Category: restaurant reviews

Fireside Grill – Saanich, BC – Dinner 7/28/08

 

Our hosts at the Gazebo Bed and Breakfast recommended a nearby restaurant in Saanich, BC, the Fireside Grill.  Housed in an attractive, Tudor-style structure, it seemed to offer Creative Northwest-influenced dishes, just what we were seeking.

A new menu had just been introduced that day.  This has not always yielded great results in our experience, but it looked good anyway.  The appetizer page looked especially appealing, so we decided to create our meal from starters alone.

Here’s what we had:

An order of flatbread with the spread of the day.  Nicely toasted and seasoned, the flatbread wedges were served with a blueberry cream cheese.  Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!  Anyone who follows our culinary adventures should know that we’re not fans of sweet things, and we especially avoid sweet spreads (and sweet bagels for that matter).  But we were WRONG.  The fresh cream cheese had some goat cheese mixed in, and the blueberries behaved more as a savory (or should we say savoury?) herb than as a sweet fruit.  A beautiful concoction; we were wowed.

Next, our salads: an organic green salad sprinkled with small roasted pumkinseeds for John, and a roasted red beet, lettuce and goat cheese salad for Mary.  The only quibble was that a mix of beet types would have been even better.

Finally, as our main course, we both had the Organic Foie Gras and Qualicum Beach Scallops, with morel mushrooms and sweet peas.  The foie gras and the scallops were delicious and perfectly cooked (we’re very picky about these).  The sweet peas were a nice addition, again perfectly cooked.  The morels were tasty, but perhaps they could have taken a less aggressive role in the dish.

All in all, an excellent meal.  (John: A-, Mary:A-)

Thursday, July 17, 2008 – Healdsburg, California

We started our trip with a stop at Imagery Winery to pick up a wine club shipment.  We like Imagery a lot, it has many interesting varietals.  Since it was lunchtime, we sat on their patio and had lunch.  Since it was our anniversary, we had a bottle of wine.

Picnicking at Imagery Winery 

Then we headed on up to Chateau St. Jean and tasted some wine on their back patio. 

On the porch at Chateau St. Jean

Later, we had a fabulous dinner at Cyrus in Healdsburg.  We’ve been there several times before and have never been disappointed.  John had Thai marinated lobster with avocado, melon and hearts of palm, sea bass with sweet corn and spring onions, mussel and saffron sauce, pompano with cannelini beans, trotters and crayfish glaze, and rabbit ballotine with agnolotti and chanterelles with an olive oil froth.  I had the lobster as well and also the sea bass but I also had a terrine of foie gras with lychee and tamarind and toasted crumpets and a crispy poussin with potato puree, haricots verts and morels.  We started with champagne and then had the sommelier pair wine with the rest of it.  It was great!  We also had amuse bouche, a cucumber gelee, some sort of popsicle palate cleanser and bunch of tidbit desserts (which we didn’t order.)  Even though the portions are not large at all, we were really, really full by the end.

It was a pretty perfect day.  Happy Anniversary John! Toasting our 36th”

 

REWIND DINER, KANAB, UTAH

On a sunny February day we happened into Kanab around lunchtime.  Our plan was to go to the Rocking V Cafe but we found that it was closed for the season.  As we peered into the Rewind Diner, a local worker passing by commented that they had really, really good food.  I have to admit that taking a recommendation from someone unknown and from Utah was chancy (see Utah Rules!) but it turned out he was right. 

 The interior of the Rewind Diner tries VERY hard at looking like a 50’s soda shop. So we were figuring it would be heavy on the burgers and fries but, no!, we were offered a vegetarian menu as well as the regular menu.  (Apparently veg food can not be sullied by being on the same menu as meat.)  We had a faux gyros wrap which was so tasty that it didn’t need to be called faux anything.  Also we had a falafel plate.  The falafel was great!  (Yesterday I had a falafel plate at House of Falafel in Pleasanton, CA and it wasn’t nearly as good.)  The hummus it was served with had enough texture that it didn’t just ooze out of the pita.  This was a great lunch and totally unexpected in this remote corner of Utah.

