Sept 14, 2008 - The review of Le Bec Fin

Tonight was the night. I finally got into the main dining room of Le Bec Fin. And I'm saying it now... this review will be long. Because I have a lot to say about this place.

When I was younger, I never could envision myself dining in a place like this. Places such as Le Bec Fin were not for me. In fact, I used to think that kind of experience was highly overrated. Why would I want to spend loads of money on such a pretentious meal when I could get a very satisfying meal at the local Chinese buffet for $7? Really, in my 20's that's the way I used to think. Of course, I was a cheap bastard at the time since I wasn't making great money. So eating at $7 Chinese buffets was the height of my culinary experience.

Now... I'm still a cheap bastard. But I am a cheap bastard making somewhat better money. And every now and again I can afford to treat myself. Though meals such as this one are rare for me. It's probably only been the last few years or so where I've started searching out the occasional fine restaurant. I would say after I turned 30, I started appreciating some of the finer things on occasion.

I've heard the name Le Bec Fin for a long time. All my life, I knew it simply as this French restaurant in Center City that was really exclusive and expensive. But I can't say that I really got the desire to eat there until the last few years. As my tastes got older and I assume somewhat more refined, I did start to wonder what it would be like to eat at a place like that. So I started building up the experience in my mind.

From what I was learning about the place, eating there would be a major league chunk out of my wallet. I had heard that the dinner menu was a fixed price menu of $165 a person. Now, from what I learned, when you paid that money you got 6-9 courses of the finest French cuisine imaginable. You ate what was on their tasting menu that night and you couldn't choose. You were also there for at least three hours eating away. They had seatings at 6:15 and 9:30pm for dinner, and that was it. This was a highly exclusive place. Jacket and tie required... the whole nine yards.

Well, even with my tastes becoming more refined, that sounded way out of my league. I kept it in the back of my mind as something that maybe I'll get to do one day before I died. But it seemed way out of reach to even step foot in that place.

Then, this past year, something happened to change all that thinking.

The link above tells you more about what happened, but short story is that the proprietor, Georges Perrier, decided to lighten the place up. Le Bec Fin went more casual. It went to an A la carte menu instead of the fixed menu. Now, instead of potentially spending $400 for a couple to eat at the place, you could conceviably eat there for $100 a couple. But Georges claimed he wasn't going to dumb down the food. Even though he lost his precious fifth star in the Mobil Travel Guide (Le Bec Fin was one of only 18 restaurants in the US that had that 5 star rating at one time), he was still going to have an incredibly unique experience.

So it was now a chance to experience at least a part of that 5 star dining experience without going too crazy to do it. Now it seemed more realistic.

I tested the waters a couple of times before tonight. I found out that the bar at Le Bec Fin which was downstairs was more accessible. In other words, you could go to the downstairs bar and order off of a bar menu to get some of the same food that you got upstairs. It was a different experience and some different dishes from the main dining room, but it was from the same kitchen and the same fine chefs. It even had a different name called Le Bar Lyonnais, but it was the same Le Bec Fin building. So one day, when I'm hanging out in Philly on my own, I decide to go to the bar and see what they had. I remember it well because it was a few months ago. My goal was to order the cheapest thing on the menu just so I could say I had a taste of the place.

So what did I order? I got a bowl of French Onion soup. The price for the soup... $10.

Now the way I figured it was that if this place really served good French cuisine, then they had to make a good French Onion soup. It's the same kind of premise I have about Italian restaurants... if an Italian restuarant is good, then they must make a good meatball.

I'm here to tell you, the French Onion soup was the absolute best I have ever had. I'm talking real French Onion soup with real Gruyère cheese, and real homemade french bread in the bowl. It was so much better than those chain places that dump some mozzarella cheese in the bowl and a few croutons. No, this was the real friggin deal.

