Senza is a one Michelin star restaurant that can be called unique in the true meaning of the word – it is one of a kind. It opened in August of 2012 with Chef Noah Sandoval as Executive Chef. It has no a la carte menu, only a choice of smaller (around 5 courses) or larger (around 10 courses) tasting menu that changes regularly. That makes it unusual, but certainly not unique.
In the morning, the restaurant opens as a coffee shop called the Wheat’s End Café. Not many high-end restaurants do that, making it even more unusual, but still not quite unique.
A clue to what makes Senza truly unique can be found in the name of the café: “Wheat’s End.” The restaurant, whether in its morning guise as a café or its evening identity as a fine-dining restaurant, is gluten free. I don’t have even a mild gluten intolerance, but I understand there are many who do. If you are a foodie and are avoiding gluten either of necessity or by choice, Senza is a godsend for you.
This was my second visit to Senza and the experiences were consistent. To be honest, it was not until after the first visit that I learned the meal I ate was gluten free. The food is delicious and creative and the service is terrific. It is a small restaurant with only about 48 seats. The space is casual with large windows looking out onto North Broadway and the excellent barbecue restaurant, Smoque, right across the street. It has an almost Scandinavian feel to me – very neat and clean with lots of wood and tile surfaces. Once the sun goes down, there is very nice directional lighting on each table. – a touch that far too many upscale restaurants don’t get.
The hostesses and wait staff have been uniformly friendly, greeting me with smiles and welcomes that sound sincere, but not overdone. It is very much the feeling of being welcomed into a home.
Senza pays as much attention to its cocktail menu as it does to the tasting menu. The house cocktails I have tried have been balanced and flavorful. It was a fairly warm evening in June when I was there. Valeria was out of town, I was not driving (gotta love the Über car service) and I was ready to settle in for a long evening of food and drink. I chose a Jackson Ward cocktail to get me started. This drink is in the Manhattan family, made with Bulleit Rye, Zirbenz, Aperol, Cardamaro and lemon.
Bulleit Frontier Whiskey was started in 1987 when Tom Bulleit, great-great grandson of Augustus Bulleit, revived the small-batch methods used by Augustus in the mid-1800s. Augustus used about ⅔ rye mash and ⅓ corn mash, which would make his whiskey a Rye, rather than a Bourbon, under today’s laws. (Bourbon must be at least 51% corn mash.) Bulleit produces a Bourbon (68% corn, 28% rye and 4% barley), a Rye (95% rye, 5% barley) and a Bourbon 10-year. All three are very highly regarded among small-batch whisky fans. The relatively high rye content in the Bourbons give them an extra depth and complexity.
Zirbenz is an Austrian liqueur that has been produced since 1797. Like most liqueurs, it is sweet and has a complex flavor from the many secret ingredients used to make it. What makes it unique is a piney aroma and flavor that comes from wild pine fruits that are harvested from trees growing wild in the Alps. It has traditionally been drunk as an after-dinner drink, but modern mixologists have discovered that it can be a great addition to cocktails.
Aperol is a slight bitter, orange-ish flavored Italian apéritif that is perhaps best described as a lighter, less intense little brother to the better known Campari.
Cardamaro is a type of Italian amaro (plural: amari). Amari are bittersweet herbal liqueurs made from distilled, neutral spirits that, like Zirbenz, are traditionally sipped as a digestif, but which have become more and more common as ingredients in premium cocktails. Fernet Branca is probably the best known amaro. Cardamaro is wine based, making it more like a vermouth, but with a flavor profile that falls somewhere between an amaro and a vermouth. A Moscato wine base is steeped with botanicals that include cardoon, a thistle in the same family as artichokes, and blessed thistle, both used in Italian cooking, then aged in oak barrels. A small amount adds a lot of flavor and aroma to a cocktail.
Put all of these together with a lemon twist and you have a wonderfully complex, flavorful and refreshing cocktail.
The amuse bouche arrived as I was finishing the Jackson Ward. On this evening, it was a fresh oyster with a ponzu mignonette. I like oysters, but just a few as an appetizer suit me well. In this case, the single, perfectly fresh oyster was delightful. A mignonette sauce is traditionally made with shallots, vinegar, white pepper and a touch of salt. In this case, ponzu, a Japanese sauce made from mirin, rice vinegar, dried tuna flakes, seaweed and citrus juice, was used instead of vinegar. While purists scoff, if you like to flavor your raw oysters just a little, a ponzu mignonette is perfect.
OK, preliminaries out of the way. Let’s eat! First course: Snake River Sturgeon with charrred lardo, kumquat, harissa, fermented ramp served with 2012 Abbrazia di Novacello Kerner from Alto Adige, Italy.
