Podcast #47: Jeremy Clayman and Eric Foster (The Mint)
May 9, 2008The Mint Restaurant
219 Fayetteville Street Mall (1 Exchange Plaza) Raleigh, NC
(919)821.0011
Web Site: http://www.themintrestaurant.com
Click Here to Listen to The Mint Podcast
Related Post: The Mint is Loaded (VarmintBites)
Related Post: Greg Cox Just Doesn’t Get It (VarmintBites)
Sous Chef/Pastry Chef Eric Foster (left) and Chef de Cuisine Jeremy Clayman
Click on the above photo for a hi-res slide show.
My meal this week at The Mint will go down as one of the most memorable I have ever had in the South, including my many wonderful meals in New Orleans. The Mint is as good as any of the fine restaurants we have in New York City which specialize in local sustainable cuisine — that I compare it to Gramercy Tavern or Blue Hill is not without serious consideration for the level of art and technique that is being practiced at this restaurant, which Raleigh should consider itself extremely lucky to have.
Co-incidentally, the restaurant was reviewed in today’s Raleigh News and Observer by Greg Cox. I am sure Mr. Cox is a seasoned reviewer of his local restaurant scene, but I beleive he lacks the perspective of a New Yorker or a fine dining veteran to be able to state:
“the lukewarm temperature and semiliquid white of the accompanying sous vide-cooked “hot spring egg” isn’t likely to win many fans. A first-course offering starring medallions of veal flank is marred by a chewy star ingredient. So, inexplicably, are crab cakes with braised fennel and a lavender-vanilla sauce.”
Mr. Cox, have you ever dined at any of our finer restaurants in New York? Have you ever been to Paris? Los Angeles? San Francisco? Chicago? Hello? Bueller? That’s about as asinine and uninformed a statement as if I, a New Yorker and a Yankee were to say something as uninformed as “I wasn’t crazy about the pinkish color of my ribs when I got them at the local barbecue restaurant”. For crying out loud, runny egg? Do you know what the !@#$ a properly made carbonara sauce is? You’re telling me you’ve never had a vanilla infused seafood dish before? It’s not like Jeremy invented it — he got it from every French chef in New York.
As much as it makes me cringe to say it, I really would have preferred that someone more like Frank Bruni had reviewed this place with the perspective of someone who has eaten this type of modern fine dining before.
I suspect many Raleigh residents, due to Mr. Cox’s disservice, will never experience the gem of a fine dining destination they now have.
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Food, General, Links, Media, North Carolina, Podcast | Tagged: eric foster, fine dining, jeremy clayman, Raleigh, restaurants, the mint | 
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