A picture of the blogger at work for you tonight...  I'm putting the final touch of some freshly snipped chives on the salmon.  This is a completely gratuitous garnish, but we were both just so excited that Spring has reared its elusive head and we had these lovely things growing in the garden that we had to use them.  The garden played another versatile part in this meal when we were both thinking about how much we like the flavor of some mint with roasted potatoes.  It is a little too early for our mint to grow but we did have a bit of this Bee Balm starting to smell the spring air.  As it turns out, the flowers and leaves of Bee Balm are edible, and moreover, it's part of the mint family.  The leaves have a mild, pleasant mint-like flavor.  This was news to me and I'm looking forward to using the flowers in a meal later in the season.

The salmon dish tonight was grilled salmon with tomato-olive salsa from, you guessed it, Epicurious.  Yummy.

The potato salad was an original concoction which starts with roasting a bunch of fingerling potatoes with S&P, rosemary, and olive oil for about 30-35 minutes at 425.  While still warm these were tossed with a vinaigrette of white wine vinegar, polish brown mustard, minced jalapeño, bee balm leaves, and olive oil.  A few good handfuls of baby spinach are added to this and tossed again.  This was amazingly good, although I'd probably go very light on the mustard next time as it dominated a lot of the other flavors.

Several weeks ago we dined at Max Of Eastman Place.  I've struggled to find a way to convey our disappointment with the meal beyond "the food was bland", but wasn't quite able to put my finger on why we felt so disappointed.  It certainly had good points.  My thoughts became clearer tonight with another dining experience, this time at Park 54.  This meal provided its own series of disappointments, but overall left us feeling much more satisfied and less ripped off.  Two restaurants with very similar prices, roughly similar cuisine, and equal numbers of disappointments left us with very different reactions.  

Examining this discrepancy helped me reach one conclusion.  Dining, for me, is about flavor above all else.  There are many many factors that contribute to a pleasurable dining experience.  But at its core, it's about really stimulating the nose and taste buds.  Give me some bold flavors.  Give me some interesting flavors.  Give me some subtle and delicate flavors.  Give me some complex flavors.  Give me some fiery flavors.  Give me some unexpected flavors.  But, please, don't bore the nose.  A restaurant can screw up any of a myriad of other factors at a meal and still have a chance of having me leave satisfied.  But if the flavor's not there it's not going to happen.

Let's take my duck entrees at both restaurants.  The duck on the left, Max's. (I've lost it's full description, the sauce was some type of fruit reduction).  On the right, Park 54's "Hoison-glazed Duck Breast served with Shanghai noodles, crispy shallots and a shiitake mushroom - red wine reduction."  The Max version was perfectly cooked fine cut of duck, had great texture, and was served with a delicate carefully prepared sauce.  The Park 54 version was a lower quality cut of duck also cooked to the correct doneness.  It was, I believe the correct term would be, slathered in hoison glaze and swimming in duck fat.  Duck fat's a good thing, but part of what I pay a restaurant for should be doing the things that I might skimp on at home, like skimming and straining off fat. 

On all technical levels, the Max duck was more expertly prepared.  But the flavor of the dish was too boring to make me want to finish it!  Whatever fruit was supposedly in the sauce was nearly undetectable as was any seasoning on the meat.  I wish the people who keep advocating "Great ingredients, prepared simply" would explain to these culinary grads that "simply" does not mean "blandly".  An herb or two, an acid component, something smoky, anything!  Just keep me from falling asleep in my Bordeaux.  The Park 54 dish was a bit too overbearing, a bit too sloppy, but it kept me interested with a lot of fun flavors.  The caramelized glaze on the duck was yummy.

I wish the duck was an anomaly at Max, because the chef obviously possesses a respectable degree of talent.  Dishes show quite a bit of care, but that pursuit of technique really seemed to bypass the primary goal.  The "gumbo" shown here was the most egregious example.  I'm very rarely one to complain about something not being authentic, and I could have cared less that there was no rice, filé, cayenne, or sausage in this soup as long as it was tasty.  How this tasteless, thickened stock made it out of their kitchen, I'll never know.

The existence of that "gumbo" was even more surprising when we experienced Max's braised beet and goat cheese salad.  In this case all those technical skills came to bear on a great flavor concept to spectacular results.  If everything at Max lived up to this standard, we, and our bank accounts, would be regular visitors.  Unfortunately this was the only dish that didn't fall flat in the flavor department.

Contrast the technical skills displayed at Max with Park 54's vegetarian pizza appetizer, and you have no contest.  This French bread pizza was basically something I might throw together and in the toaster oven at 1 in the morning.  Really pretty lame. (in fairness, I've had another variety of their french bread pizza before that was much more impressive)  But it tasted better than almost everything we had at Max. 

Making food that tastes good is really not that hard.  Adding fancy culinary skills and ingredients on top of that can elevate something good to something memorable.  This is a noble and worthwhile effort, but, please, don't forget the flavor.