How does Tim McKee get that coppa salami to stick to that tube of rabbit loin? How quickly does he have to work to carve a carpaccio of veal and then top it with a foie-gras mousseline sauce? And what sort of margin of error is there when he's making a sauce with such costly, easily damaged ingredients as sea urchin roe and white truffles? Who knows? All we know is that McKee's tasting menus remain the most ambitious and successful of local culinary adventures. Not many have the imagination to break culinary ground, and even fewer have the techniques to make that vision real. McKee has both.