Design & Innovation

I do not consider my palate all that sophisticated. Generally, I’m pretty happy with a turkey sandwich or slice of pizza for dinner. When I do go out to eat at a “nice restaurant” it’s usually some place in the city, like a Stephen Starr restaurant (Continental, Buddakan etc) that will probably serve several hundred meals that night and make you wait 1-2 hours for a table. However, I recently had a chance to experience a really interesting place that made me re-think what I consider fine dining. There is a gourmet food store/ byob in Kennett Square PA called Talula’s Table. For all you city dwellers this is 40 miles west and a little south of the city so it’s quite a trip.

Talula’s Table only has 1 table that seats 8-12 people and they only server one meal- dinner. This restaurant was founded by two former chefs that ran a place in Philadelphia and then decided to move out to the country. Talula’s Table has a very different approach to serving fine food than almost any other place I’ve ever experienced. They design a menu for the entire month made up of 8 courses. When you dine there you eat what they have selected for the menu; no orders are placed. Each course is a small-plate dish made with very carefully selected seasonal foods. Because they only serve 1 meal a day they can afford to be extremely finicky in what they select and how they prepare it. There are about 5-6 people involved in preparing and serving the meal and each course is explained in great detail when it’s served so that diners really understand what they are eating and why it was chosen. With such an intimate environment the service is outstanding. Really though the entire dining experience is above and beyond any other restaurant I’ve been to. As a diner you have access to two chefs throughout the meal that help you understand what all these sophisticated ingredients are and why they are used. This alone is really refreshing. (I’m used to haughty waiters rattling off “tonight’s special” of beef with 5 adjectives I never heard with a price tag of $50.)

The thinking and care taken with every detail of the meal is evident. It is more like visiting two friends for dinner that happen to be world class gourmet chefs than going to a restaurant. I found the whole concept of an intimate 1 table, 1 seating restaurant to be really innovative and very appealing. If anyone has the chance to visit this place – just go – you won’t be disappointed. The only downside is, now that the word is out, you have to book your reservation 12 months in advance. http://www.portfolio.com/culture-lifestyle/culture-inc/food-drink/2008/03/19/Booking-Talulas-Table

I went to a wedding last weekend at the Cescaphe Ballroom http://www.cescapheballroom.com/ and the one thing that I really noticed about this place was the amount of time they seemed to spend on how the food “looked.” Don’t get me wrong, the food wasn’t that bad and I understand that you want to make sure the food looks appetizing, but I think they went a little overboard with the presentation.  During the cocktail hour, we were actually given cocktail glasses instead of plates to put our appetizers in. I’m assuming they did this because it was called “cocktail” hour, but did you ever try to fill up a cocktail glass with shrimp and crabcakes? It’s not too fun. For dinner they gave me a little bit of a break by serving my filet on a plate. Again though I think they went a little too far with the presentation. Although I ate everything on my plate, I’m really not sure if I was supposed to. They had these green sprouts sprinkled on top of my filet that tasted like minty plasitc, so I think I should have just put them to the side, but if you’re not supposed to eat it then why would they put it on my plate? Also, they wrapped some type of vegetable around the filet (I’m going to say it was a cucumber, but I’m not positive about that) and then put it on top of my mashed potatos. The filet was pretty good, but I just didn’t like that I had to eat it while it was covered in vegetables. I never once ate a piece of steak and said to myself, “This is good, but I think it could use a little cucmber,” so I’m really not sure why they did that. Like I said, overall the food wasn’t that bad, but one piece of advice I would give them is to relax a little bit on worrying about how the food looks and just make sure it tastes good.