Feature

Gold-Plate Special

We're all quite high now, on both the theater of the absurd and the first intimations of authentic three-star indulgence. We trip through a portion of truffle-doused goat cheese, an exquisite salad of just-born leaves, and desserts (how courageous, no crème brûlée). Then sorbets, chocolates on a silver compote, little macaroons, and the candyman with his rolling treat cart, doling out pear-shaped essence of pear in a gel, pistachio caramels, cookies, and yet more pastry. (Another laugh for the silly fountain-pen shtick.) I'm in a waltz now with Fred Astaire. I'm cuter than Ginger, sexier than Rita, more graceful than Cyd. The only blip is the check: $663.73 before the tip. "What's wrong with us?" cries the Road Food Warrior. "It's not enough. It's embarrassing."

Do I really want to believe the chef is personally squirting basil-oil polka dots on my plate? Must the chef of an eminent restaurant be in the kitchen every night? On Tuesday, July 25, at 8:25 p.m., I stop by to see Jean-Georges in his big telltale open kitchen. He's at Vong in London. Daniel Boulud is vacationing in Lyons. At Daniel, his chef de cuisine, Alex Lee, is driving a huge crew to feed a full house and 150 in the private-party room. At Le Bernardin, Eric Ripert is vacationing, too. "We try to be sure one of us is always here," says owner Maguy LeCoze. I follow manager Walter Krajnc through the kitchen of Danube into the kitchen of the Bouley Bakery on the trail of David Bouley -- "He was here just a few minutes ago." "I'm looking for Nobu," I tell the woman at the podium. "I was looking for him myself today," she says. "He's in Tokyo." Only Gotham Bar and Grill's Alfred Portale, deeply tanned from Hampton weekends, is in his kitchen. "You caught me cooking," he says. "We're working on new dishes for the summer menu. I work behind the line every night I'm here, four nights a week, five days."

Next day the all-stars check in. "I am 95 percent of the time in the kitchen, 300 days of the year," Boulud tells me. "I'm only gone two weeks. I have to follow my daughter's school schedule. I trust my staff very much." From London, Jean-Georges Vongerichten assures me he is in his kitchen every night when he is in New York. "If you want your meal to be 100 percent Jean-Georges, I could only have six seats and do everything myself."

Bouley calls. "I was away cooking a dinner someone won at a benefit," he tells me. "But normally I'm like a tennis ball between the two kitchens. It's only 37 steps. I spend 80 percent of my time doing spontaneous tasting dinners for regulars during the service, actually cooking." Eric Ripert on the line. "I'm never away more than two weeks at a time. I don't cook during service, anyway. I expedite. I don't see how you can control both the kitchen and the dining room if you're cooking."

"I have a very modern way of thinking," Ducasse likes to say. "The chef is there to lead the team and not just to sit behind the piano." So let's give him his frenetic wandering. After all, AD/NY is closed weekends, ideal for dashing off to open his latest Spoon in Tokyo. Maybe we are grown-up enough, we fussy New York eaters, that we don't need either Ducasse or Jim Carrey jetéing through the dining room. I have eaten two lunches and three dinners at Alain Ducasse/New York, and his presence doesn't seem to matter. Remembering the euphoria of that one dinner, I recall my mate observing: "I get what it's about now. An evening of indulgence. Where you won't mind paying $500 because you're not coming if you can't afford it." Many New Yorkers may be less demanding, but for me the food must be seriously good.

And it isn't. In that last lunch, even the holy tuiles are a mess, with bits of melted Parmesan flying. Without whatever gave the tomato cocktail its sublime aura a few nights earlier, it is fussy, a foolish stretch that may remind you that the tomato is a fruit, but it lacks even a slice of fresh tomato. Prawns à la royale is simpering baby food. The special raw scallops have a crude taste unmitigated even by caviar. And now the $66 breast of chicken tastes no better than any other delivered minus its feet. This $76 veal chop is not as good as many I can name in New York, certainly not twice as good. The chocolate, "hot and strong in taste, iced with coffee crystals," is not the swamp it was on first tasting, but it's lost the ice, and the caramelized brioche cubes are a reach. At dinner that same night, the spaghettini is actually less sodden but still much ado about nothing. The frog's legs have no redeeming social value. The gossamer sweetbreads would be so much better discovered inside a crunch of crust.

I'm not really amused being forced to choose my knife or my pen just so the house can show off how many it's assembled. I'm annoyed. It's an intrusion and it's vulgar. Were Ducasse to try that gimmick in Paris, I think they'd roll him through town to the guillotine. It doesn't really matter much if I say the $500 dinner for two is obscene when our neighbors don't get enough to eat. I think $500 Knick tickets are obscene, too (by the way, Alain, they're $1,500 on the floor), not to mention $1,200 handbags (I bought mine at a sample sale and feel wanton enough). So on questions of what's worth what, maybe I can't be trusted. In certain circles now, nothing succeeds like excess.

But the kitchen desperately needs to be brilliant, and soon. These recipes he claims to create in his head . . . they are too intellectual, too contrived. Narcissus is in love with his own gimmicks. The food has no emotion. If the emperor is naked, we will drape him in a tablecloth to give him time to get his ermine back from the Laundromat. Open to anything? Yes, we are. But in the end, we're not so easily fooled.