Sturgeon is an ancient fish, unchanged for millions of years, which can be found in both fresh and salt water. It can live 100 years and weight a ton or more. The sturgeon in the Caspian sea are best known for their roe (eggs) which make the best caviar. Unfortunately, between pollution and overfishing, this once-plentiful delicacy is now rare in that sea.
Sturgeon is being farmed successfully in the US and elsewhere both for its roe and for its meat. It’s texture and flavor can vary tremendously, depending on where it is from, whether wild or raised, and how it has been handled. At its worst, it can be a very smelly, fishy fish with mealy flesh. Caught in clean waters or farm raised in a modern, well-run way, the flesh is firm and the flavor is delicate. Good sturgeon takes well to grilling backing or frying, as you like. This piece was perfectly grilled and delicious.
Lardo is, well, lard – pig fat – but not the white brick of fat you buy in the grocery store. It is an ancient Italian dish made by curing pork fatback with salt, pepper and various herb and spices. It is traditionally sliced very thin and served with bread as an antipasto. I’ve seen it used a few times as it was here – a thin slice on top of lean meat and melted under a broiler or with a small kitchen torch. Fatphobes may turn away is disgust, but it is a very small amount because it is sliced so thin, and it adds nice flavor and mouth feel to the dish.
A bit of trivia: sturgeon is not considered kosher because it is a fish with no scales. If there were any doubt, adding the pig fat made sure.
Kicking up the flavor profile of this dish were some sliced kunqualts (small citrus fruits that taste a bit like oranges or clementines with the tartness of lemons or limes), harissa (a hot chili paste from Tunisia and other northern African countries) and fermented ramps.
Fermented ramps are produced when the fresh vegetable is allowed to sit in lightly salted water protected from air while bacteria convert sugar in the ramps to lactic acid. Kimchi is spicy fermented cabbage. The process mellows the flavors of the ramps and, according to some, improves their nutritional profile by making them more digestible and adding probiotics. I leave the nutrition science to others, but they tasted great in this dish.
The wine pairing was a terrific choice. Kerner is a relatively new variety of wine grape developed in Germany in 1929 by crossing White Riesling with a red variety called Trollinger. It is a light, aromatic white wine with many of the aromas and flavors of Riesling – apples, peaches, apricots and so on. Most of the Kerners I have had were, like this one, from the Alto Adige region in northern Italy, up near the Austrian border. It has both the nose and the flavors of a good Kerner as well as enough acidity to balance the slight sweetness of the wine and make it clean and crisp as it washed down the fish.
The second course was Chilled Spring Onion Soup with Alaskan king crab, orange, lemongrass and green garlic froth. It was served with the 2012 Angeloet Figli Negro “Perdaudin,” Roero Arneis from Piedmont, Italy.
If you have any imagination at all, you can almost taste and smell this one just by looking at the list of ingredients: spring onions, lemongrass, oranges and garlic. Add a little crab meat for texture and you have one delicious summer soup.
This course came with another white wine from northern Italy, an Arneis from the northwest corner of the country, Piedmont. Piedmont is the home of two of the greatest, biggest and long lived Italian red wines, Barolo and Barbaresco. Both made from the Nebbiolo grape, they can be amazing when mature. Piedmont also gives us the much more easy going, fruity Barbera and Dolcerro wines, both made from Barbera grapes, and the famous sparkling wine, Asti Spumante, made from Moscato.
Piedmont produces two white wines that can be quite good (though often they are not): Gavi, made from the Cortese grape and Arneis made from the grape of the same name, Arneis at its best is a fruity wine with good acidity and a fairly full body that I normally think of with seafood. This pairing worked quite well, but I think a wine with more acidity or a sparkling wine might have been even better.
Course #4 was Poached Loup de Mer with crispy skin, artichoke, smoked roe and shisito consommé. Instead of a wine, Contratto Vermouth Bianco & Soda was served.
This was a dish that almost fell into the “too pretty to eat” category. The edible flowers and herbs on top were beautiful and the colors of the smoked roe, crispy skin and broth completed the picture. Still, that “eating with your eyes” idea only get you so far. Eventually, you have to pick up your fork and go to work. I’m glad I did. The poached fish was meltingly tender, the crispy skin added the perfect crunch, and the broth and garnished added variations in flavor and texture to each bite.
My primary use for white Vermouth is in a classic Gin Martini and, yes, I am of the school that says you need at least a little Vermouth to make a real Martini. My go-to brand has always been Noilly-Prat, as they made the driest, most Martini-friendly Vermouth I know. Unfortunately, they stopped producing the very dry version that was sold only in the US specifically for Martini lovers. Major bummer.
