Restaurant: Seline

Location: Santa Monica, CA

Date: October 12, 2025

Cuisine: Mediterranean / French

Rating: Burgundy Bliss & Butter Mastery!

Some dinners are about innovation, pushing boundaries, deconstructing classics into their molecular components. And then there are dinners like this—a special Sage Society event at Seline, devoted entirely to the wines of Bouchard Père & Fils and the kind of classic French cooking that makes no apologies for its richness. This was butter-forward, sauce-driven French cuisine at its most unapologetic, paired with a vertical exploration of one of Burgundy’s most historic houses. No modernist foams, no tweezers, no apologies. Just pitch-perfect technique, luxurious ingredients, and wines that have been waiting decades for exactly this moment.

The Sage Society knows how to throw a wine dinner, and pairing Seline’s kitchen with Bouchard’s cellar was a stroke of genius. Seline, tucked away in Santa Monica, normally leans Mediterranean with modern flourishes, but for this evening they went full Burgundian—think beurre blanc, beurre monté, duck jus, red wine reductions, and enough cultured butter to make your cardiologist weep. The chef (whose work I’ve enjoyed before) clearly understands classical French technique, and when given the excuse to go all-in on traditional preparations, the results were stunning.

Bouchard Père & Fils needs little introduction to anyone who drinks Burgundy seriously. Founded in 1731, the house is one of the oldest in the region, with holdings that read like a greatest hits of Burgundy terroir: Corton-Charlemagne, Clos Vougeot, Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus, Chambertin. Tonight’s lineup spanned vintages from 1992 to 2020, showcasing both the house’s range and Burgundy’s ability to age with grace.

This was a special Sage Society Bouchard dinner—our menu for the night, showcasing classic French technique married to Burgundian wines.

In a soft amber hush, polished wood gleams beneath elegant script place cards and a constellation of fine-stemmed glasses, setting the stage for a meticulously paced meal.

The evening began with a scallop course that set the tone for everything to follow.

Scallop Quenelle with beurre blanc and caviar. Super delicious and a perfect white Burgundy pairing. I love the soft, almost ethereal texture—the quenelle melts on the tongue like an aerated cloud of scallop and cream. The beurre blanc is pitch perfect: enough acidity to cut the richness, enough butter to coat your palate in silk. The caviar adds precise saline pops that wake everything up.

Then came the fish course, paired with white Burgundies that showed both youth and maturity.

Salmon with chicken beurre monté. Very tender salmon—cooked just to that point where it’s still translucent at the center—and a REALLY RICH butter sauce. Delicious. The beurre monté is almost sinful in its concentration, clinging to the salmon like liquid gold. This is not health food, but paired with a great white Burg, it’s transcendent.

We opened Bouchard Père & Fils Meursault Genevrières 2020 and Meursault Perrières 2020, both Premier Crus showing Meursault’s signature richness and minerality. The Genevrières displayed generous stone fruit and hazelnut notes with bright acidity, while the Perrières leaned more mineral and tense—perfect foils for all that butter. Then came Bouchard Corton-Charlemagne 2000, a Grand Cru white showing how beautifully these wines age: honeyed, complex, with notes of roasted nuts and a steely backbone that kept it fresh despite two decades in bottle.

The meat courses began with pork, and this is where the evening’s theme—sauce, sauce, and more sauce—really hit its stride.

Pork Loin with pork jus. It was all about the sauce—again. The loin itself was tender and properly cooked, but the jus is what elevated it: deeply porky, concentrated, glossy with fat and gelatin. You could taste the hours of reduction in every spoonful.

Duck Breast with duck jus. More amazing high-fat sauce! The duck was cooked to perfect medium-rare, the skin crisped and rendered. But that jus—dark, unctuous, tasting of roasted duck bones and red wine—was pure sauce mastery. Neat rose-pink slices fanned across the plate, amber skin catching the light, while the velvety sauce pooled beneath.

Hanger Steak with red wine jus and potato pavé. Oh and more sauce. They really know sauces here. The steak was perfectly charred and juicy, the pavé crisp-edged and creamy within, but that red wine jus—reduced to the edge of intensity, glossy with marrow and butter—tied everything together. This is the kind of cooking that doesn’t apologize for being rich.

Parisian Gnocchi with mushroom and mushroom sauce. And in case you were worried, these were coated in butter! The gnocchi—made with choux pastry rather than potato—were pillowy and light despite being slicked with more butter. The mushroom sauce was earthy and deeply savory, umami layered on umami.

The red Burgundies came out in waves, each more impressive than the last. We started with Bouchard Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus 2012, the Premier Cru that’s one of Bouchard’s signature bottlings. Silky, floral, classic Beaune. Then Bouchard Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Cailles 2005, showing that village’s more structured, earthy character with age.

The lineup escalated: Bouchard Clos Vougeot 2002, the Grand Cru showing classic Vougeot power and structure; Bouchard Chambertin-Clos de Bèze 2002, one of the greatest Grand Crus in Burgundy, all perfume and precision; and Bouchard Chambertin 2009, ripe and generous from that sun-blessed vintage.

