Robuchon’s genius
“HOW does he do it?” asks S. Irene Virbila [“Las Vegas, Lighted by Stars,” Dec. 28], of a tiny, crispy egg and potato dish (with a scoop of osetra caviar, true) at Joel Robuchon’s new restaurant at the MGM. The answer, of course, is slowly. But you cannot believe how slowly. In 1994, shortly before Robuchon “retired,” I had the great good fortune to work on a television production of food and wine in France and, being the only member of the team who spoke French, sat down with Monsieur Robuchon over tea to chat while the crew set up. With the simplicity and candor that characterizes his cooking, Robuchon, then generally thought to be the world’s greatest chef, shared with me, someone whom he had never met and who had no credentials in food whatsoever except for an appetite, that the secret to great cuisine, something he had learned from working in the refectory of a monastery (he had been on the way to entering holy orders), was to isolate the essence of a single ingredient, then to intensify this isolated taste and to present it on the table in a simple dish.
After our talk, Robuchon let us film his preparation of a lobster dish. We gaped as he took 45 minutes just to decorate the plate, 10 minutes alone consecrated to circling it with a pastry tool to squeeze little teardrops of a salmon paste around the periphery, followed by an even more agonizingly patient lifting, with toothpicks, of those immaculately cut pearls of vegetables. Patient lifting and then even more careful setting them down, one at a time, with movements as likely to be found at a fine jewelers or in an art studio!
“How does he do it?” Slowly, carefully, with the most intense concentration I have ever witnessed and, clearly informing all the rest, a religious, one might even say idealized, passion for the taste of all ingredients, great and small.
ROBERT LEVINE
Carlsbad
*
DINING at Robuchon in Las Vegas sounds marvelous even if it does cost an arm and a leg. While it might appear unseemly to cart in wine for corkage in a restaurant of that ilk, I still resent such a policy. Apparently they feel that if you can afford their restaurant, you are not concerned about purchasing their wine at an astronomical markup. However, even the world-class Valentino will let you bring in your own wine at $35 a pop. Bottom line? I’d rather take my ’82 Bordeaux, grand cru white Burgundies and ’90 red Burgundies to Valentino (if these magnificent wines are on Robuchon’s list, the markup must be phenomenal), buy a little wine from Valentino as well (fabulous selection with low markup) and dismiss the imperial Robuchon as a distant fantasy in which I shall never indulge, unless I win the lottery or he changes his policy.
RICHARD MCCURDY
Burbank