartare appetizer; it was toro tartare with caviar and wasabi. This is also on the appetizer menu, and I will say, if you like tuna tartare, get it. It was what I expected his sashimi to be: the best example of that thing I've ever had. An incredible, complex, balanced dish. And it also showed some originality, the way it combined the toro, the caviar, and the wasabi.

Finally, the other item from the first flight of four was a scallop carpaccio. Yeah, I know there's no such thing as scallop carpaccio, but there is now at Morimoto, and it's incredible. The scallop was sliced inhumanly thin, and it was arranged on the plate in one of those presentations you could never match. It looked like a work of art, and it tasted, well, like a work of art. Out of this world good.

I will say that, after four raw fish dishes, we really were hankering for some cooked food. And we got it: what was effectively the first half of the main course: the eight spice lobster, served with a dipping sauce made out of creme fraiche with some stuff in it. Yeah, the creme fraiche dipping sauce sounds weird, but it worked. The spices gave the lobster some real zip, and the sauce cooled it down. The dynamic is almost the same as good buffalo wings with bleu cheese, except about a million times better because of the underlying quality of the ingredients. The spices were really good, the dipping sauce was great, and what's amazing is that, with all this going on in your mouth, the lobster itself still came through. It was not overshadowed at all. I tend to like lobster a lot, but I also tend to prefer it plain, rather than all gussied up. This was absolutely one of the best things I have ever tasted. Lobster like I've never had it before, absolutely delicious combination that really shouldn't work. Truly worthy of an Iron Chef.

Next was the Kobe Beef, and it was great too. Absolutely delicious flavor. This was also one place where the drink pairing stood out: it was paired with a South African pinotage that was good on its own but which really stood out when paired with the Kobe Beef. Then came the sushi course with sake, and it was some of the best sushi I've ever tasted, particularly the toro. There was nothing particularly creative or weird here, just really good sushi.

We ended with a desert that was good but forgettable. In fact, I've forgotten it already. But you don't go to a place like Morimoto for desert -- you go for two things: creative edge cuisine that you haven't had before and raw fish. In both cases, Morimoto delivered. I probably wouldn't want to eat that way every night, but it was a real experience.

If I had one criticism of the Omakase menu, it was a bit heavy on the raw fish. Don't get me wrong, I like the raw stuff, but five of the eight courses were based on raw stuff from the water. I'd have been happy with four. In addition, I wish it had included a tempura dish. This may have been a function of the fact that we were sitting near the back, and all night viewed waiters and waitresses carrying the tempura appetizer past our table. It looked really good.

The service gets an A minus. Generally good, but it could have been a bit quicker between courses. The hosting staff at the front of the house did a good job, and for the most part they explained each dish well. A couple of times we weren't told about the wine, but mostly the seemed knowledgeable and attentive without hovering.

Morimoto was definitely a fun experience, and I'll give it another try at some point in the future. Although next time I will probably order off the regular menu, and I will definitely get the tempura.

Reputation in the Internet Era

Back during the height of the internet boom, lots of folks were talking about how much the internet changes things. That's been tamped down a bit, but it really has been an important innovation, in a lot of ways. Small stuff: I no longer own a phone book, for example. When I want to look up a phone number, I go on the Web to do it.

One area where, I think, businesses may still be behind the curve is in the way that their reputation can take big hits when they do a bad job with customers. It's not just word-of-mouth any more -- it's word-of-mouth plus word-of-blog, review site, etc. I still get hits on my U.S. Airways Customer Service -- SUCKS post, for example. Google "Dell Hell," and Jeff Jarvis's page will be one of your top hits. My view that Charlie Palmer Steak has good food and lousy service is available for viewing.

It used to be that a restaurant could feel pretty safe in serving rotten food, and then making inadequate recompense to the disgruntled diner. Oh, it could be a secret shopper or incognito restaurant critic, but the chances are it's just some guy. You might lose one customer, or get bad word-of-mouth -- and word-of-mouth is important to restaurants. But the scope of the damage will be limited. Now, however, there's a lot more room damage.

Witness this post back in May, by Stephen Dubner at the Freakonomics blog (via Ian Ayres at Balkanization and then this more recent post at Dubner's blog). Sure, Dubner is a real, live journalist, but he's also a blogger. And, like bloggers, he has the freedom to write about what he feels like. In this case, a restaurant called French Roast served him rotten chicken. When he sent it back, they fought him on it. And then they gave him little recompense -- a few measly bucks off. The manager though she'd gotten him out of there, meek and mild-mannered. And she was right -- he didn't put up a fight.

