Asheville, Day Two (Part II: Savoy)

We had made dinner reservations at Savoy for Saturday night. We discovered Savoy on our last visit and loved it so much that we had to go back. If anything, our latest meal there proved to be even better. Savoy's regular menu is very appealing, but to us the chief attraction was their chef's tasting menu. They offer a three-course and a five-course version, with optional wine pairings. According to the staff, both amount to about the same amount of food, though I find that difficult to believe, the chief difference is the relative presence or absence of dessert (not sure what the remaining course is). You have absolutely no say over what comes out of the kitchen. A nightmare scenario in a lot of places, but in the right hands, like those at Savoy, it could be one of the best meals of your life. We opted for the three-course version.

First up was a salad of spring pea shoots and duck confit with goat cheese, roasted beets and toasted pumpkin seeds. I had had duck confit -- made by braising duck legs in nothing but their own fat for many hours -- only once before, and I was not wild about it. On that occasion it was gloppy and gelatinous, large globules of the cold, aspic-like fat still clinging to the meat. Savoy's could not have been more different. Made right in their own kitchen, it was rich and full of flavor but with a surprisingly dry texture, almost jerky-like, without a trace of external fat. It was pleasantly salty, and there was just enough on the plate to get a good idea of the flavor without having the rest of the ingredients overwhelmed. The pea shoots -- another green I didn't know could be eaten -- were fairly bland but worked great as a base for everything else. I wondered if the leaves of all plants from which we normally consume other parts are actually edible. I discovered beet greens the same way just last year and now love them. I suspect we'll see more of these kinds of greens in restaurants in the near future as the chefs look for ways to cut costs while continuing to be innovative in a craft fundamentally limited by the selection of raw materials. Speaking of beets, they were very good, though possibly not the best ever, but again, it was the function they served that made them shine. The whole salad was an exercise in making a harmonious whole out of contrasting parts. The beets provided the much-needed sweetness, again in perfect balance. The tangy goat cheese and the smoky, crunchy pumpkin seeds completed the picture in the same way. The salad wasn't dressed so much as garnished with a few drops of a thick balsamic reduction, for appearance more than anything else. There was enough flavor and variety in the ingredients to make dressing superfluous.

The wine we ended up with -- the pairings are done by the individual servers at Savoy, so two tables having the same tasting menu are likely to end up with different wines -- was a Cava from Castelblanco. It was very good, far better than the budget Cavas we drink at home (most often the dirt-cheap Cristalino and occasionally a marginally better 1+1=3). It tasted more like a decent Champagne (based on my extremely limited experience of it, anyhow), without the thin sourness common in inexpensive sparklers.

Next up was the fish course -- seared ahi tuna with panzanella salad, garnished with flash-fried calamari. The tuna was very good, completely raw in the middle, with about a quarter-inch cooked layer around the outside, just enough to provide some contrast. It tasted milder than what I'm used to getting at sushi restaurants, probably because this was ahi tuna as opposed to whatever variety the sushi shops normally use, and noticeably less salty. A piece of really good tuna is one of those basic flavors that I don't think I could ever tire of, and the fewer other ingredients there are to interfere with it the better. Savoy's chef, however, took some bold steps, and quite risky if you ask me, by combining things the way he did, and he pulled it off.

Panzanella sounds bizarre on the surface. It's one of those old-world dishes (if you can even call it that) born out of necessity and gourmetified by contemporary chefs, mostly because it has an exotic-sounding name that looks good on fancy restaurant menus. It is essentially cubes of stale bread mixed with olive oil, chopped garlic and salt. It was used to make day-old bread palatable. Most Mediterranean countries have a version. If you were lucky enough to have other things available, you could throw them in. Bits of bell pepper maybe, or some fresh herbs, to attempt to lift the thing out of its humblest-of-the-humble essence. But at bottom, it's just chunks of stale bread. If that wasn't enough, bread with rare tuna would seem like an odd combination, too. Most of us think of tuna in Asian contexts, and Asian cuisines use virtually no bread. Tuna fillet sandwiches in upscale sandwich shops rarely work, in my opinion, and in any case, the tuna is usually far more cooked, which gives it a completely different flavor and texture. At Savoy, however, the combination worked, probably because of the good olive oil the bread was soaked in, the herbs, and the perfectly balanced seasonings. The calamari -- little baby ones; I picked out a few tentacles, always the most delicious part -- added that little bit of extra something that made it memorable. They were exceptionally tender, perhaps the best squid I've ever had, certainly in the top three.

Wine number two was a California rosé from Lys. I have a vague recollection of having had a Lys on our first visit to Savoy, a red of some kind. The rosé was good -- dry, fairly big on the palate, with some berries on the nose and a slightly chalky mouthfeel. It went well with the tuna. I neglected to ask what grape varieties were in it.

We finished with the meat course of Wagyu flatiron steak (Kobe grown outside of Japan; our example came from Texas). Seared to medium-rare, with a delicious crust around the outside, it was well marbled, tender but not flabby, and exceptionally flavorful. There wasn't much of it, and thank goodness for that -- a little went a long way, and we had had two sizable courses already. The beef was served over potato "risotto" -- another recent trend, a good one unlike some others, I think. A dice of vegetables -- potatoes in this case -- is cooked the way a risotto would be, by making it gradually absorb liquid in a pan. It did taste more similar to risotto that I expected, though there was also a pronounced potato flavor and a starchy texture. There was also some locally grown swiss chard, simply sauteed, and the whole thing was finished with what our server described as a crème fraîche-peppercorn sauce. Much like the salad dressing, there wasn't much of it, but there didn't need to be. There was a ton of flavor in the dish already, and everything was perfectly moist.
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The wine was a a Spanish old-wine Grenache from Alteca. The server did let it slip that it was only about $12 a bottle retail, which sounded like a disappointment initially as I was hoping for a glass (and a scant one at that -- the wine pairings are not full glasses) of something I couldn't afford to drink in any other context. It proved to be delicious, however -- big and fruity, with solid but not overwhelming tannins. Sturdy, but approachable. An example of European wine makers catering to American tastes, some might complain, but I loved every sip.

The service throughout the meal was exceptional. Our server, whose name is escaping me for some reason, explained every course including the parts of the country the non-local ingredients came from, clearly answered the one or two questions we had, and was authoritative without being condescending. Once each course was served and described, he disappeared, and magically reappeared exactly when we needed him. Sounds easy, but so many restaurants can't get that part right that it can ruin an otherwise excellent meal. Savoy definitely got it right.

We took a glance at the dessert menu, out of curiosity more than anything else. I was amused to find a fancy dessert based on zeppole -- Italian fried dough balls I used to get at local pizzerias in Queens when I was a kid. They were five for a buck in those days. We lingered over coffee, surprisingly good and fresh -- another thing that most otherwise excellent restaurants usually neglect -- then headed back to the inn, the most memorable meal in recent memory sadly, but also very pleasantly, over.