Charlie Palmers

We dined for hours last Saturday at Charlie Palmer at Bloomingdales in South Coast Plaza. Our friend and Scott's catering partner Kevin works in the kitchen there, so as a wedding gift he had the chef cook a coursed meal for us. We were told to arrive at 6pm and that is all we knew about the night...we didn't leave until 11:30.
The restaurant is very New York City chic, decorated in what Scott and I deemed "organic elegance", which is best described as a mix of natural colors and wood and modern lines and chandeliers. The main wall in the bar was flanked by a huge picture of two horses kissing...weird... The crowd was upscale OC, it looked like everyone just bought new outfits at the attached Bloomingdales. There were 2 Lamborghinis parked out front, one orange and one bright green, and we saw a guy in the bar who we are pretty sure was Jerry Rice. So the crowd this place draws is not really our crowd, but we were very excited to be treated to a coursed meal!
So here's what we ate...there were 12 courses. Now if we knew there was going to be that many courses, I would have timed my eating better, and eaten a few bites of each thing as to not get full, but since we were expecting 5 or 6 courses, we got full half way through and we only took mini bites of the last 5 courses. We thought the server was kidding as he said "You're half way through" as he served the 6th course...but we learned otherwise after that...
Course 1: corn custard with scallions, corn nuts, truffle oil
Course 2: beet salad, Roquefort cheese, walnut oil, beet puree, pistachios
Course 3: *octopus carpaccio terrine, salad of new potatoes, fennel, olives, dill, lemon
Course 4: *charcuterie board: house made chorizo, lomo, salami, pork pate, mustard, onion relish, pickled jalapeno green beans, and more stuff I can’t remember
Course 5: **foie gras touchon, pickled peach, basil foam, peach puree, pickled cherries, almonds, raisin brioche
Course 6: scallop and langostine, mussels, green sauce, Chinese long bean
Course 7: seared ono, foie gras, wilted spinach
Course 8: pork belly, stewed cantaloupe, cherries, green onion
Course 9: chicken roulade, broccoli puree, soy cumin sauce
Course 10: pancetta wrapped quail, stewed cranberry beans and carrots
Course 11: duck breast medallions, won ton, soy cumin sauce
Course 12: *braised pineapple, with micro cilantro brown sugar cake, vanilla ice cream
Now the starred ones were my favorites, and the double star was my very favorite dish of the night. The foie gras touchon was heaven on earth and I want that dished served to me in my in bed every single morning. Foie gras touchon is a cylinder of gently simmered, slow cooked foie gras, so the texture is like soft butter. You spread it on this wonderfully freshly baked raisin brioche and decorate it with bits of pickled fruit and peach puree...mmmm
Courses 1-6 were delicious and on the most part, light and fresh. Courses 7-11 were, in my opinion, too heavy and rich for such a long coursed menu. They really lacked freshness, and we weren't very impressed with them. In fact, course 9, the chicken, was our least favorite, and the broccoli puree was almost inedible (it had truffle oil on it which brought out that flavor of the water left in the pot after you boil broccoli too long...yuck!)
But the dessert was wonderful, and the brown sugar cake tasted like the filling of a giant See's butterscotch square (my favorite See's candy). The pastry chef had a second dessert plated for us too, but we escaped our table when Kevin gave us a tour of the kitchen. Scott knew about half the kitchen from his stints at Kimera and The Montage (apparently this is the new hotspot to work too). I saw our plates in the kitchen, it was some sort of fried fritter, but we never ate them...