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Prix Fixe Dining – Just Leave it to the Chef

Food and Wine Being Served At Bar Boulud in Boston, MA

Stagnation can be death in the restaurant industry. Offering the same ol’ twenty-five meal menu to consumers with no options for flavor exploration or new dining experiences is turning the everyday dining patron into the common foe and some chefs aren’t having it. In fact, many chefs are taking the old dusty menu, ripping it in half and throwing it right out of the window and replacing them with a prix-fixe menu – giving them all the creative range they need to keep their customers engaged.

The Dining Room at Eleven Madison Park in New York
The Dining Room at Eleven Madison Park in New York

Many restaurants that employ a prix-fixe menu – a French term referencing to a menu type featuring a pre-selected list of dishes at a set price – are considered destination restaurants, offering critically acclaimed dishes and where expectations are set prior to the start of dinner. Restaurants like Chicago’s Alinea, California’s The French Laundry and New York’s Eleven Madison Park all feature exclusively fixed-price menus. When the skills of a chef supersede the individual dishes of a plain menu, prix-fixe menus may seem like the better deal. While dining at Alinea, The French Laundry and Eleven Madison Park can leave you a bit lighter in your wallet with reservations starting at $180 per person, it will keep you satisfied with their 10-14 course tasting menu. While the terms prix-fixe and tasting menu are often interchanged in the food industry, a prix-fixe menu usually offers a four-course meal – appetizer, second course, main course and a dessert – and a tasting menu offers as few as six and as many as 14, smaller- three-bite portions.

With 15,397 eating and drinking places located in Massachusetts in 2015 and projected sales of $16.5 billion in 2016, the food scene is hopping on to the ten-year-old trend of prix-fixe menus. Bar Boulud in Boston, a French-inspired menu with seasonal New England dishes, located inside Mandarin Oriental, is tapping into the market like no other. With an à la carte menu for breakfast and lunch – single-items priced individually, Bar Boulud offers a three-course meal for only $42 – prix-fixe dining without breaking the bank. As of today, foodies can indulge at Bar Boulud with options like beef Pot-au-feu terrine – a dish with beef, soaked in red wine, carrots, potatoes and seasonal vegetables – grilled chicken panzanella – a chicken leg with arugula, sourdough fennel, tomatillo and oregano and Gâteau Basque – a traditional basque custard cake with brandied cherries and vanilla anglaise.

Duck Sausage from deadhorse hill on Main Street in Worcester, MA
Duck Sausage from deadhorse hill on Main Street in Worcester, MA

“Dining at Bar Boulud is about more than just a meal. It is about experiencing something outside of my comfort zone. I have always been skeptical about dining at high-end restaurants with elaborate menus for the fear of not selecting the best dish. Eating from a fixed-price menu lets me trust the chef to serve his or her best meal. Also, knowing what I will eat and how much I will spend, takes away the issue of being indecisive when choosing a restaurant,” says a frequent visitor to Bar Boulud.

Whether it’s a prix-fixe meal of three-courses or the intricate tasting menu, fixed-priced menu options are becoming part of the nation’s food culture. It seems that the odds are in the favor of the customer when it comes to a prix-fixe menu – giving them fine dining options, more food for their dollar and an increased dining experience without the stress of thinking of individual dish options. But what’s in it for the chef?

In 2006, Dallas’s critically acclaimed Abacus Restaurant offered a nine-course tasting menu priced at $90. With a main ingredient of fish scraps, Chef Tre Wilcox cultivated a new culinary menu of a la carte portions, in hopes of reducing food waste and increasing consumer experience. The biggest benefit? A 75% gross profit margin on a menu that included Kobe beef carpaccio and Alaskan king crab ravioli. Not only is the profit margin promising, but the chefs are able to showcase their culinary skill sets without the boundaries of the ordinary menu. To be a chef is to create and if creating new dishes is the sole motivation behind the chef’s skill set, then allowing complete autonomy in the creation of new daily or weekly menus to cater to the chef’s local resources, culinary background and new-found inspirations is the true way to fully experience a chef’s ability in the kitchen.

