Gerard's Place

[DonRocks]

Many years ago, I was the very last diner ever to leave Gerard Pangaud's Dining Room at the Ritz Carlton in Pentagon City. It was after 1 AM, each table had a black rose on it, and it was the end of an incredible era in Washington dining, perhaps the best food this city has ever seen. That evening was yet another example of the amazing talent and technical abilities of Gerard Pangaud, one of the finest cooks (if not the finest) ever to set foot in this area.

Fast forward to the future: at 11 AM the morning that Gerard's Place opened in McPherson Square, I was nearby and happened to remember it was opening day, so I ran a few errands waiting until 11:30, and ended up being the very first diner ever to set foot in that restaurant. I remember to this day that the thermostat on the wall, right next to my table, had been put on upside down by mistake.

Gerard's Place has been good, even great, in the past, but the financial power of the Ritz Carlton chain has not been there supporting the genius of Gerard Pangaud, and so things have never been the same.

Nevertheless, when Gerard has been in the kitchen, there were glimpses, sometimes strong glimpses, of the brilliance that made him the youngest Michelin two-star chef in the history of France.

The last time I ate there was several years ago. It was the latest in a string of disappointing meals, and the service was inexcusable. I said to the hostess on the way out that I had seen enough, and that I wasn't coming back.

Fast forward to the present: after years of hearing through the grapevine about the mediocrities of this underachieving restaurant, I had begun to hear some positive things on occasion, and even whispers about a comeback from people I trust - it was time to try it again.

I was to meet a knowledgeable friend for lunch, and he balked when I suggested Gerard’s Place, saying that he had been there about five times in the past, and had left disappointed each time. However, like me, he hadn’t been there in several years, and so I was able to talk him into it. Gerard's must be the most expensive restaurant in the city, with main courses at lunch mercilessly creeping into the $30s and at dinner well into the $40s.

First of all, the wine list. Overpriced and mediocre, featuring poorly selected Bordeaux and lots of mainly negociant red and white Burgundies at triple retail (the highly overrated Girardin, Chartron et Trebuchet (huh?), Laurent Roumier, the list goes on). How about a 1990 Latour at $1200? Too expensive? No problem! They have the 1999 at $500 (spare me). There was virtually nothing worth ordering, and so we settled for by-the-glass selections: a perfectly fine Touraine Sauvignon Blanc and an adequate red Bourgogne, which was served ten degrees too warm. Gerard’s Place does offer patrons the courtesy of bringing their own wines and paying a $40-per-bottle corkage which - I hate to say it - is the best option.

The $17 sweetbreads appetizer featured small-cut sweetbreads on a bed of excellent mushrooms (trumpets, etc.) sitting atop a reduced sauce of butter, mushroom and chives, all topped with a small fanfare of microgreens. I liked this dish a lot, apparently more than my friend did, as he commented that “whenever I see chives like this in a sauce, I think of some cowboy chef back there in the kitchen, wailing away with scissors.”

Not wanting to open myself up to libel, I cannot say that my $26.50 duck confit main course had been microwaved, because I don’t know if they even have microwave ovens. Nevertheless, what am I to think when the confit arrives, looking like the skin at one time had been perfectly crisp, and yet it was lukewarm, rubbery and soggy? When I cut the duck open, and steam roars out like it's coming from a deep-sea vent? (I expected to see a ventworm nut or two) When the juices in the meat are unevenly distributed, some parts being wet and steaming hot; other parts being less wet and merely warm? When the bone itself is as hot as a poker pulled from a fire, as if it had been heated from the inside-out? I’ll tell you this much: if they didn’t microwave it, then they sure fooled me. The dish came with really bad oven-browned fingerling potatoes, and a frisée salad that was notable only for its use of raw garlic. I ate precisely half of the dish, and could stomach no more of it.

Dessert was better, but not by much: the $9 trio of sorbets had a scoop each of green-apple, blood-orange and “exotic-fruit” sorbets, and the blood-orange was quite good, as good as I could possibly expect. But the other two were simply too dense, more like ice cream in texture, and they were both dull and uninspiring.

I have a friend coming in town next week, and coincidentally he wanted to have dinner at Gerard’s Place with me. I mentioned to him that I was having lunch there, and that I’d make a dinner reservation on the way out if I felt the restaurant was back on track: I did not make the reservation, as I’m not willing to take the expensive gamble.

Cheers,

Rocks.

P.S. Thanks, morela, for the good chuckle: www.gerardsplacerestaurant.com

Edited February 28, 2004 by DonRocks (log)

[DonRocks]

I alerted my dining companion to this thread, and he sent me the following note.

Cheers again,

Rocks.

...

But your post on our lunch was admirably concise and judicious. If you feel like it, add a note from your "anonymous lunch companion" to the effect that he (I) felt the food displayed a certain contempt for the American diner. To ask THOSE prices for THAT food in THIS city where at least 18 restaurants exist serving FAR superior food at lower prices is either blitheness, blindness or contempt.

No amuse-guele!

Sweetbreads tolerable, sauce too chivey (it's an innately vulgar flavor) and the whole sweetbread-nugget thing seems antithetical to the gooey umami ju-ju that is the raison d'etre for sweetbreads.

Duck confit not inedible but "incorrect".

Diagnosis: whoever was expediting the lunch line today is not tasting the food.

Dessert: 2 of 3 sorbets laughably inept, mushy and grainy.

Service: competent and pleasant.

