October 25, 1971 |
Vintage Insatiable
Shadows at Stonehenge
To speak of Albert Stockli as the Escoffier of our generation is not an insult to Escoffier. It is an insult to our generation, a critique of its excesses. Like Escoffier, Stockli is a prolific inventor. Flashily wedding the odd and the unlikely in a feast of shock and delight, Stockli was the consummate creative chef for the irrepressible sixties.
With Albert Stockli overseeing the kitchens and Joseph Baum (now deposed) as president, alchemizing gastronomic fantasy into expense-account reality (the Forum of the Twelve Caesars, the Four Seasons, La Fonda del Sol), Restaurant Associates broke through classic cliché. Then, struck down physically in the fevered pace of RA expansion, Stockli left the giant feeding firm, retreating to the sylvan exurbia of Ridgefield, Connecticut. There he bought the Stonehenge Inn.
Now one can accuse Albert Stockli of purism. Know that his is the mind which first conceived of stuffing a fresh peach with mousse of ham, his the soul that dared bisque of smelts and avocado, his the hand that elevated beer batter and mustard fruits into a cultural syndrome. Thus the hungry pilgrim does not brave the Merritt Parkway in the full lunge of the commuting lemmings expecting to find at Stonehenge the creative classicism of a Paul Bocuse, or the blunt and masterful simplicity of the Brothers Troisgros—Michelin three-star divinities of France.
Still, Stockli’s Stonehenge has been rashly celebrated. His philosophy of honoring the harvest of the season and the bounty of the region in a time of creeping nutritional plastification has been highly sung. So the Merritt Parkway pilgrim’s expectations ride high. Unhappily, Stonehenge today is sadly demoralized… a pale parody of Albert Stockli’s dream. Fame, ennui, and the truculence of the staff take their toll. When the house is full, gremlins rule the kitchen. And not all those daring juxtapositions of unlikely ingredients work. Cream of oat soup: what a joy to the imagination, what a bore to the palate. Seafood and cabbage slaw: very salty, very tart, very strange. Sausage in a pastry wrap, served fridge cold, would have been prouder crisp, hot and minus its overwhelming crown of pickled onion.
The menu is bold and adventurous, offering varied creatures of the sea in beer batter, “our own live brook trout” baked crisp or classic bleu, beef carbonade with horseradish mousseline, lamp chops sauté with puree of avocado and braised lettuce, émincé of turkey breast Javanese with pilaf and piña nuts, roast young pheasant with chestnut puree, barbecued smoked pork loin with cassis and Bavarian red cabbage, all on the $9 prix fixe dinner, with quiche or terrine or ratatouille or stuffed mussels to start plus soup, salad, vegetable, dessert, and coffee. A la carte, there is game -- partridge chartreuse ($20 for two), quail stuffed with grapes en crôute ($9), pheasant en plumage ($17 for two)—plus steaks, chops and duckling.
The soups defy cliché, some brilliantly, others less so. The chilled apple vichyssoise had an unpleasant aftertaste. Bisque of tomato with thyme was a thick purée without the tiniest trace of herb. But the chilled cherry soup was a thin tart ambrosia, and Swiss cream of barley was mythic, a potage to ensnare a barley soup lover’s soul. There is hot home-baked bread and fresh sweet butter. The chocolate cake of the inn is a chocolate seduction, crisp texture alternating with velvet. And the chocolate praline mousse is deeply dark and delicious.
But the weekend swarms are fatal to the fragile spirit of Stonehenge. Discipline founders. The kitchen must be chaos, with the staff dipping sauces willy-nilly, never mind what goes where. So that horseradish mousseline, promised with the veal terrine, arrives instead atop the saucisson with cabbage en brioche, and a stuffed baby chicken is served quite naked and forlorn, with no hint of promised Madeira. The baked trout is overdone and overpowered by its thick beer batter. Lamp chops were asked for rare. “Impossible,” the captain said. “They’re not cooked to order.” The salad, a fine blend of greens in an excellant vinaigrette, was marred with rust and fatigue. Corn-on-the-cob was tough, mushy and antique. And the dull pasty bits of spaetzle with the veal Cordon Bleu suffered because no one had given them the butter bake prescribed by Stockli in his cookbook Splendid Fare. An order for soufflé provoked a “ha,” and a request for espresso was denied. A mildly disappointing dinner for four, two drinks, a bottle of Corton-Charlemagne, a half of Gevrey-Chambertin, with tips and tax, cost $72.90.