“Having someone with the, ‘just cook for me’ attitude is the best thing. It is a way for customers to experience what we, as chefs, are doing. At deadhorse hill, we offer pre-fixed and tasting menus but we do it family style which allows customers to leave with exceedingly large value, pay less than the a la carte prices and enjoy the freshest ingredients available at that time to us,” says Jared Forman, Executive Chef at deadhorse hill. “For $65 per person, customers are able to enjoy a 5-course meal, family-style, which means they are getting a couple of plates per course. Recently, I served Boston Mackerel – a small quantity of fish I acquired through a friend – and added it to the tasting-menu and sold out.” Forman explains that a tasting-menu is how both customers and restaurants win. “Although, adding a tasting-menu to the routine menu is a bit hectic behind the scenes – it requires a good flow to fit into the ticketing process – it proves to leave customers with a great lasting impression on the restaurant and the quality of food. We look forward to adding our dinner and wine pairing options to the tasting-menu in time. It is an interesting way to show customers more about great quality.”

Chef Brady Speaking at his restaurant, Sonoma, in Princeton, MA
Chef Brady Speaking at his restaurant, Sonoma, in Princeton, MA (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).

For Mass Foodies, their quarterly Chef’s Best dinner series is another event utilizing the prix-fixe menu while adding a sense of exclusivity for every diner. Inner foodies come to life at each event with a single priced ticket ranging from $56 to $120, seeking out the finer culinary abilities of the highlighted chef. “At Sonoma, I had a chance to peek into the mind of the chef that ordinarily cooks from a menu that only changes every 6 to 8 weeks,” said Jaime Flores, an attendee of April’s Chef’s Best: The Brady Experience. “Having only dined at Sonoma on one other occasion – for its regularly served menu – I was excited to see what the chef had prepared for the night. The five-course meal was nothing short of exceptional. It was a diverse dining experience, as it tugged on my personal food favorites like the rack of lamb but also opened up my taste palate with the introduction of the ahi tuna – something I usually stay clear from. For the price of my ticket, I was open to new experiences. I think that is how dining should be – an inspiration from the chef.” For the event, Chef Bill Brady concocted a vision that highlighted his years of experience and the autonomy could be tasted with every delicate bite of his carefully choreographed dishes.

Whether going out to eat is something that sparks an interest in the diverse food culture from around the world or just a simple gesture of social connection, the one thing that is certain is that if prix-fixe is an option on the menu – take it. It will open your eyes to a world of flavors beyond your daily comfort zones but it will also release the chef from the chains of his day-to-day menu.

Bar Bouluds Croque Madame
Bar Bouluds Croque Madame
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Chef’s Best: The Brady Experience

Chef Brady (far right) along with his culinary team at Sonoma (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).

Let me jump to the third course of our third Chef’s Best event featuring Chef Bill Brady’s five-course extravaganza at his restaurant Sonoma, located in Princeton, Mass.

Coffee-rubbed Wagyu beef with local porter molasses, poached egg in hollandaise sauce on top of a griddled crumpet (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).
Coffee-rubbed Wagyu beef with local porter molasses, poached egg in hollandaise sauce on top of a griddled crumpet (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).

Hartley-Ostini Hitching Post Hometown Pinot Noir was paired with our third course—the Grilled Steak and Egg. The coffee-rubbed Wagyu beef with local porter molasses next to a poached egg in hollandaise sauce on top of a griddled crumpet was a piece of art on the plate. While the meat was the star, we were in the midst of pairing legend.

Chef Bill Brady, who opened Sonoma 20 years ago, informed us that this wasn’t just any Pinot. Hartley-Ostini, the little winery “started as a lark,” according to one of its founders Gray Hartley, was Hollywood famous. Chef Brady told us he put the Pinot Noir on the menu because it’s a great wine and because it’s featured in Alexander Payne’s Academy Award winner, Sideways. The 2004 film is about two friends traveling through Santa Barbara wine country. It’s hard to imagine that only 12 years have passed since we all learned how to, and why we should, appreciate Pinot Noir. And, it’s even harder to imagine a world without the film’s classic mantra, “I’m not drinking any fucking Merlot.”

