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our anniversary dinner
One of our wedding presents last year was a very generous gift certificate to the Inn at Little Washington, a consistently well-reviewed extremely swank restaurant about 70 miles from here in the foothills of the Blue Ridge. Swank enough that even with the gift cert we couldn't possibly have dinner and stay overnight. So we planned to go for our first anniversary; and thanks to some scheduling difficulties, that commemoration ended up being last night. (Our actual anniversary was May 25.)
The place runs tasting menus, which we'd never done before. (They also take spectacular individual care of you, as they should; I told them ahead of time that I couldn't have mushrooms or fresh pineapple, which they put in the computer at the time we made the reservation, and we could swap courses from one tasting menu to another, probably within reason.) We didn't take pictures, but here is a blow-by-blow rundown of the fanciest dinner we've ever had:
Some hors d'oeuvres came along while the first course was being prepared and were determined by the kitchen. Our flight--because the tables near us seemed to be getting slightly different assortments; next door were pescetarians, for example, but another table nearby just plain had different things--was the following three things. (1) A beet-pickled quail egg topped with [some sort of] roe (it's not on the menu, and I don't remember the details), which was very nice, about two small bites of hard-cooked egg whose smoothness nicely balanced the bite of the beet (which it sat in like a cup) and the tang of the roe, although I haven't cared for caviar in the past. (2) A house-made potato chip (that is, a very thin slice of fried potato) rolled around a pimento-cheese dip with Virginia country ham--quite delicious, but very, very salty. I mean, ham, cheese, dip, chips, what's not to like, but really very salty indeed. (3) Pork belly in an apple-dill relish, which was nice; I couldn't really taste the dill, but maybe without it the apple would have been sweeter?
For actual dinner, I'd ordered the second menu with wine pairings and one substitution from the first menu; Himself had ordered the first menu straight up with no wine.
First up, we both had a shot of chilled asparagus soup, which came with a chipotle (I think) and goat cheese gougère. The puff pastry was good. The soup was shockingly salty. I like asparagus very much and this was tough for me. Himself doesn't care for it and it was a struggle. Fortunately, when you're eating a tasting menu, if you don't like something it's gone in three bites and something else is coming along soon.
They also brought us bread--tiny slices of a rye multigrain that had been heavily salted on the top of the loaf before slicing, and really tasty poppyseed mini-baguettes. We realized after we finished the bread that at this joint a bread plate is like a water glass, i.e., they'll keep bringing you more every time they see you're out, so we laid off the bread pretty promptly after that.
For the first "real" course, he had spicy sesame-crusted ahi tuna tartare with cucumber sorbet. It was indeed very sesame-y. The cucumber balanced it nicely. The texture of the tuna was very smooth and melty. I had sashimi of yellowtail dusted with espelette, and the wine that came with it was a Riesling blend. I'm generally not a fan of sashimi for texture reasons, and I tend to like my white wines drier than Riesling--but the fish was not squidgy in any way, and it came with a thin slice of avocado and a bit of jalapeño and the whole flavor experience went really nicely with the wine. Of course these are (a) very nice wines chosen by (b) professional people to go with the food, so I shouldn't have been (and wasn't) surprised that the pairing worked. This was the first of several times that we noted something we never would have chosen ourselves actually turned out to be delicious.
Next up we both had carpaccio of herb-crusted baby lamb loin with Caesar salad ice cream. (The menu I chose would have had chilled veal tongue with pickled root vegetables and horseradish ice cream; even granting that we were taking the opportunity to let an expert choose what we were going to eat, I wasn't interested in veal tongue. Sorry to miss the horseradish ice cream, but life is like that, I guess.) There were also capers, shredded Parmesan, and a healthy smudge of pesto. The Caesar salad ice cream was exactly what it said--not frozen Caesar dressing, but actual salad ice cream; we could taste the dressing but also the Romaine. It was astonishing. Each of the things on the plate was nice, but all together, if you got a slice of lamb and a bit of the Caesar ice cream and some Parmesan and a caper and a bit of pesto, it was delicious. (There were also croutons--very salty ones.) The wine that came with this course was another white that I can't remember all the details of--less sweet than the first one. Of course it went impeccably with the dish.
Himself had a peanut-crusted soft shell crab tempura on summer vegetable "pasta" with cilantro and lime, which was very nice. There was a flavor between the peanut and the crab that neither of us could identify, and that's about when we decided we might like to take a cooking or gastronomy type class to help us improve our flavor vocabulary, because I did have a definite sense that this mystery flavor was "between" those two other flavors, but we couldn't work out how I knew that, what "between" means in this situation, or what the flavor was. I had a filet of Antarctic sea bass with lemon vodka sauce and a Liliputian shrimp-pork dumpling (they really did call it "Liliputian," and it was indeed a wee ravioli with shrimp and pork--which would ordinarily also have had mushrooms, so there you go importance of telling them about your dietary restrictions), which was gorgeous. The fish was fantastic and crispy at the edge, the sauce was fantastic and creamy and not too lemony or salty or anything, and it was all so good that I had finished it before I even drank any of the wine, which was a Chardonnay (another grape I don't normally care for) so I can't really say how well they went together. I had a little more of the sauce and another sip of the wine and they did go very nicely. I bet if I'd sipped the wine between bites of the fish it would have been even better.
