Polytechnic ON20
cuisine: Contemporary American
prix-fixe lunch: 3 courses for $35
tasting menu: 6 courses for $50, plus $6-$8 for additional courses
address: 1 State Street (20th Floor), Hartford
phone: (860) 722-5161
credit cards: All major
5 Stars… Extraordinary
Hartford has finally arrived
I had grown tired of apologizing for our capital city’s dining scene, forced to endure lopsided comparisons to New Haven, Greenwich, Norwalk, Stamford and even in-county rival West Hartford. I had wearied of explaining to people that, with anchors like Max Downtown, Carbone’s, Peppercorn’s, Hot Tomato’s and Costa del Sol and newcomers like VIVO, Feng, Firebox and Dish, the Insurance City was coming into its own (or perhaps more correctly, returning to glory days when it could claim standouts like the Hearthstone, the Rib Room, the Signature and L’Américain).
For the past couple of years, I had been tantalized at various charitable and press events by an extravagant morsel here or there from the Polytechnic Club. It was clear there was a prodigious talent in the kitchen. But due to its name, I had mistakenly believed the Polytechnic Club wasn’t open to the public. And of course, I wasn’t about to make people salivate over a dining venue they couldn’t visit, which would be as pointless and frustrating as a virtual massage.
But the Polytechnic Club was reconceived, the space redone and the restaurant reborn as ON20, so named because of its twentieth floor location in the Hartford Steam Boiler Building. Word has gotten out, and now top chefs, restaurateurs and devoted foodies are beating a path to Hartford to experience the cooking of executive chef Noel Jones, much the way enthusiasts line up reservations a year in advance and trek to Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Yountville, California or to Ferran Adrià’s El Bulli in Roses, Spain.
Fortunately, you don’t need to make reservations a year in advance to dine at ON20. Not yet, anyway. All you have to do is navigate the slightly confusing One State Street parking garage and elevators to be richly rewarded. Late one night, though, until I figured out the egress, I thought I might be doomed to wander the lower levels forever—like the Kingston Trio’s poor “Charlie on the M.T.A.”
Normally, I don’t pen reviews that approach the length of the Magna Carta. Nor do I usually write full-fledged reviews of institutions that don’t serve dinner. But ON20 breaks so many rules that I felt compelled to break a couple of my own. Besides, ON20 is experimenting with opening for dinner on selected evenings. And arguably, a lunch at ON20 is the equal of dinner at any restaurant in the state. Guests may choose between two dining options: a three-course prix fixe meal ($35) or a tasting menu (six courses for $50, plus $6 to $8 for additional courses). A twenty percent service charge and a $6 parking charge will be added to the bill.
God knows, I’m the kind of restaurant critic who is focused primarily on the food. It’s the food, stupid. I’d dine on a Manhattan subway platform during rush hour to enjoy fare such as ON20 serves. And conversely, all of the cosseting in the world would mean little to me unless the food grabbed me by the throat. But I couldn’t award our top rating to any restaurant that didn’t perform well in all phases of the dining experience. And without question, ON20 is setting a standard in service and ambiance that few restaurants in the state can match.
Begin with the view. From our table, we looked through a shroud of mist past the Founders Bridge to I-91 as it streamed alongside the Connecticut River. As I strolled through the rooms that make up the twentieth floor, I found different Hartford vistas, each more impressive than the last. Everything looked different from above. Under construction, the roof of the new Connecticut Science Center appeared to be a skateboard ramp to oblivion, while the Connecticut Convention Center resembled an ironing board—intriguing, but probably not what either set of architects had in mind. I’m guessing most architects give no more thought to what a building looks like from above than a woman seeking a seamless tan in the privacy of her fenced-in back yard gives to the possibility of tree-climbing adolescents.
