Last week's news that Chanterelle had closed made me sad. It's not like I was a regular or anything, but it's the only really high end restaurant that I've had the great good fortune to eat at more than once - maybe ten times in the past twenty years. Some of those times were galas; I work for a non-profit and for several years running we did a fancy fabulous dinner at Chanterelle as a fund-raising event. But some of those meals were just dinners out, for a birthday, an occasion, a celebration. And there are memory fragments from those evenings seared into my head. I can conjure up the taste of an appetizer, a layered terrine of 1/8" stripes of beef shin and foie gras, the unctuous foie gras contrasted with the meaty beef, enhanced with a dribbles of a vaguely Asian sauce. Squirreled away in my jewelry box is an irregular pearl - the bonus in a diver-caught Maine scallop that my husband ate one night. For a while, a good friend worked in the kitchen - which meant extra dishes just because, and once, a raucous late night game of ibble-dibble with the waitstaff after the restaurant had closed. Another night, it snowed. We sat snugly in the warm golden room, watching the snow fall through the big windows.
The food was perfect, the setting was elegant without being stuffy, and the waitstaff was the antithesis of supercilious. Thank you. We'll miss you.
07 October 2009
Chanterelle
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5 comments:
Wow...that sounds fun. I never thought about this much: The way a restaurant can become part of memories and how it is so sad when it closes.
Good stories.
So sad when places that are locally owned and hold good memories close.
It breaks my heart when places like this close
And Cafe des Artistes closed, too -- I was lucky enough to be taken there on dates once or twice when I lived in NYC. Sad when institutions go by the wayside.
A shame - but I'm glad it prompted you to share your stories.
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