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I let them know what was coming.
“Fancy French food,” I said.
They nodded. Pleased. Uncertain. Nothing is better, as far as I’m concerned. Yet for all the French food all of us have eaten or at least read about, these days nobody really knows what to expect from a French restaurant. I was taking them to Danny Meyer’s Eleven Madison Park, where Daniel Humm is the chef. He’s young, only 34, and all of his experience as a head chef has been in this century. At the same time, he’s as classically trained as any man alive, having started his apprenticeship when he was 14, a twentieth-century tradition. Most meals I’ve eaten by him reminded me of Joël Robuchon: intense, controlled, exacting, technical, fabulous.
My friends knew nothing about Humm or his manner of cooking. I asked them what they expected from our fancy dinner.
The first friend, a woman about my age, said, “Truffles, foie gras, and thick, rich sauces.”
My second friend, her daughter-in-law, thought of sauces, too, a parade of tiny pitchers brought to the table by a flock of waiters and poured over a multitude of dishes. “I also think of tall, starched, white chef’s hats,” she said.
The third friend, married to the second, said he didn’t think much of fancy French food because it meant “Nazi-like technique” and too many butter sauces. I was surprised, because I thought of him as having the most refined palate in the group, mine included.
Basically, I’m a sucker for fancy French food. I like everything about the French. I’m not even annoyed by their politics.
Eleven Madison Park is one of the grand dining rooms of Manhattan, not so much opulent as it is soaring and stately, with unrivaled headroom. One of its non-culinary pleasures is watching the floor-to-ceiling curtains being drawn open at dusk, allowing post-sunset light to enter. There are a lot of tables and a lot of staff, but all that vertical breathing space allows the room to feel open and airy even when the tables are full and the aisles are packed. The centerpieces of the room are pure French, outsized flower arrangements, although my cranky friend described the one nearest us as “a dried-up tree with corny roses.” I was beginning to regret my kindness in allowing him to come along.