So with that, I got a little more daring. I decided to try the dessert. Le Bec Fin is world renowned for it's dessert cart. And the bar downstairs offered a sampler plate straight off the dessert cart where you tasted 4 slivers of different desserts for $12. What the hell, I gave it a shot.

I'm here to tell you this as well... best damn desserts I ever had. I mean, these desserts were as rich as rich can be. I remembered the signature dessert was named Gâteau Le Bec-Fin. You might as well call it Death by Chocolate. Most definitely the richest chocolate I have ever tasted.

Well I was hooked. I knew I had to do the full meal in the main dining room sometime.

A couple of months back, I took the wife to the downstairs bar for a drink just because we were in the area. Didn't eat anything this time except a taste of dessert with the wife since we had already eaten. But during that trip, I found out that they were going to participate in Restaurant Week in September, where you could enjoy a three course meal for $35 a person.

That was my ticket in. I could afford that. I booked a table for tonight.

Now, someone earlier on this blog had mentioned in the comments when I brought this trip up the possibility that the restaurant might not bring out their A+ food for something like this. I admit I thought that too. But I still figured that the food, while they certainly wouldn't be sending out their most exquisite and complicated dishes for $35 a person, would still be top notch A material. At least, I hoped they would.

So we arrive tonight and get seated in the main dining room. And I start looking over the menu. In fact, it was online in advance, so I'll share with you the choices we had.

First Course (choice of one)

- Seasonal soup (Chilled Artichoke Soup)
- Chicken“Ballottine”, homemade mustard, toast and petite salad
- Smoked salmon Savarin, shellfish emulsion
- Cold Taboulé salad and squid, citrus vinaigrette
- Vegetables “Tians"

Second Course (choice of one)

- Roasted chicken breast, spicy semolina and vegetables, natural jus flavored with vinegar
- Roasted beef, mash potatoes and sautéed romaine salad, Bordelaise sauce
- Roasted pork loin, spatzle and celeriac puree, natural jus
- Sautéed scallops, fennel and fresh heart of palm fricassee, Champagne vinegar émulsion
- Salmon confit in olive oil, crispy Basmati rice, mango and Pecan nut emulsion

Third Course

- Coffee cake
- Creme Brulee
- Chocolate Le Bec Fin cake
- Sorbet

First thing I notice... this menu is not nearly as complicated as the regular dinner menu. While the whole regular dinner menu was available if we wanted it, this particular menu was especially for the $35 deal. I did expect that. But that fear planted in me earlier started creeping up that maybe we weren't getting the whole A+ experience. However, the service was attentive, and the room was quite nice. So I went with it.

The wife and I both chose the same appetizer. We went with the Chicken Ballottine. You get two slices of the chicken, which was rolled up with some mushroom and truffle mousse, and a piece of toast with a dollop of spicy mustard. Pretty basic dish, I thought. Someone near us ordered the soup, and when I saw it come out it looked damn good. I started wishing I had the soup instead. But our appetizers came out and they looked good too. I took my first bite of the Le Bec Fin dining experience.

And my first thought... not bad.

Wait a minute... just "not bad"? Not "exquisite" or "mouth-wateringly good"?

The chicken was served cold. It was meant to be that way. But it had a taste like it had been prepared earlier and sitting in the fridge for a little while. I'm guessing it was prepared well in advance and sitting in a fridge chilled, which made it taste like a leftover.

Now, with the toast and mustard, it made for a pretty tasty open faced sandwich. I would have enjoyed this in another smaller scale restaurant, like maybe a small gourmet deli or something. But for a restaurant to this standard, it came in slightly under grade. In fact, I overheard a diner at the table next to us call the same dish disappointing.

This dinner may have gotten off on the wrong foot. I started kicking myself for not getting the soup.

