I wanted very much to love Provenance. The staff could not have been kinder: everyone was welcoming, attentive, knowledgeable, and genuinely invested in making us comfortable. We felt well cared for throughout the evening, and nothing in this review should be read as criticism of the service. Unfortunately, the food itself was a major disappointment.
The central problem was not simply that the portions were small, nor that the cooking was "too modern." I enjoy ambitious tasting menus and have no objection to foams, gels, purées, rich sauces, or playful deconstruction when those techniques actually clarify an ingredient or create meaningful contrast. Here, however, the same aesthetic recurred relentlessly. Tiny amounts of fish, vegetables, fruit, pasta, or cheese were surrounded, covered, or replaced by much larger quantities of cream, foam, jelly, whipped tofu, and emulsified sauces. Course after course was soft on soft on soft. I repeatedly found myself wanting something substantial to chew.
The opening canapés established the pattern immediately. A fried crab was unpleasantly brittle and leggy, more like eating a fried insect than sweet crab, while an assertive peanut-like sauce overwhelmed what little flavor it possessed. The prawn tasted stronger and older than pristine shellfish should, hidden beneath an attractive but flavorless white coating. A beautiful oyster disappeared beneath Korean barbecue sauce and sesame that overwhelmed its subtle flavors with not-very-tasty brashness. Even an otherwise refreshing vegetable course included a pink gel that contributed nothing beyond visual novelty and was as texturally baffling as you might expect.
The same obsession with mush continued throughout the meal. Beautiful snapper vanished beneath orange jello. A single squash blossom sat atop a mountain of whipped tofu and vadouvan. The cheese course, introduced as Provenance's version of a Babybel, turned out not to be cheese in any recognizable sense, but an airy dairy cream wrapped in raspberry jelly. By that point I found myself thinking, "Please, not more cream."
The menu's strongest moments were also the simplest. The milk bread was excellent, partly because it finally required chewing. A tuna, sweetbread, and olive course was genuinely delicious because each component remained identifiable and texturally distinct. Steelhead trout with escargot enclosed in glossy snail-shaped pasta was thoughtfully conceived and flavorful, though even here a large pool of buttery sauce and an unnecessary sidecar of nearly flavorless watercress foam diluted what was otherwise the evening's best dish.
Dessert extended rather than relieved the pattern. The melon sorbet was excellent, and the tiny slivers of fresh melon beneath it were among my favorite bites of the evening. Likewise, the peach dessert made me wish there had simply been more peach instead of yet another cream quenelle, ice cream, crumble, and gel.
Provenance clearly has technical skill, beautiful presentation, and access to excellent ingredients. The later savory courses demonstrated that the kitchen can produce real pleasure when it allows those ingredients to remain the focus. Too often, though, the chef could not resist needlessly converting ingredients into various textures of mush. Beautiful seafood, vegetables, fruit, and cheese were repeatedly obscured by dominant sauces or presented in the restaurant's preferred vocabulary of mousse, foam, purée, and gel. I've had plenty of molecular gastronomy, but this really came across as lazy, disjointed, and downright unpleasant to eat most of the time.
The service was excellent and the staff deserve sincere praise. But at this price and level of ambition, visual ingenuity and labor-intensive technique are not enough. A tasting menu should build rhythm and contrast, and never lose sight of what makes eating a meal rewarding in the first place. This one left me impressed by the amount of work involved, but frustrated, over-saturated with cream and fat, still wanting something to chew, and feeling fundamentally unsatisfied and underfed. I went for a hot dog at Almanac afterwards, which was very satisfying. read more