Next he had a grilled breast of squab marinated in blueberry vinegar on a zucchini crepe, and he was really surprised with how well the blueberries went with grilled poultry--again with the cooking class, because these guys are combining flavors it would never occur to us to put together and it keeps working. I had pan-seared Arctic char with celery root purée and house-made bacon with a pinot gris, and I'm not going to lie, it was good, but it probably suffered from proximity to that sea bass, because two fish courses right in a row and one of them's going to be better. The bacon was actually a bacon reduction with tiny bits of bacon still in it, which was more umami than salty but still quite strong; the wine balanced it nicely, of course.
Finally, he had prosciutto-wrapped loin of veal with country ham and Fontina ravioli, which I may not have got a taste of. I had duck breast with sour cherries, wild rice pecan pilaf, and turnips--for some reason the turnips, of all things, pleased me immensely, and the whole course was really lovely together, as usual. I did trim the thick fat layer off the duck; that was probably the first time I hadn't completely cleared the plate. It came with a pinot noir ("We finally brought you red wine," heh).
Before dessert, they brought us tiny homemade creamsicles--homemade orange sorbet and vanilla ice cream, each of which was lovely and which together were fantastic. To be fair, that's the point of a creamsicle, so I'm not actually going to give them credit in this case for finding two great tastes that taste great together. Execution was right on, though.
For dessert itself, I had a sour cherry tart with crème frâiche ice cream and he had a butter pecan ice cream sandwich with a hot caramel drizzle, and I tell you what, that caramel sauce could make a person do really unspeakable things. The cherry tart was delicious, don't get me wrong. The cherries were perfect and the tart was nicely crispy and warm. But the ice cream thing--the combination of the ice cream and the wafer between the layers and that miraculous caramel sauce ... nngh.
I don't have a lot else to say. The whole experience was about five leagues above the nicest dinner we'd normally ever go to on our own. I may be converted to the tasting-menu concept, but one won't be able to go back to the Inn at Little Washington until--many years and a great deal of disposable income in the future. Hell of an anniversary present, though.
The place runs tasting menus, which we'd never done before. (They also take spectacular individual care of you, as they should; I told them ahead of time that I couldn't have mushrooms or fresh pineapple, which they put in the computer at the time we made the reservation, and we could swap courses from one tasting menu to another, probably within reason.) We didn't take pictures, but here is a blow-by-blow rundown of the fanciest dinner we've ever had:
Some hors d'oeuvres came along while the first course was being prepared and were determined by the kitchen. Our flight--because the tables near us seemed to be getting slightly different assortments; next door were pescetarians, for example, but another table nearby just plain had different things--was the following three things. (1) A beet-pickled quail egg topped with [some sort of] roe (it's not on the menu, and I don't remember the details), which was very nice, about two small bites of hard-cooked egg whose smoothness nicely balanced the bite of the beet (which it sat in like a cup) and the tang of the roe, although I haven't cared for caviar in the past. (2) A house-made potato chip (that is, a very thin slice of fried potato) rolled around a pimento-cheese dip with Virginia country ham--quite delicious, but very, very salty. I mean, ham, cheese, dip, chips, what's not to like, but really very salty indeed. (3) Pork belly in an apple-dill relish, which was nice; I couldn't really taste the dill, but maybe without it the apple would have been sweeter?
For actual dinner, I'd ordered the second menu with wine pairings and one substitution from the first menu; Himself had ordered the first menu straight up with no wine.
First up, we both had a shot of chilled asparagus soup, which came with a chipotle (I think) and goat cheese gougère. The puff pastry was good. The soup was shockingly salty. I like asparagus very much and this was tough for me. Himself doesn't care for it and it was a struggle. Fortunately, when you're eating a tasting menu, if you don't like something it's gone in three bites and something else is coming along soon.
They also brought us bread--tiny slices of a rye multigrain that had been heavily salted on the top of the loaf before slicing, and really tasty poppyseed mini-baguettes. We realized after we finished the bread that at this joint a bread plate is like a water glass, i.e., they'll keep bringing you more every time they see you're out, so we laid off the bread pretty promptly after that.
