At 2 Fools and a Bull, There’s No Fooling Around When it Comes to Fine Dining
We’re all waiting in the shade outside the locked door
of 2 Fools and a Bull, an exclusive chef’s table-style
restaurant near the high-rise hotel area.
— By Amie Watson
— Photography: Kenneth Theysen
— Cover: Roy Engelen, Executive Chef – 2 Fools and a Bull
The five-and-a-half course gastronomic dinner with optional wine pairings only takes 17 reservations a night for a single seating and is often booked months in advance. Fortunately, I lucked into a last-minute cancellation.
Tonight the group includes a couple from Pittsburgh on their babymoon, another from New York celebrating a birthday, a few pairs of local food lovers and one magazine writer and her guest. The soon-to-be parents have high expectations after coming a few years ago – it was the best meal of their trip.
But that was before the owner and chef changed two years ago, so there’s pressure.
Promptly at 7 p.m., host and restaurant owner Roger Herber opens the door and invites us in with flutes of French bubbly (ginger ale for the mother-to-be). He teases us past Chef Roy Engelen’s open kitchen with its smells of freshly baked bread and something sweet and tropical, past the wrap-around marble-topped bar, giant red candelabra and statue of a monkey wearing a purple top hat, out to the backyard patio.
There, seated on comfortable sofas, Roger tells us what we’re about to experience, gets us to introduce ourselves and sets us at ease. He’ll be directing the spectacle and all we have to do is let ourselves fall under the chef’s culinary spell…
…which I do by Appetizer #2: incredibly tender slices of swordfish marinated in a Kaffir lime ponzu with tomate de árbol (“it tastes like a sour kiwi,” says Chef Roy) and grated ginger that’s served with dots of avocado cream and vadouvan aïoli, crunchy deep-fried grains of Canadian wild rice, sweet-pickled onions and herbaceous cilantro sprouts.
My guest’s epiphanal moment comes somewhere between Main #1 (braised lamb shoulder ragu clinging to truffled orecchiette pasta with truffle, topped with a cloud of freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano) and Main #2 (a luscious block of compressed black Angus beef short rib with seared, sliced sirloin steak, toasted almonds, truffled polenta and short rib jus). The free-flowing wine might have helped bring on the rapture.
Roger, who formerly worked at Screaming Eagle and still owns Chicken & Lobster, bought 2 Fools and a Bull from its previous owner and then hired Roy based on the chef’s impressive résumé: three-and-a-half years at the two-Michelin-starred Beluga, then three years at Papillon on Aruba.
“In the Netherlands, I can’t find it like this, how 2 Fools and a Bull is set up, how the people are sitting around the bar, the mingling outside between courses, the weather,” says Roy.
Roy created the menu for this culinary magic from scratch by experimenting with balancing sweet, sour and earthy flavors, like the pickled cherry tomato in Parmesan foam (the amuse-bouche), the bitter basil sprouts in the lamb shoulder ragu and the sweet and saline seared scallops above Norwegian salmon tartare (Appetizer #2), bathed in a delicate white asparagus soup.
A perfectionist, he used measuring tape to cut the juicy, compressed short rib into equal squares – but he’s flexible enough to be able to adapt to food intolerances with advance warning. He replaces the creamy white asparagus soup with a home-made scallop broth for two lactose intolerants and swaps out the beef for fish for pescatarians.
He also does a complete menu overhaul every two months. Some of the most popular dishes do come back, like a sea bass tartare with home-made sweet chili sauce, but Roger uses a digital archive and books from the previous owners to make sure people never eat the same thing twice.
Despite being open only since September 2018, Roy and Roger have already perfected their choreography. The “2 Fools” play off each other like Laurel and Hardy or, for millenials, Rogen and Franco. Roy explains each dish and Roger each wine pairing. An exceptional bottle of Hands of Time Napa 2014 opens into a bouquet of plums, dried grapes, vanilla, oak and pepper after Roger decants it into appropriately gigantic wine glasses and we give it a swirl. The pacing is perfect. And while the meal is officially five-and-a-half courses, with bread a double amuse and a surprise dessert, it’s more like eight (I’m tapping out halfway through that luscious beef short rib). It’s normal for Roger to pack guests’ leftovers.
Where’s the bull?
There are references everywhere, from the door knocker to the horns on the wall, but the bull in the name refers to the giant 1960s rotisserie from Paris, which acts as the dining room’s centerpiece, separating the counter seating from the kitchen. There are only two left in the world, explains Roger. Roy always has one dish on his regularly changing menu that uses something cooked in it. Tonight, it’s the rotisserie pineapple that comes with a home-made passion fruit macaron and a pica di papaya-spiked lacy cookie above coconut ice cream.
“The macaron!” swoons one of the locals. She can’t get over the crispy exterior and chewy interior of the passion fruit cream-stuffed almond cookie. But I’m marveling at the pineapple, which Roy cooked sous-vide and then finished in the Bull. The result is a tender-firm texture with the fruit’s sugars pushed to the outside of the pineapple slices, essentially glazing it in its own caramelized juices.
Only one member of the group guesses the surprise ice cream flavor that Roy delivers once we’re all back outside after the meal, lounging on sofas, while Roger offers after-dinner drinks. Most think caramel, toffee or dulce de leche.
“It’s fermented garlic!” says Roy. He dehydrates each head for a month until it’s completely black, which sweetens and caramelizes the flavor. Then he mixes it into an ice cream base churned to creamy perfection. “You can make fudge out of it,” he says. He used to use it in an all-black dessert that was a bit too extreme to keep around. “Sometimes I think too much outside of the box,” admits Roy, “and Roger has to push my breaks.”
Roy has had to think out of the box with the Bull, though. It works well with large, rich cuts of meat, but not everyone wants to look at a whole suckling pig all night, he says. “Besides, it’s so bloody hot!” But it’s part of the concept, he says, so the pineapple was a great solution.
Roy has finally escaped the kitchen to join us for an after-dinner drink on the patio. “This was better than three years ago,” says the mother-to-be when we’ve finally finished the last spoonful of ice cream. There are a number of chef’s table experiences on Aruba, but Roy feels that what sets this one apart is that it’s just him and Roger during service. “That’s the thing I had to get used to the most, but now I love it,” he says. “You can see people enjoy their food.”
“We’re on the right track,” adds Roger, though he’s not about to kick back and relax. “If people are asked what the best restaurant on the island is and they answer ‘2 Fools and Bull’ – that would be my dream.”
With dinners like the one we had, the 2 Fools are well on their way.
