Juicy and crisp roast chicken ($18) appears with a stack of potato gratin and chard, but it was the flavorful hen-of-the-woods mushrooms, cooked with red wine and demi-glace and finished with port and cream, that had me swabbing the plate.
And the resolution is driven even lower by what Professor Tufte calls chart junk: meaningless tricks done only because the software makes them possible, like turning a one-dimensional piece of information (a sales figure) into a three-dimensional bar, as if it were a stack of potato chips.
The confit of duck leg was fork tender, topped with a small stack of shoestring potatoes and encircled with airy, homemade foie gras ravioli.
Two standards from the owner's repertory are grilled baby squid -- among the most delicious imaginable -- and octopus terrine (it is not called that, but that is what it is) in which cooked octopus has been molded, held together by its natural gelatin, served warm with olive oil, coarse salt, paprika and a small stack of tender potatoes.
Each plate was appetizing to see: glistening leaves of lettuce, dots of sauces in contrasting colors, lamb chops leaned against a Gehry-like stack of roasted potato wedges.
"I have friends who are producers who've been trying to get me to do a very produced, upbeat kind of 'Karen-O-goes-solo-dance-revolution-record'," she says, depositing a pool of ketchup next to a giant stack of sweet potato fries.
Ms. Simpson sliced purposefully through stacks of sweet potatoes.
The hanger steak with mushroom-and-red-wine sauce accompanied by a creamy stacking of dauphine potatoes was a more flavorful pick.
The po' boy was a fine choice: a homemade bun loaded with crispy crab, lettuce, tomatoes, red onion and pickles, served with a huge stack of addictive shoestring potatoes (cole slaw and tabbouleh are the other options).
Ads of Edward drooling over Bella like she was a stack of cheddar-flavored potato chips?
