With the personalized cooking, personalized service and personalized, well, person that have served him so well in Houston, chef-restaurateur Philippe Schmit unveiled a new version of himself last night. In addition to his going-gangbusters eatery called Philippe Restaurant + Bar, he’ll now bring himself and his staff to make dinner in your kitchen for 12-50 of your nearest and dearest. He gave a VIP preview in a large and lovely Bellaire home last night, and somehow they let me in.
“Oh yes, I would be zere,” the newly minted U.S. citizen promised me as I gulped down shrimp, oysters and crab salad from this chilled display on the already chilly patio. According to a card at each place setting, the concept is “catering in your home showcase,” which can include serving on your (I hope best) china and choosing wines to pour from your own cellar. If you don’t possess such a cellar, award-winning sommelier Vanessa Trevino-Boyd will be there to pour her version of the good stuff, as she did last night with bottles from Italy, France, Madeira, Portugal and South Africa.
Chef Philippe, crafty fellow that he is, designed a menu that demonstrated the three major styles of service that will be available: passed, seated and buffet. Among the appetizers swirling through the bubbles-sipping guests were these scrambled eggs with black truffle, plus the self-proclaimed French Cowboy’s rendition of chicken wings with barbecue sauce and something called Frog Legs in a Pond. I’m kind of sorry I didn’t see that last one.
If you were looking forward to a nice, light salad, you didn’t get one. In keeping with Gascony, the French region that gave us the Three Musketeers, there was protein to spare. Above the minimum amount of greens required by law, this salad served up shredded duck confit, smoked duck breast and foie gras, plus in the back a quail egg AND a quail leg atop toasted brioche.
Despite the challenges of doing so in somebody else’s oven, Chef Philippe succeeded masterfully - he is an official Master Chef of France, after all - with this cheese souffle. And since the cheese was gorgonzola, you had no trouble telling when it got close to your table. Cauliflower, chervil and walnuts joined in the souffle itself, making for a tidy little marriage. But the real hit was the port wine sauce you could pour on youself. Maybe literally.
Philippe being a classically trained French chef and all, there was an official “fish course,” and you can’t get much more French than rouget. He said he was impressed that the fish was caught only a day earlier, and certainly that achievement was hammered home by the clean, saltwater flavor of rouget and not a whole lot else. That foam, by the way, was described as “saffron emulsion.”
To showcase the buffet capabilities of his new expansion, the chef set up a carving station of beef sirloin crusted with mustard and a bit of breadcrumbs. By this point, many of the diners were groaning about how full they were from eating everything else, but there’s just something about red meat in the Gret Stet of Texas. After everyone finished taking photos, the stuff started to disappear off the cutting board. Fast.
A buffet, of course, isn’t only meat. For one thing, there were no fewer than five globetrotting sauces to spoon over the sirloin: bearnaise, barbecue, peppercorn, bordelaise and chimichurri. And there were also lots of vegetable sides, from classic ratatouille to a lovely mix of root vegetables, creamy spinach and an oversized bowl of haricot vert that I decided to empty before agreeing to go home. Oh, and there was one more tres Philippe vegetable…
Really now, what is there to say about truffled mac and cheese fries? At our table, we mostly tried to guess how they got to be that way, what innocent young American mac and cheese must have done to fall in with that bad crowd from France. Mac and cheese baked in a sheet pan probably, then cut into sticks, battered and deep-fried. Happily, especially for me, the truffle oil was more of a perfume than a flavor.
The grand finale was classic French Opera Cake, a fantasy of super-thin layers of different kinds of chocolate. Perhaps best of all was the citrus salad (candied orange) and the cafe brulot chantilly cream. Taken together, the courses were 100% a case of “Hey kids, don’t try this at home.” Still, if you want somebody to come to your home and try it for you, I’ve heard rumors there’s this French guy.
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