Issue link: http://papercitymagazine.uberflip.com/i/907630
87 Accoutrements: Mud Australia pebble bowl $153, Herdmar vintage serving fork and spoon $180, Seletti Hybrid Valdrada bowls $46 each, Sertodo Copper martini cup $32, Astier de Villatte stand $125, Riedel whiskey decanter $120, Caspari tumbler $7, all at Kuhl-Linscomb. I t's lunchtime, and I have just been served an appetizer course described on the menu as Roasted Beets Salad. The menu did give a few more details: The beets are accompanied by Blue Heron Farm goat milk yogurt and cheese and a blood-orange-infused extra virgin olive oil. What arrives on the white-tablecloth covered table is a small round bowl that looks like a bright-hued abstract painting. Thin slices of little beets, in colors that call to mind a jockey's silks, are arranged around spoonfuls of yogurt and cheese. Some are swirls of pink and white, some are circles of light and dark yellow, others are orange. Small sprigs of chive stand up among the beets like standards at a joust. Underneath the vegetables is the yogurt and cheese. The flavors intermingle on the palate, back and forth between the sweetness of the roasted beets and the tartness of the dairy. Lunch progresses to an airy caramelized cheese soufflé, then ravioli filled with mint and pea shoots. Today, we are trying a series of the small plates. Each is arranged and presented as an ephemeral artwork. Tearing them up brings out the happy toddler in me. Across the table, the restaurant's creator, Alex Gaudelet, beams. "I was in Houston for the first time, and I had visited the Eastside farmer's market," he says. "I bought some yogurt from the Blue Heron stand to eat in my hotel room." Gaudelet — who has cooked for Paul Bocuse and worked in some of the world's most renowned restaurants — La Tour d'Argent in Paris and Le Gavroche in London — decided the yogurt was extraordinary enough for his Houston restaurant, La Table, which opened in 2015. The menu has come to include locally grown beef and other local produce, when the quality is high enough. Everything has been thought through, planned, refined, and polished by Gaudelet, from the cool gray-and-white upholstery of the chairs in the more formal upstairs dining room, Château, to the custom-made handbag stands and the pastel macaron served as a final treat. Dinner at Le Table's second floor Château is even more visually impressive. In the dimmer light, a gleaming silver guéridon appears tableside for a solemn ceremony. A 42-ounce tomahawk-cut rib- eye of Akaushi -breed beef from a ranch in nearby Flatonia comes out. The steak has been bathing in cognac for 24 hours before being seasoned, seared, basted, and placed on the cart. At the table, the beef is carefully manipulated and doused with more cognac, now flaming, and the liquid is repeatedly ladled over the meat before it is cut. The practice is very old school, but so is a Mozart piano concerto — and it's no less enjoyable. Tableside guéridon service is also employed for a glorious whole roast chicken and for rack of lamb. Finish with a classic chocolate soufflé for two or a selection of macarons made in-house by Salvatore Martone, a pastry chef of the most modern sort with an Instagram following of more than 206,000 pastry devotees. In the day, Martone presides over the pastry and coffee counter on the first floor, near the more casual Marché bistro, where one can buy beautifully wrapped baguettes, cakes, tarts, and its namesake, macarons. The Frenchness of La Table is underscored by the view from the Château dining room overlooking Post Oak Boulevard — the grand street that is to Houston what the Champs-Élysées is to Paris. CHÂTEAU AT LA TABLE ALEX GAUDELET (continued)