General Notes
Chez Panisse is overhyped. It's a restaurant with a lot of cultural and historical significance (it can be seen as kick-starting the "Californian cuisine" archetype with farm-to-table / fresh local ingredients, a lot of famous chefs started their careers at Chez Panisse, etc). I could definitely see this restaurant being exciting / new in the 1990s when the restaurant first debuted, but at this point the food feels fairly pedestrian and frankly overpriced compared to the other options available. It's a cool experience nevertheless to bask in the cultural significance of it all, but if you're purely looking to optimize for good food, there are definitely better options out there.
Dishes Tasted
- ★★★★ gateau basque with blueberries -- buttery, crumb-textured pastry, creamy custardy filling, whipped cream, pistachio crumble, blueberry w/ blueberry sauce. This dessert is incredible. Perfect balance of acidity / fat / sugar and I love the combination of both the custard and the whipped cream with everything. Kudos to the pastry chef.
- ★★☆☆ guinea hen -- Joyce Farms guinea hen roasted in the hearth with lemon and sage, with spring onions chard, and new potatoes. This is cooked pretty well but overall somewhat unspectacular. The skin is crisped well and the meat is quite tender / juicy for hen, but there really isn't a ton of wow factor here.
- ★☆☆☆ halibut -- northern halibut cooked in a fig leaf, with nasturtium beurre blanc and cucumbers. The flavor profile of the whitefish with the nasturtium beurre blanc is a great idea but not executed well. The fish is very overcooked; the halibut was probably sliced too thinly for the duration of cook. The beurre blanc itself is excellent. I'm not a fan of the cooked cucumbers
- ★★☆☆ porcini mushroom -- porcini mushroom and rocket salad with ricotta and wild fennel. The mushroom is flavorful and cooked well but the dish kind of lacked the wow punch
- ★★☆☆ salmon crostini -- topped with a bit of peppercorn, served with marinaded radish on the side, pretty good