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Le Bernardin, He and Me

The taxi we flag down smells incredible, and it’s so uniquely surprising that I tell the driver so as I climb in. He laughs and comments on my perfume, then turns the jazz music up a little louder. What a cab!

I squeeze the knee of the person next to me (it’s a he) and he leans in just a little closer, smelling my neck without looking me in the eye. We’re friends, so we’re trying not to be romantic. It’s difficult to do this, so I make conversation and tell him that I’m wearing vanilla extract – I got the idea from Marya Hornbacher’s book years ago – and we send ourselves into a fit of laughter, calling out all of the possibilities for food-themed body care products.

“Almond extract!”

“Rosemary salt exfoliant!” he says.

“Basil oil!” It sounds silly and I hide my face in my hands, feigning embarrassment. He smiles, though, and his mouth looks so beautiful when he does that I lift my head and grin back with my lips and eyes.

We arrive at Le Bernardin. If he were anyone else, if he were a lover or any other friend, I would hurriedly reach for his hand and hold onto it tightly, squeezing it with each step toward the door. But it’s him, so instead, I point out a sculpture next to the building and decline his request to share a pod in the revolving doors.

I can’t describe what happens in that moment one walks into Le Bernardin, so I won’t, but you should know that it happens now – stronger and heavier and more intensely than it did the first time. Now, it is darker outside, the lighting more beautiful, the faces more familiar, the music more subtle and integrated, as though it is washing over my bare shoulders and running down my chest in waves. It feels excellent – so much so that when we take our seats on the sofa together, I pat his knees again.

“What do you think?” I ask, as though I had conjured the restaurant up just to please him. I wish I had. I would give him a restaurant if I could – my excitement knows no bounds, but my wallet and skill set do.

We’re seated at a table set for two, and the first thing I notice as I slide into the chair is that the plates are beautiful. Have they always been so beautiful? I don’t remember, but the richly colored rings closing in on the center mesmerize me. They remind me of wood, of chocolate, of gold.

“I love the plates here,” I say to him and feel my cheeks growing red. It’s a dumb thing to say, and when he admires them too, I feel the blush running up to my ears. “I’m blushing,” I say.

“It’s okay; I blush in my ears.”

I gasp, pulling back my hair. “Me too! I do too!” I lean in and whisper in conspiratorial tones. “That’s why I wear my hair like this.”

We finally lock eyes over this detail of compatibility, acknowledging both its triviality and significance, then become shy.

When we look up, champagne is being poured. Perhaps they know me better than I thought. Perhaps they know.

I give a thousand thanks – mille thanks – and we toast one another, but not before burying ourselves in the flutes. I want to say something about the wine’s scent, so I hold onto the stem and try very hard to unlock and unleash a forest of aromas. Taste proves it to be delicious, and I feel that trumps any adjective I come up with, so I peg it as delicious.

We’re approached with menus, but our server is clutching them to his chest, and I don’t think we’ll get to look. I know what that means, so I don’t mind.

“You may browse if you’d like,” he says, “but Chef would like to do a menu for you.”

I open my mouth to speak, and then turn to my companion. We have a two-second conversation with expression. “Yes.” It’s all our eyes say. We turn to our server. “Yes.”

Now we have a more difficult question to answer. Do we commit to the wine pairing? I know what I want to do – I always want to do the wine pairing – but I don’t want to be wild and irresponsible on a Wednesday night.

Another conversation, but this one goes a little differently.

“Yes?”

“Eh …”

“Why not?”

“Work tomorrow?”

“I know, but …”

“You’re right. Yes. I might regret this.”

“Yes,” we both say audibly.

We talk incessantly until the first course arrives – we never seem to stop talking, or at least I don’t. It’s another lovely plate – white this time – with a pink petal of salmon carpaccio hugging a thick slit of caviar. It looks delicate, like it’s winking at us (says he) or something else (says me). The first course is paired with another champagne, Krug this time, and I like it better than the first. It’s lighter, brighter, more crisp. But then wine comes alive with food, and the first glass was sipped on just a stomach full of butterflies. The brioche under the caviar is thin and light. The dish is no bigger than the palm of my hand but I eat it in no less than ten bites. I want to make this last.

Afterwards, the plates begin to fall into our laps, one after another, perfectly timed. I try to remember intricacies of taste, plating, sauces, but by the time we reach poached halibut in a sesame court bouillon, I’ve forgotten how many we’ve even had.

He asks about the court, trying to figure out just what else is in it. It reminds him of a dish someone used to make for him in his childhood. I take a spoonful and try to discern. I don’t know either, but I understand what he’s trying to work through. There’s a tang, a zing, salt, and musk – umami – in the middle of my tongue. “Right there,” I say.