The movie’s success propelled the winery to stardom, Chef Brady explained. Then he added that he discovered Hartley-Ostini long before Paul Giamatti ever savored a glass. He told us the story like he knew what it meant to wait for your vision to take off and grant you the privilege to do what you love.

When you walk into Sonoma accolades like Open Table’s Diners’ Choice Award 2015 and Top 100 Restaurants in the USA 2015 greet you and lead you to the bar where the event reception was held. A glass of Champy, a sparkling wine from California’s north coast, welcomed us to the party. As we sipped, servers passed first-course treats, which included a foie gras torchon served in push pops, chicken and Andouille beignets, wok-seared bay scallops in wakame and wasabi crème fraiche, and steak tartare crostini.

Rack of Colorado Lamb coated in Dijon, rosemary, garlic, and parsley then rolled in fresh panko in a roasted demi-glace accompanied a side of mashed potato and a few stalks of asparagus and carrot (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).
Rack of Colorado Lamb coated in Dijon, rosemary, garlic, and parsley then rolled in fresh panko in a roasted demi-glace accompanied a side of mashed potato and a few stalks of asparagus and carrot (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).

With Chef’s Best, chefs are given creative license to present an out-of-the-ordinary culinary experience to a limited number of guests. It’s an event. Since it’s an event, there’s a palpable sense of anticipation as each course is served and glass is poured. Chef Bill Brady concocted a vision that seemed to highlight his years of expertise, his dedication to quality farm-to-table dining, and his appreciation for the diner.

While he presented a broad range of courses to enjoy, the subtext of each course was that he wanted us to have a phenomenal, and indulgent, feast.

As soon as we sat down, they presented us with the second course, Togarashi Tuna—seared ahi tuna with shishito peppers, pickled carrot salad, and Gochujang, which is a savory, spicy, and pungent fermented Korean condiment made from red chili, glutinous rice, fermented soybeans, and salt. The dish was paired with Ferrari-Carano Bella Luce. Bella Luce, meaning beautiful light in Italian, is a white wine blend with sweet notes of honeydew, pineapple, and vanilla, which helped balance out this spicy dish.

From the tuna we went to the Steak and Eggs (and famous Pinot). And finally we were served the bright spot of the night, the Roast Rack of Lamb Persillade. The two-bone rack of Colorado Lamb coated in Dijon, rosemary, garlic, and parsley then rolled in fresh panko in a roasted demi-glace accompanied a side of mashed potato and a few stalks of asparagus and carrot. Chef Bill Brady explained that there is an excess layer of fat in between the meat and the skin of the lamb. He took that fat, which was then chopped and sautéed, and added it to the mashed potato.

The main course had the comfort of a home-cooked meal and the wine pairing of a Sonoma County vineyard. The Martin Ray Cabernet Sauvignon contributed nicely to the decadence of the lamb with its smooth supple notes of ripe cherry, rich blackberry, and just a hint of spice.

Banana Pain Perdue with a Salted Carmel Ice Cream (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).
Banana Pain Perdue with a Salted Carmel Ice Cream (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).

Our fifth and final act of the night brought us to the Banana Pain Perdue, or French toast, with a Salted Carmel Ice Cream and velvety whipped cream on top. Our Apfel Eis Wine came from down the road at Still River Winery in Harvard, Mass. The dessert wine brought our evening to a bittersweet close.

With the third installment of our quarterly Chef’s Best series behind us, patterns have emerged, like each chef is clearly passionate about cooking and dining. Chef Bill Brady stood out as a someone who takes food seriously but doesn’t take himself too seriously. While the dining room at Sonoma is romantic, cozy, and elegant (with incredible acoustics—the place was full but I could only hear murmurs and my conversation), he made everyone feel at home. He even agreed to send his recipes as well as directions to anyone who wanted to recreate our evening. He then joked, “I can’t tell you how much of each ingredient to add, but I’m happy to share my recipes!”

I hope to see you at the next event tentatively scheduled for July. Please considering joining our eNewsletter (in the footer) or follow us on Facebook to see when tickets go on sale.

Attendees at the Chef's Best Event in April (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).
Attendees at the Chef’s Best Event in April (Taken by Erb Photography for Mass Foodies).