He wrote about it on his blog. And now it's there, fore all to find, whether through search engine or just following some random links, as I did. And the worst part is, most of the other reviews I've read online look pretty positive. It was probably just a fluke, albeit one that really shouldn't have happened. But fixing it right would probably have been less damaging than incurring the reputational cost associated with getting hammered by a reasonably well-read blogger.

Wolfgang Puck Express -- Convention Center

Lunch at Wolfgang Puck Express. What do I expect -- it's a food court? Well, I don't expect a waitress to come by and see how I liked it, or advice from a Sommelier. Nor, honestly, do I expect Spago-quality food.

But hey, it's Wolfgang Puck, and he calls it his "gourmet" express. He's supposed to be a great chef, and he says he's bringing great chefery to fast food. Great idea -- Americans are now a nation of foodies, so there has to be a market for fast-but-good. Alas, while Wolfgang Puck Express might be an improvement on the institutional cuisine served in prisons or poverty-stricken school districts, it didn't raise the bar for food court food.

I had a little single-serving pepperoni pizza and a Diet Coke. On the bright side, the Diet Coke was good. The Wolfgang Puck Gourmet express pepperoni pizza was worse than a California Pizza Kitchen frozen pizza. Lots worse. Let's start with the crust. It's kind of a cliche to call it cardboard, but it's the only word that fits. Annoyingly thick for thin-crust pizza, it was neither crunchy nor chewy, nor did it have a texture one normally associates with "food." I can't even describe the texture of the crust -- slightly-soggy stale crackers, maybe. But it was vile.

Atop the crust lay a schmear of tomato sauce, which tasted like generic tomato sauce out of a can, with no seasoning, no spices, no herbs, nothing to give it any zest or flavor. The cheese and pepperoni were of similar ilk. Everybody's got to make a buck, and I do understand that cheap fast food is going to have some compromises. But I have to believe that Wolfgang Puck could produce a better product. Something slightly less disgusting, at least.

CP Steak -- DC

Over the weekend, the Main Squeeze and I had dinner at CP Steak, DC, Charlie Palmer's outpost in our nation's capital, along with a few friends. Gorgeous room, lovely view of the Capital Building.

The food and wine and of course the company was great, but you know, when I pay over $700 (tax, tip, and wine included) for a meal for five, well, I expect top-notch service. This . . . wasn't. Not that his restaurant is understaffed -- in fact, the floor was crawling with people. Nor was the place busy -- there were empty tables. But they seemed to prefer to stand around and chit-chat rather than, you know, doing their jobs. I think it's more fun to stand around and chit-chat too, and if Charlie wants to run his business that way, I can see the appeal. But it's not the best way to make customers happy.

We went and we're led past the really cool glass-walled wine room (which, alas, is not equipped with Wine Angels in catsuits). We took our seats, and the menus soon followed -- CP Steak has rigid one-page metal-rimmed menus which stick in little weighted stands. One reviewer said they made him feel like he was playing battleship with his date. Well, there were five of us, so it would have to be a more complicated game -- something involving dice and rulebook the size of the Internal Revenue Code. But you get the idea -- the menus look cool in the stands, and I suppose it's good to have your hands free. You can do a bit of knitting while waiting for the waiter to come and take your order.

Speaking of waiting . . . .

We sat down, got our menus, and then waited for somebody to come. You know, a waiter or waitress to introduce him or herself, talk about any specials, maybe give us a drop or two of water. Let's just say we had plenty of time to read the menu . . . memorize it . . . put it to song. Finally a very nattily-attired woman, whom I assumed was the Boss Waiter for our table stopped by and deigned to inform us of the specials and ask about our water preference. She also asked if we wanted wine -- and I told her I wanted to consult with their sommelier before deciding on a purchase. So she said she would send the sommelier by, and she left us to continue our contemplation of the menu.

In fairness, she did come back in a timely way to take our order, and she did a pretty good job of answering questions. Generally, she was pretty good, in terms of the information she provided, with one glaring exception. Too bad we didn't see more of her. So we gave our order, but still, no somelier. The little pre-appetizers come, and hey, they're good! Raw fish -- I got two servings, because one of my friends won't eat raw fish. But no sommelier.

At some point this bald fellow wanders by and asks about our wine order. I never quite figured out whether baldy was a waiter or assistant sommelier or general manager or what, but I did tell him we had been waiting for a sommelier. He said he'd sender her by. Unlike our waiter, he actually seemed to communicate something to somebody, because our sommelier did manage to stop by. She and I talked about what we like in a wine, and she offered several suggestions, all of them quite reasonably priced. Well, reasonably priced for restaurant wines, that is. I made my pick and she wandered off.