“Yes,” he answers. “Right there.”

We give up and continue to surrender ourselves to the kitchen and Aldo, our brilliant sommelier. He obliges our request for extra description on the pairings – we want to know all about wine, all about it – and then throws us a curveball with a malty yet inexplicably refreshing beer late in the game. This is fun, and I don’t want to leave.

We delight over the striped bass and the cannelloni made of leeks.

“Why doesn’t my bass at school taste like this?” I moan, cutting into it and taking another bite. I don’t really mind that I can’t execute this well yet, so long as I never have to stop eating, living this way.

Julio, my darling Julio has been busy in other sections of the dining room, and when he comes to say hello, my eyes light with excitement and familiarity. We kiss cheeks in the proper French way and I inquire about his family. It’s been so long since I’ve been to Le Bernardin, but I’ve seen photographs of his beautiful children, and I’m suddenly strongly happy and proud to be a part of his extended circle of friends.

I leave my partner and, pulling back my shoulders, make the walk to the restroom. Strut, strut, strut. It’s so hard not to sneak a glance in the mirrors to my right, but I keep my head high and let my legs lead. Since beginning culinary school, I’ve stopped walking with emphasis on my hips and chest and legs, reverting to a state of perpetually slumped shoulders. This feels nice and strong. Strut, strut, strut.

“I’m sorry it took so long,” I say as I allow my chair to be pulled out gently. “But the restrooms are so large, you can do ballet in them! I couldn’t resist.” I’m teasing, but to be perfectly honest, I did a few attitudes at the vanity.

By the time we get to the last savory dish – the surf and turf, how lusciously cheeky! – both our faces are flushed, his a dark red, mine a softish pink. The color is sneaking up to our hairlines, close to our ears.

Kobe beef! It’s a small strip, along with escolar. Sea beans are there too, and they make us laugh. Ingredients do that to people who work with ingredients all day long. I take a bite, though, and remember that at Le Bernardin, nothing is reduced to just a part of a plate. The whole plate is, as were the ones before, a perfect equillibrium of fat, salt, acid, cream and crackle. I forget about the sea beans and just eat surf and turf.

We’re given fromage blanc with a scattering of almonds, a drizzle of honey. This is food I know, food I eat at home, and it’s entirely better here.

The eggshell makes another appearance – of course I remember it from the summer – filled with chocolate pot de creme and salt. It remains one of my favorites, and while I roll the pudding around on my tongue, he points out the perfectly smooth edge of the egg. We notice different things, but I like that about him, and he makes me want to be more careful, precise, to not settle for “delicious” as an adequate descriptor.

I want to kiss him, and I know that it’s not the wine or the lighting or the dress or even the buttery-textured langoustine tricking me. I like him and I want to kiss him.

I don’t. I can’t. We’re in public. We’re friends. Eric Ripert is walking to our table.

He’s been sent over by my friend John Winterman, the perfect maitre d’ at the perfect Cafe Boulud, and I know it, but I can’t help but feel special, chosen, important. I babble some nonsense about learning to cook whole dishes as opposed to components, and he nods graciously and handsomely as I launch into the importance of wine pairing and probably say the word “exciting” one too many times. He laughs, and I do too, and then squeal as he walks away. I apologize, because I talked too much and my friend didn’t get to say a word. He forgives me and blames it on himself, which makes me like him even more. I want to kiss him, and I almost do, but a chocolate-chicory dessert is making its way to us.

The dessert is delicious, and I know I should use words like “earthy” and chestnut-scented,” but at this point, all I can think about is the way his eyes turn up tightly, just like the corners of his mouth, when he smiles. He smiles a lot, so I think about this a lot.

We order espresso. He asks for it first, which makes me so happy. I don’t need it but I do not want to leave. We joke about sleeping at Le Bern – under the bar, under a far table – and while I am tempted, I know that the night should end soon.

Somehow, we make it from the table into another cab – this one doesn’t smell as nice, but we’re leaning closer to each other now, and I’m enjoying the scent of him, of grape, of salt and chocolate, and that is so much better.

I ask him a thousand times – mille times – whether or not he likes it. What a funny question. He likes it and so do I.

As we say good night, we inch closer and closer to one another, trying our best to recount every last detail of the evening.

“Chef Ripert!” I step out of my shoes.

“Langoustines are one of my favorite things in the whole world.” He moves half a step in my direction.

“The service!” I let my hips touch his.

He stops talking. His hand is on me. I don’t know where his fingers touch, but as soon as they do, my entire body becomes light, like champagne and heavy, like chicory.

I am going to kiss him, but he does it first. He tastes like Le Bernardin, and when our lips meet, I stand on my toes and drink him in.