Joe and I have dined at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and Germany, where restrained and well groomed staff in their multiplicity of functions are devoted to one's dining experience; and we have eaten at Gallic bistros and Rhineland beer halls where the meat, held high overhead by waiters weaving through the crowd, arrives still smoking on the joint. In these old world restaurants food is honored. To be a cook or waiter in a fine restaurant in Europe is a noble profession, and at a bistro, at the very least, it is a good job. To be a top chef is a rare honor that extends its beneficence to the entire town, now a destination stop in the world of gastronomy.
Frederick, Maryland has a destination restaurant, newly opened, and right around the corner from my house. Link to Volt Restaurant
If you want to have supper at Volt restaurant, begin your hunt now for a seating because dinner is heavily booked all this year. Lunchtime is more flexible, and you can stop at the bar and have a bite to eat from a very limited menu for a fixed price. Lunch reservations are required for any of the dining rooms, and so as soon as K told us he was coming to visit in three weeks, I went online and found a table, the only one fore or aft for several days for three, at noon. I was fortunate.
Volt is the shortened name of the chef and partner, Bryan Voltaggio,
who, losing only to his brother Michael who won the competition, rose to
the top of the Bravo TV hit program "Top Chef" last year. North Market
Street has never been the same. There are people coming and going the
likes of which on a weekend night have rarely been seen in public in my
town. We reserve such appearances for private parties, or rather, we
used to, in Frederick. Now men in tuxes and bejeweled women teetering in their
shoes and clutching their escorts for support make their way over the curb and up the stairs into the red stone building.
On the other side of the street from Volt is a tailor's shop, and the proprietor was outside jiving with passers-by on the bright sunshine day of our lunch. The object of admiration was a cream-colored Rolls Royce, whose owner had driven his family for a festive meal at the new restaurant. I later passed the family who were in the private dining room, and the women were beautiful in their hats, and the pater-familias was splendid in his suit. The tailor knew the man by his suit, which he had decided was good enough for this beautiful car. I admired the Rolls, and dropped a couple of dimes in the meter out of respect for the car. Then my family and I walked across the street into the restaurant.
We were seated soon after we entered. We waited near the bar for a few minutes, and sat in a room composed in Euro-modern furniture and color. Notably, there was nothing that stood out but everything was of a high order. My mother had cautioned me as a young woman to take a quick look at myself in the mirror before leaving the house and always remove the one thing that stood out from the rest. Usually that meant wiping off some lipstick, but I also learned a version of sartorial balance and harmony. I saw that Volt restaurant was pulled together. Nothing is out of place or gaudy, and everything is in muted cream, gray and maroon color. The dining room walls are off-white, and the linens were heavy and crisp. Overhead in the chef's dining room where we ate were two suspended amber-colored, undulating pieces of glass the length of the dining room, the only decoration. Who needed to view interior decor when we were seated by the best show in Frederick--the kitchen at Volt.
The staff wear clothes according to their roles. The captains, four for the lunch service, wear black suits, as does the wine steward. The people who serve the food and remove plates wear less formal, but still dark clothing. The cooks wear white, with white caps or scarves, and at the top of the chain is the great chef Voltaggio himself, in whites but not in a toque, fortunately.
We were seated in the chef's dining room, which means at Volt that the dining area is open to the kitchen for our viewing. There is a counter with eight places facing into the kitchen, and a few tables behind the counter as well. We sat at a table because the counter is reserved for dinner only for the special 21-course chef's tasting menu. Our lunch was the chef's lunch tasting menu, a five-course affair.
The tasting menu at lunch is a price-fix meal, with wine chosen for the food. We were there for the full experience, and sat back to enjoy the kitchen displayed before us. The cooks were focused on their tasks. By the counter set for dinner, two cooks were preparing salads for today's lunch, and one was measuring, drop by precious drop onto a plate cooled by nitrogen, a garnish sauce for the evening menu. I looked closely at the resulting pellets of frozen sauce, and each one resembled its brethren. They were perfect in uniformity. Their maker stood at his station intent and focused on his task. The other nearby cooks were making salads by layering greens on plates, a plate at a time. Back in the reaches of the kitchen, I noticed the wine steward examining each plate before it passed out of the kitchen into the dining rooms. Our captain said that the steward was performing that inspection because the chef was on the telephone. Usually it is the chef's responsibility to assure that every plate meets his exacting standards, and the wine steward actually scrutinized each plate, and pointed out corrections, which were made. Food service at this level means not only is the crust on the fish golden, but the garnish of wasabi whitefish roe on the ahi tune tartare looks like jewels, laid just so.
