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Hello, everyone.

Chef Paul, Souschef Mark Graham and their staff have been in the proverbial huddle all week coming up with wonderful things to serve on Thanksgiving. They plan to bake pumpkin pies and pecan pies and French apple tarts and apple-cranberry pies.

There will be free-range roasted turkey, stuffing, a couple of kinds of cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes and brussels sprouts with chestnuts. Those things will all be part of a traditional, three- course Thanksgiving dinner we will be offering for $40 per per person plus tax and tip, $15 for children 12 and under.

We will also be offering a more extravagant, five-course, free-range turkey tasting/wine menu Thursday. It will start with an aromatic turkey curry with Indian flatbread paired with a dry New York State riesling from Hosmer Winery in the Finger Lakes. The second course will be the mysteriously named "potatoes three ways." The third course will be a bread pudding soup with brussel sprouts and chestnuts paired with Domaine Bruno Clair's spectacular 2003 Marsannay "Les Vaudenelles." The main course is turkey breast roulade stuffed with foie gras, chestnuts and sweetbreads, paired with Paul Jaboulet Ainé's 2003 Vacqueyras. The meal will end with pumpkin ice cream with a dried fig brioche and a wine appropriately named "Symphonie de Novembre" Jurançon 2004, from Domaine Cauhapé.

The cost for the special tasting menu is $100 per person plus tax and tip. An à la carte dinner menu will also be available for those who don't like turkey or would like to add something to their meal. A credit card is required to confirm reservations for Thanksgiving.
People seem to like to eat earlier on holidays, so we will begin serving dinner at 2 p.m. and seat our last diners starting at 8 p.m.

The Saratoga is offering a special room rate to Chez Sophie customers for Thanksgiving, $79 per room. We can book the rooms for you or you can call the hotel directly at 518.584.4000 and ask for the Chez Sophie Thanksgiving rate.

A note about the second course on the tasting menu; it created quite a bit of controversy. Paul originally called it a "trio of mashed potatoes," which is entirely accurate because he plans to use red potatoes, yellow potatoes and rose gold potatoes from Sheldon Farms to create three completely distinct textures and flavors, one done classically with butter, one spiked with herbs and celery and one with truffle butter and shallots. The problem is, his wife hate "trios" of anything on principle, and worried that the idea of potatoes as a second course would turn people off the tasting menu, which promises to be fantastic.

Cheryl thought about it for 24 hours before she mentioned out loud to one of our tenured waiters. He backed up her qualms rapidly, mentioning that he'd been having a discussion about that very thing with another, even-longer-term waiter.

Cheryl ventured into the kitchen to express her concern to Paul. He didn't take it well.

"I don't want you to change what you're planning to do, because I know you, and I'm sure this will be great," Cheryl said, with all sincerity. "Just give me some details so I can call it something else, because I'm afraid the description, as it is, will discourage people from getting the tasting menu."
Paul was clearly tired, and not in the mood to have anyone question or limit his creativity. He'd worked several 14-hour days, the nanny had called twice from the house because she wasn't feeling well, and either Paul or Cheryl needed to get home to relieve her of the children. Cheryl had yet to write the newsletter, and a large group of Skidmore professors and students had just come in unexpectedly with a special out-of-town dignitary looking for food, even though the kitchen had been cleaned and all the staff but the two owners and the bartender had their coats on to go home.

"This is not the time to talk to me about this," Paul said softly, yet a trifle desperately. "I have an idea of what I want to do next week, but if you press me on it, I'm going to get tied into something that's not what I'll end up doing in seven days. I'm looking to to play with flavors and textures in a way that makes it fun. There will be things that are light and airy, and crunchy, and soft, and herbal and buttery..."

"I know, Love," Cheryl said, even more softly. "I want to eat this dish already. I just want to call it something sexier. I'm writing the newsletter now. Help me out. Three Mounds of Venus. A rainbow of spuds. Anne Boleyn's roots." Paul must have been exhausted, because the only one who laughed at the last moniker was Nicole, the garde manger, who knows her Hen-er-y de Eighth, I yam I yam and his dead wives. (Boleyn, the second, sharp-tongued, unwilling wife of the big man, was rumored to have a third breast and an 11th digit, which were most likely a big mole and a vestigial bump that grew unaccountably large in public retelling when she fell out of favor for being a little too son-less.)

Back in Chez Sophie's kitchen, a third waiter with unfortunate timing came into the kitchen and started to make another argument against trios of mash, at which point Paul ultimately tired of the debate over his culinary freedom.
"I guarantee you if you went to Arpege and Alain Passard had a trio of mashed potatoes, you'd order it and you'd think it was brilliant,"
Paul told the cheeky waiter. Passard is a controversial Parisian chef who offers things like a confit of tomatoes with "twelve flavors" as dessert.
The waiter, a persistent Frenchman, continued to push: "'E would call it someting else."
Paul took a deep breath, grabbed his jacket, and said calmly: "If people want to have the tasting menu at Thanksgiving, they just have to trust me." Then he made a graceful and dignified exit, thankfully not pulling a celebrity chef and beheading his critics with a highly honed Henkels. During a cell phone call about an hour later, Paul renamed the dish to its current vagueness while his children bounced off the walls in the background.

