Restaurant: Providence [1, 2]
Location: 5955 Melrose Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90038. (323) 460-4170
Date: December 15, 2014
Cuisine: Cal French
Rating: Awesome food
It’s been a month since the Foodie Club convened for the awesome white truffles at Saam dinner and so Erick was itching for some more epic wine dinner awesomeness. Enter the chef’s table at Providence. There is no doubt that Providence is one of LA’s top fine dining establishments.
Enter the private chefs table: pretty much inside the kitchen!
And tonight’s menu.
From my cellar: 2006 Domaine Leflaive Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 94-96. This is notably more elegant, refined and complex with only a trace of exoticism to the mostly white flower and peach aromas that are followed by textured, pure, detailed and delineated flavors that are quite reserved and cool at present while culminating in a focused, crystalline, dry and driving finish. This does a slow build from the mid-palate before exploding onto the knockout finish. A Zen wine. Note that while I am giving a suggested initial drinking window of 2013, this will be capable of aging for years.
agavin: personally I think there was a trace of premox in this bottle, perhaps, but that it was drinking fabulously for us. It just didn’t taste that young, more like a 2000 or something. So if you have these, perhaps drink up.
Sphereified Greyhound. Like a greyhound popper.
Scallop “taco.” This spicy leaf (nasturtium, a bit like shiso) contained a mixture of scallop and some grain. It was scrumptious. As Yarom puts it: “a 10!”
Razor clam. With a bunch of sauces and bits.
Bacon and squid. A popsicle of… you guessed it… bacon and squid.
Beef cigars. Basically super yummy beef taquitos.
Smoked Bacon soup. This little cappuccino was incredibly delicious. Super creamy it tasted strongly of bacon. Yummy little bits were in the bottom.
Creme fresh with salmon crisps. The crisps are actually salmon skin. The Ikurka (salmon eggs) were incredibly fresh too.
The bread. The greenish one was seaweed. The brioche was the best though.
Fancy Normandy butter and salt.
2004 Bouchard Père et Fils Chevalier-Montrachet. Burghound 92. This is presently quite reticent and it requires considerable aeration to coax aromas of airy white flowers, spice and limestone that precede textured, pure and defined energy-filled flavors that possess a linear mouth feel, all wrapped in a focused and mouth coating finish of impressive length. Perhaps this is just going through a phase but it seems a bit awkward at present, and while all the component pieces appear to be in place, I wasn’t knocked out despite the length of the finish. One thing that is clear though is that this definitely needs more bottle age before it’s ready for prime time. Tasted only once in bottle.
agavin: This was our weakest wine, but it was still very nice.
Sashimi. Calabrian chiles, lemon, mint.
Uni in yuzu. Caviar, soy milk.
Check it out inside. It’s literally in a yuzu too!
New Zealand abalone. buckwheat, dashi butter. A very savory little dish.
From my cellar: 1983 Domaine Clair-Daü Bonnes Mares. JK 94. The Clair-Dau, whose vineyards are now all owned by Louis Jadot, was another excellent 1983. I have had good luck with this once-heralded vintage, which I often find delicious to drink. Menthol was the most prevalent characteristic, to go with its open and autumnal fruit.
agavin: I adored this wine. There was some funk on the nose that blew off in 5 minutes. Then it opened and opened and opened. The acidity was perhaps stronger than the fruit, but I still loved it.
Squid carbonara. pancetta. Truffles. This was actually a bit spicy. The spice nuked out all the cheese and the truffle though. It would have been better as a pasta (and without the spice).
Live scallop. white truffle, salted butter. It came out in the shell.
Then they cracked it, so it was steamed in the shell.
And truffle was shaved on top. A really delicious dish.
1971 Pierre Ponnelle Bonnes Mares. 94 points. After a few minutes the nose came around and also became vibrant and full of dried red fruits. There was a ton of fruit left in here and a lovely long finish.
agavin: really really nice.
Monkfish. Matsutake.
John dory. lardo, cabbage, apple. A really delicious dish with a nice fruity tone to the sauce that paired well with the old red Burgundy.
We added this duck dish. It wasn’t on the regular chef’s menu.
1983 Château Margaux. Parker 96. The 1983 Margaux is a breathtaking wine. The Cabernet Sauvignon grapes achieved perfect maturity in 1983, and the result is an astonishingly rich, concentrated, atypically powerful and tannic Margaux. The color is dark ruby, the aromas exude ripe cassis fruit, violets, and vanillin oakiness, and the flavors are extremely deep and long on the palate with a clean, incredibly long finish. This full-bodied, powerful wine remains stubbornly backward and at least 5-6 years away from maturity.
agavin: we decanted ours at the beginning of the meal and it was very lovely.
a5 wagyu. Pickled bitter greens, caramelized onion puree, carrot. Really fabulous bit of meat.
Cheese cart!
A real cheese cart is so much better than those “they just give you two cheeses” kind of cheese plates. Those are lame. We even got seconds (and a whole other plate of different cheeses I forgot to photo).
1990 Chateau d’Yquem. Parker 99. An extraordinary effort, Yquem’s 1990 is a rich and fabulously superb, sweet wine. This wine also possesses lots of elegance and finesse. The wine’s medium gold color is accompanied by an exceptionally sweet nose of honeyed tropical fruits, peaches, coconut, and apricots. High quality, subtle toasty oak is well-integrated. The wine is massive on the palate, with layers of intensely ripe botrytis-tinged, exceptionally sweet fruit. Surprisingly well-integrated acidity, and a seamless, full-bodied power and richness have created a wine of remarkable harmony and purity. Certainly it is one of the richest Yquems I have ever tasted, with 50-100 years of potential longevity. An awesome Yquem!
Frozen yogurt. tangerine, carrot, ginger, hazelnut. A very autumn tone to this and the other desserts.
Hachiya persimmon. Whiskey, mint, cocoa.
Pear. Sunchoke cake, manjari. Really autumnal.
Petite fours. The usual, but all very lovely.
And a bag of slightly spicy chocolates to go.
The wines varied very good to spectacular. Four people, six bottles. We could have really used an extra white, as Providence is very seafood heavy, but it still worked out well.
The food was pretty awesome. Having just eaten at Maude a couple days before it’s pretty obvious that this slightly more 2000s style of French American (with Asian influences) is ultimately a little more successful on the plate than the more textural play at Maude. There were a lot of very good dishes here, although a couple of goofs like the carbonara.
Overall, a seriously epic night! We started at 7:30pm and walked out after 1am!
For more LA dining reviews click here,
or more crazy Foodie Club dinners here!
