Saturday, August 3, 2002
Returned movies. Light lunch at an Internet cafe across the street from the Coast Inn. Steam room and full body massages for both of us at Spa Josephine (1400 South Coast Hwy, Laguna Beach, 949-497-8461). Franz was our masseur—he was very good. Dinner at Savoury's (not Savory's) [1287 South Coast Hwy, Laguna Beach, 949-376-9718], a fine dining restaurant of owner/chef Brad Toles. It's on the ground floor of the Hotel La Casa Del Camino, right across the street from Woody's. The gastronomic vision of this restaurant was as though Chef Toles asked himself with every dish, "How can we pack an astounding number of flavors into this dish and present it so that people's eyes pop out of their heads?" Consequently, every morsel of food seemed to have between 1 and 3 descriptors. You didn't get just butter, but rosemary butter. Your plate didn't have just one dipping sauce—there were 2 or 3 from which to choose, each of which had 2 or more ingredients. If you go to their Web site, you can see things like bread wafers cut into spoonlike shapes dotted with herbs and—in the bowl of the spoon—what appears to be at least 4 different foods: perhaps one is a prawn and celery nib sitting on a large scallop dotted with an herbed olive oil. Perhaps another is a slice of heirloom tomato with snippets of green and white asparagus tied together with chives. We can't say for certain, because their Web site is awful: one page predicted, "NEW SPRING MENU COMING SOON" in August, and the "Menus" page gave a "file not found" error. Nowhere on their Web site could you find anything describing the food in any detail, and even the few photos of food that appeared were too small to satisfy. During dinner, our senses were too overwhelmed to allow our hands to take notes, but, as an example, if you search Google for "savoury's judy chamberlain" you'll find mouthfuls such as "lobster and blue crab cannelloni" (3 descriptors) and "wood-smoked Chilean seabass" (3 descriptors) and "pistachio-crusted foie gras in a balsamic wine reduction" (5 descriptors). Yes, all our food tasted deliciously and was perfectly cooked, and yes, it was all presented in visually stunning ways, but in this artistic frenzy I was unable to focus my pleasure because every plate literally had 8 or more flavors competing against each other. Even the breadsticks plate was graced (or cursed) with this touch; they came with a whipped, herbed butter and an infused oil and something else we can't remember. It made me think, "Is this excess necessary to impart an enjoyable dining experience?" which is something I don't think I've ever considered at any other restaurant. The decor was very tasteful: a restrained take on modern Spain. Our table looked out across the outdoor patio tables onto the busy sidewalk and the busier main street, and the large, missiony archways allowed favorable lighting for our meal. Service was the finest we'd seen in a long time, certainly the finest we'd experienced on our vacation, so we reveled in the luxury. Despite my criticisms of the chef, I recommend dining here solely for the bizarre experience of attempting to decide whether the dish you just got was an atrocity of culinary arts or an artistic masterpiece worthy of a museum (or both). Most of the time, my thoughts ran like this: "how beautiful! ... my God that's a lot of flavors for one dish ... that's very tasty, but I can't remember what I just ate!" Our meal for two came to US$118 before the tip. Having dined there once, I don't feel the need to return unless it's for the selfish amusement of writing a small book describing exactly what we ate. After dinner, we hung out at the Boom Boom Room but got tired after a short while—it was the same as yesterday: good DJ up front, bad DJ on the dance floor. We left early and went to bed.