Now a few positves to begin. The wine list at Le Bec Fin is usually long and intimidating. The cheapest glass of wine is $11, with many more glasses getting way more expensive, even into the three digit range. But for this promotion, they were serving a house pinot grigio for $7 a glass, as well as a house red. Based on our food choices, they recommended the white pinot grigio. That seemed more reasonable. They even told us the name and vintage of the wine. It was Ca' De Rocchi 2006 Pinot Grigio. I found out later that it retails for about $14 bucks a bottle in the stores. So it's not high end stuff, but it was far from cheap. So that worked out well, and meant that my wife wouldn't be ordering a $17 glass of wine like she did to me last time we drank at their bar. In fact, it also meant that a second glass was easier to swallow.

And I will say this as well... the french sourdough bread was tasty to nibble on while waiting for courses to arrive, and was served early and often. It is apparently made right there, and it tasted like it.

Now get this... here is how dedicated they are to presentation. When the appetizers are put down on the table by the food runner, one of the main servers notices that they put my wife's dish down in the opposite direction that it was supposed to be. So a completely different guy comes over, takes my wife's dish, and spins it 180 degrees to the proper serving angle. Then he goes behind us and says something to the food runner about it.

Now that's some friggin class right there.

So for our main courses, my wife goes for the chicken dish, and I go for the salmon. Excuse me... the salmon confit. And they are properly presented. So I take my first bite hoping for something better than the appetizer.

And I got it.

This piece of salmon was perfection. Now we were getting what we came here for. And the wife starts raving about the chicken. I take a taste of hers, and I must say they got a hold of a piece of juicy and fresh chicken right there. This wasn't no Perdue oven stuffer roaster, no sir. And the flavors that were added to the salmon, the juices of the emulsion were incredible and added to the flavor very well. The basmati rice had pieces of crispiness that added really good texture.

Now I knew the chefs had taken this dinner seriously.

So for dessert, the wife gets creme brulee, and I go for the signature chocolate Le Bec Fin cake. The deal is of course that we get to try each other's dessert. When I saw her creme brulee, which was a good sized portion and is one of my favorites, I almost offered to trade her dessert for my cake. Then when I took my first bite of the cake, I quickly rescinded that offer.

This is just the best damn chocolate cake there is. I mean, when you do something like that signature gourmet dessert over and over again for about 35 years, you're bound to have something really special.

So the official word on the meal is this. After a mildly disappointing appetizer which still wasn't bad, the meal fully made up for it. And while these weren't their most creative culinary creations on the menu, they are still many notches above other places. While not an A+ tonight, it was a solid A- at least, or an A on the lower end of the scale. The appetizer was about a B+, the main course a solid A, and the dessert A+ for sure.

And one of the most fun parts of the evening... we got to see Georges.

Now, Georges Perrier, the executive chef and proprietor of Le Bec Fin, is arguably Philadelphia's most famous chef. I had hoped that he was overseeing the dinner somehow. Well, there he was going through the dining room checking that all was going well. He has several restaurants now, but Le Bec Fin is his signature place and the place that made his name. Here is a guy that has won just about every major cooking award there is in the world. Truly one of the greats in cooking.

And here he is, berating his staff right in the dining room.

So right behind us before dessert is served, not more than a few feet away from our table, I hear Georges bellow out in his thick French accent to our head server, "Pain dish... pain dish! I do not like that!"

He said a few other things too in that brief tirade, they may have been in French, but that is what I remember most.

The problem... the table next to us still had their bread dishes on the table as dessert was about to be served (in French, apparently "pain" means bread... just Googled that). Those dishes apparently are supposed to be out of the way and off the table before dessert. And he saw that they were still on the table. And he let our server know about it in very blunt terms.

Well, she jumped to that table next to us, and cleared those dishes right away. But when he left the room, she did something really funny. She talked about him behind his back. She cracked that he usually calls her "stupid f-ing girl" when he does that. Apparently she has known him for 20 years and they talk to each other that way.

Then, she cracks that she must be important because he calls the hostesses out front just plain "girl". To which I immediately cracked, "Oh, so you have a special title I see."

