There is no theme for our monthly tasting menu, Table 14. No region. No culinary concept borrowed from somewhere else. What there is: a chef with twenty-some years behind him, a list of what's available from the farms he trusts, and seven courses to fill.
No cuisine to defer to. That’s a freedom most chefs crave.
Our tasting menu has a logic that exists before the ingredients do. When the logic comes from the cook and not the concept, Chef can work backwards, build the arc, move from lighter to heavier, decide where the acid hits and where that rich sauce comes into play. Which technique can help serve his ideas and which ones could distract from it. Without one, you're designing the blueprints and constructing the building at the same time.
The amuse bouche of squash blossom goes into tempura batter not because it fits a theme but because that's what Chef’s experience tells him. Flash fried, gone before it turns limp. The Lititz produced pork belly gets 24 hours because it’s better at 24 hours than 18 or 36. The central market goat milk for the agnolotti pairs with the local mixed mushroom brodo. Ben knows there is a connection between the land that those goats graze on and the mushrooms that grow in similar conditions.
What holds it together isn't a concept. It's a point of view.
Look at what this menu preserves. Pickled watermelon radish, preserved lemon, fermented chili, pickled green tomato. June is arriving with everything it has, and Ben is still reaching for the jar. That's not nostalgia for winter. That's a cook who understands that brightness needs tension, that acid earned through time does something fresh sometimes doesn’t. The snap peas and green strawberries in the burrata course tell you exactly where you are in the calendar. The fermented chili on the pork belly tells you Ben hasn't forgotten where he's been.
The Scottish Highland NY strip steak gets crispy tallow pave and burnt onion demi glace. These pasture raised cows are just down the road at Stone Arch Farm, ten minutes from the restaurant. The poussin cared for by Earl Keiser gets albufera sauce and brown butter ube puree. These aren't local ingredients reaching for technique. That's a cook's full range showing up, the kind of range that only comes from years of building it, sitting right alongside whatever the farm had ready that week. The second Thursday of every month, six people sit down at one table. What arrives in front of them is twenty-some years of cooking distilled into seven courses.
-Paul
Table 14’s First Menu: June
Tempura Squash Blossom
Koji beet mousse, meyer lemon, pickled watermelon radish,
baby basil, pistachio, whipped chevre, basil oil
House Burrata
english pea and preserved lemon espuma,
snap pea & green strawberry salad, ramp panko
24 Hr Mangalitsa Pork Belly
smoked salsa verde, fermented chili, popcorn grits,
pickled green tomato salsa
Goat Milk Agnolotti
mushroom brodo, shaved truffle, braised local tuscan kale
Tea Smoked Poussin
albufera sauce, brown butter ube puree, white asparagus
Scottish Highland NY Strip
crispy tallow pave potato, grilled spring onion and baby zucchini,
burnt onion demi glace
Lancaster County Cheese
whipped honey, house focaccia
Elderflower Panna Cotta
cardamom sponge, strawberry pearls
