2023-11-27 17:03:33
Are you a truly great home cook, the sort of domestic deity frequently encouraged by your slavering dinner guests to open your own restaurant? Because — setting aside humility for the moment — I am!
But here’s one of the things regarding being an absolutely awesome home chef: Restaurant visits are frequently no more than single nights off from one’s station at the stove. Regardless, home cooks deserve time away from our world-class toil. And yet I’m ambivalent regarding my recent night off at Cenadou, a French bistro-style restaurant located in North Salem, a town in the upper reaches of wealthy Westchester County. It was an extraordinary meal. It also knocked my culinary ego down several pegs.
Cenadou
Address: 721 Titicus Road, North Salem
Hours: Wednesday to Saturday, 5-11 p.m.; Sunday, noon-10:30 p.m. (closed 4-5 p.m.)
Prices: Starters, $12-$24; entrees, $28-$44 (a shareable grilled wagyu chuck flap is $130); desserts, $14-$18; cocktails, $17; wines by the glass, $16-$55; bottles, $65 to $240
Info: 914-485-1519 or labastidebyac.com/cenadou; reservations via Resy
Etc.: Outdoor patio seating, lot parking, ADA-accessible
An uncomfortable truth dawned on me while consuming Cenadou’s mushroom risotto: Compared to Cenadou, every dish I’ve made since I started cooking at the age of 13, a home-cheffing career spanning 38 years, has displayed the skill level required of a shaving cream pie whipped up by a garish circus clown.
Taking a second bite of risotto, I close my eyes and mutter the following words: “Never. Could. I. Ever.”
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Cenadou’s vegetarian mushroom risotto — the absence of chicken stock is miraculous — is packed with explosive flavor. And yet somehow the dish remains light, its nubs of rice suspended in airy sauce. Said rice responds to your teeth with the ideal chew, fat peas stud the plate, and there’s not a single ounce of gloop. Furthermore, the menu hadn’t warned me there would be foam. Who does foams anymore? Aren’t savory foams as dated as payphones?
They wouldn’t be if they were always as purposeful as Cenadou’s aged Parmesan foam, which fringes the plate like a cloud of finely grated cheese and brings an additional lightness to the dish’s rich flavors.
This mushroom risotto is hands-down the best vegetarian entree I’ve ever eaten — 10 meatless wows out of 10. Who on earth had prepared this impeccable plate?
Cenadou is a 45-seat spot that opened in June in North Salem, Westchester County. Its chef, Andrea Calstier, has worked at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and with celebrity chef/restaurateur Daniel Boulud in New York City. (Christopher J. Yates / Special to the Times Union)Cenadou is a 45-seat spot that opened in June in North Salem, Westchester County. Its chef, Andrea Calstier, has worked at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and with celebrity chef/restaurateur Daniel Boulud in New York City. (Christopher J. Yates / Special to the Times Union)
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Cenadou opened in June, run by husband and wife Andrea Calstier and Elena Oliver, who both grew up in Marseille, France. (In the local Provencal dialect, “Cenadou” means “dining room.”) Calstier is the chef. He has worked at Michelin-starred restaurants in France and with celebrity chef/restaurateur Daniel Boulud in New York City. He and Oliver, his childhood sweetheart, spent almost three years conceiving and building Cenadou.
From the outside, the 45-seat spot has a chic but understated appeal: a clean white building nestled at the edge of its own capacious parking lot, window frames and front door painted a shade or two richer than regular French blue (Saint-Tropez blue?). The upholstery maintains the color scheme indoors, and the friendly waitstaff keeps the theme ticking along with blue aprons and white shirts.
The menu offers hors d’oeuvres and larger appetizers to start proceedings. An hors d’oeuvre of chickpea panisse is four perfect, crisp fingers of fried chickpea batter. Panisse is a popular street food in Marseille, so if that leads you to expect crunchy excellence, you won’t be let down. Each piece of panisse is piped with buttons of smoked-espelette coulis. Espelette is a mild chile named following the French commune in which it is cultivated. The coulis tastes faintly sweet, faintly spicy and fully satisfying.
From the appetizer list, the escargots are housed in a vol-au-vent pastry shell. A shallot compote brings sweetness, the snails and black garlic earthiness, and the whole ensemble brings a smile to this snail-lover’s face.
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The risotto is one of five mains. I might equally have swooned over the duck entree. Like the world’s tantrum-throwing politicians, these slices of duck breast are incredibly thin-skinned. As one of duck skin’s biggest fans (I have all their albums), this raises suspicion. And yet the sparse layer of brittle skin brings the clean flavor of the duck flesh into pristine focus. A puree of parsnips topped with batons of the vegetable was enjoyed even by my parsnip-hating wife. And figs poached in red wine acted like the less garish cousins of maraschino cherries, lending an adult sugariness to the rich assemblage of food, which was finished with a fig leaf-infused duck jus. If it weren’t for the risotto, I would say life doesn’t get any better than Cenadou’s duck!
A starter of chickpea panisse is four perfect, crisp fingers of fried chickpea batter is piped with buttons of smoked-espelette coulis.
Christopher J. Yates / Special to the Times Union
Another starter of escargots are housed in a vol-au-vent pastry shell with a shallot compote.
Christopher J. Yates / Special to the Times Union
Thinly sliced duck breast with a puree of parsnips and figs poached in red wine.
Christopher J. Yates / Special to the Times Union
For dessert: Ile flottante (floating island), a floaty meringue suspended in a puddle of vanilla custard with heavily toasted almonds and salted caramel.
Christopher J. Yates / Special to the Times Union
While you (elegantly) wolf down these pleasures, you can surveil the workings in the open kitchen. I’m not sure a Gordon Ramsay-style TV show called “Kitchen Dreams” would ever take off — although I have images of the anti-Gordon, Dame Mary Berry, walking into functioning food businesses, purring the words, “Well, it’s all terribly nice.” If such a show were ever green-lit, however, Cenadou would make the ideal opening episode. Its silent kitchen sparkles and glides; the chefs and their whites are so clean you might eat dinner off them. But that’s a different show altogether.
Onto dessert then, where the swooning continued. Ile flottante (floating island) is meringue suspended in a puddle of vanilla custard. At Cenadou it is garnished with heavily toasted almonds and a salted caramel. Were those almonds burnt? Obviously, by now, I should have learned to trust the chef: They were on the edge of burnt, but they were perfect. As was the meringue, which straddled a world somewhere between meringue and marshmallow. The creme anglaise was divine. And soon the only thing floating was me.
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This has been a lot of praise, I realize. So let’s balance everything out with a very minor complaint. The cheapest bottle of wine on the menu is $65. That being said, two starters, two mains, a dessert and that “cheap” red came in at 58 cents below the $200 mark (and included free bread and butter.) For the staggering quality of food at Cenadou, honestly, this is a steal!
Suffice it to say, this culinary clown is already looking forward to his next North Salem night off.
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#Cenadou #French #fine #dining #Westchester