And the diners who's table the bread dishes were on got a little nervous. First of all, there was still bread on the dishes. One of them laughingly said "what if I had still wanted to eat the bread?" And then she clutched on to what was left of her wine glass for fear that would be removed too.

Hey... when Georges says it's time to get the bread off the table, it's time to get the f-ing bread off the table.

Yeah, you think he's a bit demanding?

We also saw Georges pull out a bottle of the house red wine and take a swig of it in a glass near us. Apparently they taste all the wine themselves to make sure the bottles are good and will pair well with the food. In fact, the sommelier apparently takes a taste of each bottle they serve right when it is opened before it is poured in someone's glass just to make sure no bad bottles are there.

Now that's friggin class right there.

Oh by the way... the total bill was as follows. Two three course meals at $35 a piece, 4 glasses of wine at $7 a piece, and two coffees. Somehow that came out to $90 before tax.

I didn't question anything at the time. I just glanced at the final price of $96, threw down $120 and let it be. But as I'm driving home and thinking about it, I realized then that the math didn't totally add up. Either that, or they gave us a break on the 2nd glass of wine and the coffee was free. Or they just screwed up. I don't know.

All I know is that we got out of there much cheaper than originally planned. I was banking on the bill being around $110 before tip in advance.

Well, that didn't suck at all.

Apologies for this being long, but you don't eat at a world class restaurant like this and only write a few paragraphs about it... at least not in my world.

I'm sure this will not be my last trip to Le Bec Fin. And next time... I might even try the escargot. Just to see what the fuss is about.

Smoking with Eddie Ortega of 601 Cigars

About a few weeks ago, I got to enjoy something you don't get to do everyday.

It's not often that you actually get to enjoy a good cigar with the man who owns the company of the cigar you are smoking.

Back at the end of July, the last Saturday in July to be exact, I made my annual trip up to the Lehigh Valley to see the Philadelphia Eagles training camp. In recent years, this trip has included a second part to visit the Cigars International superstore in Bethlehem, PA.

To me it is an absolutely perfect day. I enjoy seeing my favorite team live and in person in the morning, get a few autographs, then I head over to Bethlehem for a couple of hours and veg out in the cigar lounge with some fine smokes.

Well this year, things changed a bit. I would up driving over an hour to the training camp site, only to find out just before I got there that the morning practice had been cancelled. Not because of weather, but because a water main break flooded the field. So the training camp idea was done for me, and it was only 9:00 am.

I'm thinking I might have to kick around town for a couple of hours before the cigar shop opened, but a phone call to the shop informed me that they actually open early. So thankfully, I got to head to the shop for a morning smoke instead. I'm not usually a morning smoker, but why not give it a try for once? Not like I had anything better to do.

Let me say something about Cigars International. Not only do they have a great website with really good deals, their superstore in Bethlehem is amazing. Imagine a cigar warehouse with a huge lounge in the back. I love the choice of brands too. They get some cigar brands that you don't often find at normal cigar shops, and they get exclusive lines of cigars from some brands that aren't sold anywhere else. I'll tell you about my cigar purchases later.

As I get there just before 9:30, I see that they are hosting a cigar event at 10 am with Eddie Ortega, who owns a cigar brand called 601. He was arriving to promote his cigars, and apparently to give out some free samples.

This trip, which started out so disappointing, quickly became worth it when I heard the words "free cigars". In my world, that brightens my day quickly.

So I'm browsing around the store which isn't crowded at all, and Eddie Ortega shows up for his event early, well before 10 am. So I got to meet him well before the afternoon rush of people. He struck me as a very nice guy, and seemed to love meeting fellow cigar smokers. So we got to chatting right away. As we are chatting, he hands me a free sample fresh out of a new box.

Now, he didn't just hand me some run of the mill stogie here. The brand he was sampling was his new line called Cubao. And the stick he handed me was the Lancero size, which looked to be at least a good hour and a half smoke. Just for kicks, I asked him how much it would cost me to buy one of these cigars individually, and he said around $9 to $10. Which, according to Cigars International website selling a 5 pack of Lanceros for $48 is about right.

