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Restaurant Bandol, Portland, Maine

Bandol, 90 Exchange Street in Portland, Maine, tel. 207-347-7155, has two seatings for dinner only, six and nine pm. Five and nine-course prix fixe menus vary from about $55 to $90. Reservations suggested.

By Michael S. Sanders

From Ogunquit to Castine, Maine certainly has its share of restaurants reaching for the culinary heights. None, I would wager, has ever dared to put sweetbreads, calves’ brains, tripe, and lamb’s tongue on the same menu, to serve you a single scallop as an entrée, or to prepare an entire five-course meal without a starch ever appearing on your plate. (I exaggerate, but only slightly). Enter chef Erik Desjarlais, a twenty-seven year old, largely self-taught rebel from Portsmouth, New Hampshire who may well change some of your notions of what a good meal can be at Bandol, his restaurant on upper Exchange Street in Portland’s Old Port.

Is Portland ready for the New England equivalent of a one-star Michelin restaurant—translation, a $60 five-course prix fixe menu sans wine? It certainly sounds ambitious, if not downright audacious. And yet, when you sit down at the table, its starched white tablecloth and white Limoges china playing simply off the black-painted trim and chairs in the intimate storefront space, you get the first inklings that someone has put a lot of thought into the whole experience. I notice three unusual things right off. There are only eight tables for twenty diners in a room that could pack in double that number. The menu is good reading all by itself. And a short fellow in chef’s whites at the counter in the back just off the kitchen appears to be not just fussing over every plate but also tasting a bit of it (handed to him on a spoon) before it goes out.

In keeping with its Provençal namesake, Desjarlais’ menu is heavy with French, if not Mediterranean, influence in both his offerings and his presentation. The prix fixe (there is a nine-course tasting menu as well) includes a light starter, entrée, main course, cheese, and dessert, generally with four to six choices of each. His food is loosely in keeping with the season and includes his interpretations of a variety of standards from all over France, such as, for our mid-winter meals, squash soup, snails in garlic sauce, foie gras, pot-au-feu, cassoulet, saddle of rabbit, and the aforementioned specialty meats. Along the way, however, the diner is in for many a surprise, all of them pleasant.

The first are the amuse-bouches, those unexpected tidbits meant to awaken your taste buds to the task ahead. A single petal of crunchy fried potato smothered with Iranian sevruga caviar over crème fraîche is followed, leisurely, by a single perfect oyster brimming with its liquor, arriving perched on a bed of coarse sea salt. “Little salty bites,” Desjarlais calls them, “And the best way to start the meal, with a small taste of bubbly.” The meal has hardly started, and he’s giving food away. Why? “It makes you feel welcome. It enhances the experience!” he said emphatically when we met a few days after my second meal there.

By the time the first courses appear, you have begun to relax and get into the rhythm of an experience in which half the fun is watching the food arrive and then admiring it. It takes two people to serve a soup here. One waitress delivers the empty bowl, a wide-lipped affair with a small dimple at its center. In it, in this case, lies a little package of duck confit. The second waitress promptly pours—from a white teapot the size and shape of a pear—not more than a half of a cup of brilliant orange, piping hot, squash soup over it. Twelve spoonfuls later, and my friend is staring disconsolately into his empty dish. Looking around the table, you realize that all the portions are small. Not miniscule, but small. My order of braised lamb tongue was three thin slices half-crunchy, half-buttery, hidden under a handful of crisp mâche bathed in a warm, tangy vinaigrette nicely cutting the richness of the meat. I want more.

“I’d rather have you finish your plate and wish you had two more bites,” the chef told me later, smiling just a bit cruelly. “But then, the next course comes, and by the end, you’re fully satisfied. I trust my servers to let the diner know that, yes, you can eat five courses and be happy. The entrée isn’t going to be huge. It’s going to be what I feel is the right portion size to go with the rest of the meal.”

