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Opening Night Menu at Le Bec-Fin

Posted by Foobooz on June 12th, 2012

Tonight is the opening night of Le Bec-Fin 2.0 and we received a copy of today’s $150 tasting menu. Check out Chef Walter Abrams’ first menu.


Consommé de Volaille, Confit Escargot, Foraged Herbs
Or
Marinated Roots on Vegetable Crisp

Hen Egg Pasta, Ris de Veau, Raisins, Coriander, and Sorrel
Or
Swiss Chard Wrapped Yolk, Potato Fondant, Truffle Gelée, and Corn

Foie Gras, Caramelized Onion Brioche, Peaches, Sedum
Or
Grilled Artichokes, Baby Gems, Mustard, Parsley Croutons

Poached Halibut Wrapped in Holland Leeks, Crepe and Caviar Butter
Or
Whole Roasted Fennel, Quinoa, Cherry Tomatoes, Manni

Dry Age Beef, Peas, Morel Mushrooms, Sauce Bordelaise
Or
Champignons de Paris, Lemon, Young Beets, Tart de Rye

Yellow Springs, Meadow’Creek’Mountaineer, Local Honey, Pluots
Lemon Verbena, New Jersey Blueberries, Ginger, Candied Citrus
Cherries, Macadamia Nuts, Micheal Cluizel Mousse

Le Bec-Fin [Official Site]

Le Bec Fin
1523 Walnut St, Philadelphia, PA

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    This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 12th, 2012 at 3:47 pm and is filed under News, Opening Soon. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

    • Tex

      “Foraged herbs.” Identifying the herbs would tell you something about how the dish actually tastes. Merely specifying that they were “foraged,” which plays only to the hipness factor, does not.

    • Jimmy

      I’ve noticed that folks on this website and others have made overly critical remarks about the new Le Bec. I don’t get it. Don’t we want this type of restaurant in our city and for that restaurant to succeed?

    • Tex

      Yes, I want it to succeed. That’s why I’m suggesting that it improve this particular menu description.

    • Jimmy

      Touché

    • FattyFatMan

      Tex, you should be a full-time restaurant consultant.

    • Consultant

      Yes Tex and Fatty, restaurant owners love to pay to hear nitpicking irrelevant points from condescending pricks like you two. Two consultants who couldn’t run a hotdog stand. Now excuse me while I go count my growing piles of money from serving guests who aren’t jagoffs like you.

    • Daytime Drinker.

      Consultant if we remove the emotions from the conversation and actually have an adult conversation on the substantive points most intelligent people would have to agree with “Tex”. Here is the point expanded: IF you open a 5 star restaurant and the last place your Owner, Chef and Pastry Chef worked was the French Laundry, you need to *NOT* put phrases like “Foraged Herbs” without actually specifying the herbs in the dish on your menu. IF YOU DO NOT SPECIFY said “foraged herbs” then you are transferring emphasis from the actual herbs TO the fact that you have a forager……which most customers have less interest in than knowing the flavor of the food they are ordering. This is an expensive restaurant that serves expensive wine. Most people order wine to match the flavor of the dish. They could certainly ask the waiter what the “foraged herbs” were but is that really necessary when you can just have better menu language. Again it may seem nit-picky to some but a restaurant that wants to live up to this level of ambition should not make trendy amateurish menu language mistakes.

      Furthermore the menu also say’s “New Jersey Blueberries”.
      “New Jersey” does not add a value index to anything on a menu.
      If anything the specific farm in NJ will be named if the blueberries were in fact special and different from anything you or I can pick up in any grocery store.

      THIRD…..A dessert referred to as “Michel Cluizel Mousse”
      In the same vein “Michel Cluizel” chocolate is really just OK.
      Barry-Valrhona-Guittard-Noel make better chocolate.
      More importantly they need to stick to one style, name the source and varietal or name the brand. Maybe 100 people in Philadelphia immediately know the “Michel Cluizel” is a chocolate company and for a 5 star restaurant (or one aspiring to be) to name a chocolate dessert without actually using the word chocolate is weird.

