Seabird takes flight

The problem with tasting menus isn’t their tedium or agitating parlor tricks, although the format has come under fire for both. The issue isn’t that they leave customers so hungry that they have to scrounge up second dinners when they get home, nor that they ravage diners with so much richness that it’s a struggle to walk out the door.

Where tasting menus go off the rails is the point at which they become a restaurant’s sole repository for creativity and wit. Too many chefs have the tendency to assume that only guests who can drop three figures on dinner have minds to go with their mouths.