For a recent market menu, she was able to count on their beets for a chilled roasted beet soup — a purée with caramelized onions, garlic and a swirl of sour cream and sherry vinegar — and on their leeks, escarole and tomatoes as part of a main dish of ricotta gnocchi with sausage made from local pork from Eagle Wood Farms in Barkhamsted.
The artist, in his sleek blazer and ascot, a cigarette puffing away in its holder, would rattle off dozens of pen-and-ink sketches, working sight unseen and strictly from verbal descriptions, while John Fairchild and I sat there, pumping the buyers and drinking chilled Beaujolais and nibbling roast chicken and frites.
The curly noodles are also served chilled in hiyashi chuka, a refreshing bowl of chilled ramen, cucumbers, pickled ginger, roast chicken or pork served in a cold bath of soy, rice vinegar and sugar.
Dropping temperatures demand robust food that heats the body to its chilled bone: thick soups, roasts, stews.
Chef Sven Meade will join former Shutters chefs Jeff Jackson and Beau MacMillian in the One Pico kitchen to prepare a menu featuring a heirloom tomato and watermelon salad with chilled crab and piperade sorbet; roasted Chilean sea bass with black bean sauce; braised beef short ribs with farmers market vegetables and a red wine reduction; and for dessert, a warm chocolate pudding cake.
The menu at Smith's changes daily, but typically includes roast stone fruit with chilled grappa, Sauternes custard with Armagnac prunes or vanilla pudding with rhubarb and vanilla cream.
RECOMMENDED DISHES -- Mussels; smoked-salmon taco; asparagus salad; lobster bisque; pizzas; grilled veal chop; roasted halibut; roasted grouper; tuna; chocolate bread pudding; tiramisu; chilled mango and mint soup.
Among my favorite types of dishes at the Laundry and Per Se are soups like chilled green pea or hot lobster corn chowder, roast turbot or the chef's incomparable way with rabbit and veal or the bacon-wrapped poussin braised en cocotte and the Alsatian fruit tarts.
With so much strong competition, the bland roasted garlic-goat cheese flan and the chilled beet timbale, a tower of underseasoned shredded beets, were also-rans.
The menu is traditional and pan-Italian, with appetizers like roasted peppers, vitello tonnato, sauteed clams and a chilled seafood salad of shrimp, squid and lobster.
