Corton

To celebrate the momentous events of the last few days, which I am not to discuss, we visited the new restaurant Corton on Saturday night. I have some thoughts, but I am still sorting through them and will post later.

UPDATE: here are my thoughts:

The overwhelming impression I had upon leaving Corton was that the food looked better than it tasted. Aesthetically, the food turned out by the Corton kitchen is a striking achievement- a sort of series of alien landscapes, bright green slimes,'transluscent gels, things enrobed with other things. An evening at corton reminded me of nothing more than an evening at the Taco Bell depicted in the cult classic movie Demolution Man, a vision from a future I'm not sure I want to visit. Liebrandt would make a very good chef for the kind of people who dress in futuristic silver tights, I reckon.

But I'm not a futuristic person in silver tights, so the question is whether Corton's food is delicious for me, today. That's a close question. Certainly, everthing is tasty, some of it spectacular, and it is made abundantly clear that the tall, dominating chef one can glimpse through the window into the kitchen is capable, if he so chose, of producing new French cuisine of the highest possible caliber. Slot this guy into Per Se's kitchen, and nothing would skip the slightest beat.

But the food I experiencxed at Corton was not entirely of that quality. I think, for example, of my Dorade with chanterelles, which, cooked sous vide and presented with a limpid grey silver skin, tasted unaccountably fishy. Nor could I entirely understand why it was accompanied by what I took to be Cherry tomatoes enrobed like malt balls by mozzarella. Yes, the accompanying slick of tomato sorrell sauce was magnificent, but why could I not have fish that tasted subtler and skin that was a greater pleasure to eat? It was not a matter of execution, to be sure - one of two side dishes to the Dorade was (oddly) yet more Dorade, this crispy and covered in a thin seaweed gelatin. So Liebrandt knows precisely how to do what I was craving. He just chose not to, and I couldn't quite understand why.

Or let's consider the hamachi starter, tiny rolls of fish interspersed somewhat randomly amid a veritable hurricane of additional bits and bobs - kombu, avocado, flowers salsify, and who knows what else. Striking? Yes. Delicious? Well, not as much, and definitely not as delicious as the piece of unadorned hamachi we recently had during an omakase feast at Sushi of Gari. I'd rather a little less fuss and more flavor.

I suppose it is entirely possible that I did not understand what Liebrandt is doing, or that I am understating the quality of the food. There is no doubt, for example, that our lobster (blessed with a somewhat inexplicable $8 supplement) was glorious: a kellerian tail of sumptuous Maine lobster barely cooked, barely wet with a butter sauce that seemed almost superfluous and yet still welcome.

Nor can I do anything but give the highest praise for the starter of foie gras covered in corton's much ballyhooed cherry hibiscus gelee. Without doubt, this is one of the best foie gras's in the city. His chocolates are good, the service is almost seamless, the space a pleasant environment to eat a great meal.

In the end, though, based on only one visit, Corton feels a little empty to me. I looked for a while, during dinner, at the thin leaf of kombu on the hamachi plate. It was beautiful- intricate beeige and black patterns that seemed to change somewhat in the sort lights of the restaurant. When I put this miraculous piece of natural art in my mouth, though, the magic flitted away as I slowly chewed the dried seaweed, thinking of bygone days waiting for communion wafers to dissolve in my mouth in elementary school. That is my lasting impression of Corton, until I visit again. Feyly beautiful, and yet lacking just a little bit.