Spoon & Stable - December 22, 2015
When one of your favorite restaurants happens to be popular, sometimes you need to make reservations months in advance. A lot can change in that period of time. Sometimes you want to expand the reservation to include another friend and sometimes the people that were originally intending to go can’t. Thankfully with a little notice it’s not too hard to get a couple of people interested in going to a really talked about restaurant. It doesn’t hurt that the restaurant earns the praise heaped upon it.
Pro-tip: If you’re in a group of two or three, and it’s not a romantic dinner if the former, and you love to see food, the best place to sit in the restaurant is the chef’s bar. And you want to sit to the far left if you can get it. That’s right next to what they call the “pass.” The lines are right in front of you, so you get to see all the chefs cooking and plating everything. On lucky nights you get to see Gavin and Diane doing their thing, and if they’re not there, Chef Nye and Chef Tony are pretty fun to watch too.
On this night, after the shuffling of schedules, I was joined by my good friends Andrea and Rachel (the second Rachel from the Scena adventure).
Pain d’Epi with butter: I’ve mentioned it before, but their bread game didn’t impress me a year ago. It is so good now. Crispy, chewy, good crumb, great slightly sour flavor, perfectly paired with a salted soft butter.
Amuse of Arancini with truffle and fonduta: Still great. a crispy warm exterior and a nice cheesy al dente interior flavored with a touch of truffle.
Roasted Carrot Salad with toasted rye berries, caramelized goat cheese, chervil, and maple vinaigrette: A great combination of different carrots. Slightly different roast times on each led to a great combination of textures. The rye berries were a good nutty addition.
Belgian Endive Salad with pears, blue cheese, pecans, and sherry vinaigrette: Another great salad, a little bitterness from the endive, some funk from the cheese, nice tart vinaigrette, sweet pears, good textures too.
Peekytoe Crab Tartine on toasted sourdough with lemon aioli, winter radish, satsuma mandarin, and tarragon: Really good. Gavin regaled us with a funny story about how the Peekytoe crab used to have a less than desirable name and the fisherfolk couldn’t sell them, but once they trademarked Peekytoe and started calling them that, they didn’t have a problem selling them.
Truffled Risotto: not on the menu, but if they offer it, you want it. So good, nutty and funky from the cheese, nice and loamy from the truffles.
Sweet Potato Agnolotti with smoked sheep’s milk cheese, walnuts, cippolini onion, and balsamic vinegar: Great. Good sweetness from the potatoes, onions and balsamic counteracts some of the walnuts’ nuttiness and the cheese’s salt and smoke.
Sea Scallops with black trumpet mushrooms, riso rosse, salsify, apple beurre blanc: Nice sweetness from the scallops paired with the umami and slight astringency of the mushrooms. The riso rosse was really good, nice al dente texture.
Creamy Spinach with fried cheese curds: For whatever reason this dish reminds me of the Indian dish Palak Paneer. It’s good, I recommend eating it as soon as it arrives at the table. Cooling temperatures do no favors to cheese curds and spinach in sauce.
Crispy Potatoes with rosemary & garlic: Funny, the only use of the ampersand on the entire menu, everything else is just serial commas and line feeds. You know my feeling on potatoes, these are cooked right, spiced well, and have good textures.
Grilled Millbrook Venison with red cabbage, celery root, chestnut, and black currant: Really good, not too gamey. Good tartness from the cabbage and the black currant, the chestnut cake was a nice surprise. The meat had a great sear on it.
Lime Curd with mandarin sorbet, kumquat, thyme, and crispy milk: I think I’ve written about this one before. But it’s really good, I ordered it specifically for the sorbet and the thin fruit paper. Putting the paper on your tongue makes it dissolve like some sort of breath strip, it’s a fun and extremely tasty dessert.
Honey and Cream Cake with sweetened condensed milk ice cream and quince: A table, and James Beard Foundation, favorite. The little meringue cookies gave it a great textural experience, all of the flavors work really well together too.
Petit Fours: Biscotti, macaron, gel, shortbread, almond cookie, and toffee. All good, and a nice end to a night filled with good friends, great conversations, and impeccable service.