Dessert is where restraint is hardest to hold. Sugar is generous and forgiving, and it is easy to let a sweet course turn loud after an evening of careful savoury plates. We ask the pastry section to resist this with the same discipline as the kitchen, to lean on acid, bitterness, and cold before they reach for sweetness.
The yuzu cream that closes the tasting is left almost plain. A thin sable, a cold cream sharp with citrus, and nothing else on the plate. It would be simple to add a sauce, a tuile, a scattering of something bright. We take all of that away. The last spoon of the evening should feel like the first cold opening, clear and exact, a sentence finished rather than a flourish performed.
Bitterness does a great deal of quiet work here. Brown butter taken to the edge of burnt, chestnut honey with a real edge to it, dark chocolate worked with single origin coffee. These are the flavours that let a dessert close an evening without shouting over everything that came before it.
A guest once told us that our desserts taste like the lights coming up slowly at the end of a film. We have thought about that a great deal since. It is exactly what we are reaching for, a close that lets you sit a moment longer before you stand.
Sezanne