Meanwhile, Cheryl had a lot of fun picking the wines for the Thanksgiving tasting menu, and she thinks she did such a good job that Paul has suggested sticking peas up her nose. "I don't understand the pea thing," Souschef Mark Graham said quietly.
"I'm standing here in front of freshly shelled peas and it seemed like a good idea," Paul explained logically.

The Hosmer Riesling is a very special New York State wine that unlike most New York rieslings is not dominated by sweetness. It's almost like an Alsatian riesling, semi-dry, with a light, floral bouquet and a nice mouthfeel. Aromas of peaches, pears, and honey make this wine rich and luscious with a finish that's lively and long.
The next wine, the Marsannay from Domaine Bruno Clair, is a tremendous value, a brilliant, soft, vibrant pinot noir. The Vacqueyras from Ainé is dominated by Grenache, lengthened by Syrah and exquisitely crafted. And oddly enough, we find that the rather obscure dessert wine, the Symphonie de Novembre, is a favorite pairing for Alain Passard with that weird tomato confit dessert.
That's a tempting thought, but we think it will be brilliant as well with something a little less savory, like the pumpkin ice cream and brioche.

Because we will be offering the turkey specials on Thanksgiving, our Pink Plate Special will be offered on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday this week.
Carbonnade à la Flammande will be the entree, which is beef braised in Belgian beer and onions.
The Pink Plate is a weekly prix fixe special we will offer this week on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. For $32 per person, you get your choice of soup or salad, the featured entree, two selections from our cheese board or one of a couple of featured desserts and coffee, tea or espresso.

We offer a fun and elegant à la carte brunch on Saturday and Sunday.
Our artist-in-residence, jazz pianist Cole Broderick, plays the baby grand piano from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Sunday

The brunch menu this Saturday and Sunday will feature beef short ribs braised in red wine with rosemary over polenta ($16); chestnut tagliatelle with lumb crab meat and white truffle oil ($18); bacon- wrapped salmon with maple-walnut sauce ($16) and blue cheese risotto with applewood-smoked bacon ($14). Appetizer specials include a crabcake with lemon caper mayonnaise ($16); a salad of Sunset Hill Farm greens tossed in a red wine vinaigrette ($7); Rhode Island Littleneck clams steamed in white wine with herbs and garlic ($13) and soup of the day ($8).

The brunch specials run from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. The complete menu,
offered from 7 to 2 p.m., includes a Continental assortment of
muffins, pastries, fruit, yogurt, frittata etcetera for $9;
omelettes ($10 to $12); pancakes du jour ($10); the All in One, which includes 2 eggs any style, homefries, toast and sausage or bacon ($10); waffles with sweet cream butter and local maple syrup ($10); and Irish steel- cut oatmeal ($8).

Artist-in-residence Cole Broderick has been busily promoting his seventh CD release this month, "Chez Sophie Jazz." This CD is a departure for Cole, who won a Billboard Critic's Choice Award for his 4-CD set of jazz compositions: "Seasons in Saratoga," because it's the first time he's recorded with a vocalist. Weirdly enough, that vocalist is Cheryl Clark, co-owner of Chez Sophie, wife of Chef Paul and mother of the adorable Nico and Léo. Their artistic collaboration started back in the diner, a couple of days after Nico was born, when Cole heard her singing to her infant son while vaccuuming the carpet in the rear dining room. Since then, he has persistently urged her to sing with him in the dining room, and conceived and produced a CD of
12 of the standards the two of them perform in Chez Sophie's dining room and 4 original piano compositions. Our illustrious web designer, Sharon Maenza of Kilakwa Associates, has loaded parts of the CD onto our website at http://www.chezsophie.com/ Copies are for sale for $16 at Chez Sophie.

We've also started booking reservations for New Year's Eve 2007, on Monday, December 31, 2007.
This is our most elegant party of the year, with festive decorations and special menus to make the evening memorable. Our early seating, with tables available at 5, 5:30, 6 and 6:30 p.m., will feature a prix fixe five-course menu including options for three of the courses, with a glass of Champagne included for $80 per person, plus tax and gratuity.
The New Year's Eve all-night party starts at 8 p.m., with seatings available at 8, 8:30, 9 and 9:30 p.m. The 9-course menu will feature options for three of the courses, with a midnight Champagne toast included. Jazz Pianist Cole Broderick plans to start playing at 8 p.m. The cost is $130 per person, plus tax and gratuity Special prix fixe wine menu available as well as our full wine list and bar.
The Saratoga has agreed to make double and king rooms available to Chez Sophie customers for $219 per night. Book early, because the hotel is always sold out on New Year's Eve.
Reservations required with credit card confirmation, call 518.583.3538.

A very smart lady booked 20 seats last week for her family at Chez Sophie on Christmas Eve. We will be open and serving what we hope will be the most elegant fare in town on both Christmas Eve and Christmas. This was a huge success last year. We offer a five-course prix-fixe menu featuring fabulous, festive choices, with seatings from 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. (No à la carte menu will be offered, but there are great choices within each of the courses.) The price will be $75 per person for food, plus beverages, tax and gratuity. Children under
12 eat for $25.