At ON20, however, absolutely nothing is left to chance. The dining room is graciously appointed, but the colors are muted so as not to compete with the incredible view or food. There’s so much space you could weave a Smart Car between the tables. Beautifully conceived place settings include ornate chargers, Reed & Barton silverware, glass knife rests, thick square glass bread plates, butter knives, white linen napkins and glass napkin rings. Jackets may not be required, but gentlemen will feel under-dressed without them. At lunch, there is either live piano or classical guitar music. I haven’t heard the guitarist, but the pianist showed an amazing ability to take pieces “up tempo,” sometimes mid-song, without ruining them. “As Time Goes By” became a fleeting memory that mimicked the song’s name.
The dining room runs as well as it looks, thanks to exceptional personnel like director Erica Howat, dining room manager Marwan Idris, and maître d’ Michael McGarrity. Our waitress, Danielle Casey, was typical of the servers—warm and gracious but always professional. At ON20, seats are pulled out for you, chairs repositioned when you get up and napkins refolded with such timing that you may wonder if the staff has slipped a transmitter onto your person that alerts them to your movements.
The ON20 dining experience may be the height of civility, but Jones’ food is the cutting edge of modernity. Most restaurants with breathtaking views serve food that’s mediocre—or worse. But Jones may be setting the bar higher than any Connecticut chef that has gone before him. The gauntlet has been thrown down to the Thomas Henkelmanns, the Jean-Louis Gerins, the Roy Ips and the Billy Grants (Grant, a good friend of Jones, has been a strong supporter behind the scenes) of our fair state. Trying to keep up with Jones’ stunning, multi-course tasting menus is bound to ignite a culinary arms race that few chefs—perhaps none in Connecticut—can hope to match. The nuclear arms race was a zero sum game in which there could be no winners, but a culinary arms race might conceivably benefit all.
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If I were a normal person, I could have picked three courses from ON20’s prix-fixe menu, and no doubt gone away quite happy. But since I’m the sort who can’t stand to know someone’s having even more fun than he is, I felt compelled to try an extended tasting menu. Besides, with a chef I trust, especially one as brilliant as Jones, there’s nothing I enjoy more than being surprised. Once your dislikes and restrictions, if any, have been stated, it’s so much more fun not knowing what’s coming. And Jones is the kind of chef who could probably make you rethink your dislikes, too.
We not only gave the kitchen no instructions as to our food but we allowed the staff to select matching wines. ON20’s evolving wine list ($40-$280) is dominated by French and American vintages. Offerings by the glass (white $9, red $10-$11) can be selected from a wine cart. Sequentially, our wines included a Clos Du Bois Sauvignon Blanc, a Charles Krug Chardonnay, a Vouvray Demi-Sec Vignobles Brisebarre, a Bridlewood Syrah, an Artesa Pinot Noir and a Vigna del Papa Vin Santo.
An extended tasting at ON20 is a voyage of discovery, a veritable Odyssey, except every adventure is a good one. No monsters lurk in the depths, no sirens lure ships onto the rocks, no trickery will prevent you from having an unforgettable meal. Jones works with the finest, freshest, most eclectic ingredients imaginable. He displays incredible talent for finding the essence of individual components, for marrying compatible flavors, for balancing opposing tastes, for employing color, texture and smell to stimulate your senses fully. You’ll probably never exactly repeat an item, because Jones is a restless soul with a seemingly boundless imagination. Dishes are so well-conceived and sharply etched that each lingers with you afterward, like the rare dream from which you awaken recalling every detail vividly. As I write, I can still “taste” our first course, a plump Kusshi oyster served in a Japanese soup spoon with American sturgeon caviar, pale green cucumber gelée and tiny edible flower petals, a refreshing combination that didn’t compromise the mineral flavor of the luscious bivalve.
