Showing posts with label fine dining. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fine dining. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

Staying and Dining at Cape Cod's Historic Dan'l Webster Inn (Sandwich, MA)

Dan'l Webster Inn is located in the charming small town of Sandwich, MA, the oldest town in Cape Cod. The inn has been around and offering lodging for more than 300 years and has that old world charm and a lot of history.
Danl Webster Inn
I was recently hosted to experience the inn and the on-site restaurant. It was unfortunately rainy that day, so we spent a lot of our time in the room napping, but now I can tell you the beds are quite comfy here. A walk around the property to check out some of the historic features (or the doll given to them by the Empress of Japan) was a good way to kill time. There's also a spa on-site.
Danl Webster Inn
Dan'l Webster Inn has a fine dining restaurant and a tavern on the property. The restaurant has a few different rooms you can dine in, but the most beautiful in my opinion is the Conservatory! On one side The Conservatory is line by floor to ceiling glass windows and some tables overlook the koi pond.
Dan'l Webster Inn
We started dinner with some appetizers including Shrimp cocktail ($16) and Scallop and bacon arancini ($10) with smoked tomato coulis, bacon aioli
Danl Webster Inn

Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Forage: A Surprising Fine Dining Gem in Salt Lake City (Utah)

I never knew Salt Lake City to be a fine dining destination, but my last visit to Forage was an eye opener. Chef Bowman Brown's tasting menu at Forage is worthy to be compared to the best tasting menus in New York or other major metropolitan cities, and at a fraction of the price! The food and presentation reminded me a bit of my experience at Willows Inn.

We got the wine pairing and started dinner with a glass of Gruet Brut, followed by the first course:
apple and evergreen

Forage SLC
These tiny, bite-sized apples were filled with chestnut and coated in spruce vinegar. What a surprising dish and so fun to it. To make it even better, it was served with apple cider poured over spruce juniper. Can I have the whole pot?
Forage SLC

Bread with goat's milk butter, both really good (even if it doesn't compare to Willows Inn's chicken drippings to go with bread).
Forage SLC

Potatoes cooked in oak leaves, garlic scapes
Forage SLC

Monday, July 14, 2014

Ostra (Boston)

One of Boston's top restaurant groups is the Columbus Hospitality Group, which runs a number of high end restaurants in town helmed by Executive Chef Jamie Mammano. Their latest is Ostra, a seafood-oriented Mediterranean restaurant in Back Bay.

IMG_3202
Considering the restaurant's name, I obviously had to order some oysters. The fun part about moving to Boston is trying all the East Coast oysters we rarely get in LA. I've tried and loved Cotuit in LA, but this was my first time having Duxbury oysters.
Oysters
There was a special appetizer of hamachi beautifully wrapped in avocado
IMG_3204

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

A Taste of Canada. Eden at The Rimrock Resort (Banff, Canada)

I really wanted to get some foie gras while I was in Canada, and a quick search landed me at Eden Restaurant at The Rimrock Resort in Banff. This is white tablecloth service rarely seen in Los Angeles. We got a table by the window with a view of the mountains. Dinner starts with the server bringing the champagne cart.

IMG_5803
IMG_5804I wanted to indulge but didn't want to spend too much so I opted for the cheapest one, a Chandon Rose. I don't know if they normally refill your champagne, but they refilled mine all night long. Apparently since we were the last table on a Sunday night, they figured they might as well finish off the bottle they opened for my order! Lucky!

Our first amuse bouche was a fried duck confit served on a pine log.
Fried Duck Confit
The bread basket was served with Hay smoked butter, whipped olive oil w aged balsamic, goat's milk butter. The most interesting of the bread was the Flax seed bread.
Bread
More amuse bouche: Alaskan king crab and confit beef tongue. I loved the confit beef tongue.
Amuse
First course: Juniper smoked sturgeon on top of rock coho white salmon, Bloody Caesar sorbet
Smoked Sturgeon

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Under The Radar: Buffalo Club (Santa Monica, CA)

Buffalo Club is a fine dining restaurant in Santa Monica that's been around for 19 years, and yet not that many people these days seem to know about it.

The exterior looks like a dive bar - that's because it used to be before the current proprietor bought it and reinvented it as a restaurant. Walking in, though, especially after the recent renovation, reveals an interior much different from the outside - an elegant, dimly lit, quiet, dining room. After the latest renovation, there are now two dining areas: the white tablecloth Iroquois dining room and the more casual (and cheaper) Garden Courtyard.

iroquois
The chef and part owner, Patrick Healy, has been at the restaurant since its inception, a rare feat for fine dining chefs in LA these days. Healy trained in France under Alain Ducasse and other 3-star Michelin chefs before opening his own restaurant and later joining Buffalo Club.

We let the sommelier, Brayner Ferry, pair everything for us and he welcomed us with a brut rose from La Maison du Cremant de Bourgogne.
Our dinner was off to a great start with the Dungeness crab salad, avocado wrap, asparagus, Belgian endive, spicy gazpacho ($23). Pictured here is half of the portion, the restaurant split them for us.
crab
The precious crab salad sits atop the gazpacho and covered by fresh, creamy slices of avocado. It's not quite salad, not quite soup. Either way it was a great, light way to whet your appetite. None of the flavors were too strong as to overpower the crab, instead they come together well.

Crisp duck confit, frisee, arugula, red onion, haricot vert, duck fat potatoes, Bing Cherry gastrique ($19).
duck
While I've had duck confit salads before, it's the first that the duck was this crispy. The meat was rich, but nicely by the greens and the gastrique. This was paired with a classic Chardonnay for Carneros, to cut the richness.

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