I don’t recall having tried Contratto Vermouth before this, though I recognized the name. The brand has an interesting history. The first Contratto Vermouth was produced in the 1890s, but was stopped in the 1960s when Vermouth fell out of favor with most of the drinking public. However, the recent renaissance in mixology led to the re-introduction of the brand. I enjoyed the Vermouth and Soda. It was refreshing and worked well with the dish. I probably would have gone for a good Chardonnay if I was ordering something, but that’s just me.
Next up: Hokkaido Scallop, Hudson Valley foie gras, blueberry, granola andoxalis and a glass of 2010 Emile Beyer Pfersigberg Grand Cru Riesling from Alsace, France. Scallop, foie gras and Alsatian Riesling – this one had my name on it.
Hokkaido Scallops come from the cold, deep waters off of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido and are often used in sushi. In this case, they were simply seared, as was the foie gras (duck liver) from the Hudson Valley in New York. These are two of my favorite luxury foods. Garnished with a little blueberry (foie gras loves fruit) and oxalis (a type of sorrel with edible leaves and flowers that were both in this dish), this dish was lovely to look at, even better to eat.
I love Alsatian wines, and Emile Beyer is a consistently good producer which owns some of the best (Grand Cru) vineyards in Alsace. Pfersigberg is one such vineyard, and his 2010 Riesling, while still very young, was delicious. Riesling (arguably) produces some of the most age worthy white wines on the planet. This one was just starting to lose some of the apple and tropical fruit of its youth while the minerality and complex stone fruit aromas were starting to develop.
After four delicious seafood courses (five counting the amuse bouche, although the crab was mostly a garnish in the soup) it was time to move on to some meat. Course number 5: Berkshire Pork Belly with coriander meringue, Szechuan pepper, celery and anise hyssop served with 2013 Division-villages “Les Petits Fers” Gamay Noir from Oregon.
In the 1980s the common wisdom was that fat, especially saturated fat and cholesterol in our diets was making us all fat and causing heart disease. Subsequent research has shown that this was, at best, overstated and possibly exactly wrong. I will let the medical community continue to sort that out, as I am not qualified. However, there is no doubt that, in reaction to this fat phobia, pork producers did their best to breed leaner and leaner pigs. Unfortunately, the leaner the pork became, the less flavor it had as well.
Fortunately, some of the old “full fat” breeds still survive, now known as “heritage” varieties. One of those breeds is the Berkshire, which came from Berkshire county in England. This pig and similar breeds are in high demand by chefs today because their flavor and texture are noticeably better than common commercial breeds.
Chef Sandoval treated the pork with the respect it deserves. Coriander (the dried fruit of the coriander plant, the green leaves of which are also known as Cilantro) has a warm, nutty flavor with hints of lemon and orange. Pork loves ground coriander. The green leaves of the herb anise hyssop provided a little anise (licorice) flavor and aroma, while Szechuan pepper gave just a touch of heat.
The 2013 Division-Villages “Les Petit Fers” (“The Little Irons”) Gamay Noir is made using fruit from two vineyards in Oregon. The fruit from one vineyard is fermented using carbonic maceration, the same technique used in France to produce Beaujolais Nouveau. Whole clusters of grapes are put in tanks and the fermentation occurs while most of the juice is still inside the grapes and under a blanket of carbon dioxide. The grapes from the second vineyard are pressed and the juice fermented normally. The final product is a blend of these two wines.
Like Beaujolais, this a a light, bright fruity wine and, objectively, it is a great match with the pork. It happens that I am not wild about the taste of Gamay, whether produced in France or elsewhere, so it was not my favorite wine of the night, but that puts me in the minority.
The sixth course was Roasted Rack of Lamb with cippolini ash, buttermilk, huckleberry jus, nasturtium. The wine to accompany the lamb was the 2009 Dauvergne Ranvier “Vin Rare” Côte-Rôtie, France.
Another beautiful presentation. The lamb loin was roasted medium-rare and rolled in the ash of cippolini onions (more for presentation than for flavor) and served with a cippolini onion, a huckleberry jus and nasturtium leaves. Winner.
The wine was stunning. The 2009 Dauvergne Ranvier “Vin Rare” Côte-Rôtie is a blend of 80% Grenache and 20% Sytah. Deep, almost black, purple color. Tons of black fruit and licorice on the nose. Huge on the palate as the flavor goes on and on. Still very young, this one will be a beauty when it grows up.
There was really no where left to go after the lamb-Côte-Rôtie combination. It was that good. Wisely, the chef made that the apex of the meal and we cruised to a gentle ending with a creative cheese course and two sweet courses.
I love a traditional cheese course at or near the end of a meal. Yes, I know cheese can pack a lot of calories, but I just want 3 or 4 pieces that just add up to an ounce or two. I love all kinds of cheeses from mild to strong, cheddar to blue. Raclette is a semi-hard cheese made in both France and Switzerland. It is often served by melting the surface of a block of the cheese (traditionally in front of a fireplace) and scraping the melted cheese onto a plate.
