A world-famous chef and some rich, rich food.
The utopian vision behind this swishy restaurant, the second in New York from world-class chef and restaurateur Alain Ducasse, whose eponymous Essex House restaurant boasts the most expensive prix fixe price tag in the city, is a melding of worlds. The menu presents two versions of a similar dish, one in North American Atlantic style and the other in European Atlantic style (fancy ways of saying American and French), allowing diners to weave in and out of culinary traditions as they wish. To give an idea of what this means, the two soups on offer were New England clam chowder and bouillabaisse.
This approach, though somewhat cutesy and contrived, seems easy enough to follow. The now-famous bread course fits neatly into the plan, offering toasted slices of crusty dark bread with salted butter, a buttery peanut spread and Concord grape jam, a charming way to set what one imagines would be an uncomplicated meal in motion.
This, however, was not to be the case, and after the peanut butter and jelly, playtime was over. Much like the jarring transition from childhood to the unforeseen complexities of adult life, Mix thrusts the diner from this innocent setting into a confounding world of difficult-to-navigate choices.
The main source of confusion is Mix's menu. In order to eat dinner here, one must master the prix fixe system (there is no a la carte ordering) as well as the subsystem of strange categories into which the menu is divided. There are three sections from which one can choose in order to create a meal: 1) First of Mix, which encompasses starters, soups and Must of Mix, a selection of pastas and sandwiches 2) Second of Mix, the main course, and 3) Third of Mix, also called "dessert." One starter, one soup and one Must of Mix costs $48, and one choice from each of the Mixes is $72. (And this the newer and supposedly more simplified version of the menu.)
In the end, we threw up our hands and asked the waiter to figure it all out for us. Even after deferring to the expert, the oddity wasn't over. To orient us with the salads on the menu, the waiter, unsolicited, produced a "viewing" tray of pre-made salads, the first of its kind that I've ever seen. Identical shallow glass bowls shaped like petri dishes fitted with transparent covers lent each salad inside the look of a terrarium. I half expected to see insects crawling among the peaks and valleys of meats and vegetables.
Once my imagination took that turn, I lost my appetite but ordered a salad anyway. The glazed shrimp with sweet and sour eggplant was clean and pleasant with hints of sweet Indian spices, but in the end was overshadowed by the peculiarity of the experience. I can see the logic in viewing desserts after a meal is over, but viewing salads before it has begun I still don't understand.
The other starters that we ordered required less ceremony but were stomach-turners in their own right. Dish after dish, it was a case of too much of a good thing: The clam chowder was delicious, but it was so rich that it was like drinking straight bechamel sauce. Between three hungry diners, we could hardly put a dent in it. The bouillabaisse broth was too potent. Like everything else here, it was made with excellent ingredients and an extreme amount of skill, but in this case both seemed misapplied. Our other starter, chewy elbow pasta with diced ham, butter and truffle jus, looked like harmless comfort food but was also too rich. Each bite squelched with oil and an overpowering truffle taste. Every selection from the First of Mix and Must of Mix left our table almost untouched, and even so, we felt too sick afterward to dig into the main course.
This turned out to be the greatest tragedy of the evening, because the entrees were quite good. The bison tenderloin was a supple puck of lean, rare meat, served with a condiment of its own jus and horseradish cream that literally dissolved in your mouth. The chicken pot pie, doled out in a surprisingly large portion, was golden-crusted and generously stuffed with juicy shredded chicken, starchy gravy, mushrooms and precious carrot and potato coins that were cut into little flower shapes.
The pinnacle of the evening was the Mix vegetables en cocotte, a treasure chest of vegetables and some fruits served in a little metal pot. The pleasure of picking through veggie after veggie and being surprised as more and more varieties keep cropping up cannot be overemphasized. (How often are vegetables the most exciting item on a menu?) I counted at least a dozen varieties, including paper-thin slices of radish, beets and refreshing baby squash, halved lady apples, stewed apple-y wedges, julienned granny smiths, gumball-sized patty pan squash, triangle-shaped parsnip slices, miniature bulbs of fennel, and the list goes on.
To go with the meal(s), we ordered wine by the glass: a crisp and delicious 2000 Fritz Haag Riesling ($9) and a very pleasant 2001 Barbera d'Asti Cassinelli ($13). If you like foofy drinks, the Mix rose cocktail ($13) was an impressive, effervescent combination of rose water, raspberry puree, champagne and vodka, with a rose petal atop as a decadent flourish.
More foamy pinkness followed in the dessert course with the floating islands with pink praline (served in the inexplicable petrie dish), a frothy creation in a creme anglaise that, rich or not, I could lap up with little difficulty. The vanilla profiteroles with chocolate sauce were good but fairly standard, and the heart of chocolate Mix cake was a sticky confluence of praline and several incarnations of chocolate that was just too much to handle.
In this evening of peaks and dips, the most consistent part and its saving grace was smart, entertaining and down-to-earth staff that lavished us with so much attention that it made us wonder if we were doing something right. But we decided in the end that it was probably just the mix.