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Tristan's menu offers something for every appetite

By Deidre Schipani

Leroy Burnell
The Post and Courier

Tristan

In late fall, Tristan restaurant saw the departure of its talented Irish chef for the West Coast and sunny climes of San Diego. Quickly, chef de cuisine Aaron Deal was appointed the executive chef. This Johnson & Wales graduate has found a culinary home in the contemporary cooking at Tristan.

With his passion for ingredients and commitment to local and sustainable resources, this young chef was wise enough to leave well enough alone on the menu and carefully added his own signature dishes — such as a Butternut Squash Terrine ($10) with Split Creek Farm Goat Cheese, ginger snap toast, pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and tender arugula leaves. The popular Pomegranate Beet Salad ($12) remains, with the earthy flavors of the tiny and tender beets, endive grilled to a sweet and crispy char, and the salty crunch of pancetta lardons (think bacon bits). Strewn with fromage blanc, it is a still life with pomegranate vinaigrette.

The appetizer menu is well constructed in variety, texture and playfulness.

The she-crab soup ($8) is presented as a frothy cup of "cappuccino" with foamed parsnip cream over the top. Lamb ribs ($12) are cloaked in the house-made (and available for purchase) chocolate barbecue sauce. The sauce has all the complexity of a Mexican mole but is used in simplicity to balance the hickory smoked ribs. The Crab Cake ($14) is excellent — lumps and chunks of backfin served with roasted corn kernels and soybeans, splashed with a lobster emulsion and sprinkled with sweet sea urchin roe. Its panoply of flavors and freshness of ingredients resonated in quality and simplicity.

Mussels ($10) "speak" with an Asian accent in their preparation. They are served in a hot-and-sour broth with succulent braised pork belly, sesame-flavored vegetables and young shoots of sprightly cilantro.

Chef Deal travels the globe in ingredients and preparations: black edamame with short ribs, sauce Perigueux with sweetbreads, a squash and a quinoa risotto; pickling cherries, candying kumquats, drying grapes, perfuming broth with vanilla, and pairing white tuna with black truffle agnolotti.

Ingredients also have their pedigrees, such as Keegan-Filion Farms chicken, Harris Farms rib-eye steak, specially cultivated Tristan turnips, Paddlefish caviar and Port Reyes blue cheese, to list a few.

The Keegan-Filion Farms Chicken ($26) was delicious. An airplane-style breast (wing on) was poached to tender succulence, served with a pillow of buttered pommes puree (mashed potatoes), along with tender and sweet sugar snap peas and foraged mushrooms. Sauce Marsala spoke to its Italian heritage. This simple dish redefined the chicken and mashed potato genre.

They got us with a gimmick, the Tomahawk Rib-Eye Steak ($55). You do need to see it to believe it — a nearly foot-long rib, frenched with clinical precision, attached to a 2-inch-thick steak, being raised on a diet of corn, hay, grass, legumes, lazily eating its way to weight and flavor. You just want to pick it up by its bone handle and participate in carnivorous gluttony, Tom Jones-style, and we did. Kudos to the kitchen for crafting a sauce Perigueux — reducing a French mother sauce, stratifying with truffles and foie gras, enhancing with Port and cognac, and cooking slowly and patiently to form a culinary tempera to glaze the gargantuan beef.

The composition of the menu truly offers something for every appetite. The appetizers (hot and cold) can easily be combined for an inventive meal.

The chef sends out a little amuse — those namesake turnips (Tristan) sprinkled with coarse salt, garnished with a microgreen, bathed in fruity olive oil — a tease to the pleasures that wait. The intermezzo (a sorbet) with its passion fruit base was a bit too sweet and flowery to perform its palate-cleansing ritual.

Our server was a diner's gem. He was informed about the ingredients, cooking methods and presentation. He kept a watchful eye on his tables and assured the guests a good experience.

Chef Deal has combined the art of cooking with the joy of food. He seems not limited by tradition; open to adventure and competent in his skills. Pastry chef Nicole Anhalt plates a seasonal menu of desserts. She has assembled an admirable cheese course assortment ($12) and broadcasts her menu with solid flavors and risk-taking combinations.

Her Pear Bread Pudding ($8) combines French toast with pears, sweet caramel sauce with salty bacon bits, coffee ice cream and dots of pear puree. It's a mouth voyage of sweet, salty, hot and cold. Masterful!

The wine list is well thought out; sommelier Brian Austin is helpful, engaging and well-versed in his cellar.

Get there to hear the lush voice of singer Ann Caldwell on Thursday and Friday evenings.

Tristan promises "bold cuisine with global influences" and our experience was that promises were kept. And for all you culinary knights of the round table, Tristan may very well be your Holy Grail.

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