Among the first courses, seafood and vegetables play the starring roles. And all the dishes are abundant with colorful ingredients and flavorful accents. Plates are decked out with relishes, salsas and fluffs of shredded cabbage. Sauces and vinaigrettes are vivid with the orange of carrot or the red of beet. Little fritters and spring rolls adorn entrees, and the mashed potatoes are piped into ruffled towers.
Dinner begins on a generous note with a basket of crusty bread and a small crock of liver pate.
It would be easy to fill up on it before you get to your first course. But portions are generous, so you'll need to pace yourself. What Persimmon's kitchen does best is cook fish with precision. It's routinely moist and silken, a simple lesson that many restaurants seem incapable of learning. It's served with whipped potatoes on a pool of grapefruit sauce that tastes like a lightened and heightened beurre blanc.