Try to visualize our second course: a trio of Spanish-themed treats displayed on a long rectangular white plate. No sequence was suggested, so I decided to work from right to left. On the right was a square of cured Iberian ham balancing a piece of white asparagus, in the middle a dehydrated fig resurrected with a port-and-pomegranate sauce, and on the left was a Washington cherry dipped in Iberian ham fat, its stem still attached for easy handling. The ham and asparagus provided a contrast of tastes and textures, of vegetal cleanness and meaty unctuousness. The fig was small but intense, pairing beautifully with our buttery Chardonnay (don’t forget the role wine can play in maximizing a dish’s potential). Most interesting of all was the coated cherry, its acidity offsetting the richness and flavor of the ham butter, a jolt of Maldon sea salt crystals amplifying its flavor. Clearly, we had journeyed to a mysterious faraway land with different rules and assumptions, a high-concept place where dining and art collided, where food was at once color, form, art but also taste, texture, smell.
Perhaps the truest measure of a great chef is that your favorite dish is always the one you just finished eating. That certainly held true throughout our protracted meal, as each new dish briefly erased the memory of the ones that went before it. One that could easily win a competition on Top Chef was New Zealand langoustine with avocado salad, roasted strawberry and lime air (foam) on top. To the left was a small pile of Szechwan pepper (presumably picked for its complex flavor and mouth-numbing effect), to the right a small pile of fleur de sel, while resting on the foam was a pipette of tomato oil, to be applied as needed. The flavors contrasted and melded together in ways to which words cannot do justice.
I normally don’t enjoy dishes with much sweetness, but at ON20 all of your biases go out the high, wide, tempered glass windows. Braised squid was stuffed with a maple chutney that included tomato, zucchini, onion, pineapple, maple syrup and sherry vinegar, the combination proving to be inspired rather than weird. In the hands of a less talented chef, who knows?
A thick blue frosted glass container was shaped like an eggshell, its white lid separated from its base by a “broken egg” zigzag pattern. We expected egg inside, but ON20 exists to confound—and exceed—expectations. Inside were Nantucket Bay scallops, Prince Edward Island mussels and Alaskan King crab in a white wine beurre blanc, a relatively conventional dish except for its presentation. As wondrously fresh as were the bivalves, we liked the crab best of all because of its incredible capacity to absorb the flavor of the sumptuous sauce.
The next treat was elegance defined—a square piece of poached Hawaiian hamachi in a pretty pale yellow pool of yuzu-and-elderflower sauce. Three precious edible miniature flowers, each of a different type and color, floated in the broth like pond lilies in a Monet painting. A cèpe mushroom lounged across the fish, a few Cyprus sea salt crystals garnished it. The lovely sauce was intensely tart but balanced by the natural richness of the fish, which was so perfectly cooked it was almost disconcerting.
Perfect cooking proved to be the rule, not the exception. Jones dabbles in molecular gastronomy, but is so grounded and well-rounded that he would prefer not to be known for it. Hudson Valley foie gras was prepared sous vide, preserving the fatty meat and cooking it incredibly evenly. (French for “under vacuum,” sous vide is a technique in which food is slow-cooked at relatively low temperatures in air-tight plastic bags.) One end of the meat was supported by a honey cake garnished with grated orange zest, the ensemble rounded out with lingonberries, a saffron-and-vanilla air, Bolivian Rose salt and Szechwan pepper. Maybe I’ll just whip this dish up sometime…
Well, I have never seen the point of paying for a meal you could easily reproduce in the comfort of your own home. Our next treat was a little more classic and a little more easily duplicated, but I was still happy to leave it to a professional. We certainly didn’t turn up our snouts at incredibly tasty pig’s head graced with Dijon mustard and Panko bread crumbs, the dish’s innate richness also balanced by a sauce gribiche (which actually bears similarities to tartar sauce but isn’t emulsified) and by our jammy Syrah.
But we didn’t mind following the pig’s head with something a little lighter, either. For most of my life, I couldn’t stand beets, but today’s chefs have far better ideas of what to do with them than did the hair-netted kitchen ladies who also made lima beans scary. Not many (probably not any) chefs would come up with anything so imaginative as Jones’ picturesque beet and goat cheese salad, however. There were so many layers of beet flavor, from the heirloom beet that supported tempura goat cheese to a dried beet ribbon to a cube of beet gelée topped with a golden miniature edible flower to dots of beet sauce to further-reduced beet paint clinging to the plate like fresh lacquer. And again, a little trail of Szechwan pepper, in case you like your taste buds to tremble as they sing.
