AUTHOR: Dave McIntyre TITLE: Surrender, Dorothy! DATE: 3/20/2006 09:21:00 PM ----- BODY:

Some restaurants let the customer be in control of the meal. (Remember "Have it your way"?) In today's high-end dining establishments, however, we've come to revere the chef as artist, and they can become temperamental. They may not actually be flinging their ingredients at the wall to make a Jackson Pollack cuisine, but ask them to substitute a side dish or an ingredient on your entreé, and they might just fling it at you. Our parents went to restaurants to be pampered and treated like royalty; we go to be teased, intrigued, and sometimes so it seems, even insulted or abused. Apparently the new restaurant Gilt in Manhattan is a place where you have to surrender control of your life for a few hours. At least that’s the impression one gets from reading the April 30 issue of Wine Spectator, where Thomas Matthews relates his experience with the cuisine of chef Paul Liebrandt with this hilarious exchange between diner and waiter regarding the chef’s tasting menu. “The first time I dined at Gilt, neither its price nor its dishes were listed, so I asked my server how much it cost,” Matthews writes. “‘Around $135,’ he replied. ‘It depends.’ “‘Depends on what?’ “‘On what the chef sends out.’ “‘And what might he send out?’ “‘It depends.' “‘Depends on what?’ “‘On what he has in the kitchen, and what he’s inspired to create.’ “‘And what about the wine?’ I asked. ‘Will the sommelier pair wines to go with the tasting menu?’ “‘Of course.’ “‘How much does that cost?’ “‘It depends.’” This article is not yet on the magazine’s Web site, but for what it’s worth (and apparently that can be a lot when the check comes), Matthews concludes: “If you can accept some risk for the sake of exploration, then Gilt should be on your short list of new restaurants to try.”

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