By Christine Barbour,
Food Fare

April 23, 2003

When I was a little girl my grandfather owned a restaurant in Los Angeles. Oddly, I don't remember much about the food, but what I do remember is my grandfather as restaurateur — his crinkly blue eyes and vivid smile, hand always outstretched to greet his customers. He taught me that good hosts make you welcome, and that hospitality is an essential part of dining out — whether the place is a cozy neighborhood cafe or a multi-starred temple of culinary art. 

Even the most daunting of fine dining experiences can be transformed by a friendly touch. I eat at some pretty extraordinary restaurants and I don't intimidate easily, but the places dear to my heart are the ones that go out of their way to make me feel special and comfortable — that make me the star of my evening out, not the chef or the wine list or the dining room décor, no matter how splendid any of them may be. 
 

Here in Bloomington, when I want warm hospitality combined with superb food — imaginative, beautifully prepared and professionally served — I put myself in the capable and talented hands of Truffles proprietor Mark Kiang and his executive chef Martin Frannea. Whether I want to indulge in a romantic dinner with my husband, have a relaxing meal with friends, show Bloomington off to out of town guests, or just stop in to ogle the gorgeous martinis and have a snack in the bar, the people at Truffles do it right. 

Birth of a restaurant

A restaurant like Truffles doesn't happen by accident. When the building in Jackson Creek Shopping Center became available just blocks from his other restaurant, the Mikado, Mark Kiang saw a niche to be filled. Beautifully renovated by earlier occupants, the building was ideally suited for elegant dining. Backed by his family in China, who thought they were investing in a steak restaurant (Kiang always keeps steak on the menu so they won't be disappointed), he took a lease on the place and set about advertising for a chef.

Meanwhile, in Austin, Texas, Martin Frannea had cooked for his family since the age of nine and cultivated his passion for food on twice yearly trips to exotic places with his Norway-based father. With a degree in Fine Arts, he started a sculpture studio, but ended up turning to restaurant work when he found he could parlay his fascination with food and art into a regular paycheck. In 1994 he enrolled in the Culinary Institute of America to train as a chef; two years later he took on his own kitchen.

By the time Mark Kiang's head-hunter found his resume on the Internet, Frannea was burned out from three years of high intensity work and ready to give up on the hot Texas summers. Kiang flew down to Austin to meet him and studied his menus, finding a cosmopolitan style that was not too far-fetched for Bloomington and an authenticity that he wanted for his restaurant. After a two day interview, he offered him a job. Frannea flew to Bloomington, liked the restaurant space, liked the town, and moved up 10 days later. Truffles opened three weeks after that, on December 27, 2001.

The dinner hour

The interior of the restaurant is at once sophisticated and tranquil. The 56° Bar (named for the proper temperature to cellar wine) has high red walls, lots of wood panels, and black accents. Beyond the bar, the dining room itself has white walls, white linens, and tables far enough apart to give a sense of ordered space and quiet. 

Along the far side, the kitchen is open to the dining room. There the cooks sear steaks, stir sauces and assemble desserts behind the long counter, while Chef Frannea directs kitchen operations from the dining room side.

Having overseen all the ordering and the preparation of the food, he takes on the role of expeditor during the actual dinner hour, in charge of the timing and the pace of the kitchen work that produces plate after plate of painstakingly cooked, arranged and garnished food. Although the kitchen got quite busy on the Friday night that I spent watching, under Frannea's good humored, bantering management, the staff never lost its rhythm or its cool.

The food that emerges from Chef Frannea's kitchen is exceptional. It's not avant-garde, or architecturally elaborate, or filled with wildly exotic ingredients. Rather, it is focused on what he thinks his customers want to eat. Most of his recipe ideas come to him not in the kitchen but in the shower, while his mind is still fresh and caffeine free. 

Frannea scorns what he calls "neat-o food," food cooked by chefs primarily to impress their peers, and he doesn't think much of the show business styles of celebrity chefs. His food philosophy is simple: "Until you are Charlie Trotter [a well known Chicago chef], you need to be making food that is yummy."

And yummy his food is. The items on Truffles' menu change often but always include a variation of the dish that Chef Frannea says he is the most proud of: seared duck breast with a vanilla rum sauce, served with a potato croquette stuffed with black truffle butter. The unexpected fragrance of the vanilla mixes with the caramel notes of the rum to give the savory sauce depth and flavor. It's just terrific. 

Other entrées can include innovative fish and seafood dishes, rabbit, chicken, vegetarian options, and, of course, steak. Desserts might feature shortbread cookies layered with fruit and whipped cream or my particular favorite, a divine dark chocolate crème brulée.
 

The 56° Bar menu is lighter than the restaurant menu, but no less, well, yummy is still the word. The menu includes starters (fried purple potatoes with spicy ketchup stand out here) salads, sandwiches (try the crispy artichoke poorboy with spicy mayonnaise, or the BLT with applewood smoked bacon), and more substantial entrees (flank steak, roast chicken, enchiladas verde). There is also a full array of martinis, cosmopolitans, and other specialty drinks, and a wine list with good choices at both the high and the low end of the price range.

Fine dining

In the vocabulary of the restaurant world, Truffles' niche is "fine dining." "Fine dining," of course, means different things to different people — a confusion not helped by the fact that no restaurant, no matter what its caliber, wants to claim that its dining is not fine. 

For the folks at Truffles, fine dining means more than white cloths on the tables, good crystal at the bar and fancy French names on the menu — it has to do with the skill of the chef, the quality of the food, the depth of the wine list, the smoothness of the service, and, yes, the size of the check. 

Real fine dining can be expensive; the ingredients are top quality, they must be served at the peak of freshness (fish flown into the purveyor the night before is ordered by the chef in the morning and on your plate by nightfall) and the labor costs per plate are twice those of other kinds of restaurants. All food is made to order — no steam tables, no pre-made sauces or frozen food waiting to be warmed up. 

Clearly, fine dining also takes time. One of Chef Frannea's chief disappointments is a customer who comes in in a rush and cannot wait for the food to be properly prepared or enjoyed leisurely. 

At Truffles, fine dining is also about service, the kind of unobtrusive service, says Mark Kiang, where guests have what they want before they even think to ask for it. Being a good host is in Kiang's blood, part and parcel of the elaborate and intricate role of food in Chinese culture. For him, fine dining is "allowing people to have good food, knowing they are walking out happy. How much they enjoy being here is an indicator of how we are doing." My grandfather would approve

Truffles is open for dinner seven days a week. A four course tasting menu with wine is available for $50 per person, but menu items can also be ordered a la carte. Entrées range in price from about $12 to $28. Entrées in the 56° Bar range from $7 to $9. Reservations recommended. Menus available at http:www.truffles56.com.

Food Fare columnist Christine Barbour welcomes your comments via e-mail at cbarbour@heraldt.com. Next week, Food Fare partner Jennifer Piurek explains how couples whose food favorites go in wildly different directions can happily coexist.