A French Laundry reinvention
When the French Laundry opened in 1994, its menu cost $44 for four courses and $49 for five. Since then I’ve visited chef/ owner Thomas Keller’s restaurant each year, following the progression of the food and the surroundings. Over the last 23 years the restaurant has evolved from one with a beautifully rendered but comparatively modest menu into the Bay Area's first Michelin threestar restaurant, awarded when the guide first published its Bay Area list in 2006. Today, the the 12-plus courses will cost you $310 (including service charges).
But the most recent dramatic development is in the restaurant’s environment. With a spectacular new kitchen and menu, a newly added wine cellar and private dining room, and a refreshed interior, the French Laundry has reinvented itself.
Keller always looks for ways to up his game, and that serious dedication has put him on top. Each year, under a series of chefs, the tasting menu has become more refined. No two ingredients are repeated on the daily changing menu (un-
less an ingredient is something like truffles or caviar). Not even the opening of Keller’s Per Se in New York in 2004 derailed the experience. In fact Keller became the only United States chefs to preside over two Michelin three star restaurants.
Yet going there earlier this month, the experience felt significantly different.
Earlier this year Keller debuted the $10 million renovation of the wine cellar, dining room and kitchen, the latter so white and gleaming it looks like the Hollywood idea of a kitchen set in heaven. Light floods in from the skylight making the walls glow, as do the outside walls made with three layers of inlaid glass.
The remodel, designed by Snohetta, seems to have reinvigorated the staff, and the food is better than ever. My lunch, in fact, brought back the excitement of the early years, when Keller was in a league of his own.
Every element of this remodel has a purpose, and each detail means something to specific to Keller. A majestic example: the Crape Myrtle that stands in the newly renovated garden. The 23-year old tree was brought in after the remodel. Lifted by crane into the garden; the tree was originally planted in 1994, the same year Keller took over the French Laundry.
For the design of the new building, Keller sent the architects a photograph of the glass pyramid by I.M. Pei at the Louvre museum in Paris as inspiration; he wanted the new addition to make a dramatic contrast to the original century-old stone building.
To the casual observer the dining room may feel much the same, but the subtle remodel shows that no detail is too small to reconsider. The banister and other woodwork used to be cherry, but to go with the new darker gray color scheme workers stripped and re-stained the wood to walnut, which has a subtle gray tone.
The menu similarly follows a similar path of reinvention, with any hint of lethargy banished. Keller does pay homage to several of his signature dishes, including the salmon tartare cones and Oysters and Pearls — a blend of poached oysters and caviar on a bed of tapioca in a rich, buttery sauce. This is bookened by the signature dessert — Coffee and Donuts, small doughnuts and a demitasse filled with cappuccino semifreddo — one of several sweets that round out the 12-plus-course menu.
Changes in the menu are as subtle as the difference in the wood accents the dining room. Yet taken as a whole the food feels dramatically different.
For one course chef de cuisine David Breeden, who has headed up the kitchen for five years, sent out four one-to two-bite fish dishes; the bold flavors belied their delicate size. Two strips of charcoal grilled needle fish were glazed with lamb juice; a knob of Alaskan King crab was fried in a tempura batter and set on a red chili mayonnaise; bourbon-cured steelhead trout with a firm skin nestled into sour apple purée with sorrel; and sake-poached Japanese Yagara was glazed with cherry leaf gelee. All these dishes had a subtle Japanese feel and helped to expand the scope of the menu.
These were followed by a lump of Bodega Bay crab meat set on a rich custard with egg sauce. Then came a parade of other luxuries: foie gras mousse capped with Musquee de Provence pumpkin gelee with a honey poached cranberry; Scottish blue lobster in creamy broth; white truffles on polenta and a light omelet; 100-day dry aged wagyu beef tartare; wild Sonoma duck with smoked foie gras; and rib eye of lamb cooked in cabbage leaves.
That was followed by a series of desserts including a chocolate tarte, banana crème fraiche ice cream wrapped in coconut mocha, and more than a dozen chocolates displayed in a light wood box.
Each dish was precisely executed and boldly flavored; there wasn’t a sour note in the mix.
The wine cellar has also been reinvigorated and houses one of the best collections in the nation, including more than 400 half-bottle labels.
After that memorable lunch I went back to read my original review from 1994, then found a menu I saved from December 2003. When people ask me what has been my most memorable experience, the 2003 lunch is the one I turn to not only for the food, but for the surroundings and the company I was with. That menu started and ended in a similar fashion, with a profusion of truffles.
However, the current menu seems even more complex in its ambition and pacing. Many courses come right to the edge of excess — but never tumble over because the dishes are so unified and balanced. Every ingredient has a voice, amplified by what Breeden and the other chefs do with it.
Previous to the remodel I heard rumblings that the restaurant had become a little staid and predictable, a charge that seems to plague any legacy restaurant that sets standards others copy. What was once unique becomes commonplace.
But the remodel seems to have given Keller and Breeden a new perspective. It’s still the French Laundry, but the dishes are more exciting and the service staff under longtime manager Michael Minnillo is reinvigorated.
The French Laundry feels like a newly minted fourstar restaurant.