A Priceless Meal
File this under old news. A little over a week ago Steve Barnes, our most prominent local food journalist, published a profile on one of the region’s top chefs. The chef is Luc Pasquier and he rules the stoves at Jack’s Oyster House, an institution since 1913 in downtown Albany.
Despite my best efforts I have yet to make it to Jack’s and try his food.
Steve’s story is more of a puff piece on the chef. And it’s fine. It covers a bit of the chef’s professional history, goes into how he met his wife, and reveals that Luc doesn’t really cook at home.
Except apparently when Luc does cook at home, he goes all out. At least when the invited guest is Steve Barnes. And by all out, I mean a ten-course tasting menu with paired wines, which took the chef two days to prepare. Regrettably neither the published story nor the piece Steve wrote on his blog went into any details of the meal beyond posting a picture of the menu and a few recipes for the dishes.
Everything looked delicious, but what really knocked me out were the wine pairings. As you know, I don’t impress easily. And I’m floored they didn’t even get a mention.
Champagne accompanied the first course of rabbit terrine and a tomato tart. And while the Champagne served is not a household name, Vranken Diamant Brut retails for around $50 and sounds quite lovely. From the producer:
The nose is intense, fresh and complex, with vegetal characters (cut grass and dried ferns) and woodland scents. Full and vinous in the mouth with rich fruit flavours (figs and prunes), combining with a generous hint of sweet Viennese pastry and with a slightly musky finish.
I don’t think I can write tasting notes for all these wines, otherwise this post will never end. The second course was poached lobster, which was paired with a Boillot Puligny-Montrachet 1er Cru “Truffière” from 1990. Old wines are a special treat. Aged premiere cru wines from the French village that is considered the home of chardonnay are a very special treat indeed.
Frankly, I was surprised to find this vintage available online for a very reasonable $90.
The third course was fried escargot, which was chef Luc’s take on the regional delicacy of Buffalo chicken wings. Although it appears the importance of Frank’s Red Hot in the dish was lost on the Frenchman. With this he served a 12 year-old Graves from Chateau Haut Selve. Most likely it was the white, which is a Bordeaux blend of sauvignon blanc and semillon with a bit of sauvignon gris.
I’d be really curious to hear how this wine had aged, because it seems to be the odd bottle out of the group. Yes, it’s over ten years old. But current vintages can be had for under $20, which instinctively makes me question its aging potential beyond ten years. However, I will readily admit I am no expert on the wines of Graves.
On to the fourth course of pheasant and foie gras. This isn’t exactly a light meal. And don’t forget, this was all done at the chef’s house. My first pairing idea probably wouldn’t be a 19-year-old pinot noir from a small village in Burgundy, but that’s more about my lack of a good wine cellar than anything else. But that’s what Chef Luc served. The Domaine Amiot-Servelle Chambolle-Musigny “Derriere La Grange” 1er Cru from 1991. This bottle would easily set you back $100 if you could find one.
Thankfully the fifth course was a palate cleanser.
But the sixth course jumps back into the richness with a veal and kidney dish. Naturally, this was served with a 1995 Carruades de Lafite. This wine is the second label of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, which is to say it only costs hundreds of dollars and not north of four figures. While I couldn’t easily find a bottle of this 15 year-old wine, I found its younger cousin for a mere $425 (on sale).
The remaining four courses were dessert. I have to respect a chef who includes the cheese dessert, the fruit dessert, the cream dessert and ends a meal with chocolate truffles.
It’s no wonder why chef Luc’s wife said that it had been ten years since he’d cooked a meal like that at home. This was epic. Eating this meal out at a restaurant could easily cost $2,500. For most people it would be a once in a lifetime treat. I just kind of expected that somebody who writes about food and has his own food blog would write more about the details of this feast.
After all, there is no word limit to what you can publish online.
FUSSYlittleBLOG 
Ah, Lafite. I have only heard it whispered in hushed, revered tones.
White Graves or Pessac wines can age very well. They do see used oak and are more structured than a Sancerre. The very best are just as expensive as red Bordeaux. They are harder to find because the English love them and get the largest share of the export. We had a ten yer old Smith Haut Lafite once. Very good but expensive.
Daniel, once again you miss the point and then nitpick and otherwise find fault as a result of what I’ll assume is a misunderstanding, not a deliberate misinterpretation of what I’ve written.
The profile of Luc Pasquier is the latest in the at-home-with series I write about local chefs for the Times Union’s monthly life@home magazine. They have a strict word limit — only 20 percent longer than your blog post above — and they are not intended to be about the food. They’re meant as small portraits focused on an evening meal at home with a chef and his or her family, and I talk about the house and its residents as much as I do about food. I’ve written 16 such profiles for life@home, every one of them linked on my blog, so I’d think that by now the scope of them should be clear to a close reader such as yourself.
Further, I request that chefs create casual meals, preferably only three or so courses, for the profile. I was shocked and more than a little dismayed by the extravagance of Pasquier’s meal, which went on for almost six hours. While the food and wine were thrilling, for me to have devoted several thousand words to them on the blog would have been rewarding Pasquier’s excesses. Such coverage also would have been unfair to future chefs who might have felt they had to try to equal or outdo Pasquier, and to past chefs who had listened to the request for a simple meal. To break precedent and do a blowout blog post on Pasquier’s meal, writing about it ways I’ve never written about any other chef’s at-home-with evening, would have made at least some future subjects more likely to try something similar. I know from speaking to chefs that they read the profiles and menus and feel some sense of competition when they’re chosen. Given its cost in time, labor and ingredients, I couldn’t in good conscience present Pasquier’s meal as an example worth emulating. It was too much.
I completely understand the restraints of print journalism. And I hear you when you say that you did not want to highlight chef Luc’s excesses by dedicating a blog post to the meal itself.
However, if you truly didn’t want to draw attention to the ten-course meal with matching wine pairings, I am puzzled by your decision to include a picture of the menu in your blog post.
It’s not that I missed the point of the piece. I get it. And my post wasn’t intended to nitpick. It was just that I wanted to hear more about the “thrilling” part of your time with the chef. Sure, you would be breaking precedent, but this was an unprecedented extravaganza.