Susur Lee has a lot on his mind. Last week he was in the Cayman Islands for the ab-fab gastronomical festival that takes place there every year. Right now he’s in Hong Kong visiting with his Mom before nipping off to Abu Dhabi for five days to guest star at the World Gastronomical Congress. And of course he has four restaurants to worry about – Lee in Toronto, Zentan in Washington DC, Shang in New York and Chinois by Susur Lee in Singapore. And now a fifth… Lee Lounge opens on Valentine’s Day as an annex to Lee on King Street West, the latest incarnation of the space that was once Susur and more recently Madeline’s. On Tuesday, the latest VISA Infinite dinner took place there – three weeks before opening – with Susur himself in the kitchens and, now and again, in the dining room. It was a sell-out crowd of 120 filling both the Lounge and Lee (the two rooms are now linked by an opening in the connecting wall) and the food was spectacular.
We began with Nicolas Feuillete Brut Champagne and a selection of extremely inventive hors d’oeuvres. One morsel in particular was universally declared to be the most irresistible dainty ever created – finger-sized spring rolls, very crisp and piping hot, filled with ground beef and nippy five-year-old cheddar cheese… “Cheeseburger spring rolls” in other words. Whether or not they will appear on Lee Lounge’s menu when it opens remains to be seen.
We sat down to an amuse, though as joint emcees David Lawrason and I were up like jack-in-the-boxes throughout the evening, David discussing the wines that Lifford wine agency had provided, me trying my best to describe Susur’s dishes. The amuse was relatively simple – a delectable shigoku oyster on the half shell (as meaty as a kumomoto but not as briney, now being grown in north-western USA). Susur has garnished it with a shallot mignonette, a dab of puréed meyer lemon and a morsel of Portuguese-style salted chili. The balance of rich, salty oyster with the tangy and sweet-tart and salty-hot condiments was impeccable.
Lest we forget, Susur revolutionized high-end dining at Susur, circa 2001, by reversing the order of dishes, starting with the substantial, meaty main course then serving half a dozen other courses that grew progressively lighter as the evening progressed (though he did concede that dessert was an appropriate finale). He reprised the idea on Tuesday and once again I was struck by its undeniable logic – why not start with the big, heavy dish when the customer is hungry rather than almost full? Of course, it’s a nightmare for the sommelier who must bring out a mighty red and then offer lighter, more elegant wines, each one running the risk of seeming an inadequate successor to the one before.
This time, we began with a rich, robust, fruity Napa Cabernet Sauvignon, the Joseph Phelps 2007. It worked beautifully with the first course, a roast loin of New Zealand fallow deer. The meat was improbably tender and still bloody, the way Susur likes to serve it; the sauce held all the drama and artistry. It began as a reduction of white veal stock with onion and white wine, blitzed with honey and Dijon mustard; then Susur puréed some of the apricots he put up last summer, adding a hint of vanilla and swirled that into the mix, finishing it with a little butter to emulsify. Alongside was a crispy little croquette of boiled potato broken up and mixed with some Rose Haus cow-milk cheese from Fifth Town dairy, together with thyme, rosemary and black pepper. The cheese played with the fruity flavours of the sauce. As David Lawrason pointed out, the mustard sprang out to meet the wine which was threatening to overpower the venison and the whole gustatory skirmish ascended heavenward like some Renaissance painting of the Assumption.
The second course… “This is the money dish,” said Shinan Govani of the National Post, one of many illustrious scribes at the media table. Susur had taken it off his menu at Chinois, in Singapore, and it is promised for Lee Lounge. It’s basically a contemporary Susurisation of Peking duck but it blew off every sock in the room. If you want to try it at home, here’s how. Take a duck breast and remove the skin. Create a new skin by skimming the uba off a trough of fermenting bean curd. Layer it with dried shrimp and five-spice powder and deep fry until very crisp. Meanwhile, marinate the duck for two days as if it were going to end up as char sui pork, i.e. in Chinese wine, rose wine, hoisin, dark soy, garlic, ginger and coriander. Then slow roast it until it’s like juicy, meaty candy and cut it into strips. Serve it with the crispy “skin,” some steamed pancakes for wrapping, some fermented bean sauce, and some julienned raw condiments – leek or green onion, cucumber and raw persimmon. Tell guests to wrap up their own pancakes and watch them gasp in ecstasy as they try it with Amity Vineyards 2007 Pinot Noir, the best vintage of that renowned Oregon Pinot I’ve tasted in years.
At that point, David Lawrason and I decided to stay seated. “Taste this,” he said, pushing across the remains of his Phelps Cabernet, “with that.” And indicated the tiny bowl of intense blackberry and mint sorbet with a twist of freshly ground black pepper and a teaspoonful of Niagara Cabernet Franc Ice Syrup that Susur had sent out as a palate cleanser. Oh. My. God. The wine and the sorbet had been separated at birth. Identical twins!
We had tasted Bambi. We had sampled Donald Duck. Now we got to eat Thumper.
As a homage to the year of the Rabbit, Susur presented three dim sum rice-dough dumplings stuffed with a farce of rabbit, ginger and cilantro. One was garnished with chopped black truffle, another set on a puck of soft roasted pear and dusted with grated biobio parmesan from Quebec, the third annointed with a sauce made from wine and finely chopped sweet Chinese sausage. Susur had told me he considers this dish as much European as Chinese. For those who had never considered grated cheese or a dark gravy on dim sum, it was a revelation. And the Jadot 2008 white Burgundy wasn’t a bad choice at all.
The last savoury course showed Susur’s interest in Japanese flavours – a plump scallop pan-seared on one side and surrounded by salmon “pearls.” I’m sure hal;f the room thought Susur had gone molecular with these intensely fishy, salty spheres but they were just salmon roe that had been rinsed free of salt and then marinated in dashi, sake, mirin and soy. With this dish came some pickled white asparagus, pickled radish, and a sweetly rooty sauce of carrot essence, ginger and scallop stock. The wine? Paul Zinck 2009 Pinot Blanc.
Dessert? Vanilla panna cotta with a “ravioli” of tissue-thin raw pineapple filled with raspberry purée, invigorated with a passion fruit and orange gastrique. We thought a port had been paired with it, but “Quinta do Portal Colheita 2007” turned out to be a dry red table wine from the Douro, to the astonishment of all.
The food that night was spectacular and some of the wine matches inspired. The room looked stunning with gold walls, black lacquered tables, fuchsia light boxes recessed into the walls and a new façade of floor to ceiling glass. The kitchen encountered some hiccups that stretched the evening a little longer than intended… I could point out that that is in the nature of previews. Those of us who were there now have bragging rights that we were the first people ever to eat in Lee Lounge.
Many thanks to photographer Marc Polidoro for the images. © Marc Polidoro