Well, anyone who hands me a $10 cigar is immediately my best friend, at least for the next couple of hours.

Honest review of this cigar is that it may not be for everybody. But it was definitely for me. This cigar had three things going for it that I liked. It has a corojo wrapper, it's medium to full bodied, and it is Nicaraguan. I'm learning more and more that I like fuller bodied cigars, and I'm learning more and more that Nicaraguan cigars are top of the line. Eddie claims Nicaraguan cigars are every bit as good as a good Cuban. I think I'm starting to believe him based on other Nicaraguan smokes I have had.

If you don't like these things, this cigar might overpower you a bit with it's flavor. But if you do, this smoke is for you. It had a great peppery flavor right off the bat that stings the tongue right in the back of the throat. About 4 or 5 years ago, I might not have liked that as much. Today, I've grown up as a cigar smoker and I dig that kind of flavor much more.

Eddie lit a Cubao up with me, and we got to talking. One thing he shared with me is his recommendation of the Partagas Series D cigar. Let's just say that you can't exactly get that cigar in the US. But when I make my trip to London, England later this year on the way back from India, I will be searching for one of those.

We also discussed the best way to cut a cigar, and surprisingly he just likes to bite the end off of the cigar and start smoking. He says the cigar cut just isn't that big of a deal to him. I know many cigar smokers that might think that idea is hogwash. In their minds, if it isn't cut by a double guillotine cutter that costs $70, it isn't a good cut. Well, when the owner of the company tells you to just go ahead and bite the end off of one of his $10 cigars, you take him at his word. I'm here to report that the Cubao smokes just fine that way, thank you.

I did eventually leave him be to speak with other customers as they filtered in, but I also bought up one of his 601 Green Oscuro Corona for my 2nd smoke of the day. It's not often that I smoke two cigars in a sitting, but what the hell. Eddie warned me that this was probably his strongest smoke, which is why I bought the smallest size he had.

My thoughts on the 601 Green Oscuro... not as peppery as the Cubao. It's more of a smooth smoke for me. Fuller bodied, definitely. I remember thinking that I could handle a larger size of this smoke if that was the only cigar I was smoking all day. But after tackling the Cubao first, this small size was about all I could handle that day. You don't smoke this cigar on an empty stomach. I wouldn't mind having this cigar on hand after a nice steak dinner. It was definitely a good choice for sitting there in the cigar lounge with a group of guys from Virginia I had met as we talked some football.

This is probably the best compliment I can give Eddie Ortega. When I made my trip up to Cigars International, I had my eye on several cigars I knew I had to grab ahead of time. I bought 5 other cigars there. Two of them I had been waiting to try for a good while but couldn't get at home. These were the Montecristo Media Noche #3 size, and the Perdomo Reserve Maduro. Aside from the other cigars I grabbed there, these two in particular I had been waiting weeks to try. So, after buying those cigars I had been waiting weeks to try, I wound up smoking two of Eddie's cigars instead that day. I wound up saving those other two cigars for another time.

Let me say this as well... I eventually smoked that Montecristo Media Noche a couple of weeks later, and while it was a good cigar, I found myself a little let down by it. For my standards, I thought it was a little less flavorful than it should have been, especially for a maduro. Montecristo usually doesn't disappoint me. Perhaps I should have had less expectations going in. The Perdomo Reserve Maduro, however, lived up to my expectations. That's a fine cigar.

So Eddie's 601 and Cubao cigars have converted me. They wound up being better than at least one cigar I had been waiting weeks to try, and just as good as another. Since our meeting, I have picked up a 601 Blue Box-Pressed Maduro which is sitting in the humidor waiting to be smoked at a later date.

Big thanks to Eddie Ortega of 601 Cigars for good smokes and good conversation. Hopefully we will meet again sometime.