Apr. 30, 2004
Tapawingo! We're already saving up for next year
We made our more or less annual pilgrimage to Tapawingo a week ago. Like many who go there infrequently because that's all they can afford, we were celebrating an occasion. It was our anniversary. The 13^th. This month marks Tapawingo's 20^th  so they're seven up on us, but who's counting?

Some people of means no doubt consider Tapawingo their neighborhood restaurant and go there as routinely as we go, say, for burgers at the Town Club in Elk Rapids. We don't envy them a bit. Tapawingo is like a rich, double-chocolate mousse: something we enjoy sparingly, lest familiarity diminish our pleasure. May we never become jaded about food this good.

On the way there we speculated about changes, as the restaurant is starting its first season since star executive chef Stuart Brioza went off to California, newly crowned as one of Food and Wine magazine's "best new chefs." Our experience found the restaurant virtually unchanged, however, and we came away more certain than ever that Tapawingo's excellence begins with chef-owner Harlan "Pete" Peterson. It was extraordinary when he opened it 20 years ago; outstanding when Rich Travis was in the kitchen, superb under Brioza, and is no less brilliant now with no executive chef at all.  Peterson just has a knack for finding talent and developing stars at Tapawingo.We enjoyed an utterly exquisite meal, and that despite a service snafu that, in the end, demonstrated in yet another way that Tapawingo is a thing apart.

Many things make it so, starting with the idyllic, pastoral setting. Then there were the exquisite little amusées of salsify and prosciutto at the outset--flavorful trin kets, hinting at delights to come.

Sommelier Ron Edwards sets Tapawingo apart, too. Arriving at tableside, he saw we had the 34-page list open to the Pinot Noirs of Burgundy, and exclaimed, "My favorite page!" We said we were considering a bottle from Gevrey-Chambertin, a town where we once spent a memorable day with a spry, woman of 90 who, in four languages, lectured us in detail on her estate's architecture, geology, history, and wine. Edwards knows the territory far better than we, of course, and when we said we were considering halibut and scallops as main courses, he did what any good sommelier would do: He deftly steered us to roasted rack of rabbit as a better fit than scallops with the wine we wanted. And then he smoothly steered us to a wine from a neighboring vineyard that he suggested we'd find more to our liking. His comparison of Domaine Desaunay-Bissey's Vosne-Romanee les Beaumonts 1er Cru 2000 and the previous year's from Domaine Henri Rebourseau's old vines at Gevrey-Chambertin was eloquent. We were not about to argue. We even flattered ourselves that we understood some of it.

Tapawingo's meals are prix fixe, so we enjoyed every course. One of our starters was a pair of pressed pheasant-breast crepinettes in a truffle demi-glaze with a caper-onion fennel relish; the other a small bowl of sauteed mushrooms and ricotta cavatelli pasta in a pool of buttery, sherried, mushroom sauce. Both were immensely flavorful and rich, but delicately portioned so as to stop short of excess. The salad was wine-poached pears and soft, veined Roquefort on baby greens and pearl-sized tomatoes so delicately opalescent they couldn't have been two days old. And we shared a creamy celeriac and parsnip soup with a swirl of sherry syrup ringed by evenly graduated droplets of truffle oil. We admired it so long we almost had to send it back to be warmed up.

Then came that glitch we mentioned, as a bit of a wait developed between salad and main course. Just before it grew uncomfortably long, however, Sommelier Edwards himself arrived with a murmured apology that he was bringing "a complementary cheese course a little out of order because there's a slight delay." We laughed about an "elusive rabbit," poured a bit more of the Vosne-Romanee, and enjoyed the cheese. When the main course did arrive, it was all we'd hoped for: simple foods, stunning flavors, in amazing combinations. The pan-seared halibut sat beside a ring of red bell pepper surrounding a mound of white beans and wild rice rice drizzled with chorizo-flavored broth. The rabbit was perfectly roasted, sauced with mustard-flavored jus, and served with a timbale of flavored couscous and an array of baby turnip, roasted red pepper, and zingy bits of fried olive.

The delay, Peterson later confessed, was one of those ticket mix-ups that bedevil kitchens just reopening after a vacation break. Most restaurants would simply have apologized; many would have just let us sit and wait. The way Tapawingo handled it was another of those things that set this restaurant apart. The cheese even went nicely with the wine. The wine didn't outlast the meal, however, but we weren't able to finish the main course, anyway. We considered asking to take the remains home, but decided it just wouldn't be in keeping with the spirit of the place or the evening.

We knew the bill would be stunning because we really went overboard on wine; our Burgundy was $73, but that 34-page list has many choices in the $20-40 range, and some for even less. The food came to another $97. Hardly a cheap date, but some things are priceless. Anniversaries and Tapawingo are two of them. We're already saving up for next year.