This is a tricky rating.  I want to give it an A because it was so surprisingly good for Utah.  But, really, the service was a little ditzy, they ran out of falafel so we could only get one plate and the falafel was fried a bit dark.  So…

Table consensus – B/B+

 

HOT DOGS AT THE DOGFATHER’S

TODAY’S WORRY

 When we are driving from California to Utah in the summer, we often taken the route through Yosemite NP with an overnight in Tonopah, NV.  We travel through a lot of territory that is pretty desolate.  Before the first time driving this route, I googled up the names of the small towns I saw on the map and asked for places to dine and stayover.  I got nothing.  After passing through them, I realized why.  These are really small, nowhere places.  Maybe they have a gas station/convenience store, maybe not.

So we’ve taken to packing a lunch and picnicking along the way.  We’ve eaten in Yosemite NP a couple of times but often it is too early for lunch when we are there.  This time we decided we would find a table in a park maybe in Benton Hot Springs or its sister city Benton.  The sign as you come into Benton Hot Springs says population 13 1/2.  There was no picnic table.  But the town of Benton boasts 279 people and actually has a little park.  A sad little park.  We stopped and had our lunch there.  We saw no people.

Now what does this have to do with hot dogs?  John and I went out for hot dogs before we went to see Pirates of the Caribbean part II.  (which I enjoyed – Johnny Depp, what more can I say?)  There is a place that we’ve been eyeing called The Dogfather’s.   It’s kind of a cute name and an occasional hot dog won’t kill us.  (hopefully)  We have a conversation with the guy behind the counter because he pegs us as non-Utahans from the getgo.  He admits that he is originally from California as well.  So we play the “where are you from”  game.  He mentions that he comes from near Bishop, CA.  “Oh,” we say, “yesterday we were near there are on our way to St. George.”  “Actually, I’m from Benton,” he says. 

What are the odds that we’d meet someone from a town that has a population of only 279?  While we were sitting in Benton the day before, we wondered why anyone would live there.  There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of jobs.  It’s ramshackle and depressing. I guess you’d only be there if you’re parents happened to have landed there.  And then like the guy at Dogfather’s you’d find a way out.

BTW -  the hot dogs were bland an unappealing.

YOU CAN HAVE YOUR TORTILLA AND EAT IT TOO!

Do you ever feel like you are saying stuff and no one is listening?  Well, yesterday I had an experience of someone actually listening.  Last June, we took Ryan and Jon out to dinner at Don Jose’s Mexican Restaurant in St. George.  You can read my review here.  In case you don’t go back and read it, let me tell you that it was really bad.  But apparently there are new owners and the new owners obviously must have googled up their restaurant.  And what they found was my review.  So they wrote to me.  Here’s what they had to say –

“Just wanted to let you know that Don Jose Mexican Restaurant is under new ownership and would love to invite you back for a much better experience.
Changes were made with a lot of the recipes and the response has been very favorable.
We now have someone making fresh corn and flour tortillas. Margaritas were definetly a must so we obtained our liquor license in order to be able to serve Margaritas and a wide variety of beer. Last but not least all you can eat chips and salsa is served with your meal.
Changes have been made and for the better….. ”

Yay, for them.  I think we’ll venture back for a second try.

SPAM AND OTHER FOOD PROBLEMS (REVIEW OF AMBER RESTARUANT, DANVILLE, CA)

TODAY’S WORRY

Last month Jon helped me with the spam problem by requiring comment posters to type in Mary before their comment would be posted. But it looks like the spammers have figured a way around. Today I got over 400 spam comments. Surely not as bad as the 5000 I had last month but still enough to make my screen freeze when I tried to delete them. So this is another problem that will need to be solved.

And just so you know what I am thinking about, Americans! stop eating out and spending megabucks for suboptimal food. We just went out to dinner and it was sad. This was at Amber in Danville, CA. My main course was a phyllo purse filled with seasonal vegetables. Well, last time I looked it was May. My seasonal vegetables were carrots and zucchini! Where was asparagus, or fiddleheads (I am smitten with the fiddleheads), or spinach or something that was even vaguely reminiscent of spring! Add to this lettuce leaves with chicken (totally ground up cooked chicken with no flavor), beef satay made out of tenderloin (certainly a skirt or flank steak would have been much more flavorful) with a blah peanut sauce and a potsticker filled with shrimp (I like the ones from Costco better) and you have a meal which is badly cooked, unexciting and pedestrian. I don’t want to pay a lot to eat bad food.

So Americans, a call to arms! And these arms would be your chef knives and santucos. You can do so much better for cheaper at home. Be creative! Try something on a Tuesday beyond meatloaf. You’ll save money and eat better too.