Luscious Colorado lamb was paved with shavings of Oregon black truffle, then presented in a Pinot Noir sauce (reduced with lamb stock) with a smattering of hickory smoked salt, which paired inexplicably well with the Syrah. It was hard to imagine what meat could surpass the lamb, but Wagyu beef rib-eye steak in a Pinot Noir sauce (reduced with beef stock) with Australian sea salt managed the trick, the unctuous meat fairly oozing flavor. Baby carrots, caramelized onion and oblong potato cuts rounded out the dish.
Convinced by then that Jones walked on water, it was time to turn our attention from savory to sweet miracles. A snowy mound of mascarpone sorbet was dusted with a little Szechwan pepper and encircled by a ring of balsamic Madeira. Candied fennel balanced the sourness of the mascarpone. A cinnamon croquant perched on the edge of a glass layered with caramel sauce, caramelized apple, white chocolate and Chantilly cream. A rectangle of fabulous baked chocolate mousse (light, not overly sweet and deeply chocolatey) was topped with a piece of dehydrated chocolate, a fresh raspberry and a few flat crystals of Maldon sea salt, the plate garnished with raspberry coulis and basil oil.
Most intriguing, however, was a long rectangular white plate displaying three treats arranged from smallest to largest. The smallest was a caramelized hazelnut, its spun sugar extended into a long fragile wand that rested on the second item. That second item was a delicate praline macaroon nestling on a pile of praline powder. The third, and largest, item was an egg cup full of a wattleseed crème brûlée. Wattleseeds were originally eaten by Australian aborigines, and more recently have been roasted and ground for a flavor said to be reminiscent of coffee, chocolate and hazelnut. Since pralines are made with almonds, there was an obvious unifying flavor theme running through this eye-catching dessert trio. Finally, we finished with a tray of cookies and confections, such as a few top French restaurants still serve.
It was a flawless meal. The only nit I could pick would be that ON20’s tap water wasn’t terrific, meaning you may want to “spring” for mineral water. Apparently, a meal like this can happen in Hartford. When we retraced our footsteps, no easy thing that, fifteen proved to be our magic number, the courses paced so perfectly, the food so extraordinary that I was startled to look at my watch and notice four hours and twenty minutes had flown by. Only on the summit of a lonely mountain or in the arms of a beautiful woman had time ever seemed more immaterial.
So the only thing that could possible impinge on my happiness was subsequently learning that someone else had twenty courses when he visited ON20. Because, as I said earlier, I’m not normal. And even for those who are normal, the restaurant should come with a caveat. Like gaining a glimpse of heaven but knowing you will have to return to earth, you should be careful because dining at ON20 is apt to spoil you for other restaurants. It’s mostly downhill from there.
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And so, Jonesing for another pass at ON20 and mobilized by the rumor that the restaurant was opening for the rare evening meal, I returned to Hartford, this time with another fortunate friend in tow. The restaurant had an entirely different feel at night, but the views were just as stunning.
On this occasion, we ordered from the regular prix-fixe menu, but the kitchen plied us with additional delights. Familiarity breeds favoritism. After complimentary glasses of Gruet Brut Rosé, we selected a 2004 Saint Francis Cabernet Sauvignon, Sonoma, California ($42). A delicate scallop wonton with a zippy, chutney-like, sweet-and-sour sauce was presented as an amuse bouche, and we were off to the races.
