Michelin three-star restaurant French Laundry serves mushroom soup from a bong

Let's talk about the French Laundry's bong course. https://t.co/cSdEvoydR0 pic.twitter.com/G80R4u06Wm

— Paolo Lucchesi (@lucchesi) March 26, 2019

In a New York Times review of celebrity chef Thomas Keller's Manhattan eatery Per Se, critic Pete Wells described the mushroom soup "as murky and appealing as bong water." So now for special guests, Keller's legendary French Laundry restaurant in the Napa Valley serves their porcini mushroom broth out of a blue and green swirl glass bong. From a column by San Francisco Chronicle food critic Soleil Ho:

After dinner, I emailed the French Laundrys public relations people about the bong. In an email, they responded that its something Thomas Keller pulls out for restaurant industry folks because he knows wed get a kick out of it. (This is true. And Keller knows me from a previous encounter during my past life as a New Orleanian line cook.)

It is clearly a tongue-in-cheek reference to past writing and is not on the menu, they wrote, but regularly prepared for guests as a fun item. When I pressed them on where the bong was actually from obviously not Riedel or Zalto all they would say was that it was hand blown by an artisan.

"The French Laundrys bong course is a brilliant act of artistry" (SF Chronicle) Read the rest