Ah, L’Espalier. The name alone sends a tingle down from my palate and fills me with a sense of deep-seated longing, but the “$$$$” listing tends to keep this food lust at bay. Fortunately, my mom was recently in town, and like all savvy college students, I knew how to maneuver myself into a fabulous meal.

Charged with anticipation, my mother and I strode to 774 Boylston and arrived at large metal doors. Past the entrance, we found ourselves greeted by a host in a miniature elevator foyer. We were directed to take the elevator up to the dining room. This was not just any old elevator – it was a glass elevator à la Willy Wonka. Talk about perfect prelude to my dining fantasies.

Immediately upon arrival, I was filled with a sense of sophisticated homey comfort that comes only with an exquisite interior designer. We arrived in a marble lobby adjacent to an area that very much resembled a family room, a magnum of Dom Perignon on ice and all. Well, more like family room of my dreams.

After having been seated at a wonderful window-side table overlooking Boylston, my mother and I eagerly awaited the bread service. It may seem frivolous to recount what can be a negligible preface to a meal, but at L’Espalier, every facet of the dining experience, including the bread, is exquisite. A tray of bread was brought to our table with warm Kalamata olive and sourdough, and was served with soft peaks of butter. I need to pause here for a second to talk about this butter. This wasn’t just any old mass-market variety- this was butter that would make Ina Garten and Paula Deen fall to their knees. We used the bread merely as a vehicle on which we could pile this soft, unimaginably creamy, rich, and salty primrose pleasure.

Unable to pick just a few dishes, we decided to order both the Fall Prix Fixe and the Fall Degustation. The first course to arrive was a Skip’s Island Creek oyster with American caviar. With very minimal preparation involved, the oyster was a true testament to the quality of the ingredients. Silky, sweet, and salty, the one brief slurp of oyster was like a splash of the sea.

Following the oyster was crispy black pudding with wild mushrooms and an Apple Street Farm fresh egg. Just to clarify, black pudding equals blood sausage. I have enjoyed both the Korean and Spanish varieties, soondae and morcilla, respectively, but I’ll admit that I get a little squeamish every time. This one, however, I didn’t love. The texture was too grainy for me to forget that I was munching on coagulated blood particles. I handed it over to my mom, who enjoyed every morsel.

Standing in stark contrast to the black pudding was the Thai coconut rock shrimp crepe with salmon roe. The crepe was a slightly too sweet for a savory dish, but the saltiness of the roe provided a wonderful contrast of flavors.

We were then greeted by sheer decadence on a plate: roasted foie gras with fig jam-smothered brioche and a fried chanterelle. Like, ohmygod. There was just something about the luxuriously silky goose liver paired with the sweetness of the figs and the salty crunch of the mushroom that titillated every inch of my being. Really, a textural and flavory jackpot.

After the foie was roasted lamb tenderloin with Mediterranean spices and cannellini beans. Perfectly prepared and well seasoned, but was it really that extraordinary? Eh…

The following course, however, paired the seemingly disjoint ingredients of succulent pan roasted Brussels sprouts, creamy hummus, and fall off the bone, toe-curling, sumptuously fatty duck confit. For those of you that are virgins to the confit method of cooking, any meat cooked confit means that it is ever so slowly cooked in its own rendered fat. This dish was stunning in its luscious complexity, and only had the unpleasant side effect of incessant mouth-watering during its consumption.

With our stomachs pleasantly stuffed, we took a quick breather before what we knew would be some heavy-hitting desserts. First came the cheese course. We were presented with five award-winning local cheeses that again attested to the outstanding quality of ingredients. They were presented with the saccharine accoutrements of candied walnuts, pine nut topped honey, and preserved apricots. I was then served chocolate decadence cake that was also a component of my mother’s dessert tasting. Hers was a trio of chestnut sorbet with praline crumbs, the chocolate decadence cake with raspberry coulis and Italian meringue, and panna cotta with raspberry foam, brown butter crunch, and blueberry gelé. Each individual dessert was highly respectable in its own right, but the panna cotta made both my mother and I giddy with delight. Being the sugar addict that I am (admittance is the first step to recovery), I’ve tried multitudes of panna cottas. This one, however, takes the cake. Actually, it takes the gelatinized cream. Unimaginably voluptuous, the panna cotta coated my mouth with its thick creaminess that was perfectly counterbalanced by the slurps of fresh raspberry “air” and the crunch of the sweet brown butter flakes. Perfectly conceptualized and perfectly prepared, the desserts effectively brought closure to my three-hour stop in what I can only hope will be heaven.

Yes, it was expensive, but it was also the best meal I have had since I’ve become a starved college student. Yes, I am currently saving every penny I can to experience this epicurean ecstasy once more.