We had an ulterior motive, of course, in selecting this restaurant. For those who don’t follow Dallas restaurants and chefs as if it’s a high-stakes contact sport with winners and losers and intrigue and drama, let us quickly TL;DR it for you:
Carte Blanche on Lower Greenville offered a special chef's tour tasting menu on New Year's Eve.
Hank Vaughn
As reported by Claire Ballor in The Dallas Morning News last summer, when Carte Blanche opened in 2021, chef and owner Casey La Rue represented himself as someone who had worked at several Michelin-starred restaurants in the U.S., including Joël Robuchon in Las Vegas and Per Se, Thomas Keller’s restaurant in New York that has been awarded three Michelin stars.
Such a pedigree helped justify the high cost for a meal from a chef who most in North Texas were not familiar with. But, as Ballor reported, when previous employees started checking up on some of these elite culinary references, they came up empty. There was no record of La Rue having worked at any of them.
One can dive deeply into the minutiae here, with W-2 tax forms and claims of working under a different name, with backs and forths between food writers and La Rue. Sides have been formed, and the importance of ethics (or lack thereof) in relation to the quality of food has been debated. But throughout it all we just wanted to see how the food fared with all the political theater stripped away, at least for one night, while we waited for the ball to drop in Times Square and left 2022 in our rearview mirror.
The chef’s full tour menu was the only option on New Year’s Eve: a prix fixe offering consisting of 12 courses along with an optional wine pairing, which, at an additional $255 per person, was a bit much. Instead, we stretched a couple of glasses of wine while we watched, with a bit of envy, others being served several different glasses during the evening, all with the requisite explanation of notes, weather conditions and vine genera. We also passed on the optional $115 per person caviar add-on; we are, after all, simple working folk.
Prior to the start of the tour menu, our server brought out a few amuse-bouches: foie gras with grape emulsion, potato croquettes, savory churros with shaved truffle and some truffle soup. Accompanying these delights were a couple of wonderful croissants prepared by Amy La Rue, the pastry chef from the bakery that is a part of Carte Blanche. The buttery and rich foie gras spread on the croissants was one of the highlights of the meal.
The first three courses properly highlighted vegetables. The Hakurei turnip was served with Parmesan foam and dill oil as a dip for the crisp greens. Squash chawanmushi was a flavorful custard mélange of squash, onion, kumquat, pistachio oil and leek foam attractively served in ceramic eggs in a little basket. Embered kohlrabi rounded out the veggie round: compressed grapes, pumpkin seed oil and anise hyssop made for a nice little bite.
Two seafood courses followed: a Gulf shrimp, breaded and deep-fried with Meyer lemon-uni aioli, and grouper, grilled and served with charred tomatillo trout roe, and fennel puree, with a citrus beurre blanc with chili oil added tableside by our server. The shrimp was unimaginative, but the aioli redeemed it a bit. The chili citrus sauce was the clear star, greatly complementing the fish.
Next, a couple of boar-centric courses: smoked boar shoulder and boar belly burnt ends served with quail. The shoulder came in a bite-sized package with charred blackberries and fennel pollen, creatively presented and appreciated before we plopped them into our mouths. The boar belly was served along with a quail drumstick on a grilling grate. Both were perfectly seasoned and full of outdoor flavor.
After a palate cleanser consisting of a glass of seltzer flavored with maccha and spearmint, the final courses arrived. These consisted of game, including venison, elk and antelope. The venison tartare was a lovely mixture of venison, kristal caviar, crème fraiche and parsnip chips, served in a spoon presented in weathered antlers. It was a unique presentation that added a little something to the spoonful of flavor that was subtle and not overpowering. A chaser of rich venison broth completed the course.
The elk was 60-day dry-aged with bordelaise sauce added tableside and included some parsnip puree as well as some foie gras. The highlight of this round, however, was the antelope rib pastrami, which was a moist and meaty fall-off-the-bone morsel of heaven.
Three dessert courses rounded out the meal, including a passionfruit bar, crème caramel and milk gelato. The crème caramel consisted of candied kumquat with caramel and cardamom served in a large volcanic rock and was another interesting (if heavy) presentation.
Finally, a selection of petit fours was brought to our table, along with a couple of croissants to go, and a written description of our menu signed by chef La Rue along with our server.
All in all, the menu was really good. The food was well-prepared, and there was some thought to originality, though at times, perhaps, the experience was being stressed over the food. We’ve eaten at a couple of Michelin-rated tasting menu restaurants in the U.S.: Grant Aschatz’s Alinea in Chicago and Daniel Humm’s Eleven Madison Park in New York. Both have been awarded three Michelin stars. How does Carte Blanche compare?
Well, Eleven Madison Park has more variety, and Alinea is much more creative and original, and both cost about the same as here. The food at Carte Blanche is very good and refined, yet one feels that there is perhaps a bit of work to be done to reach the upper echelon where Michelin judges “quality of the ingredients used, mastery of flavor and cooking techniques, the personality of the chef in his cuisine, value for money and consistency between visits.” However, Carte Blanche has received Forbes and AAA accolades.
And does any of that even matter? Should one assess the integrity of the chef as well as his technique? On one hand, a side in this debate says none of that should matter and the food should speak for itself, so who cares if a resume was embellished? On the other hand, if the food can speak for itself, then why the need to embellish anything at all? Why didn’t chef La Rue let his technique and flavors do the talking from the get-go?
At least there’s ample parking in two shared lots in the back of the restaurant. At least one controversy has been averted.
2114 Greenville Ave. Dinner: Tuesday – Saturday, 5 p.m. – 9 p.m.; Bakery: Thursday – Sunday, 7 a.m. – noon.
