Pfunksfoolosophy

My dear friend and I made reservations at Perilla, which is Harold Dieterle’s (Top Chef Season 1 winner) new restaurant in the West Village in NYC. I phoned in the reservation and made it for the ‘Speidemanns’–that’s right. Spiderman…but with the logical spelling of a nice Jewish family. The hostess paused for a minute and asked, “Spiderman?”

Me: Let me spell it for you, darling….(i proceeded to spell it slowly)

Already, the fun begins…ah, yes. My clever plan. My pal and I are silly. We’re mischievous. We’re insane. Later, he and I exchanged emails about our attire, our demeanor and a host of other possibilities to ensure that we would fulfill our comedy fantasy. I came up with a first name for Mr. Speidemann. Claude. Perfection, right? Claude would need to wear an ascot. My friend doesn’t own one. Pity.

Okay, the evening arrived and we met for drinks. I was really excited to try the skate, as that’s a fave fish of mine. We had a plan for our arrival and we got into character. It was beautiful.

We arrived, ‘Claude’ stepped up to the hostess and said, ‘Speidemann. Table for two’ without so much as a smirk. I was laughing inside. A giggle was just behind my teeth, I tell you. We were shown to our table and nothing more was said.

Claude selected a nice wine from Argentina (you can’t go wrong with those folks) and tucked into our appetizers. Spicy duck meatballs for me and carpaccio for him. Nice. I enjoyed mine and we split them so I could taste his. Gotta tell ya…the carpaccio should have been called salad with some raw beef. Mind you, the beef was great and it was served with caperberries (my fave) but it was light in the meat department. The meatballs were great, if a little overcooked and I felt that the quail egg wasn’t absolutely necessary. It added some depth, but I think that the jus stood on its own. That’s just me.

Okay, on to the entree…Skate wing for me and Wolf fish for him. I love skate. I adore it. Tender, slightly sweet…that lovely crunchiness when prepared properly…hey, man…what’s this? SALTY. Aww, come on.  Bear in mind that it was served with pastrami and cabbage.

I think that the chef didn’t take into account the saltiness inherent in pastrami and just over salted the fish. The flavors were all there. It was delicious, but the salt got to me. Mind you, I ate nearly all of it, but when the waiter (Robert) asked me how things were as he cleared my plate I had to tell him that I think the chef was heavy handed with the salt. He looked stricken and said that he wished I had told him earlier as they would have prepared something else. I told him that since I had eaten nearly all of it, I obviously enjoyed the flavors. No worries. He was inconsolable.

I shrugged. My dinner companion shrugged. Eh. Whattaya gonna do? I am particularly sensitive to salt because I don’t use it when I cook. The food was excellent so we thought nothing of it. Asked for the dessert menu. Decided on coffee.

When we received our check, Robert told us that he had taken the entree off of our bill. It was our turn to act stricken. That wasn’t our intent and we made that clear to him. He would hear nothing of it and told us that the chef wanted us to be happy and hoped that we would come back.

I have to tell ya…I think I will. It’s clearly not in my budget to do it any time soon, but you know what? They made us feel welcome. It was the way I would like my own restaurant to be in that they wanted you to enjoy the food. “You’re in my home and I’m cooking for you” ya know? So I can understand why Robert insisted on comping the entree.

On our comment card we stressed how we didn’t want to be comped.

Claude signed it ‘your friendly neighborhood Speidemann’.
I love him.