Still, indolent lovers may be tempted by the bucolic camouflage of summer lunch at Stonehenge (cottages are $25 for the night). The sunny dining room is discreetly populated by well marbled Mesdames of a certain age. There are mallards cutting throughways across the pond and a lazy swing for two. What a setting for indulgence of the senses. If only there were a chef on duty. “Not at lunch,” our captain confided, when we asked for a soufflé. “There is no chef in the kitchen.” The menu reflects this limitation. Sharply tailored, it offers the famous shrimp in beer batter, trout similarly coated or bleu, quiche, veal bratwurst, lamb stew, chef’s salad and cold meat platter, $3.25 and up, including dessert and coffee, appetizers à la carte.
A whole quiche was brought to the serving cart, a wedge cut and served: it was fluffy and thickly studded with Gruyere ($1.25). There were exquisite crêpes ($1.75) wrapped around dark woody mushrooms napped in a fragile Mornay sauce. In a fit of gourmandism, we decided to share an order of beer-battered shrimp ($3.75)—inflated crisp balloons to dip in a mustardy fruit sauce—while a page was dispatched to fetch our trout from the tank beyond the pond.
“You’re paying quite a price for this wine,” our friendly captain commented, as he presented the Clos des Mouches, a full, elegant white Beaune, admittedly no bargain at $15.50.
“But it’s a lovely wine,” I said.
“Well, I wouldn’t pay it,” he observed.
“This trout was alive 67 seconds ago,” he announced proudly. And there it was, a pale bleu ingénue, standing on edge curled and alert. It was served neatly boned and tender, then bathed in a very thin white sauce which the waiter proceeded to spill on the chair, the floor and my sleeve. “I didn’t get you too badly, did I?” he asked. The dessert cart offered an apricot pastry—the fruit tasted home-preserved—and a moist Black Forest torte. But again, no espresso.
“The bar is closed,” was the excuse. And then the check arrived, unbidden. Tariff: $42.55, including tip.
A chefless lunch and a lackluster weekend dinner seemed a less than fair test for the fabled glories of Stonehenge. So again we braved the traffic crunch, on a mundane Wednesday, arriving, alas, 45 minutes late for an 8:30 reservation. From his office, Stockli himself emerged, promising, “I will take care of everything for you… don’t worry.” He disappeared into the kitchen, leaving us at the mercy of a bristlingly hostile crew. Our delinquency was surely to blame for the breakneck pace of dinner and the ravaged larder. Possibly the kitchen was simply unwilling to spend the time for partridge, quail or pheasant, preferring to service quenelles from the steam table and venison cutlet scavenged from an abandoned shoe factory. The venison was inedible. We sent it back, willing to accept anything in its place.
“No, there is nothing,” we were told. “The kitchen staff is gone.” To stave off protein deficiency, we ordered cheese. Our captain, apologetic and determined to divorce himself from the growing mutiny, served huge slices of excellent appenzeller and Coulommiers.
Still, our tardiness in no way excused the blandness of the quenelle, the stringiness of the venison or the pathetic gracelessness of the service. The waiter kept bringing fresh courses before removing soiled plates, tried to serve soup while we were still eating hors d’oeuvres, set plates tilting three inches over the edge of the table and never had the tiniest clue about who had ordered what. Attempts to order white wine with the first course were defeated when the cellar tardily announced that our first two choices were not available just as we finished the second course. At last the angry bristle escalated into sheer malice and unwelcome dimming of the lights. With the welcome stilling of the Muzak went the air conditioning, to be turned on again finally only after several requests.
Snifters of brandy were offered, and lengthy apologies, and there was no charge for the venison on our check. Behind us I felt a barely contained hysteria when it was discovered we’d left the full tip to the captain and, in the spaced marked waiter, written in “zero.”
Students of graffiti may be amused to know that the men’s room wall, papered with buxom nudes, has several gastronomic observations, some not printable. Next to the generous breast: “This is some spicy meatball,” and below:
“Stonehenge is a fourth-rate restaurant.”
Graffitists exaggerate. Given a favorable juxtaposition of the stars, I suspect one might dine at Stockli’s table with rare and special pleasure. But clearly the fabled Stonehenge is in an autumn of random disenchantment.
Stonehenge, Ridgefield, Connecticut, on Route 7