L2O

This is the story of how I walked out of the Belden-Stratford Hotel carrying a bag with two blue boxes inside, boxes that had been so coddled, so precisely wrapped in blue ribbon, that they could have been from Tiffany. These boxes were not full of leftovers. Even though I had left plenty of food on my plate that night (I had ordered L20’s 12-course tasting, and anything larger than an amuse was left half-eaten), those remaining bites were carried back into the kitchen they came from. Offers to wrap it up did not come, but that’s just as well—otherwise that bag I carried would have been filled with ten boxes instead of two.

To explain why I had any boxes with me, I’ll go back to my initial feelings for the restaurant. By feelings, I don’t mean emotions. I mean the soft, curious, velvety feel of the menus; the cool touch of the ivory marble slabs meant to hold the silver; the polished surface of the wood tables, so smooth I couldn’t keep my palms off it. Combined with the tinted-blue water glasses and the aquarium in the bathroom, the restaurant gave off the aura of relaxing in a tepid wading pool. It’s a space that is pure, effortless and—because it drips with money—luxuriant.

If the tactile quality of the restaurant hit me in the design, it was even more prevalent in the food. Laurent Gras, who comes to Chicago after San Francisco (Fifth Floor) and New York (Bistro du Vent), is a chef who seems to care deeply about texture, manipulating each ingredient to its most pleasurable consistency. His geoduck sparkled with bright citrus notes and the occasional bite of fresh wasabi, but it was the light crunch of the clam between the teeth that made the dish so interesting. Likewise, a plate of morels could not have been cooked more perfectly, the porous things soft but not mushy, substantial and yet ethereal. On the delicious, lemony amadai (Japanese sea bream), Gras crisped the scales of the fish until they popped like Rice Krispies. He did the same with his pork belly, crisping one side until it was a cracklin’ suitable for offsetting the fattiness of the rest of it.

This was not the only time Gras would repeat a technique. Over the course of the two meals I ate there, there were many repeats. The shimaaji had been smoked, lending the meaty striped jack a subtle campfire note; so was the glassy, noodlelike gelatin that topped the salt cod; and so was the sturgeon, one of my favorite dishes of the night, which was paired with a tart-sweet combination of passion fruit and carrots. Tomatoes, despite not being in season locally, popped up again and again, with surprisingly good results. And there’s a trick the kitchen is particularly fond of, a way of taking flavors and spinning them into a cylinder with a sticky, Styrofoamish feel. These foamy concoctions found their way onto the sturgeon dish, and a couple of the desserts, and it never made a very good impression. Still, dissing these dishes for a molecular mishap is pointless—push it aside and the offending ingredient is gone, leaving behind otherwise nearly perfect work.

There were a few bonafide mistakes: The fluke promised lemon oil and basil seeds, the bass promised flavors of green olive and lemon, and yet both dishes were so subtle they made me yawn. And there was the taste of the incredibly potent sea urchin, which required almost a full glass of wine to get out of my mouth.

But beyond this, L20 hit almost every note with precision. Which brings me back to my boxes. Throughout both meals, servers would occasionally come by with a tray of housebaked breads: sweet cubes of pain au lait, flaky brioche stuffed with anchovy, baguettelike epis studded with thick chunks of bacon and mustard. And every time the tray came close, it took every inch of my strength and every ounce of my intelligence not to tackle whomever was holding it and, like a maniac, run away with the breads in my mouth, fists and pockets. To make matters worse, after several dessert courses, including a brilliant pineapple ice and flawless praline soufflé, the bread was replaced with macaroons. And not just any macaroons, but pistachio macaroons with a fragile, sugary crust and a creamy, chewy middle. And so, finally, after repeated failed attempts to talk myself out of it, I asked if I could take one—just one—epi and one—only one—macaroon home.

Of course, they gave me four of each. And even though I had the luxury of eating the contents of both boxes early the next morning, I quickly realized that my request wasn’t at all necessary. I had wanted to take a piece of L20 home with me, something to remember my meals by. But as I write this days later, each dish as fresh in my mind as when I ate it, I now know that a meal at L20 is more than memorable enough on its own.