The true gourmand is a strange mutant. I’m talking here about that rare and irrepressible creature who is totally daffy about what goes into his mouth. Imagine perceiving the first fresh litchi of June as if it were a mystical vision. Imagine weeping over the perfume of a peach. Imagine the sudden heat racing through your body, blurring your vision, making your heart pound. Some get that rush winning with commodities… making a killing at gin rummy… some get it in bed. And – wild and bizarre as it may seem – for some of us, all it takes is the first taste of a wild strawberry.

          So I’m admitting I’m irrational about food. And true gourmands are a very tiny percentage of the population. We are a totally frivolous minority. But our self-indulgence is essentially benign. That’s why I must once again celebrate the splendors of the Palace… an outpost of the most decadent fuss and excess a true gourmand could wish for.

          I’ve spent paragraphs apologizing for loving the Palace… brooded earnest hours away hoping to justify a $200 tariff on a meal for two. The price is even higher now, and the carte des vins could be used as evidence in a case charging outright theft. And I still can’t nice-ify $250 for dinner. I’m not going to try. Some people buy emeralds. Some people have children. I am good to my mouth. And there is no restaurant like the Palace anywhere in this town. No other restaurateur shops with such intense abandon. No one else offers caviar on the prix-fixe dinner. No one else would fly in ortolans. No one else sets a table with such extravagance. No one else has the patience for such ridiculous and spectacular presentations – the toasted-bread clipper ship, the carved-turnip roses, the sculpted-pastry baskets wound with candy ribbons – wonderfully immoral and wanton embellishments.

          There is a natural tendency to want to hate the Palace. It is never spoken of without the coda “the most expensive restaurant in town.” That boast is not likely to engender bursts of affection. The town’s French-restaurant Mafia would love to see it fail. What is it, after all, but the megalomania of Frank Valenza, failed actor, Bronx-born, not even French? But then Valenza has a primitivism that never fails to grate. He has courted the most irritating publicity with his solid-gold credit cards and his $500-a-person birthday dinners.

          Thus, fired by the wholesome paranoia New Yorkers pop like a One-a-Day capsule, we come to the Palace wary for fraud, eager to expose the myth. But the Palace cannot be weighed and measured and starred as if it were some little Mom-and-Pop beanery on Prince Street. I worry about the Palace’s being judged twice in the New York Times, first by a critic who confesses to preferring fish well done and then by a critic who cannot eat pink chicken livers. (True, I have confided my passion for junk food. I like to think it a frailty I keep in its place.) Never mind the latter writer’s obvious errors, like describing cassis as “blackberry liqueur” or confusing a cushion of foie gras under sauce suprême for “a winy brown sauce” or thinking a chocolate truffle filled with vanilla butter cream and crème pâtissière was a cocoa-dusted ice cream ball. What matters is the undue emphasis on price and décor.

          Yes, it’s sad that Valenza’s fortune went into a bland beige setting appropriate for Saks’s better-dress department. The paintings are banal. The best that can be said for the background is just that: it is background. It doesn’t distract. And there is a luxury of space and quiet that’s quite rare.

          There are nights when the pacing falters, times when the brilliant young chef Claude Baills panics. He is especially skittish with someone he wants to impress in the house. Some of the coolest heads in town give in to excess when a restaurant critic is identified. I have had seriously disappointing meals in my favorite restaurants, even an inedible dish in one of the most celebrated three-star inns of France.

          I asked Claude to do something special with sweetbreads and brains for a birthday dinner one night last week. In a characteristic burst of anxiety and ego, he took over the entire meal. The first dish was a brilliant still life: two little mounds side-by-side – duck rillettes and quail mousse – ringed with tiniest pickled white onions and carrot balls, then an outer ring of pristine crescents of orange and grapefruit, a moving counterpoint of sweet, tart, and acid playing against the fattiness of the terrines. “A dizzying immersion in total spectacle,” said my sybaritic friend. But a salad of sweetbreads and brains, ringed with slant cuts of leek under a toss of truffle julienne and bean sprouts – an exercise of exquisite arrogance – was lost under a heavy vinaigrette. Claude Baills the erratic genius just didn’t know when to stop. I can go on with the honor roll of triumphs – and with listing flaws, too. But the flaws here have to do with daring.

          There is an artist-dreamer in the kitchen. He does daring French classics, and every day he walks a high wire. Almost always he makes it. And this sublime madness is financed not by a Barnum amused to see what the suckers will pay, but by philanthropy. The Palace does not make a profit. It almost certainly never will. It is subsidized by Valenza’s pop eatery, the Proof of the Pudding. If you care about your mouth, you will send everyone you know who doesn’t care all that much to Proof… and start saving for your next dinner at the Palace.

The Palace, 420 East 59^th Street

For more on The Palace read my The Palace: Splendor in the Foie Gras, Eight Wonderful Dinners: The Sensualist at the Table and The Palace: How They Ate in Pompeii Before the Lava Flowed.