Tending toward molecular

Santa Cruz, California, June 22, 2012—

DINNER WITH FRIENDS in this nearby town tonight at a new restaurant allied to a winery I've always liked, both for their wines and for the affable, intelligent, witty man responsible: Randall Grahm, who once noted to us that while Lindsey was a chef pâtissière, he was only a pastichier.

His winery is Bonny Doon, named for the improbably named hamlet a few miles from here, and his wines carry names like Big House Red, with its penitentiarical label illustration, and Le Cigare Volant, the French formula corresponding to American English "flying saucer," because a winery in the French Rhone region, whose product is similar to this one of Randall's, once successfully petitioned its local government to outlaw the landing of UFOs in local vineyards, thus endangering grapevines. You get the idea.

(Randall has published a book of the excellent satirical essays he used to send out as winery newsletters, many of them hilarious parodies of masterpieces of English or French literature. Among my favorites, The Love Song of J. Alfred Rootstock.)

I thought the food here expressed wit and imagination similar to Randall's, not only in the descriptions on the menu, but — more to the point — in concept and execution. I began with a lettuce salad with grapefruit sections and Reggiano, with a "circulated quail egg croque madame" on the side — a parody of a Salade lyonnaise, I suppose. ("Circulated," because poached in rapidly whirling boiling water.)

I went on with seared duck breast, beautifully chosen and cooked, accompanied by pan-roasted plums and a "lettuce roll" wrapped in prosciutto, looking like a zany variant of a cigar — paired, naturally, with a glass of Cigar Volant.

Dessert: "Valrhona Chocolate Textures": a molded chocolate mousse, hard enough to hold a cylindrical shape, lying on its side, with a cooked cherry secreted within, a delicious barely softened cherry next to it on the plate, a nest of soft sponge-cake tatters, and a spoonful of soft plum sorbet — a really fine concept, marvelously achieved. And intelligent; and witty.

Moscato Frizzante, 2009; Le Cigare Volant, 2007 (both Bonny Doon, of course, and both first-rate)

Le Cigare Volant, 328 Ingalls St., Santa Cruz; 831.425.6771