Photo by Joel Veak
Bostonians love their French food, but lately we’ve been favoring humbler bistro and brasserie fare over the more elaborate conceits of nouvelle cuisine. Even at its most elevated, we often prefer our French hybridized with Asian or New American accents. It’s been a while since a new restaurant opened to offer opulent, straight-up New French cooking with painstaking platings. But that’s precisely what acclaimed Parisian chef Guy Martin (or more accurately, his exec chef Gerard Barbin) is doing at Sensing (3 Battery Wharf, Boston, 617.994.9001), the flagship restaurant of the waterfront’s luxe Fairmont Battery Wharf Hotel.
The roasted duck breast entrée ($35) is representative: simply, exquisitely presented on a plate whose front edge twists downward like a wryly exasperated Frenchman’s lower lip. The slender teardrop of duck breast is darkly lacquered with a highly reduced sauce of duck stock, soy sauce, and star anise. A less-reduced version of the lacquer snakes artfully across the plate. The breast is counterpoised with a tic-tac-toe board of sweetly pickled parsnip strips (odd and thrilling), crisscrossed with crunchy straws of rich, filo-wrapped leg confit. As spare and self-contained as a haiku, Sensing’s duck two ways may be a splurge, but it’s also a useful reminder that — in a town where chefs often pile a dozen overly busy tastes on a plate — less can be very much more.
