The Michael Voltaggio *Experience*

In Junior High my big brother used to make me lie on his floor and listen to Jimi Hendrix. That was the only way to get the full impact he said, and yes, the black light was on and of course I did anything he said, hoping a little cool would rub off. I kinda got Jimi Hendrix — the humor, the little riffs and the complete artistic involvement. But back then I was mostly focused on what I could see under my brother’s bed.

I don’t usually write about restaurants but my dinner the other night at the Langham Hotel in Pasadena requires me to. I didn’t dine on the floor, thank God, but Michael Voltaggio just may be the Jimi Hendrix of food. Did the tattoo make me think of this? Or maybe the edge, the confidence, the sure-handedness of this young chef made me search for the way to describe the dinner, and “experience” was the first word that popped into my head. It wasn’t dinner after all, it was a food experience. Psychedelic. Yes, here’s how Wikipedia defines it:  A psychedelic experience is characterized by the perception of aspects of one’s mind previously unknown, or by the creative exuberance of the mind liberated from its ostensibly ordinary fetters.

This food experience was not accidental. I and my immediate loved ones are starstruck by the contestants (and judges, oy!) on Bravo’s Top Chef, and we went like pilgrims to check out the culinary skills of Voltaggio, who is in the throes of the competition. At least still competing in TV-land, since the show is actually over and the winner known, but only to the brass at Top Chef and its sworn-to-silence contestants.

To begin with, the menu is beautiful and simple. Four- and five-course dinners are offered, and you are asked to make your selections from the categories of “Beginning,” “Middle” and “End.” The titles of the dishes are plain-Jane, such as “Halibut Cheeks,” “Wagyu Short Rib” and “Coffee Cake.” Ah, but those names are so misleading, and in retrospect, funny as hell. My Middle was “Turbot,” subtitled (but not more illuminatingly) “Butternut Squash, Madras Curry, Pumpkin Seed Granola.” Here’s what it looked like on the plate:

I’m getting ahead of myself, though. We started with an amuse-bouche — a single bite, gift of the chef — of the heart-of-the-heart of palm, hollowed out with something warm and creamy in it, accompanied by a nitrogen-chilled horseradish powder and a glistening deep-green blob of chive puree. All three, pop in the mouth, get the full impact. Cold, green, warm, spicy, soft, liquid. Nice.

The unstandard bread of the three choices was a bacon bread, and all were served with a choice of Vermont salted or French unsalted butter. (That’s not counting the truffle-swirl bread we had between Beginning and Middle, served with goat’s milk butter. Lordy!)

One of my two Beginning courses was a Langoustine with a tiny lobster lasagna under it, and it looked like this:

Another Beginning was the very pedestrian sounding “Heirloom Beets.” But these beets were the texture of beef tartare (here’s where I think Voltaggio has fun with words — beef/beet, yes! Tartare, of course). With it was a quail egg, except that goat cheese played the part of the egg’s white. The foie gras also wrapped a grape concoction, so there were always little surprises wrapped in surprises.

I’ve always envied the eye-candy that Japanese food is, with its colors and wrappers and textures. This food was not Asian, but it had sushi on the brain. Flavors that are separate but equal, and that combine to make a whole. Cuisine with wit. Amuse Cuisine (can I coin that?) Precision assembly, like this:

The service was what you’d expect at that level of dining. All the dishes were deposited at the same moment, the napkin was refreshed and tonged onto the table if you made a little excursion to the facilities. Or, as was our case, to the kitchen! Yes, we hugged Mr. Voltaggio in his own habitat, and got to talk food for several minutes on end. He also signed my birthday girl’s menu:

He’s maybe old enough to vote and looks like he’s having far too much fun for the Langham. He’s got a young crowd in the back in a space that didn’t look all that large. And to ice the cake, as it were, crazy-hair Marcel from Season 2 of Top Chef breezed into the kitchen.

Now the Langham needs to perk up its dining room to match the excitement of what’s coming out of the kitchen. It’s a beautiful place, but it’s like taking your trophy date out in your mom’s Lincoln Town Car. Nice, but…

As an extra at the end of the evening we were presented with a cold slate slab of chocolates, including a lollipop with the emphasis on “pop.” I spied other diners laughing around the room as we all bit into our exploding Pop-Rock lollys. Thanks, Mr. Voltaggio, for letting us all in on the joke.

Kelly McCune © 2009

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