Rustic. Simple. Unadorned. None of these words apply to the dishes coming out of the kitchen at Café Vivant. Helmed by executive chef Jared Wentworth and chef de cuisine Emily Phillips, a meal at this Menlo Park restaurant redefines and updates the term “New Age” for the 2020s.
As a dining experience, Café Vivant is an evolutionary step forward. There are nods to culinary practices from the past, from sauce and sauté work to reductions and deconstructions. The old recipes and techniques have been studied, examined, and then reconceived until they reach an unassailable level of excellence. Mistakes either aren’t taking place or they’re intercepted and destroyed before they make it into the dining room.
I’m not suggesting that the chefs favor, or err, on the side of a cerebral approach. Rather, the complexities on display plausibly alter the narratives normally found on menus. The combination of flavors seemed to be arriving from an outlandish parallel world. One that was being dreamed into ours so that dishes with aesthetic flaws, and our memories of them, would be erased.
This is the first meal I’ve eaten that was undeniably delicious and yet also disconcerting. The minimalist approach to interior design and tableware paired with a maximalist’s penchant for opulent ingredients definitely achieved some algorithm’s refined state of perfection.
At night, Café Vivant glows like a church lit up by candles—but one that sells 3,000 varieties of wine. The list of options is bound in a book that’s as thick as a bible. Each elegant dish is executed with a kind of reverence that suggests the presence of something holy, an invisible nimbus hovering above the plate.
A butter-poached Maine lobster ($42) arrived with its own dark green halo in the shape of a seaweed tuile. Served in a bowl, the chef paired the crustacean with marble-sized balls of a fruit and a vegetable. The menu description mentions a sea urchin companion and a sauternes nage, or broth, but purposefully omitted the rest. The guessing game is an essential part of the fun. We guessed pear (wrong, it was apple) and al dente butternut squash (ding, ding, ding).
The fried quail ($28)—imagine fried chicken but on a much smaller scale—is battered on the bone. It’s meant to be an homage to a Southern dish served with sides of collard greens and cornbread. But the plate is also an exercise in mastering sauces. Gravy, dotted with chives; a peppery orange hot sauce; and, a sweet relish. On paper, the three flavors should be competing for attention. Eaten together they form an unbeatable team. Special shout out for the duck fat cornbread. Sweet and tender, it epitomized the kitchen’s profound understanding of a culturally significant dish and an inventive swerve away from its origins.
Poultry is an essential part of Café Vivant’s identity. Led by co-founders Jason Jacobeit and Daniel Jung, the team has partnered with a farm in Pescadero to raise Heritage breed chickens, other farm animals, and produce. The menu’s philosophy is a union of, at least, two minds. Jacobeit, who was at the restaurant when I had dinner there, told me he pitched the concept of serving whole roast chicken to Wentworth. The chef agreed but asked if he could also make other dishes. Hence the inclusion of lobster, quail, duck, halibut, etc.
I do not regret for a moment our order, which also featured: duck breast gloriously roasted with chestnuts as rich and dense as chocolate; and, halibut bathing in a sumptuous mussel-saffron fumet and adorned with yellow and green zucchini “scales.” But when one of the roast chickens was served at the table next to us, my heart seized with envy. The color of the chicken’s skin had crisped to a golden color in the oven. The bird was at rest on a plush bed made of rosemary and finished with nasturtiums. Even more rosemary was planted like a pennant rising out of the tail end. It looked like a platter of food worthy of being served at a banquet hall out of Dune.
For the final course, Café Vivant’s executive pastry chef fulfilled her role as the Duchess of Deconstructed Desserts. Almira Lukmanova made modern art out of a tarte tatin and a cheesecake. Her apple was caramelized through and through but left largely intact. Again, the menu made no mention of the tiny meringues or the apple skin folded like a pretty ribbon. But Lukmanova’s cheesecake was her boldest statement. Made to look like a crowded bird’s nest, the camembert eggs cracked open with the tap of a fork. It was a whimsical risk that succeeded in delighting a pair of cynical adults.
Café Vivant, 720 Santa Cruz Ave, Menlo Park. Open Tue-Sat 5pm to close. cafevivantca.com @cafevivant
