Foretelling a quietly brilliant meal

In the FT, Mike Steinberger reacts to unsavory innovations by much-written-of chefs like El Bulli's Ferran Adria and The French Laundry and Per Se's Thomas Keller. At a dinner last spring at Alain Ducasse's 3-star Monte Carlo restaurant, Louis XV, he tasted the light: "Naturally, the meal began with an amuse, but one slightly more substantial than usual: It was a crudite, consisting of several stalks of celery, a few baby carrots, a few radishes, several other raw vegetables and a balsamic dipping sauce... It was disarming. But then I bit into a crisp infant carrot bursting with flavour and, as I did, I grasped the ingenious message. [The amuse] signaled that the dinner to come would be defined by flawless ingredients and simple preparations meant to draw the maximum flavor... It was just a quiet, brilliant dish that foretold a quietly brilliant meal, a meal that represented the apotheosis of haute cuisine."