by Richard Frisbie

Created on: November 18, 2009   Last Updated: November 19, 2009

Molecular Dining at Chef Lionel Gerard's Restaurant La Table de St-Crescent.

Subtitled: Dining at the chef's table means you have to clean your plate.

During a recent dining experience in the Languedoc-Roussillon region of France I learned:
If it's on your plate it's FOOD!

A friend and I had the good fortune to join Chef Lionel Gerard's guests at his chef's table in the kitchen of the Restaurant La Table de St-Crescent. We were seated late, one course behind his friends, and barely out of the way of running waiters, waitresses and other kitchen help. Our timing allowed us a preview of the meal to come as the two gentlemen seated with us drank wine and conversed in French over some spectacular looking dishes.

Lionel Gerard is a precocious chef, the second generation in his family to exhibit the brilliance that earned his father two Michelin stars. He will not inherit his father's stars, but he will earn his own and soon. Meanwhile, you can experience his cooking in Narbonne, France, where he won a best food and best value award this year while deconstructing and reconstructing food in creative and distinctive ways.

As an example, his friends had one course of a pastry shell that was topped by a cube of pineapple. Except, upon closer inspection it was really not a chunk of fruit, but pineapple reduced to a pulpy juice, then molded with gelatin to look like and have the consistency of real fruit. Sometimes nothing is as it appears with Chef Lionel.

Our soup course was made with shelled, blanched and peeled peas, pureed and served in the center of the bowl surrounded by a frothy pea broth. The pea "island" was basically used to showcase the jumbo shrimp, upright and stunningly pink in the green sea of peas. More peeled peas were used to decorate the bowl's rim, and a pipette of dark liquid completed the picture.

I was instructed to taste the broth, then cut pieces of shrimp and squirt some of the brown liquid into my mouth with each bite. What a rush! It looked like soy sauce, but was really liquid shrimp, the shells browned into a rich slow-roasted broth, then strained and reduced to the essence of shrimp. The result was a delicious pea soup with a shrimp bursting with flavor in my mouth. Amazing!

We were served steak & eggs as a main course. Here the steak was oh so real, heavily marbled and grilled over Merlot grapevines to infuse the meat with a hint of fruit, and served rare, (the way steak should be) tender and moistened with the fat of the aged, grass-fed

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