Ultimately, the purpose of an appetizer is to whet, to arouse, to salivate. It's to kick-start the innards and make them receptive to the more weighty compositions to follow. Mansion Chef John Tesar's crab "scampi style" does this. Six ounces of king crab leg meat is torn from the shell in ropes, flecked with parsley and set in a pool of Riesling butter sauce with touches of garlic and shallot. Riesling creeps to the forefront, launching a fascinating interplay of focused minerality and torrents of fruity acid that seem to reach around the crab's sweet buttery richness, targeting the minerals a few layers deep in the soul of the meat. Here, bitterness kisses the front of the mouth before the butter slides the crab's rich sweetness across the palate. Then the acids clear away a little of that, and it becomes almost floral. All of this is framed in a steely mineral component that is strong in the wine but subtler in the crab. Hence, the complex flavors of the crab instantly become understandable. This is a laser beam of a dish. It is visceral. It has gobs of charisma. It is pure mouth joy.
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