Chris Brown’s Fresh Palate at Perigee

The drama uncoils as we arrive at 55 Mill Street in the Distillery District expecting to walk into a restaurant called Perigee. Instead we’re in a staircase well, have to walk up a steel staircase. We can see ahead a low-ceilinged restaurant glittering with candles, the tables grouped around three sides of a glassed-in kitchen. Then we’re in the thick of it: we’re seated at a table within a couple of yards of a chef in whites and black skull cap with a huge knife as sharp as Sweeney Todd’s open blade, and a cook wielding a blow torch on meringue.

Suddenly I feel a tickle of excitement like the way I used to feel in the theatre - before the stage was used to beat up the audience - when there were lights that went down and palpable anticipation rippled through the audience. Same thing in a good restaurant today.

Already, Perigee is confounding expectations. It’s been a mushroom restaurant lately even though it got good reviews originally. I’ve come along tonight with a couple of gastrocats to see if it’s still here. Oh boy.

The excitement builds. Service is seamless, menus slipped before us. Details are deliciously nailed down – homemade bread and nubby hummous, housechurned butter an amuse bouche of tuna tartare.  

My eyes now leave the chef shaving beef and start scanning the menu. Here’s a chef with the assurance to just print the essential – Guinea Hen, Halibut, Grilled Octopus, Langoustine – an Offal Plate! Brief description follows in small print. The fifty buck entrée ceiling is pierced with a gingerbread spiced venison rack with goats’ cheese croquettes ($52), a $49 lamb burger with truffle ketchup.

Who is Chris Brown, this authoritative chef?  His father Victor(a former chef) owns Perigee, and his brother Michael is the sommelier. Brown has spent the past five years working under the supervision of Pat Riley who came up with the fishbowl kitchen idea.Riley left early this year (He’s now taken over from Brad Moore at Eleven) and since then, Brown’s been on his own.

As I browse I finally make the one plate leap. So far, tradition’s demanded I eat an entrée rather than become a tapas junkie. But these days appetizers and entrees are merging, often I can’t tell the two apart. I do a double take at the list of appetizers and liberate myself from linear tyranny. I’m going to eat just how I want to eat. They all laughed when the Dadaist Artaud ate his meal backwards starting with the chocolate mousse. Now I’m gonna call it eating nouvelle.

What is a chayote? A chi-OH-tay is a pale green pearshaped pepper that comes mushed into a gently tart limecoloured soup with some crunchy black bean and cilanatro sprout salad and two little two little cheese stuffed empanadas teeter on the edge of the plate. The first confirmation that Brown is  a master of flavour: each asserts itself precisely and delicately, separate yet complementary.

On to the Offal Plate. My friends are still high from a frabjous gorge at Pied de Cochon in Montreal “Oh, the stuffed pigs trotters!” Competitive juices are flowing. A long dish arrives bearing a sublime array of innards. Gizzard confit is an amuse bouche. The star is a crisp-coated snow-white blob of calf’s brain which would have melted in the mouth if it wasn’t swallowed first. Can we order a repeat of brains or perhaps a whole order?

The sweetbread is quite overshadowed because after years of eating duck foie gras I’m bowled over by the earthy creaminess of the real thing, goose foie gras. The coup de grace is the arrival of three dear little piglet ears wrapped around duck confit. Follow that!

Brown does -- grilled quail along with a tamale, a corn husk filled with spicy cornmeal and goose confit – flavours that go together like Brangelina. And on the side, three little loonies of foie gras mousse. Sensational.

The quail are officially an appetizer but the helping is almost as big as the squab entrée. Surprise pink, tender grilled, laid over a gribiche (picklish) sauce, with raw and braised baby artichokes, dehydrated artichoke chips and sautéed chanterelles – a subtle sweet/sour blend.

I’ll take the celery spaghetti! It comes in the Dungeness crab salad that graces a crusty roasted fillet of pickerel poised over artichoke puree in a puddle of crab bisque. Sweetish crab and pickerel, the shadowy artichoke and the bossy celery – they taste marvelous together.

Among the dishes, suddenly a ginger beer sorbet, sorts out the palate and the sinuses.

We skip the cheese course because we’ve been watching Rachel, the pastry chef frothing mascarpone for an espresso pot de crème which comes with an OTT unctuous blood orange marmelade ice cream. The baked Alaska is an irresistible combo of seared meringue  lime sorbet and dark chocolate mousse - hardly room for the basil-flavoured panna cotta.

We leave somewhat stunned. We have a single tiny gripe, a bland goat cheese pithivier, puff pastry cake, but overwhelmingly we’re knocked back on our heels. A good chef has a voice, a way of identifying his cooking as unique. A really good chef creates a new way of tasting the food we eat. Brown, who’s 29, has given me a fresh palate.

Incidentals: good wine list, friendly service, restaurant buzz never stops conversation.

Housekeeping: responding to readers’ charges that I don’t know a star from a falling one, I’m sorting out the star rating system…

 
Stars are given in order for food, service, environment, price - points off for noise.
Four stars – Perfection.

Three 1/2 stars -- originality/inspiration

3 stars, excellent

 2 1/2 stars, very good

2 stars, good

1 1/2 stars, variable

1 star, disappointing.


***1/2 Perigee, 55 Mill St. 416.364.1397 No wheelchair access. Buzz good, noise low. Food plus tax for two: $152