Dialogue-Rethinking How to Design a Menu
*This review is based on an experience on September 20th, 2019. Yes, it’s dated but I feel like the meal would still be relevant today which goes to show how ahead of its time the food at Dialogue was.*
Being able to create a menu, a blank canvas for a chef, is oftentimes the end goal or dream of many a line cook. It is the summit of the mountain that we all look towards as we push through the fire and metal of another hellish service. One day, we tell ourselves, one day I’ll climb my way out of these trenches and onto the mountain of creative freedom. There, my true potential as a chef will finally shine.
Yet, when we finally do end up coming face to face with the task, the freedom of choice often leads to paralysis. With so many options, endless possibilities, we end up not knowing where to start. We begin to see the truth in the statement that creativity comes with restraints. That the greatest dishes were created because of the limitations that their chefs had to work around. It is by self imposing shackles on ourselves that we are truly able to be free, for pure unconstrained freedom is really just loneliness, or us staring into the endless void.
Common restraints that we impose upon ourselves include the following.
Seasonality- As produce has a natural ebb and flow throughout the year so too must our food. It makes sense for us to create with what’s in season or what is to come. Why create a dish highlighting fresh tomatoes in winter when in six months time the same dish will inevitably taste better. Furthermore, using ingredients at their prime now naturally creates a sense of time and place in the dish, something that so many of us strive to obtain.
The “Course”-A Main course will often be one of the heavier courses in the meal. We expect heavy meat, thick sauces, and garnish or accompaniments that are on the hotter and richer side of flavors. A raw course expects exactly that, raw preparations of protein, usually earlier on in the meal. Diners expect the flavors to be lighter, brighter, and higher acidity than something coming later on in the meal. As we eat we judge a dish based on its freshness. It would be silly to judge a raw course based on how well it could do as a main, as the expectations and criteria are completely flipped.
The Highlighting of One Ingredient/Technique- This method of creation has become more common in recent times. Chef’s “rediscovering” specialty ingredients or curating them through the process of fermentation aim to create a dish that showcases this product in its entirety. X product Y different ways isn’t so much a description of a dish as a prerequisite for a dish to be considered acceptable by today's standards.
But what if there were other ways of thinking about the menu? What other theoretical handcuffs can we put on ourselves that would allow for new spurts of creativity?
What was once located in a small mall on the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Rosa, California, Dialogue, an intimate 18 seater restaurant aimed to tackle that question by creating a menu and dishes with multiple unique limitations. The result, a mind boggling intellectual meal that was constantly forcing diners to take pause. You were constantly being forced to ask yourself, “do I like this?” In doing so, you had to be a lot more conscious of your experience. Why am I feeling this way, what part of this do I like? What feels off for me? That mental conversation that you have with yourself really helps you become self aware of your development as a chef and your connection towards food.
It’s a shame that Dialogue is now closed because I would say that the meal at Dialogue that I had was one of the most complex and cerebral meal that I’ve experienced. It is the only time in my entire life where I’ve walked out of a meal mentally exhausted. I felt like I had just watched an incredibly heavy and thought provoking film on the level of Schindler’s list.
While we no longer have the ability to experience this forward thinking restaurant, the meal for me will forever have a place in my head. It was the first time I’ve ever eaten food that clearly had a unique voice and personality. The creativity of the dishes were pushing against that boundary of what I knew to be food. To draw parallels to other disciplines, I can only assume the effect mirrors the emergence of modern art as a movement. The rejection of classically technical dishes, the conventional interpretation of perfectionism and instead approaching food with a sense of “what if”. By looking at dishes and menus from a different angle, Dialogue created dishes with a deeper story behind them, beyond simply what’s on the plate.
So how did Dialogue challenge the status norm? What were some of these modern shackles that they used? Let’s examine a few that to me were the most memorable.