Wine list: insulting.

Ambience: more elegant than what's on the poor plate, that's for sure.

....

Edited February 28, 2004 by DonRocks (log)

[Mark Sommelier]

Rocks,

You forgot to describe the ambience of the restaurant, including the clientele and the staff.

[saycheese]

I have seen numerous favorable and unfavorable comments by DonRocks about a number of restaurants, so it's clear that DonRocks eats out a lot, and has fairly discerning taste. Moreover, it's clear that DonRocks isn't wishy-washy in expressing his opinions. That's fine -- egullet is a great forum for sharing opinions. However, I am a fan of Gerard Pangaud's creativity and talent, so I think the vehemence of the attack based on one meal is a bit extreme. Was Gerard actually there when you had lunch? If you were such a devoted customer from the Ritz Carlton days, I'm sure Gerard would still remember you and would have spoken to you personally during your meal and would have corrected any of the flaws you mentioned about the food. The fact that you didn't mention seeing Gerard suggests perhaps he wasn't there to oversee the kitchen. I have noticed that when I have been to places like Laboratorio, and even the French Laundry, on nights when the chef/owner was away, the meal and the service haven't been as perfectly executed as when the chef is in the kitchen. Just by looking at recent postings on egullet about places like Le Bernardin demonstrates that individual experiences at the same restaurant can vary dramatically. Even really fine restaurants have bad days. And by the way, Gerard's Place doesn't have a microwave oven. So I don't know what happened to your duck confit.

I admit that I agree with the criticism about the prices at Gerard's being high, but like DonRocks pointed out, Gerard doesn't have the financial backing of a large hotel chain. If you look at a lot of the top restaurants in DC, they are in hotels -- Citronelle, Maestro -- for example. And 2941 (quite overrated in my opinion) has a lot of investors pumping in money. Moreover, I thought Gerard's Place had a $30 3-course lunch menu that one could choose for a less expensive alternative.

The fake Gerard's Place website you mentioned isn't funny at all, and I don't think egullet should be condoning that kind of malicious use of a business's trade name.

[jbraynolds]

Noone who has ever had Gerard's food will deny that he has "creativity and talent". The problem is that he gave up using them a few years ago, about the same time that his wine list went straight to Hell and, it has been suggested by more than one person, his golf handicap went down.

[jbraynolds]

And, for the record, my experiences with Pangaud's cooking go back almost 20 years, to his first American presence, at Aurora in New York. I was also at that last Ritz dinner and, yes, it was truly memorable.

[jbraynolds]

Okay, here's one for the conspiracy theorists out there. Those in the food & wine trade in D.C. back in the late 80s and early 90s (that would include me) who spent more time with industry folk rather than their families (um, that would have been me, as well) knew all too well about a simmering feud of egos between Gerard and Jean-Louis Palladin. Maybe "feud" is too strong a word but there was some serious competition and oneupmanship going on, perhaps fueled by the fact that Gerard, back in the Paris days, had replaced Jean-Louis as the youngest chef to ever get two Michelin stars (I guess the fact that Marco-Pierre White replaced Gerard was mitigated by the fact that he was a Brit, so didn't make the D.C. boys say "ah, what the f***"). And don't forget that the shadow of Yannick was hovering around as well, making D.C. one incredible city for high-end French dining...and all of this was to the great benefit of the D.C. dining fanatics (this was also when Roberto Donna was staking his claim as well as the ascent of Peter Pastan and Obelisk and when i Ricchi was flat-out remarkable...but that's for an Italian dining conspiracy discussion). All in all a truly amazing era of fine dining, as anyone who was around back then would attest. Am I the only one who thinks that he can track the waning of Gerard's spark to the departure of Jean-Louis from the D.C. trenches? Go ahead, talk about Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, I won't stop you.

[cjsadler]

P.S.  Thanks, morela, for the good chuckle: www.gerardsplacerestaurant.com

WTF!? What is up with this?

[tan319]

...

But your post on our lunch was admirably concise and judicious. If you feel like it, add a note from your "anonymous lunch companion" to the effect that he (I) felt the food displayed a certain contempt for the American diner. To ask THOSE prices for THAT food in THIS city where at least 18 restaurants exist serving FAR superior food at lower prices is either blitheness, blindness or contempt.

No amuse-guele!

Sweetbreads tolerable, sauce too chivey (it's an innately vulgar flavor) and the whole sweetbread-nugget thing seems antithetical to the gooey umami ju-ju that is the raison d'etre for sweetbreads.

Duck confit not inedible but "incorrect".

Diagnosis: whoever was expediting the lunch line today is not tasting the food.

Dessert: 2 of 3 sorbets laughably inept, mushy and grainy.

Service: competent and pleasant.

Wine list: insulting.

Ambience: more elegant than what's on the poor plate, that's for sure.

....

That note reads like a page from 'American Psycho"

[morela]

P.S.  Thanks, morela, for the good chuckle: www.gerardsplacerestaurant.com

WTF!? What is up with this?

If you google Gerard's Place, you get 560 hits. This link came from the 10th of 560 hits and appears on the first page of results. I agree, it is troubling that a restaurant as widely known and respected as this one would have this (hot dog and wings) site quoted as being their own.

Gerard's need to get medieval on someone's ass for this...or maybe join the rest of the world and get a website.

It was a search that took 0.17 seconds.

Come on, tell me you didn't laugh at the big rubbery hot dog. You know you did.