When Dinner Smells Like Tom Ford

“Don’t inhale it like you’re doing cocaine—your nose can get fatigued,” the scent expert Chandler Burr instructed last night, gingerly waving a perfume blotter under his nose in the candlelit dining room of the recently reopened Hotel Gritti Palace in Venice, Italy.

The table in the baroque hall was set for 30-plus, an international coterie of guests who had assembled for a preview of a new interactive dinner from executive chef Daniele Turco, to be emceed by Burr when it is officially offered at the property next week.

"Does anyone know what it is?" Burr, the former New York Times perfume critic, asked of the earthy, nutty aroma in question, surveying the room as suggestions started trickling in—timidly at first, then with gusto.

“Cardamom!” one voice shouted.

“Olive!” said another.

“Anyone else?” Burr prodded, encouraging participation while visibly restraining his overwhelming urge to drop some knowledge on the audience. Finally, he revealed the answer: “Truffle.”

Three more blotters followed, one dipped in sucane absolut—“rum,” Burr clarified—and another in an essence of white ginger; the final scent strip provided a whiff of the individual notes in their completed fragrance form: Tom Ford’s best-selling chypre-oriental, Black Orchid. “You've had my Black Orchid,” Burr subsequently declared, motioning to an army of attendants in white tuxedo jackets to dispense with a macerated beef tartare plated with a shot of rum and individual heaps of ginger, shaved truffle, and Parmesan. “Now, you'll try his”—chef Turco's.

And so began the latest installment of Burr’s illustrious “scent dinner” concept, an event he has devised to celebrate—and elevate—the oft-decried gourmand fragrance category, which showcases aromas of the edible variety. “It just struck me that these [perfumes] use amazing raw materials—food raw materials*,”* he explained, elaborating on his idea to “translate the invisible dinner from the sense of smell, to the sense of taste.”

For his latest olfactory art exhibit, Burr has partnered with fashion designer Tom Ford’s beauty arm to showcase its collection of standout gourmands. Yes, you read that right; perfume as olfactory art is an idea that Burr defends relentlessly.

Fragrance, he insisted, “is the equal of paint, clay, words that are in literature.” Burr waxes less lyrical when it comes to, well, food.

“Food is not art,” he asserted, making similar claims about wine—fighting words in many parts of America, not to mention Italy. “Art, as far as I'm concerned, is artificial; it must be created by a person who wants to manipulate you into perceiving the world in a different way,” he reasoned aloud—somewhat paradoxically, considering the decidedly mind-altering menu.

Turco’s five-course meal—which he will prepare at the Gritti for ticket holders on November 6, followed by a cooking class at the hotel’s remodeled Gritti Epicurean School on the 7th (the same experience will also be offered at the nearby Hotel Daniele courtesy of executive chef Gian Nicola Colucci on November 8th)—revolves around five of Ford’s best-selling scents. In addition to the Black Orchid tartare, there is: another amuse bouche of Sicilian lemon, Italian bergamot, and rosemary-infused ricotta ravioli, created in homage to the same essences that brighten up Ford’s ultra-fresh Neroli Portofino eau; an intermezzo of sage and cardamom sorbet served with a sauce of caramel and passionfruit, Turco’s interpretation of Ford’s Jasmin Rouge; a veal filet topped with a sweet almond-flour disc, accompanied by vanilla-spiked vegetables on a drizzle of honey coulis, a shout-out to the honeyed beeswax in Ford’s fan-favorite Tobacco Vanille; and a dessert of rum-soaked baba, brioche popovers that Turco displayed alongside a ramekin of warm, vanilla-tinged milk and the same swirls of peach and mandarin that color Ford’s next fragrance, due out in fall 2014.

Asked whether he considered food art, Turco was humble. “I don’t consider myself an artist—you should never think about your ego,” the chef said. “But I’d like to [offer] something on the plate that’s taste and presentation—something that you could call ‘minor art.'”

For more information or to book a scent dinner, visit epicureandinners.com.