The Structure of the Menu: The menu at Dialogue is driven by the core concept of connectivity. Unlike most tasting menus, Dialogue actively tried to repeat one ingredient from the previous course into the next, preparing it in with a different method so as to showcase the versatility of ingredients. Oftentimes, flavors that were in the foreground of the previous course would become the backdrop or structure for the next, creating a stage for a new star to shine. The inter connectivity of the menu therefore acts as the thread that ties the entire menu together. While each dish might have a separate story on its own, it is inevitably part of a larger narrative that the team is trying to create.
Furthermore, Dialogue strives to have inter connectivity between menus as well, an idea that only repeat diners and the chefs themselves would be able to fully appreciate. The first few bites of the meal are always a nod towards the previous season, a look back at where we came from. The only dishes that aren’t “in season” so to speak, they end up using ingredients from the previous menu as a way to highlight where the restaurant has come from. Conversely, the last bite of the meals serves as a look forward into the future. For what’s to come down the pipeline. It aims to use ingredients that are just coming into season, ingredients that are just slightly under their prime. Conversely, they will end up becoming the backbone to the first few bites of the next menu, as a way of referencing this current iteration that is only temporary in nature. This methodology acts as a reflection of how as much as we strive to create a sense of time, or capacity to do so only has meaning because of how there exists a before and after.
Creating a Dish Based on an Idea-Thoughts on Oysters: The core philosophy behind this dish is the idea of getting that oyster and oceanic flavor without using an actual Oyster. Here, the chefs use roasted salsify along with oyster mushrooms, oyster leaves, and borage to all give that salty oceanic flavor. To help with the illusion, the dish is heavily salted to mimic that oceanic brininess. For me, this dish was interesting because in my mind oysters have such a strong depth of flavor and intensity that it is one of those foods with an irreplaceable flavor. To question that belief and turn it on its head is what truly makes this dish shine.
Interjecting Sweet and Savory-Shiso and Caramelized Soy: A Shiso tempura ice cream sandwich that was sandwiched literally into the middle of the menu really makes the diner question the role that sugar and sweetness plays in a tasting menu. Throughout the meal, flavors aren’t always being presented at the times we’ve socially come to expect. We started with some richer courses before getting some bites of acid here and there. Then, right at the point where you start expecting heavier mains, the chefs instead drop this dish which would have worked perfectly as a dessert at the end of the meal. However, because of the herbal notes with the black currant and the shiso, the dish also worked as a refresher for the palate. While some people might be put off by how sweet the dish was, for me I thought this was an excellent use of sugar in the meal.
Playing with Time-Raw Squashes and Rose: One of the core tenants of Dialogue is to use preserves and vinegar’s to create flavors that are unique to the restaurant. This dish highlights how the flavor of roses changes throughout a three year time span. You have a three year old white rose vinegar, two year aged rose syrup, and fresh rose petals picked the day of. To compliment the flavors the dish then adds slices of raw squash and radish for texture before finishing it off with a sansho vinaigrette to add some heat and excitement. This dish here is a good example of a dish that is highly intellectual and interesting but isn’t necessarily delicious. To me, it felt incomplete with all the flavors floating in the upper register. An appropriate image for the dish in my head is a teetering jenga tower, swaying just too much for my level of comfort.
Blackberry, Bordelaise, L'Explorateur: Acting as the cheese course to transition from savory to sweet, what was interesting about this dish was how it played off the savory notes of the dish before. Usually, you see cheese courses paired with some fruit or sugar to transition you to the dessert side focusing on what’s to come. However, here, the emphasis was on the interplay between the creamy cheese and rich bordelaise sauce. It lets the diner relive the previous course, as if they are trying to catch one last glimpse of a sunset before it fades off into the distance.
Recreating an Image-“ The Woods are Lovely, Dark and Deep”: To represent the coming of fall and the end of summer, Dialogue created this dish mimicking the fall leaves on a forest floor. For me this was a success both from a philosophical standpoint and a technical one as the dish itself was delicious and it managed to evoke the emotions they were going for. It just goes to show you how powerful this type of food can be when expertly done and was an excellent way to begin the dessert progression to conclude the meal.