HERBIE FULLY LOADED

TODAY’S RESTAURANT REVIEW

THE HERBFARM, Woodinville, Washington

Speaking of fully loaded, last night we ate a nine course dinner at the five star Herbfarm.  Each menu is designed around seasonal products of the Northwest and our dinner was “A Menu for a Copper King.”  The entrie menu featured salmon and, of course, herbs.  After a tour of the herb garden with small tastes of different plants, we sat down to this sumptuous dinner at 7 and arose around midnight.  Each course was explained and paired with wine.  It was quite an experience!  Our menu –

1. Paddlefish caviar on crispy salmon skin, stellar bay oyster with sorrel sauce and copper river salmon dog.  This was served with a 1997 Argyle brut.  I think the real star of this dish was the caviar which was served on creme fraiche and was not too salty. It went well with the crispy skin.  The salmon dog on a brioche bun was also really good.  And although I’m not an oyster fan, I enjoyed that as well.

2. Lemon thyme consomme with dungeness crab, halibut cheeks, and razor clams served with a 2005 King Estate Pinot Gris.  This was also pretty good.  I would have liked the consomme to have been a little hotter but all the ingredients worked well together.

3.  Nettle, goat cheese, and green garlic ravioli served with a 2004 L’Ecole No. 41 Semillon, Columbia Valley. The ravioli were served with wild fiddleheads and a lovage sauce.  This was really good.  The goat cheese wasn’t too strong and I’d never had fiddleheads before.  They were quite delicious.

4.  Copper River sockeye salmon salad with pea sprouts, wild greens, radishes and herbs served with a 2005 Soter Vineyards North Valley Rose.  This was fabulous.  The salmon had been cooked slowly at 185 degrees and was meltingly perfect but I really thought the greens stole the show.  In combination with the salmon, the little piquant tastes of watercress, arugula, mint and other herbs was just perfect.

5. May Wine Ice.  A strange herbal Moselle sorbet which worked as a palette cleanser.

6.  Copper River King Salmon with morel mushrooms, asparagus, lentil croquette and pinot noir-fennel sauce served with a 2004 Beaux Freres Belles Soeurs Pinto Noir.  My absolute favorite thing of the evening?  The lentil croquette.  Yes, the lowly lentil was raised to a new level in a savory croquette full of herbs and with a hint of sweetness.  I couldn’t eat all the salmon because I was really full at this point but if they’d given me another croquette, I would have found room.  The asparagus was too crunchy for my taste and I would have liked a little bit more of the sauce.  Oh, and morels?  Yum.

7.  Sally Jackson Guernsey cow cheese with a dried fruit turnover and cress salad.  Surprisingly strong cheese  that combined well with the cress and the sweetness of the fruit.

8.  Sweet cicely creme brulee and fritter, rhubarb cobbler with angelica ice cream and lemon verbena sherbet cone.  Not one, not two but three desserts.  Can’t keep eating.  Must lay down.  Took small tastes of each.  All good.

9.  Brewed coffees, teas and infusions with a selection of small treats and a vintage 1916 Barbeito Malvasia Madeira.  We each had our own French press for teas and coffees.  Could not eat small treats.  I am now at bursting point.  Headline reads, “California Woman Explodes at Herbfarm.”

Oh, and there were also these incredibly tasty onion-potato rolls that they kept coming around and serving you with a chive butter.

Wow, what a meal. 

Table consensus – A+

 

 

I’M EATING OUT WAY TOO MUCH

TODAY’S WORRY AND RESTAURANT REVIEWS

 Wow, I have been eating out way too much lately.  As Alexander McCall-Smith would describe me in his mystery novels located in Botswana, I am a traditionally built lady, but all this eating out is making me too traditional!

First an update on the post about Jardiniere.  I wrote to the restaurant about the overabundance of salt in their dishes.  The executive chef, Robbie Lewis, wrote me back.  It seems that they have switched from kosher salt to sea salt from Isola Egadi which is off the coast of Trapani, Sicily.  He explained that this salt is much saltier than the salt they had been using and the chefs are still getting used to it.  He also said he hoped that we would come back again.  After the nice personal note and explanation, I am sure we will.

We ate at the The Peasant and the Pear in Danville, Ca. last week.  The menu had just been updated to reflect the spring season.  We started with calamari fritti.  The rings were so tiny that it would have been impossible for anyone not to overcook them.  We also had French fries as an appetizer.  (I know, strange, but we had a real FF lover at the table.)  Unfortunately, the fries lacked crispness.  We were later comped for both these items.  The lamb shank which was the only carryover from the old menu was excellent according to John and George.  Karen had a flat bread pizza which was awful.  Doughy and undercooked.  I had cannellini stuffed with ricotta and in a mushroom sauce.  The sauce was too thick and the pasta overcooked and flabby. 

