29.3.10

Thursday April 1st: Homage to Pascal Barbot


This Thursday we're continuing our homage series with a menu of dishes inspired by Pascal Barbot of Paris, France. His restaurant, L'Astrance is considered "the hardest reservation" in Paris and Barbot is the youngest chef to earn three michelin stars. His cooking is characterized by showcasing high quality ingredients with Asian accents.

MENU:

Pea soup, ginger, yogurt - $4

Mushroom and foie gras galette, lemon marmalade, hazelnut oil - $12

Scallops, almond milk, mint, buddha's hand - $12

Clam, sea lettuce, citron, smoked mackerel bouillion - $10

Halibut, Sea Urchin, Chard - $16

Leg of lamb with black curry and artichokes - $12

Chili-lemongrass sorbet - $3

Jasmine egg nog - $3

Olive Oil Cake, Creme Fraiche Ice Cream, Strawberry, Aged Balsamic - $7

4 comments:

Amy Sherman said...

Oh yeah, this is really the place to spread your anti-foie message. Talk about barking up the wrong tree...

MSF said...

It's the guy's signature dish.

Plus, we used to almost never serve foie gras until we read about foie terrorists, and now we'll serve it indiscriminately until they publicly chill "the eff" out:

"Last July, Laurent Manrique, the chef of the renowned San Francisco restaurant Aqua, received a disturbing videotape in his mailbox. It contained footage shot from within his garden of his family relaxing at their Sonoma County home in Northern California. The video was followed by threatening notes that stated he and his family were being watched. That summer Manrique’s business partner, Didier Jaubert, was also the victim of what he considers a hate crime. The perpetrators glued the locks of his front door shut and spray painted his home and car with slogans such as, "Foie gras is animal torture" and "Murderer."

Francine Bradley, a poultry specialist at University of California Cooperative Extension at UC Davis...associates part of the outcry to foie gras with a lack of awareness among urban Americans of what is required in making food. “You have people making decisions about food production based on a concept of animals which comes out of Disney," she says.[8] She also speculates that those who are uncomfortable with the force-feeding process would be equally shocked if they ever saw large fish being swallowed whole by shorebirds.

Another defender of Sonoma Foie Gras is Ken Frank, chef and owner of La Torque in Napa Valley, who is a self-proclaimed animal lover and widely recognized in the industry as an advocate of humane agriculture. "I flew to northern California to watch the ducks at Sonoma Foie Gras," he said. "I've been there several times since. I didn't see any cruelty. I didn't see any suffering animals. I actually saw animals lining up to eat. These were happy ducks.""

Bottom Line: kittens taste crappy no matter what, life is fleeting, and who doesn't want an oversized liver?

Sorry, to clarify, I meant land kittens (no offense to sea kittens).

http://www.peta.org/Sea_Kittens/index.asp

le_sacre said...

don't suppose there's a vegetarian option of the meal available then, eh?

MSF said...

We can always improvise a vegetarian option but it may not be an homage-worthy effort. Sorry the menu is a little imbalanced in that regard.