I pause for a second. Didn’t I do that once? “What do you
serve?”
“Something fruity and bright.”
She informs me that chefs frequently judge customers who
order the wrong dessert to follow their entrée or, in other cases,
the wrong glass of wine.
“There’s nothing more painful,” she says, “than making a
beautiful velouté of asparagus, sending it out, and watching
someone wash it down with a big glass of Cabernet.”
She tenses up. “I want to scream: ‘That wine is ruining your
soup and your soup is ruining that wine!’” She pauses and
concludes, “Sometimes people need to be told what to do.”
Which is why Beast is the perfect vehicle for Pomeroy to
channel her need for control. Eating dinner at Beast is like going to
someone’s house for dinner. The menu is prewritten (so no one
can order the wrong dessert) and there are no substitutions.
“I throw a dinner party every night,” says Pomeroy. “That’s
all we do here.”
Except, most dinner parties we all normally go to involve a
thrown-together lasagna; Pomeroy’s dinner party starts with that
dazzling French onion soup, moves on to foie gras bonbons, steak
tartare and quail egg toast, and pig’s-head terrine. It continues with
dry-aged, grass-fed beef wrapped in bacon and served with lentils
and turnips, relaxes into butter lettuce salad with fried Meyer
lemons, and finishes with a cheese plate and, for dessert, an elegant
chocolate soufflé that’s also a bit scruffy. (“There’s digital cooking