    • http://philadelphia.foobooz.com Foobooz

      It should be noted that this menu was given to me by Le Bec’s PR rep. The file was called “Opening Menu as of early afternoon 6-12.pdf” She noted that a more descriptive menu would also be made available. As of this moment, we haven’t received that one.

    • FattyFatMan

      Ah, there is so much anger on the Foobooz boards. I have to say more often than not it is unintentionally hilarious.

    • FattyFatMan

      @ Consultant

      I hope your consulting skills are better than your ability to detect sarcasm.

    • FattyFatMan

      Let me add, Foobooz, thank you for posting the menu. It sounds delicious.

      I hope that the new Le Bec succeeds and has another 40+ years ahead of it.

    • Anon

      @Foobooz with all due respect I hope you are not shilling for LBF because that excuse about getting the menu from their PR rep is either BS or just a defense mechanism.
      You seriously expect intelligent people to believe the publicist of a 5 star restaurant knowingly released an inaccurate menu for you to print.

    • Kevin (the other one)

      I was there. This is not a completely accurate version of the final menu, which had more details and some differences.

      Tex, no one named Tex would have recognized the herbs anyway.

    • Daytime Drinker.

      @kevin the strange thing about your post above is that it adds nothing to the conversation of any substance. First you accuse someone who clearly uses a pseudonym “Tex” to post a comment and then you say the choice of pseudonym means he would not have recognized the herbs anyway. More importantly than the fact that it is absurdly illogical is that it delegitimizes your argument above it stating…. you were there and saw an accurate version of the menu which you seem not willing to share despite feeling strongly against any criticism.

      Yes Foobooz certainly generates the interest of clueless jerks who think they are experts in all things food. I personally want LBF to do well and succeed. We need an expensive refined restaurant that is not an overpriced Italian restaurant but “Tex’s” original post raised a very accurate stylistic question for a restaurant of this caliber and attacking him is NOT the solution.

      The solution is to fix your menu.
      It is vague and worse…stylistically all over the place.
      This is not any kind of a takedown but look in more detail.
      One of the most *annoying* things about the original LBF was the tendency to selectively gravitate back and forth between French and English menu descriptions.

      Even this menu starts with “Consomme de “Volaille” and then 2 lines down refers to a “Hen egg Pasta”
      So if you choose to use the French word for chicken why use the English word for an egg………which came first.
      Furthermore there is no difference in flavor……absolutely zero…….between a regular egg and a hen egg from the same source. The term “Hen Egg” is BS.

      Most people also do not know that “ris de veau” = sweetbreads and describing it in French is not going to convince people who are organ meat averse to enjoy it or order it without some feeling of duplicity.

      I am sure the food will be excellent but 3 things are for sure right now.

      1. They need a better menu editor.
      2. They need a better publicist.
      3. You really cannot roll into town saying basically “we all worked for Thomas keller for years but really do not expected to be judged on the finer details of what we do”…..Nah !!! That will not work.

    • DaytimeSober

      DaytimeDrinker you sound like a pretentious putz. No one other than an obsessive compulsive mentally ill person cares about the minor flaws you see as so important. I am glad to know you likely make your own life a living hell.

    • FattyFatMan

      I personally would like to thank Tex for restaurant press-release menu quality control.

      Where would fine dining in our city be without such attention to detail on the part of food blog respondents?

      Let the unintentional hilarity continue.

    • Dustin

      I think DaytimeDrinker is on point with his critiques of the menu. Consistency is important.

    • http://philadelphia.foobooz.com Foobooz

      We’ve posted the latest menu for Le Bec-Fin’s Opening Week.

    • Daytime Drinker.

      Thanks for the new menu.
      Now stop deleting comments because people are critical and it is really refreshing to see that egg pasta is made with hen eggs.

    • FattyFatMan

      I think that there should be a special Philly food blog where people can complain about Philly food blogs.

    • JulieM

      oh my god. you are all terrible, terrible people.

    • chino

      Seriously….are you all trying to have a conversation about this or just outwit each other ?

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