My companion and I both selected fowl appetizers. Nesting on a lentil ragoût, his breast of squab medallions in a Madeira truffle sauce had a wonderful complex flavor without being terribly gamey. My smoked duck salad with pomegranate fig reduction and French horn mushrooms proved to be a three-ring circus, except all three acts were working in concert. On one end of the long rectangular white plate, a vibrant apple chip adorned a salad of Granny Smith apple, oven-dried tomato and mâche in a fig-and-pomegranate reduction, while on the other end sat a pile of unusual-looking mushrooms. The mushrooms alone would have validated my selection, so flavorful were they. But the main act occupied the center ring: topped by pieces of fig and resting on orange segments were beautiful slices of smoked duck breast, the meat evenly pink, the exterior seared but not deeply. If I hadn’t known a little about sous vide cooking, I’d have suspected witchcraft.
Three seafood treats wended their way to our table before our main course. Crab salads are normally pretty mild-mannered, but a Jonah crab and mango salad topped with lotus root, guacamole and Szechwan pepper showed how flavorful crab could—and should—be. Receiving different treatment than on my last visit, New Zealand langoustine was paired with a pan-seared diver scallop, the shellfish garnished with confit tomato and surrounded by a moat of English pea purée. Hooray! A seafood medley of cuttlefish, Buchot mussel, rock shrimp and clam was topped with wispy frizzled potato and mussel air. (Believe it or not, I had encountered mussel foam before.) We mopped up every last drop of delicious sauce with bread.
Three landlocked treats also found their way to our table. Sweetbreads stuffed with applewood-smoked bacon came in a red wine demi-glace that balanced the inherent richness of the proteins. Succulent sous vide poussin came in a Madeira truffle sauce, the lily gilded with shavings of Oregon black truffle and Cyprus sea salt. Not for the lily-livered, I suppose, sous vide Hudson Valley foie gras was served in an orange-and-caramel reduction with a honey cake, saffron-and-vanilla foam, Maldon sea salts and Szechwan pepper. Moments like these help critics forget all of the bad meals through which they have to slog.
When our main dishes arrived shortly thereafter, we were certainly game. Rack of Broken Arrow Ranch wild boar in a mustard demi-glace bored no one, while we were hardly playing Russian roulette with rillette of rabbit wrapped in smoked bacon and escorted by caramelized Brussels sprouts. Truthfully, I think of a rillette as more of a paste, but these delicious rabbit tidbits fully retained their distinct identity.
Finally, we entered the homestretch. Garnished with a fried mint leaf, a scoop of intense basil-and-lime sorbet rested over a lemongrass-infused, pineapple-mango-and-kiwi compote. With perhaps a wink and a nod to a lemon trio served at Bricco, Grant’s beloved West Hartford eatery, a sort of deconstructed lemon meringue pie showcased a square of lemon tart, a meringue macaroon and pools of intense lemon fluid gel, the creation finished with a fresh raspberry, a candied hazelnut and raspberry paint.
This lemon dessert seemed like the dénouement but, like fireworks displays that pretend to end and then fire off stirring final volleys, Jones had three more arrows in his dessert quiver. A square of chocolate mousse was matched with star anise ice cream, blood orange gelée, caramel powder and caramel sauce. An espresso semifreddo was paired with an ethereal orange beignet. Finally, there was another assortment of cookies and confections to accompany our coffees, albeit with some new delicacies added to the mix. Counting the amuse, we had managed sixteen courses this time.
After dinner, I finagled a tour of the kitchen. For the most exciting, varied and complex food I have encountered in Connecticut, the kitchen proved to be surprisingly modest. But what struck me was how incredibly clean and well-organized it was. The other thing that hit me was that it was obvious Jones was doing most of the cooking himself. At most restaurants you visit that have a renowned chef at the controls, someone else is apt to wind up cooking your food. But if ON20’s open, you can be sure Jones is in his kitchen. In his relentless pursuit of perfection, Jones feels that, like a circus knife thrower, a top chef can’t afford to have an off-day.
Jones has fired the first salvo in a culinary arms race, and the rest of the state could be in trouble. Keeping up with this Jones could be highly problematic. On a scale of one to ten, ON20’s a twenty.