Here, beauty, intensity, and flavor triumph over quantity every time. The cassoulet, for example, explodes all convention, consisting of perhaps a quarter of a duck breast gleaming pinkly in a robe of green cabbage leaves and one small piece of intense duck confit over a scant ladleful of white beans. Poussin, spring chicken, is two miniature drumsticks and thighs, perfectly roasted, on a bed of tangy bear’s head mushrooms and roasted salsify. Explaining the portion size and the missing starch, Desjarlais says, “I want my customers to be able to have breakfast the next day. There are certain things I feel you don’t need a lot of, filler, and the extra plate of mashed potatoes that comes with the six ounce portion of steak, I just don’t do that.”

The one thing served, I thought, in a veritable lashing, was the foie gras, on the menu in four different incarnations in my two visits. “In some other places, you get this really tiny piece, it’s gone in one bite, and you feel ripped off. They’re saving money because foie gras is expensive. But you don’t get the full experience.”

You want the full experience? Try the Torchon of French-grown Goose Foie Gras and Seared Duck Foie Gras with Medjool Dates and Toasted Brioche, basically, a hot and cold foie gras sandwich with date jam. This artery buster amply demonstrates two things: Desjarlais is a fool for foie gras and this is one time when too much definitely can be not enough. The torchon technique (literally ‘dishcloth’), Erik says, “is the closest thing to eating raw foie gras, the simplest way to eat it.” The process involves cleaning, binding, curing, and poaching the foie gras, many steps and much time over four days. Pan-seared foie gras is all over town, he points out. “There’s more gratification in the torchon technique because of the work that goes into it.”

Therein lies one key to this chef’s thinking, and by extension, to the excellence of his food. He doesn’t care how long it takes, and he’ll use the best ingredients even if it makes his food expensive. His menu is thick with specialty products and producers: Niman Ranch pork, Jamison Farm lamb, Bobo Ranch young chicken, Sunset Acres rabbit, Périgord black truffles and Alba white truffles, to name a few. “It’s important to know where the animal comes from,” Erik explained, “that it has been treated properly. And, to say it is Niman Ranch proves to the public that it comes from a reputable source [particularly] if I am serving braised, stuffed pig’s head. My servers know where things come from, how they’re raised, why it’s important. It’s part of the education we’re trying to give our diners.”

He goes on to talk about the preparation of tripe, brains, and sweetbreads, peeling lamb’s tongue, preparing that stuffed, braised pig’s head– all of which involve very intensive, time-consuming, and highly specialized techniques you don’t find in your typical restaurant kitchen. (Don’t shy away from these unusual dishes; tripe and sweetbreads both were not only delicious, but a refreshing change from that steak.) He is someone who clearly loves the mechanics of cooking, the process. “These are things that challenge me, that challenge my sous chefs, that challenge my servers who have to tell people what they are.”

The attention to detail evident in the first three courses carries on through the last two, with perfectly-ripened triple crèmes like Époisses and Vacherin spooned from their wooden boxes at tableside, and unusual American cheeses from around the country. Desserts—from insubstantial wisps of Varlhona chocolate mousse to authentic if petite tarte tatin and crème brulée and fruit sorbets—are works of art, light afterthoughts.

Two notes of particular interest: the wine list and the service. In keeping with the name, the wine list is, but for a lonely handful of Californians, a good half a hundred French wines with a heavy emphasis on the Languedoc, Provence, and Rhône regions. Many you don’t find very often in these parts, all are very fairly priced, and about a dozen are available by the glass and half-carafe, the latter a thoughtful innovation rarely seen in Maine. The table service strikes just the right balance between attentiveness and discretion, with very European touches evident throughout the three hours of your meal. You don’t return from the washroom to find your food cooling at your place, and you’ll find your napkin has been replaced if you do get up.

About the bill, which arrives accompanied by a final touch, a clutch of handmade sweets: it helps to think of your evening, instead of dinner and the theater, more like dinner as the theater.

Originally published by Downeast Magazine.

Posted by Michael at July 28, 2005