After making short work of my braised veal cheeks...

... we were treated to a cheese course. A cart of six diverse cheeses at room temperature was rolled over to our table. We opted for a taste of each, with accompanying grapes, olives, and membrillo (the spanish quince paste that goes so well with so many cheeses). We began with a particularly dry, crumbly chèvre from France, which honestly was not as satisfying as the fantastically rich goat cheeses being turned out right around the corner from the Culinary, at the Coach Farm Dairy. Next came the Comte, a variation of Gruyère, the noble forbear to the rubbery embarrasment most Americans know as swiss cheese. The flavor was fine, but the cheese appeared to have dried out a bit too much in the open air. The Reblochon followed, a creamy, earthy, slightly funky soft-ripened cheese. From there I ventured alone to the Stilton, the overpoweringly stinky blue-veined English classic -- Lisa wouldn't go near the stuff. She favored the Pierre Robert, a powerful, gooey, triple-cream cheese with the richness of the now-ubiquitous Saint-André and the depth and character of a raw-milk Camembert.

We saved the most intriguing - and decidedly un-French - entry for last. This was the Red Dragon, a johnny-come-lately designer cheese from Wales. It's basically a cheddar with whole mustard seeds mixed in. Our waiter told us that this stuff made the best ham sandwiches you'd ever try, and after tasting it, I can see why. The idea behind Red Dragon appears to be the same as the idea behind the old Lipton Soup Mix commercials. You remember, the one where a group of average-looking suburbanites peers puzzlingly under their hamburger buns at an outdoor barbecue, and the most obstreperous muu-muu-clad lady in the pack yells out, "Hey Phil, where are the onions?" Of course, her husband, having just gotten the skinny from Phil himself, explains to her in an embarrased whisper, "They're INSIDE". So yeah, if you use Red Dragon in your ham sandwich, you can skip the mustard. Of course, you could also just use a far less expensive cheddar and the mustard we all know you have in your fridge anyway. Still, for a cheese tasting, the Red Dragon was a kitschy amusement, and you can't beat Escoffier's price.

Finally came dessert. Lisa, already stuffed to the gills, heroically ordered a cup of tropical white peach sorbet. It opened with a burst of pineapple, which gave way to the smooth mellowness of fresh peaches, followed by a hint of the floral aromas that distinguish white peaches from their poorer yellow-fleshed cousins. A stunning display of control, in something as simple as a sorbet.

I, unencumbered by a want of appetite, ordered the Saint-Honoré, traditionally the most challenging of pastry dishes. The idea behind a classic Saint-Honoré is to fill dozens or hundreds of profiteroles with pastry cream and dip them in hot caramel, then build them into a mountain of pastry from which guests can pick one sugary nugget at a time. The trick is that the profiteroles must be filled immediately before service so they don't become soggy, and the caramel must be at precisely the right temperature when the profiteroles are dipped. Too hot, and the sugar will burn and become bitter; too cold, and it will either fail to harden properly or fail to adhere to the profiteroles in a smooth coat.

Escoffier, unsurprisingly, balks at the prospect of preparing a rock-candy-mountain for every damn fool customer who orders the Saint-Honoré. Instead, they have come up with a clever single-serving tribute to the classic dish: a caramel-dipped profiterole filled with whipped cream, sitting atop a schmear of pastry cream in a disk of caramel-dipped choux paste, all resting in a pool of crème anglaise. The caramel was perfect - brittle and light with just the faintest suggestion of the bitterness of burnt sugar. The pastry was airy and delicate, and the subtle contrasts between the sauce, the pastry cream, and the profiterole filling kept me engaged until the dessert was all gone. Another triumph for the next generation of master chefs.

This being my birthday dinner, Lisa graciously offered to drive us home. I rounded out the evening with a glass of Poire Williams, which was enough to secure my sense of warm contentment for the cold ride back to Rhinebeck.