A – for the lamb shanks and C-/D for everything else.

An update on a previous restaurant review and a new one tomorrow!

BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

CELEBRATION – JARDINIERE, SAN FRANCISCO

 Because we are bad parents, we were not around when it was Sarah’s birthday at the end of last month.  In an effort to atone, we took her out to dinner last night at Jardiniere in San Francisco. 

Jardiniere, San Francisco

The Jardiniere is an upscale restaurant located near Davies Symphony Hall.  Downstairs is some seating and a circular bar.  The balcony seating overlooks the bar area.  It is nicely furnished and has an intimate feel.

Here are the selections we chose last night:

Sarah had duck confit on top of a salad of marinated le puy lentils and heirloom oranges as a first course. This was followed by a loin of cervena venison with black trumpet mushrooms and a sauce au poivre with glazed baby spring vegetables, smoked bacon and creamed nettles.  I can only tell you that Sarah was way too stuffed for dessert.  She made me promise not to review her meal since she is doing a review at Braisin’ Hussy (entry date 4/10/06.)

John started with the braised Colorado lamb and shelling bean soup with Swiss chard and basil.  He said it was very good with the lamb not dried out at all.  He followed this dish with red wine braised beef shortribs with horseradish potato purée and herb salad.  I had this main course as well.  The shortribs were cooked perfectly.  They were moist and  meltingly delicious.  I thought the portion was way, way too big but John managed to finish his and mine too.  Our biggest complaint was that the potato puree melted into the sauce.  The potatoes were just too thin to stand up to the red wine sauce.  They acted more as a sauce thickener.  I was really looking forward to the horseradish mashed potato portion of this dish and I think the whole thing could have been improved by having rustic mashed potatoes instead of puree, more of the potatoes and lessof the shortribs.

My first course was Maine diver scallops with sautéed mushrooms,smoked bacon, Italian parsley and toasted almonds.  You know if you’ve read any of my reviews that getting the scallops right is a big thing we me.  No overcooking!  These were cooked perfectly.  Yum!  But the rest of the dish was really salty.  I like things well seasoned so I would imagine that this amount of salt would be way over the top for most people.

Rating - 

Sarah – B+

Mary –  B+  

John – A-

 

Boulevard, San Francisco, CA

Last Thursday for the birthdays, we went to Boulevard Restaurant in San Francisco. And although the traffic was really bad getting into the city, it was worth the trip. We had a great dinner with great service. Here are our choices –

Both George and I started with the sauteed fresh Hudson Valley foie gras with steamed persimmon pudding, persimmon sauternes coulis and red flame and pomegranite relish. Although once again there is a noticeable difference between European and American foie gras, it was melt in your mouth delicious and the steamed pudding was a sweet counterpoint to the foie. He and I also ordered the same entree, the grilled Florida butterfish (escolar.) I’ve had this fish twice before, once in Florida and once in Utah (of all places) and it is a firm white buttery flavored fish. Kind of like Chilean seabass but without the guilt. This was served with butternut squash and fresh porcini mushrooms with an aged balsamic vinegar. Wow, yum. My fish could have been cooked a tad less but it was still great.

John started with the fresh Monterey calmari two ways – pan roasted and stuffed and crispy fried. He says the stuffed calamari was the real star. He followed this with a second appetizer, the char-rare ahi tuna with pan seared foie gras and once again, the aged balsamic vinegar. He said this was perfect.

Karen, who is more of a meat and potatoes kind of girl, chose a salad of hearts of romaine and the wood oven roasted Berkshire pork prime rib chop. Yay, they didn’t overcook the pork! The mashed potatoes with white carrot-parsnip swirl looked especially good and Karen wished there had been more.

Accompanying the first course we had an Alsatian Weibach Riesling, and a Sonoma-Cutrer chardonnay for the main course. John had a glass of pinot noir from Volnay with his main course.

Since it was birthdays celebration, we also had dessert. A huckleberry buckle and a 3 dessert sampler which included a sweet corn ice cream and an intense chocolate thing. The ice cream, I thought, was especially interesting and innovative.

So all in all a delicious over-the-top restaurant experience – worth the hassle and the price.

Table Consensus – A