Society Life Magazine

I barely knew thee.  And neither will legions of financially strapped food nerds.  Aurora is shuttering its Uptown-Oak Lawn location at the end of July.  Since it was my birthday, I thought I would shell out for a taste of chef Avner Samuel’s brand of refined cooking before its extinction.  No one knows for sure where the Samuels (wife, Celeste, commandeers the front of the house) will venture next, but servers were already buzzing about a more “casual” concept in the works.

Casual-shmasual.  I was there for some highbrow eats.  The evening began promisingly with a shirred egg amuse bouche topped with beet-cured salmon: creamy, rich, and gorgeously minimal.  It was followed by an expertly seared foie gras: again rich and gorgeously minimal.  My wife was much less pleased with an avocado parfait, which inexplicably arrived as a chilled “soup” topped by slices of avocado.  It was a perplexing dish.  It reminded me of my grandmother’s aspic creations from the Seventies, only melted down into a bowl instead of a congealed mold.  Mere hints of tang and sweetness strained to the fore, but barely.  We weren’t sure what to make of it, and quite possibly neither did the kitchen. 

My second course was a duo of duck: a pan roasted breast and a confit of hind quarters.  Everything was simply plated, if a little repetitively.  My wife’s grass fed beef filet was plated almost identically (a truffled potato dauphinoise almost mirroring my fingerlings tossed in duck fat on her plate).  So perhaps they weren’t the most inspired compositions, but the theatricality of their presentation was unmatched.  As courses came, servers made calculated displays of lifting the warming domes that covered our plates in choreographed unison. 

It must be noted that despite the relative emptiness of the room, the servers were readily available without being obstrusive.  They did, however, almost outnumber the guests.  Every time one of us left to use the rest room, someone would snatch up our napkin and spin it into a tight, neat, crescent ready for our return.  Definitely swank.

And they charge a premium for it.  I’ve been to my share of upscale restaurants, but none have ever caused me to break out in a cold sweat when the check arrived.  It was pricey, and I expected it.  I even used a $25 gift certificate (oh, yes, I went there) that only managed to make the final tab even more daunting.  (“That’s with the coupon, er, gift certificate?”)  Yup, still three digits, even without dessert.  I wiped off my flop sweat, made a loud gulping sound, and reminded myself that I was experiencing a dying art.

Restaurants like Aurora have become a rare breed in these times of economic mindfulness.  Their shift to a more casual concept coincides with a macro-shift in tastes (not just spending habits) that eschews formality.  Witness the triumph of Kogi BBQ food trucks in Los Angeles, David Chang’s Momofuku empire in New York, our own burgeoning gastropub and gourmet tavern scene here in DFW, and the global domination of artisanal cupcakes.  We want to have our cake (as in literally having enough money for dessert) and eat it too.  And we want to wear jeans if we want to.  And drink a microbrew instead of champagne.  And laugh a little too loudly.

There will always be room for foie gras, truffles, and first growth Bordeaux on the DFW restaurant scene, but even with Aurora’s demise, that room seems to get smaller every day.