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La Renouivillier(continued) By Joe Reese
As for the liver, just, really fantastic. So good, I can't tell you. Then we had sautéed beef tournedos with wild mushrooms and a
whirled beef sauce. My companion said something then that I won't forget.
She said that if the tournedos had been "tornadoes," then
it would have been a "whirling" beef sauce. But then she's quite a person. I say "companion." Actually, she's my mistress, and why don't
we just go ahead and admit it? It's fine with her. I mean, we've talked
the whole thing out. But on with the review. An otherwise magnificent roast filet of beef perigourdiene — or
perigorduanine, I forget which — actually, it's roast beef, you
can get it at Krogers and just pour some onion soup over it — anyway,
its intense sauce glinted with flecks of truffle, but it was tepid by
the time it reached the table and so we sent it back. They were really nice about the whole thing, though, and threw in another
bottle of the Beaujolais. I went back and talked to Ben Greenberg, the chef. I mean, I thought
the thing about the extra bottle of wine was really nice, you knkow?
Know, sorry. Ben and dI had some alaughs. Laughs, sorry. He really manages
the place now, the Sommelwhateveritis Brothers live in New York and
lease out through an agent. Value of the name, you know. Ben used to
cook at the El Chico on Northwest Highway. That's another good place
you might want to go. It was, in fact, actually through Ben that I met Michelle. My companion,
that I was talking about. She came back to the kitchen, too, with me.
They seemed really glad to see each other, she and Ben. They had been
dating around, you know, that kind of stuff. She is really some kind of good looking woman. Jeunne Fille! I like the way her blond hair kind of catches the candlelight, and
she has this kind of athletic look about her — not really muscular
but just taut, you know? I love that kind of woman, do you? Anyway,
she kind of stayed back there in the kitchen with Ben, and some waitress
brought desert — something with strawberries I think, We got to talking, the waitress and I. She had some, too. She brought
a couple of glasses of champagne for the two of us and we drank that
— she didn't have much to do. I mean, they really don't have much
business out there. At those prices, I don't wonder. She was really nice. Her first husband had left her. Just up and left.
Two kids. What is she going to do? How can she support two kids on a
waitress' pay? So I told her, maybe I could help her out. So I had to go to the bathroom then, and I had a little trouble finding
it even though I had been a couple of time before but it was a new place
and not really well marked — watch out for that if you drive out
there, the bathrooms are, you turn left at the kitchen and if you turn
right you're out in the alley. &# (or yu could yjust use the alley, I mean, who's going to see
you, five miles north of town!) But anyway, when I got back inside Michelle had got back and I guess
she had said something to Dorinne — that's the waitress —
but Michelle had gotten smashed somehow, has no idea how to drink, and
they were talking and then yelling and — well, somehow, Michelle,
I guess, stuffed a baked potato into Dorinne's face. Kind of funny, now that you think of it. Sour cream and bacon and chives
and butter and little bits of celery. So Ben comes out then, and, well, the blankety blank blankety blank
overreacts. I mean, I'm not going to let my woman be yelled at by some short order
cook, you know? Hasn't even been to Oklahoma, much less France. Well, anyway he got in a punch when I slipped because there was all
this butter and stuff on the floor, and I guess some other food got
thrown, I don't know. Some of the waiters came; Ben realized he had been way out of line.
We all sat down and had some coffee. I took back what I had said about
him and, maybe, about what he and Michelle had been doing back in the
kitchen. Then he took back what he had said about my having the palate
of a moray eel. And then Dorinne went back to work. So it was all OK. Still, in retrospect, I don't advise you to go there.
It's really expensive, and, to tell the truth, this particular reviewer
felt terrible the following day. Probably food poisoning. La Renouivillier
This piece also appears in the August 2007 issue of Metro Mania Magazine. |
