IN New York

On a personal crusade against “palate fatigue” caused by dishes that “taste the same with every bite,” Ben Pollinger, executive chef of elegant seafood restaurant Oceana, says that he layers textures and flavors in unlikely ways: “I like to have some blend of crispy, crunchy, chewy, creamy, meaty. In regard to flavors, I like to have a balance of sweet, sour, and salty.  Bitter is best left as an undertone. A good example would be a dish I had on the menu long ago, sautéed Nantucket bay scallops with a mamey puree (mamey is a tropical fruit with a creamy orange flesh and a flavor like a combination of mango, pineapple and banana) and citrus salad.  The scallops are naturally sweet, as is the mamey. The citrus segments were sweet but acidic at the same time. I used to use six or seven different kinds, like cara cara oranges, Persian limes, sweet lemons, pomelos, satsumas. I would candy the pomelo rind and dot a few pieces on the plate, so that as you were eating a few acidic bites of citrus, which would create ‘high notes.’ You could come around to a piece of candied pomelo rind, which would bring you back down with its sweetness.  The whole concept for me is kind of like creating a built-in palate cleanser in a dish, but not so extreme. Just enough so that you don’t get bored with the same flavor and texture halfway through a dish.” 

 These days, he plates sweet white tuna sashimi with tart peach chutney studded with crunchy macadamia nuts and drizzles steamed black bass with tangy carrot-citrus sauce. Moist, fleshy dorade filet (chewy) is wrapped in a thin, crisp taro crust (crunchy) and  served with a piece of basmati rice cake and a mound of baby bok choy, Chinese long beans and blanched peanuts, seasoned with chilis, ginger, Thai basil and kokum (a tart dried Indian fruit). Tableside, a server pours a sauce that Chef Pollinger tells me consists of ginger, shallots, garlic, coriander, cumin, black cumin, mustard seeds, curry leaves, fish fumet and coconut milk, and finished at the last minute with cilantro puree. It’s the color of a freshly mowed lawn in early springtime and is just as aromatic, in an exotic, Asian sort of way. No two bites are ever the same…and my palate was at a constant state of attention.