The first item of food was a beet infused macaroon-like savory puff with a center of fois gras. It was a one-bite, deep pink piece of gustatory fun served on a pewter dish.
The table before us was set with what I assume was Reidel stemware--that
delicate and simple crystal that in honoring the contents ennobles
itself. We were having the wine pairings with our meal.
Then the first wine was poured. The chef had chosen a Riesling from Alsace, from a village I know, Wettolsheim, just a few kilometers southwest of Colmar. The wine was from Domaine Ehrhart, which produces superior Riesling. I swirled the Reisling in the glass and thought of warm autumn days in wine country, where in cool caves we drink wine with the proprietors and their families and hear tales of the hundreds of years that this vineyard and that have been in the family. Grapes in Alsace have been cultivated since the time of Romans garrisoned in Strasbourg, and the records date from about 500, although in those early years the wine production was not good, and in especially bitter winters, the wolves would come down from the Vosges mountains to strip the vines bare of bark, so hungry they were.
The first course accompanying this wine was yellowfin tuna tartare chopped and rolled up in a wrap of more of the ahi tuna, with jasmine rice, a touch of chili oil, the most delicate dash of a tiny green cilantro leaf, and that wasabi-green whitefish roe sparkling on top. You do not eat such food quickly, and you do not disdain to use the sauce spoon, although I imagine at La Tour d'Argent it is preferred that the sauce spoon lifts the sauce to the food, rather than straightway to the mouth.
My knowledge of the details of wine ends on the borders of Alsace, so I do not know the next wine, from Domaine Wachau, in Austria, but it was a tart, fruity 2008 white from the Gruner Veltliner, the most widely planted grape in the country. This wine was paired with a course of ravioli filled with chevre, goat cheese from Cherry Glen Farm in Boyds, Maryland. The farm produces cheese from champion goats such as Toggenbergs, and the white Saanens you may recall from the story of Heidi in the Swiss Alps. The ravioli was in a brown butter sauce infused with sage, and topped with pink oyster mushrooms.
When the plates were cleared by two servers and new cutlery laid, the captain poured an Argentinian white wine, an aromatic, crisp 2009 Torrontes Pircas Negras. The same three servers again placed at the same time before us our next course, which was halibut with a daub of white asparagus risotto. One sauce was rhubarb, and another of ginger, and across the fish were laid slivered spears of white asparagus, topped of an offset dash of orange roe.
When I return to Volt, I will carry a camera so I can show you how beautiful these plates of food are. The food is centered, topped, highlighted by a thin line of sauce and a drop or two of a balancing flavor, and crossed spears of vegetables, all locally grown.
We ate slowly, talked about food, and then it was time for Pineland Farm Natural Meat's beef striploin. This company was founded in 1949 in New Gloucester, Maine, and sells its production primary in New England, and sells to a few places in the Mid-Atlantic, including this restaurant. The beef was served with dark maroon carrots, a dark risotto, and morel mushrooms. The wine was a wonderful 2007 Bonarda Durigutti, a full-bodied, fragrant red wine from Argentina.
We finished our plates, they were removed, and a server took a silver instrument and cleaned the crumbs from the table
before the dessert course.
K told us that during his grand European trip upon graduating from college, he had forgathered with some friends in old Prague. He was a typically scruffy, good-natured American kid, roving around Europe in dirty jeans and backpack. He and his pals stopped one night at La Perle de Prague, the best restaurant in the city, and had supper. He recalled that neither he nor his friends appreciated the display of gastronomic excellence in front of them, and this was not lost on the staff. When a waitress crumbed the table before dessert, whisking the little silver tool deftly over the white linen cloth, she reached his place and finished by sliding the crumbing tool toward him and deposited the debris right in his lap. I hope that the staff at Volt never have their ire raised to such a degree of violence against a guest, but it is always wise to mind your manners when sitting so near the kitchen, with all those knives flashing.
Dessert appeared--"Temperatures and Textures" as was
explained to us, of coconut, with pineapple and meringue, which K looked
at and said, "It looks like marshmallow, but took hours to prepare."
Sauce was laid to the side of the frozen ice cream, next to the meringue
and the pieces of rich fruit.
We finished with coffee and espresso, and two hours after we arrived,
we left the restaurant. The Rolls had left, and in fact, we were there long enough for a nearby table to have two seatings. How could the people have rushed through their meals?