Bar Chelou

Friendship

I know that the public depends upon Braindoc, the maestro of mastication, for objective, impartial and dispassionate judgment (and occasional witty reportage) to guide your culinary selections among the multitudinous options throughout the Los Angeles Basin and the four corners of the earth.  To sift, to winnow, to separate the wheat from the chaff so as to ensure that you, dear readers, my sole worldly concern, will dine only on unsurpassed fare at the most preeminent of eateries.  Michelin stars are meaningless compared to the imprimatur of yours truly, who will accept nothing less than the paramount of décor, ambience, service and, of course, the food itself.

My close friend, movie producer Morrie Grossman, who has accompanied me on many of my culinary journeys (such as at Dear John’s), has a very talented daughter, Sarah.  Sarah is a renowned pastry chef who has worked at some of the finest restaurants in Los Angeles, including Providence and Jon and Vinny’s.  Sarah is now the head pastry chef at Bar Chelou in Pasadena.  Morrie and his wife, Leah, invited the lovely wife and me to join them for dinner to sample Sarah’s creations.  Just like Hercules and the Cretan Bull, I was faced with a terrible dilemma of two difficult choices to which there may not be a straightforward solution:  would I be able to maintain my duty to be unbiased in my assessment of dining establishments or would I succumb to my friendship with Morrie, because, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, the essence of friendship is total magnanimity and trust.  Of course, one can’t be too trusting as Mark Twain observed that friendship endures and will last a lifetime, provided one is not asked to lend money.

During her culinary school training, Sarah dipped her toes into the seven seas of gastronomic options.   After testing the waters, Sarah chose to specialize in desserts.  She particularly enjoys the structured and methodical rule-based cooking of pastry, producing superlative desserts which have the same addictive effect as the blue crystal meth produced by the structured and methodical rule-based cooking of Walter White in Breaking Bad.

Bar Chelou is tucked into an alcove adjacent to the historic Pasadena Playhouse, which was designed in 1925 in Spanish Colonial Revival style with a courtyard lobby by Elmer Grey, the architect who also designed the Beverly Hills Hotel and the Huntington Library.  Our quartet arrived to find an awaiting Sarah who had snuck out of the kitchen to take a brief break from her hectic schedule to greet us.

Of course we came to Bar Chelou to sample the desserts in the “let them eat cake” style of Marie Antoinette, but Sarah encouraged us to taste from the entire menu.  We began with an appetizer of burrata toast with paleta ibérica and pickled peppers.  Paleta ibérica is cured pork from the shoulder of an Iberian pig, as opposed to the more common jamón which is from the rear leg or “ham” area.  The paleta has a more intense flavor than the Italian prosciutto, which was well-balanced by the piquant peppers and mild burrata.

The French breakfast radish is an oblong, heirloom radish, reddish-pink in color with a mild, peppery flavor and crisp texture.  It is served with with fromage blanc and furikake, a mixture of sesame seeds, seaweed, herbs, fish flakes and salt, named for the Japanese word for sprinkles.  The furikake enhanced the subtle flavor of the radish with a nutty depth from the sesame seeds and a briny note from the seaweed and salt.

Since we had scaled Kilimanjaro, dog-sledded to the South Pole and trekked the Danakil Depression, Sarah knew that the only choice for our last appetizer would be the anchovies with peppers.  Further description is unnecessary.

For our first main course we selected the Ibérico Pork Chop with cabbage, fennel pollen and furikake (which must have been purchased at Costco).  A golden-brown seared pork chop is sliced and topped with shredded cabbage.  It is dusted with fennel pollen for a sweet, aromatic lift and plated with furikake for a touch of salty umami.

For a true geography lesson, we completed the main courses with the Duck Leg with Yu Choy Couscous, Spicy Labneh, Macadamia Dukkah, combining flavors from China, the Middle East and North Africa.  The duck is rich and intense with the slight fattiness complemented by the bitter, earthy flavor of the yu choy couscous.  The creamy labneh and dukkah add a tangy, yogurty zest and spice and nuts for texture and earthiness.

Now that we had ingested the obligatory protein and vegetable dishes, I could turn off the loop recording of “If you don’t eat yer meat you can’t have any pudding; how can you have any pudding if you don’t eat yer meat” that was running laps through my brain.  Rather than tease you, dear reader, with any more verbose drivel, let’s get right to the point.

Sarah treated us to four samples of her talent.  All of the desserts had the rare combination of beautiful presentation and deliciously unique flavors.  Her cheesecake is composed of 75% goat cheese, 25% cream cheese which she explained is “like a sweet cheese plate to complement the menu.”  The cake is drizzled with a blackberry/hibiscus sauce with tart and floral notes and covered with sheet of edible “glass” of sugar.  Buckwheat tuile wafers are wedged into the top of the cake for texture rather than having a more pedestrian crust.   Marigold flower petals are floated on top of the entire deconstructed preparation.

The sesame mille feuille is a multi-cultural blend of Middle Eastern, Asian and French tastes.  Sesame ice cream, maple pastry cream, maple syrup, sesame praline and toasted sesame seeds are artfully arranged.  The nutty flavor of the sesame is contrasted by the natural sweetness of the maple syrup and praline.  Sarah achieves a superb textural balance of the ice cream, sesame seeds and crunchy pastry.

Moving on to the fruitier options, Sarah shows off her virtuosity with her banana bar.  A crust of feuilletine, a crispy confection made of thin sweetened crêpes, chocolate, peanut butter, crushed toasted peanuts is topped with chocolate caramel mousse with a caramelized banana insert.  The base of the bar is dipped in dark chocolate while the upper portion is sprayed with cocoa butter and milk chocolate caramel.

We finished the evening with raspberry sorbet that is causing Baskin and Robbins to turn over in their graves.  Fresh raspberries are steeped with sumac bark to add a touch of citric-like acidity.  They are then slowly cooked with a touch of rhubarb (to add tartness) confit style at low temperature to preserve the flavor.   The sorbet is served with rhubarb in the center, frozen raspberries at the edges and a garnish of apple sorrel to add color and a touch of lemony, sour taste.

Is my friendship with Morrie stronger than my obligation to you, dear readers?  You’ll just have to make a trip to the City of Roses to eat at Bar Chelou to find out.  Tell Sarah that I sent you.