Ciboulette reunion dinner at Vetri: Just like old times

Watching Bruce Lim and Francesco Martorella deftly trade pots and pans across the stove in the upstairs kitchen at Vetri, it seemed impossible they hadn't seen each other in over a decade.

After first meeting in the early '80s at the Fountain at the Four Seasons, the two chefs partnered in 1989 to launch Ciboulette, a petite French restaurant in the very same dining room where Le Bec-Fin had previously made its home - and where Vetri is now. Their endeavor was a quick success: that year, Esquire named Ciboulette one of the country's best new restaurants, and in 1990, Food & Wine named Lim and Martorella two of America's best new chefs.

"We have a special chemistry," Martorella observed the other night at the stove, tapping Lim on the shoulder and asking him to taste a rich brown sauce that had been simmering away since morning. "Not many people could just jump behind a line and cook together like this after 22 years."

The duo were brought back together by Marc Vetri himself, who organized and hosted a Ciboulette reunion dinner at Vetri Cucina in early October. Eighteen guests paid $200 a seat to partake in eight-plus courses of resurrected Ciboulette favorites, paired with high-end wines.

Despite the relatively high price point, the event was not about making a buck. In fact, Martorella guessed that the bounty of expensive ingredients on the menu - caviar, foie gras, truffles - meant the house might even lose money on the evening, when all was said and done.

"Marc just has a thing for nostalgia," he said. He'd run into Vetri earlier this year at an event hosted by Di Bruno Bros, where Martorella has recently been consulting, and the idea of a reunion came up.

"I had never even met Bruce [Lim] before," Vetri noted, "but I just thought this dinner would be so cool."

Vetri compared the Martorella-Lim collaboration event to white truffles - but even more rare.

"White truffles, when they come around once a year, we don't make money on them, even if we charge $50 to shave them over your dish," he explained. "We could have charged twice as much for this event - it's a once in a lifetime experience - but what does it matter? It's about the experience, about creating something magical."

Verbal dismissal of cost cares notwithstanding, Vetri did pull two of six jars of Osetra caviar away from the counter when Lim was spooning the tiny black fish eggs atop a Pemaquid oyster for the first plated course.

"It's not French food without butter, caviar and foie gras!" crowed Lim, who was thrilled to have his hands on such luxe ingredients. At his current regular job, as private chef to a well-off couple who splits their time between the Main Line and Boca Raton, he is tasked with making healthful meals. Even dinner parties are all about kale and keeping gluten-free. He doesn't keep white sugar or butter in his kitchen.

"Don't take a photo of me holding this heavy cream," he joked. "My boss would kill me."

The cream went into that oyster, which was served au gratin with melted leeks beneath its caviar grown. Upon tasting one, Vetri emphatically declared it "sex on a plate."

Oysters were served to seated guests only after they'd sampled from a giant spread of hors d'oeuvres. There were savory madeleines topped with truffle butter and French ham, comte cheese gougeres stuffed with discs of black truffle, pastry-wrapped escargots masquerading as pigs-in-a-blanket, brioche shrimp toasts (with more caviar) and miniature tarts filled with wasabi tuna poke and pickled radish - which Martorella had been slicing when he cut his finger on a sharp new mandoline.

He took the injury in stride. "When Marc asked if I wanted to do this, I said, 'Sure, as long as I don't have to work too hard,'" Martorello recalled, laughing. "But once I get in front of the stove, I can't help it. We've been here since morning."

Martorello got one of his first tastes of French cooking in the building where he'd also later open his first restaurant - stirring sauces for Georges Perrier at the original Le Bec-Fin. It was a small but an important step in his career, which included working under Jean-Marie Lacroix (Fountain) and then as one of the opening chefs at Brasserie Perrier. He then moved to run the kitchen at Stephen Starr's Pod, and eventually launched Bliss on the Avenue of the Arts.

Lim, for his part, had been trained in the mother country itself. After growing up in Singapore, his mother sent him to the south of France as a teenager  to pursue his culinary passion. He trained in classic haute cuisine, and then brought his skills to the U.S., where he worked under Jean-Louis Palladin and Jean-Marie Lacroix, before opening his own restaurant with Martorella.

Though Ciboulette was a critical success, Lim felt the size of the dining room was holding it back, and in 1992, he took up the Park Hyatt at the Bellevue on an offer to move the restaurant to a large, 110-seat space there. Martorella wasn't into the concept, so the pair parted ways. The new Ciboulette stayed open all the way through 2001, but Lim still has regrets.

"French food is too time-intensive. Nobody wants French food anymore," he said. "If I had a time machine, I'd go back and skip learning all that French stuff and just learn Italian food - learn how to make pizza!"

Martorella concurred: "Just look at how well Vetri is doing. Italian food is hot."

The evening's guests seemed to enjoy the rich French fare just fine. Newlyweds Rich and Catie Haelig were making their first-ever visit to 1312 Spruce St. - "We've eaten at Pizzeria Vetri, but never here" - and were thrilled that a friend had thought to give them these tickets as a wedding gift.

Bucks County residents Don and Linda Shaw had passed through the building's front doors numerous times - including many when it was Ciboulette. "We used to make excuses to come here," Linda remembered. "Oh, good week at work? Let's celebrate at Ciboulette."

The couple reminisced about days past, but were generally bullish on the state of Philadelphia food. "We travel all over the world," Don noted, "and nowadays we never go to a city that makes us say, 'We wish we had this kind of food at home.' The Philly restaurant scene has never been better."