Food: Parallel 37

[tuftears]

chipotle recently had a birthday, so in honor of the occasion, he wanted to eat at Parallel 37. With dracosphynx driving, we headed up via BART and navigated the streets of San Francisco to the Ritz-Carlton, with a minor 'whoops' due to there being two overlapping roads-- there's a road named Stockton which runs through a tunnel, but the actual restaurant was on the road above it, which is *also* named Stockton. Thanks, San Francisco!

We ordered the 5-course tasting menu, with wine pairing for chipotle and dracosphynx; I eschewed since I'm not a drinker; I'm told I missed a great deal that way since the flavor of the wines and the courses interact. I pled for 'non-scary seafood', and they were very accommodating on the subject. Seems the way a tasting menu works is the chefs cook what they want, but they can adapt the selection if people have different preferences, i.e. non-gluten, non-dairy, etc.



We began with an 'amuse bouche' -- from left to right, trout, mackerel, and some kind of vegetable. Mine were cooked; I'm given to understand these were prepared like sushi for the others. The vegetable was chewy and a bit tough, but the other fish were pretty decent.

They served a selection of bread with two different butters, honey butter and mustard butter. Both flavors were pretty mild; I couldn't tell which was which when eating with the rye bread, but it became obvious with the sourdough. (hint: the mustard butter was the one with the black dots on top, which were logically the mustard seeds)



This was followed by a terrifying-looking dish. What would you do if presented with something like the above?

This turned out to be: a poached quail egg on top, some sort of noodles beneath that, and a delicious bit of butter-broiled cod beneath. I tried to split the egg in half, but the yolk quickly leaked out and blended with the sauce beneath, and joked that I had failed my 'eat food' check. I have a sneaking suspicion you're supposed to eat the egg whole. Still, no great loss; I used some bread to soak up the delicious sauce at the bottom.



Moar seafood! I didn't like this one much; a couple of pieces were edible, but I disliked the texture of the rest. (I did taste-test) They poured hot sauce right onto the fish as serving. I'm not sure if the fish was supposed to be nearly raw and cooked by doing so, or not.



Finally, non-seafood! This was the most culinarily educational dish in the bunch. The duck breast tasted as if it had been smoked, but dracosphynx suspected bacon had influenced it somehow. This is the first time I've tried porcini mushrooms, which made up the back half of the dish. There were little crispy black things which tasted bacony to me; possibly toasted duck skin.

I'm not sure if porcini mushrooms naturally taste fatty like these did, or if that was a byproduct of the way they cooked this dish.



This was followed by not one but TWO kinds of BEEF. On the left we had brisket; on the right, sirloin, and there was a small rectangle of what I thought initially was blue cheese, but was corrected by dracosphynx: parmesan custard. Wild!

The brisket was fall-apart tender. The sirloin seemed a bit tough; I've cooked better with a sous vide, but it went with the custard quite well. The onion ring was... an onion ring. I think they would have been better served with a normal caramelized onion. Still, this was a rich and satisfying course.

After a meditative pause, they brought out a 'palate cleanser':



Apple sorbet! This was really good. I could have eaten quite a bit more of this, given the opportunity.

That's the sorbet on the right. Two cooked slices of apple on the left.



This is dessert! I initially thought they were grapes, but no, these little balls are actually poached pear. It was served with ginger ice cream.

Rich and delicious. Despite the small portions, I was pretty full at this point.

We rounded the meal off with nearly-black coffee in chipotle's case, cafe mocha for dracosphynx and I had hot chocolate:



Most expensive meal I've ever had, but it was a delicious and unique experience! Thanks to chipotle for inviting me along and dracosphynx for driving. ^_^

Comments

[merrycalliope.livejournal.com]

The egg is almost certainly meant to be broken and eaten with the rest. If not, it should have been served separately and it's not you who failed, it's them. In small courses like this the flavors on each plate should play well together.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Oh, well okay then. ^_^ It was something of a joke since WOW has food that has level requirements. Imagine having to be level 85 to eat Chinese food!

[merrycalliope.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha! I hadn't thought of it that way though I've always found it weird that food (and health/mana) potions didn't just scale with character level. That applies to almost any game with such but WoW actually has some items that do scale. I guess it's just a way to keep people in recipes.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, otherwise if food all had the same stats, no one would bother getting the new recipes!

[dracosphynx.livejournal.com]

The cod dish had zucchini at the bottom, I think, and a miso-based broth/sauce. The pasta was squid-ink noodles.

I don't think they added bacon to the duck, I think the chef treated the duck like it was bacon. (I.e. instead of using fatty pork belly, he coaxed the fatty duck along the same path by adding the crispy duck skin, smoking it, etc.)

The beef dish had three kinds of beef, actually. The waiter mentioned it was the beef, beef, and beef dish. The marinade/dressing for the wintergreen salad in the middle was made from beef bone marrow. The parmesan custard was pretty impressive.

(The descriptions for the dishes are kind of all third-hand. The chef was making these up as he went, so there was no printed menu. We had to rely on what the waiter said about each dish. In turn, the waiter had to rely on what the chef wrote down as the description of the dish. The waiter remarked it was terribly hard to read the chef's handwriting at times, so... Presumably, if the chef wrote everything down as he was improvising, and the waiter read the notes correctly, and we heard what the waiter said correctly, then to the extent I remember things, we know what the dishes were.)

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

On the subject of "failing eat-food checks", we actually had that happen in a Mekton campaign =^.^=. The DM had a habit of asking you to roll for it if you ever said "I *try* to (action)", especially when the stakes were low and potential for hilarity was high. My character tried to eat a sandwich. And epic failed.

I've confirmed that it's possible to fail an eat-sandwich check IRL. And that's all I want to say about that incident =^.^=.

Glad you enjoyed your restaurant trip!

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

The sandwich explodes. You take 1d4 hp damage.

[rowyn]

*giggles at the failed eat-food check*

Amusingly, I was just writing a scene where a character is struggling with such a test. :D

It does look like an interesting selection! I sympathize with you about the wine pairings; I don't like the flavor/aftertaste all alcoholic beverages share, so it's mostly wasted on me. -_-

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

dracosphynx actually coerced me to try some of the dessert wine. It was okay but I could taste the alcohol so I wasn't a fan. He said that the flavors of the wine actually seem to change when you've had some of the food. I could see that, ginger ice cream interacting with the alcohol for instance.

[rowyn]

Right, some times things with alcohol in them are okay, but they'd always be improved by not being made with alcohol so I don't quite get the point.

I am maybe a little jealous of people who enjoy it and the ensuing complexities of flavor, though. :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I do enjoy tiramisu though, which is made with some alcohol. :9