More treasures: Bouchard Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Cailles 2005 and Bouchard Clos Vougeot Grand Cru 2002, both showing beautifully with age—tertiary notes of forest floor, leather, and dried cherry emerging.

We dove deeper into the cellar: Bouchard Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus (vintage unclear); Bouchard Corton-Charlemagne 2000, the white Grand Cru; Bouchard Vosne-Romanée 2001, Grand Cru, from that legendary village; Bouchard Clos Vougeot 1999, showing two decades of evolution.

Then: Bouchard Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus (another vintage); Bouchard Chevalier-Montrachet 2020, the Grand Cru white; Bouchard Clos Vougeot 2001 and 1999—a vertical within the vertical.

The procession continued: Jean-Claude Boisset Savigny-Les-Beaune Les Peuillets 1999 Premier Cru; Domaine Parent Beaune Clos De La Mousse 2008 Premier Cru; Domaine Parent Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Cras 2008 Premier Cru; Bouchard Le Corton 2012 Grand Cru; and Château de La Maltroye Chevalier-Montrachet Grand Cru white.

More gems emerged: Bouchard Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus 2012; Bouchard Clos Vougeot 2014; Joseph Drouhin Volnay Caillerets Ancienne Cuvée Carnot 1999; Domaine Bouchard Beaune Clos de la Mousse 2008; Domaine Faiveley Nuits-Saint-Georges Les Porets-Saint-Georges 2006; and Bouchard Le Corton 2008.

The bottles kept coming: Bouchard Volnay Les Caillerets 2012; Château de Beaune Le Corton 1992—a Grand Cru showing three decades of age; Bouchard Beaune Grèves Vigne de l’Enfant Jésus 2012 (yet another bottle of this stellar Premier Cru); Bouchard Clos Vougeot 2014; Bouchard Volnay Caillerets Ancienne Cuvée Carnot 1999; and Bouchard Beaune Clos de la Mousse 2008.

As we moved toward the cheese course, the wine show continued unabated.

Artisanal Cheese Course with cool stoneware presenting pale straw and ivory: a chalk-white bloomy rind slumping into glossy custard alongside two batons of firm, sunlit-yellow cheese. The soft wedge exhales aromas of cultured cream and button mushroom, spreading like satin—saline, lactic-sweet, with hints of hazelnut. The companion slices offer gentle snap, yielding to supple chew with flavors of sweet butter, toasted grain, and faint apple acidity.

Cheese platter with Comté, Camembert, bread and butter. Classic, simple, perfect.

Yep, if butter sauce wasn’t enough, we needed MORE butter in its purest form! Because why not?

This was some really great food. I haven’t eaten at “regular” Seline yet myself, but given the photos online and my previous experience with the chef, the normal menu is much more modern and cerebral. This was pure butter-forward French—rich, classical, delicious, and utterly unrepentant.

More whites: Bouchard Meursault Genevrières 2020 and Meursault Perrières 2020, both Premier Crus; Bouchard Volnay Les Caillerets 2012; Bouchard Le Corton 1992; and Bouchard Vigne de L’Enfant Jésus Premier Cru.

The final wave: Bouchard Meursault Genevrières 2020 and Meursault Perrières 2020; Bouchard Volnay Les Caillerets 2012; and Domaines du Château de Meursault Le Corton Grand Cru 1992.

This was the kind of dinner that reminds you why classical French cooking endures. There’s a reason beurre blanc has survived centuries of culinary evolution: when it’s done right, nothing beats it. The scallop quenelle was ethereal, the salmon luxurious, every meat course elevated by sauces that tasted of hours of patient reduction and perfect technique. The kitchen knows how to handle butter and stock, gelatin and acid, building flavors that are rich without being cloying, intense without being overwrought.

And the wines—my god, the wines. Bouchard isn’t always the most exciting producer in Burgundy; they’re a large négociant with holdings that sometimes produce wines that are good rather than great. But on this night, with bottles chosen carefully and given time to breathe, the house showed what it can do. The Meursaults were textbook, the Beaune Grèves consistently elegant, the Clos Vougeots powerful and structured. The older vintages—that 1992 Corton, the 1999 bottles—demonstrated Burgundy’s ability to age with grace, developing complexity while retaining freshness.

What made the evening work was the synergy between food and wine. This wasn’t modernist cuisine that fights with traditional wine; it was cooking designed to showcase classic bottles. The butter sauces provided a luxurious canvas for white Burgundy’s richness and acidity. The meat jus—earthy, concentrated, layered with red wine—echoed the Pinot Noirs’ structure and tertiary development. Every pairing felt considered, harmonious, right.

The Sage Society deserves credit for orchestrating an event that was educational without being stuffy, luxurious without being pretentious. This was serious wine paired with serious cooking, served to people who appreciate both. No one was taking Instagram photos of every course or checking their phones between pours. We were tasting, discussing, comparing vintages, debating terroir, enjoying the hell out of ourselves.

Seline proved they can cook classically when called upon, even if their regular menu skews more contemporary. I’m curious to try their everyday offerings—modern Mediterranean with cerebral touches sounds appealing—but for this night, going full Burgundian was the right call. Sometimes you don’t need innovation; you just need butter, sauce, and technique. Lots of butter. An almost obscene amount of butter. And you know what? It was perfect.

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