You also need to hit the jackpot to pay for such dinners. As is the custom in Napa Valley, they present the wine list with the reverence of the family Bible. The best of Keller's dishes are identified by their wit. And he has an instinct for the adorable. Rabbit, wrapped in a crackly veil of potato, is accompanied by tiny rabbit chops, each the size of a large pea.
Portions are minute, yet precise, geometric, three-dimensional.
You imagine doll-size ovens, surgical knives. Keller's is intellectual food, seemingly devised in the mind rather than intuited by the abundance of the market. Yet he never loses sight of deliciousness. Fruits and wines and even herbs are fashioned into cold souffles, custards, ice creams, sorbets and syrups, then arranged in complex miniature still-lifes. He is one reason.