For the first "real" course, he had spicy sesame-crusted ahi tuna tartare with cucumber sorbet. It was indeed very sesame-y. The cucumber balanced it nicely. The texture of the tuna was very smooth and melty. I had sashimi of yellowtail dusted with espelette, and the wine that came with it was a Riesling blend. I'm generally not a fan of sashimi for texture reasons, and I tend to like my white wines drier than Riesling--but the fish was not squidgy in any way, and it came with a thin slice of avocado and a bit of jalapeño and the whole flavor experience went really nicely with the wine. Of course these are (a) very nice wines chosen by (b) professional people to go with the food, so I shouldn't have been (and wasn't) surprised that the pairing worked. This was the first of several times that we noted something we never would have chosen ourselves actually turned out to be delicious.
Next up we both had carpaccio of herb-crusted baby lamb loin with Caesar salad ice cream. (The menu I chose would have had chilled veal tongue with pickled root vegetables and horseradish ice cream; even granting that we were taking the opportunity to let an expert choose what we were going to eat, I wasn't interested in veal tongue. Sorry to miss the horseradish ice cream, but life is like that, I guess.) There were also capers, shredded Parmesan, and a healthy smudge of pesto. The Caesar salad ice cream was exactly what it said--not frozen Caesar dressing, but actual salad ice cream; we could taste the dressing but also the Romaine. It was astonishing. Each of the things on the plate was nice, but all together, if you got a slice of lamb and a bit of the Caesar ice cream and some Parmesan and a caper and a bit of pesto, it was delicious. (There were also croutons--very salty ones.) The wine that came with this course was another white that I can't remember all the details of--less sweet than the first one. Of course it went impeccably with the dish.
Himself had a peanut-crusted soft shell crab tempura on summer vegetable "pasta" with cilantro and lime, which was very nice. There was a flavor between the peanut and the crab that neither of us could identify, and that's about when we decided we might like to take a cooking or gastronomy type class to help us improve our flavor vocabulary, because I did have a definite sense that this mystery flavor was "between" those two other flavors, but we couldn't work out how I knew that, what "between" means in this situation, or what the flavor was. I had a filet of Antarctic sea bass with lemon vodka sauce and a Liliputian shrimp-pork dumpling (they really did call it "Liliputian," and it was indeed a wee ravioli with shrimp and pork--which would ordinarily also have had mushrooms, so there you go importance of telling them about your dietary restrictions), which was gorgeous. The fish was fantastic and crispy at the edge, the sauce was fantastic and creamy and not too lemony or salty or anything, and it was all so good that I had finished it before I even drank any of the wine, which was a Chardonnay (another grape I don't normally care for) so I can't really say how well they went together. I had a little more of the sauce and another sip of the wine and they did go very nicely. I bet if I'd sipped the wine between bites of the fish it would have been even better.
Next he had a grilled breast of squab marinated in blueberry vinegar on a zucchini crepe, and he was really surprised with how well the blueberries went with grilled poultry--again with the cooking class, because these guys are combining flavors it would never occur to us to put together and it keeps working. I had pan-seared Arctic char with celery root purée and house-made bacon with a pinot gris, and I'm not going to lie, it was good, but it probably suffered from proximity to that sea bass, because two fish courses right in a row and one of them's going to be better. The bacon was actually a bacon reduction with tiny bits of bacon still in it, which was more umami than salty but still quite strong; the wine balanced it nicely, of course.
Finally, he had prosciutto-wrapped loin of veal with country ham and Fontina ravioli, which I may not have got a taste of. I had duck breast with sour cherries, wild rice pecan pilaf, and turnips--for some reason the turnips, of all things, pleased me immensely, and the whole course was really lovely together, as usual. I did trim the thick fat layer off the duck; that was probably the first time I hadn't completely cleared the plate. It came with a pinot noir ("We finally brought you red wine," heh).
Before dessert, they brought us tiny homemade creamsicles--homemade orange sorbet and vanilla ice cream, each of which was lovely and which together were fantastic. To be fair, that's the point of a creamsicle, so I'm not actually going to give them credit in this case for finding two great tastes that taste great together. Execution was right on, though.
For dessert itself, I had a sour cherry tart with crème frâiche ice cream and he had a butter pecan ice cream sandwich with a hot caramel drizzle, and I tell you what, that caramel sauce could make a person do really unspeakable things. The cherry tart was delicious, don't get me wrong. The cherries were perfect and the tart was nicely crispy and warm. But the ice cream thing--the combination of the ice cream and the wafer between the layers and that miraculous caramel sauce ... nngh.
I don't have a lot else to say. The whole experience was about five leagues above the nicest dinner we'd normally ever go to on our own. I may be converted to the tasting-menu concept, but one won't be able to go back to the Inn at Little Washington until--many years and a great deal of disposable income in the future. Hell of an anniversary present, though.
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