I expected her to, you know, bring our wine and pour it. But we wait . . . and wait . . . and wait. Appetizers arrive, and we start to eat. More raw fish for me! It's really good raw fish, I have to say. Tuna tartare, with a bit of zip Finally, midway through the appetizers, we got our wine. The sommelier shows it to me and then wanders off to open it She gives it sniff, and then takes a small taste. She decants it. I'm starting to get worried about whether something is wrong, but finally she brings it and pours. She tells us to give it a few minutes, so it will open up.

She was right! It did open up When I first tasted it, I thought it was OK -- not spoiled or anything, but no better than a $10.00 Lindeman's. Twenty minutes later, it was pretty darn good. The . . . leisurely pace of the service worked to our advantage here, because in the inevitable delay between appetizers and main course, the wine improved dramatically. So by the time the main courses arrived, we had gotten a pretty good start on the wine. Hey, there were five of us, after all. With my friends, that's two bottles of wine, easy.

We killed the bottle as we were eating the main courses, and we could have easily consumed another bottle. If, that is, somebody had bothered to, you know, ask us if we wanted one. Somebody finally did -- but by the time they did, we were almost done eating, and, based on past performance, I was pretty sure they wouldn't get it to us before we had finished, so I declined. Not only did nobody ever ask us if we needed more wine, the sommelier never even stopped by to ask if we were enjoying our selection. Like the waitress who was supposedly in charge of our table, she was AWOL after making a first appearance.

The food, by the way, was quite good. I got the Wagyu beef sampler -- three three once portions of Wagyu beef. American, Australian, and (allegedly) authentic Japanese Kobe beef. The meat was perfectly prepared and really good. I mean really good. I loved getting to contrast the three styles of Wagyu beef. My serving was nine ounces of meat -- and that was it. Oh, a bit of garnish, but basically just the meat. That's fine -- side dishes were ordered and served separately. But I needed a side dish or two to round out the meal. Hey, I'm an American -- don't expect me to eat light.

We ordered three side dishes, because the waitress told us they were "large, family-style portions." Maybe for a family of anorexics. Don't get me wrong -- they were pretty darn good, just like everything else. We ate every morsel and then licked the plates clean. No, not literally, but it looked as if we had. The goat cheese orzo gratin, which had to have about a million calories per bite, was particularly delicious. If somebody had asked, we might well have requested another order of it -- but nobody bothered to ask if we wanted more. (Our other side dishes were asparagus, which was good, and creamed spinach -- yuck! -- which I didn't bother to taste. But my friends said it was good, and they ate it all.) For that matter, our waitress never bothered to ask if the food was to our liking. In fact, we never saw her again after she first took our order.

There were other substandard aspects of the service. Water glasses that stayed empty too long; really good bread that we never got more of. Suffice it to say that the service was uniformly substandard for a restaurant of that price range. I don't want to give the impression that I want to be rushed through a good meal -- I like the whole slow food thing. I didn't particularly mind having a few moments to digest between each course. But there are times when alacrity matters.

More to the point, at a good restaurant, the customer should have the sense that the mob of people runnng around are part of a team that's working together in a coordinated way. Our waitress -- or "table captain," if you want to be old-fashioned -- should have noticed that the sommelier hadn't come, that our glasses weren't being filled, that we ran out of side dishes halfway through our main courses, and that we needed more wine. But I didn't have the sense that she, or anybody else for that matter, was paying attention to the details of the service.

So did I have a good time? Yes! Good friends, good food, good wine. I really did enjoy myself, despite the problems with the service. Nor do I want people constantly hovering. But I really do think it's a shame that a restaurant which consistently delivers such great food also delivers such lousy service. You know, at Red Lobster the waitress usually stops by and asks if the food is good and refills our bread and gives us more water. My entree cost $85, and while somebody on a budget could get roast chicken for a little over twenty bucks, most of the items aren't cheap. A restaurant of that caliber, with that many people "working" there ought to have better service than the average Red Lobster.

Our reservations were lateish -- not terribly late, but 8:30 or so. By the time we finished, the service had definitely started to wind down. There were a couple tables still filled, but we were the place was definitely emptying out. We had done the valet parking thing (and yes, we had a designated driver), and a helpful fellow in a white jacket took my ticket and made sure the valets were still around to retrieve my vehicle.

It was a very nice gesture. Finally, we saw the kind of attention to hospitality and service that a restaurant like this ought to feature start-to-finish. Somebody cared about doing a good job. As I walked past, I caught a glimpse of the words sewn into the breast of his white jacket. It said "Executive Chef."