I thought of having a filet mignon for dessert to go with the 1/4 bottle of wine remaining; I chickened out. B ordered the lemon meringue torte with basil sauce - a bit of an oddity, basil sauce, but it went remarkably well, and this was one of the reasons one goes to
such a place: to find new taste relationships that you'd never have thought of yourself but that go together as seamlessly as hot dogs and beans or foie gras and apples. It was a huge piece: about six inches square.I had decaf espresso (insufficiently decaffeinated,
I discovered) and the chocolate bar with hazelnut cream sauce. A childish extravagance, and my eyes goggled out when they served three of them, each twice the size of a Baby Ruth bar. They consisted of rich dark chocolate mousse layered with crisp wafer and puddled
with a hazelnut sauce that looked like cafe au lait. We decided that 1. it was near the end of the evening, so they had lots of surplus food and 2. they were amused by us. We cleaned our plates nonetheless. So they brought us a tray that contained
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Chocolate-covered grapes, espresso squares, mini-fruit tarts (raspberry, blueberry), pistachio wafers; I think this was a test: real true card-carrying gluttons would have wolfed the whole: we ate the good things and left part of the less good things. The wafers (thin
lace cookies with slices of pistachio) were extraordinary; the tarts were good but ordinary; the grapes were just plain weird (Thompson grapes dipped in good dark chocolate and then rolled in cocoa); and the espresso squares tasted as though they had been set up with gelatin.
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I'd go again, if I were rich enough. Michel Richard's Citronelle, in the Latham Hotel, Georgetown. Dinner for two, $100-200 without wine.