Hotel rooms at The Saratoga will be available to Chez Sophie customer at a steep discount. ($79 per night.)

Live Piano Jazz
Jazz pianist Cole Broderick plays the baby grand Tuesday and Friday night, and during Sunday brunch from 10:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
(barring special events that preclude live music.)
Cost: No cover charge

Tasting menus
Chef's Choice seven-course tasting menu available each night. The
menus are designed based on the best and most creative dishes Chef Paul K. Parker is serving each evening. We will pair wines for you at an additional charge or you can order from our extensive wine list.
Cost: $80 to $200 per person for seven courses, plus tax and tip.
Everyone at the table must partake in the tasting menu.
If you're feeling less impromptu, you can call ahead to arrange a
special tasting menu with the number of courses and wine pairings
designed to suit your capacity, dietary restrictions and budget.
Tasting menus arranged in advance will be printed on commemorative vellum scrolls personalized with the name of the host or the reason for the event.
Cost: Depends on the number of courses and the wines selected; available for two to 75 guests. Call Cheryl to make arrangements at
518.583.3538

The Pink Plate Special
offered Monday, November 19, Tuesday, November 20, Wednesday, and November 21

The Pink Plate will not be offered on Thursday this week because of our special Thanksgiving menu (see above)
$32 per person
includes your choice of soup or salad, a special entree, selected desserts or a cheese course and coffee, tea or espresso.

This week's special entree:
carbonnade à la Flammande
(beef braised in Belgian beer with onions.)

Notes on Nico and Léo:
Nico is at a very difficult stage in his emotional development, one in which he never wants to be alone. While Léo, who is almost two, can sit quietly crooning to a pile of plastic dinosaurs for an hour and be perfectly happy, nearly five-year-old Nico wants to be held and hugged and played with constantly. This has caused a bit of a problem because Paul has been going to work before Nico wakes up, and when the poor child arises to find his father gone, he gets a little hysterical. Paul gets home earlier than Mom at night to spend time reading to and playing with his son before bedtime, but Nico still has to be talked out of the tree each morning when he wakes to find he has missed his Dad.

Up until this week, Nico has had his own bedroom, but we can only get him to sleep in it for a few hours before he creeps downstairs to his parents' bed. Cheryl took Monday and Tuesday off from the restaurant and tried to find a solution to the problem.

She disassembled Nico's red racecar bed and put it in the larger upstairs bedroom with a double bed that the Nanny had been sleeping in before the Nanny got her own apartment and car. The idea is that the kids can share a large room, so neither of them feels alone.

Mom then took Nico's old bedroom and turned it into a children's playroom with rubber floors and loads of toys and the kinds of surfaces that beg for fingerpaints and abuse. Nico and Léo participated in the shopping trips to equip this changeover, helped hammer the furniture together and helped move the toys around in ways that suited their tastes in each room. Nico, in particular, was thrilled to show his father the accomplishment, announcing "we have a new house!" But that night, as we tried to read the children to sleep in separate beds in the same room, we found them clinging to us.
Eventually, we relented and slept in the "Kid's Bedroom" for the first night. The second night, an exhausted Paul managed to make it downstairs into the adult bedroom, but Cheryl couldn't disentangle herself from the children, who awoke and cried every time she tried to creep downstairs. Cheryl remembers her mother telling her that you have to let children "cry it out" or they'll get spoiled. She knows she and Paul are ridiculously lenient, inconsistent and easily manipulated, but she can't quite believe that letting a child cry itself to sleep is the best answer.

We had planned for the third night to be the charm. But then the Nanny returned from her weekly three days off. Her car broke down and she needed to stay the night, so she slept in the kids' room, and the kids ended up with their parents downstairs. Then the Nanny got a cold, and tonight she is quarantined in the kids' new bedroom. We lost the momentum on the changeover, but once the Nanny is well, we'll start over. If there's anything we've learned over the past five years of parenthood, it's that kids are adaptable. However, we've also learned that our kids can get what they want from us with little more than a trembling lower lip. And they seem to want to be with us as much as possible, which is charming in its own way.

The Parker family
at Chez Sophie
518.583.3538

Chez Sophie was founded in 1969 by sculptor Joseph Parker and his French-born wife, the late Sophie. The business moved to a vintage stainless steel diner in Malta Ridge, New York, in 1995. It is owned today by Sophie and Joseph's son, Paul Parker, and his wife, Cheryl Clark. In June of 2006, they moved the restaurant into their current location in The Saratoga Hotel on Broadway..

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P.S. Each month we draw a name at random from our database of customers and send them a $50 gift certificate to Chez Sophie. If you would like to be added to this promotions database, which is owned by Chez Sophie, please send us an email with your name, address, telephone number, birthday and anniversary. People on the list will also receive a gift certificate by mail or email for a free glass of champagne or dessert on their birthdays or anniversaries. (You only need to enter once to be eligible every month.)

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