I drove up to the campus for our dinner at the Escoffier Restaurant. In case you don't know who Escoffier is, his full name is Georges Auguste Escoffier (1846 - 1935), and he was the leading figure in modern French cuisine. Escoffier's technique is taught at the CIA, and forms the foundation of a formal culinary education. If you are a trained chef, you probably were taught these standard French cooking techniques.
As a quick aside, though, the thing about cooking is if you can learn these techniques, you can do any kind of cooking. The ingredients change, but the cooking techniques are the same.
Anyway... back to the restaurant. The restaurant is a classic/contemporary French restaurant. The decor was very French, with pastel colors, big curtains and draperies on the windows, antique wooden side tables, white table cloths, waitstaff wearing black vests, white shirts, ties, black pants and long white aprons, and I think real silverware.
We had a group of 15, and we were split up into 3 tables. I sat with 2 women who were from northern California, a guy from Indianapolis who was a urologist, and an guy who worked as an IT consultant from Albany, NY. I have not eaten a meal with this group yet, and we had a really great time together getting to know each other better.
We started the meal with an amuse bouche which was a crispy phyllo pastry with a filling of lobster. It was really good, I liked it a lot. Only 1 bite, but very nice.
For the first course, it was pre-selected by the chef. It was escargots in a garlic sauce, surrounded by a ring of mashed potatoes. It was quite good too. I have had escargots before only once, so this was my second time to eat them. Basically, you are eating the sauce with this kind of dish, and the sauce is usually delicious, buttery and garlic.
For my entree, I looked at the menu, and the thing that jumped out at me was the lobster. It was also the most expensive thing and since I didn't have to pay for it, I thought, why not? The dish was 2 small lobster tails and the claws on a ragout of mushrooms. There was a sauce on the plate, and the coolest thing was a "gobule" of horseradish sauce. This horseradish sauce looked like a marble-sized sphere of white liquid. I thought it was an egg at first. Then I cut it open and the sauce just burst out. How did they do this??? I need to find out! It was like a bubble of sauce. Very impressive.
Next we had a cheese course, which I could've gone without. Sorry I am not a cheese person. I know there are so many varieties of cheese, and people love them, and blah blah blah, but... I just can't get excited for cheese. I had a few nibbles of cheese, at best.
For dessert I selected a Gateau au Chocolat, also known as a chocolate cake. It had the molten chocolate center, and IT WAS THE BEST THING I HAVE EATEN HERE ALL WEEK (capitalization intended). It was served with a light chocolate ice cream on the side, and it was just simply delicious; heaven-on-a-plate. Who needs heaven when you have that dessert to eat? I am a chocoholic for sure, this dessert proves it.
The meal lasted 3 hours, from 6 pm - 9 pm. Although it was long, the time went by very fast. The service at the Escoffier was very good, all the students did a wonderful job. They were also very knowledgable when we asked them questions. I would rank this restaurant a little higher than Caterina de Medici last night for overall experience.
I was ready to get back to the hotel after this meal. Two more days of FOOD, I hope I can keep up this pace and level of eating. Wow, so much food, the CIA goes through so much food volume, and a lot of this food is going into me. I am not going to get on the scale until I can have a week to eat more normally. But for the time being, this is incredibly fun to indulge like this.
Ok, that is it for tonight. See you later.
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