The cheese course for this meal was Aerated Raclette with a membrillo stuffed eclair, pancetta and basil buds. A glass of NV Barbolino “Lancillotto” Lambrusco from Emilia-Romagna, Italy was poured with it.
Apparently the Raclette was melted and then aerated to give it a lighter texture. Membrillo is basically a jelly made from quince that is popular in hispanic countries, Portugal and Italy. Quince is a pear-shaped fruit that is yellow when ripe but generally is too sour to eat as is, so it has historically been used cooked, sweetened and eaten or preserved as a jelly or paste. It is often served with cheese, on bread or to stuff pastries, among other uses.
The seventh course was composed of the runny Raclette in a glass with a little pancetta (bacon & cheese – yum!) and some basil buds. The membrillo stuffed eclair could be used to dip in the cheese and scoop out a nice bite. I’ve had all the ingredients in this dish any number of times, but never combined in quite this way. It was a clever and delicious play on the cheese course.
Lambrusco is the name of an Italian grape and the wine made from that grape. It was enormously popular in the 70s and 80s as a sweet, very fruity wine that was “frizzante,” which means “lightly sparkling,” or “fizzy.” Its popularity has waned and I think there are many, much better, wines to chose from, but it was kind of fun to taste this blast from the past. Served cold on a hot summer day, it tasted pretty good. I have to confess that in the late 70s I though Lambrusco was a really good and sophisticated wine.
The first of two sweet courses (course #8 if you’re keeping score) was Oatmeal Streusel with pine nut nougat, apricot, sherry ice cream and dreamsicle. A 1985 Bodegas Toro Albala, Don PX Gran Reserva Sherry was poured on the side.
I have been to more than one world-class restaurant where I enjoyed a fabulous meal, only to have the evening turn painful when it ended with four or five sweet courses, plus some mignardises and maybe some candy for good measure. While I am sure that there are many of the “eat dessert first” philosophy who are happy to see a parade of sweet courses at the end of a meal, I am happy with one or two sweet bites. A perfect dark chocolate truffle is, in my world, a perfect ending after the cheese course.
Senza does dessert in a way that should satisfy most people. First, a not too sweet, non-chocolate course for the unfortunate few who don’t appreciate chocolate. (I saw a poster in a restaurant once that said “90% of all people say they like chocolate. 10% of all people are liars.”) Second, a nice chocolate course.
This first dessert was another tour de force of flavors and textures on a plate: the crunchy streusel with some warm spice flavors, the chewy nougat and the smooth ice cream. Sweet, but not too sweet and paired perfectly with 1985 Bodegas Toro Albala, Don PX Gran Reserva Sherry. Bodegas Toro Albala is an outstanding Sherry producer. “PX” stands for Pedro Ximénez, the grape from which this sweet wine is produced. Like many high-end dessert wines, a vintage PX takes many years to mature, and the 1985 is just hitting its stride. In addition to the obvious nutty and raisiny notes of Sherry, this one has notes of herbs, tobacco, licorice, coffee, cherries and no doubt more that I can’t remember. It is truly a wine to be savored – and I did.
And for the 9th (10th if you count the amuse) and final course, Chocolate Cremeux with lemon verbena, raspberry, rosemary, pumpkin seed served with NV Anfre Clouet Grand Cru Brut Rosé Champagne.
A “cremeux” is a rich, dense custard that can be eaten as is, topped with whipped cream, spread on toast, or pretty much used however you like your chocolate. I assume it was pastry chef Phil Rodriguez who developed both of the desserts, and this one is another winner. The cremeux was intensely chocolate, but it was balanced beautifully by the (white chocolate?) sauce and ice cream. The flavor of raspberry is wonderful with chocolate of any color. The lemon verbena was a different way to add a citrus note, and the hint of rosemary added an unexpected herbal note. Yum.
André Clouet is a relatively small producer of Champagnes based in Bouzy, and area that produces outstanding Pinot Noir. This Brut Rosé is 100% Pinot Noir and it is delicious with lovely fruit on the nose and lots of berry flavor in addition to toasty notes. This wine could be served before, during or after more any dinner and be quite welcome.
So, how do I sum it all up? Senza is an outstanding restaurant. Every course is beautiful and combines flavors and textures in interesting ways. The wine (or other beverage) pairings are extremely well done – better than many big name restaurants and at a very reasonable price. Even when a particular wine was not to my personal taste, it was nevertheless well chosen and would appeal to most people.
If you are gluten-intolerant, treat yourself to perhaps the best dinner you will ever have at Senza. If you couldn’t care less about gluten but love great food and great wine, go to Senza.
See you there.
