Farm-to-Post Foraged and Wild Dinner at Post 390 (Back Bay, Boston, MA)
Farm to Post is the dinner series at Back Bay's Post 390 that showcases the local farmers and New England producers the restaurant works with. I attended a pork dinner last year featuring Dogpatch Farm and I had another opportunity to attend a special dinner recently. In September, Post 390 held a "Foraged and Wild" dinner featuring (you guessed it) foraged ingredients.
Each Farm to Post dinner always starts with a cocktail reception with passed hors d'oeuvres. This year's most popular appetizer was probably the fried Damariscotta oyster (from Maine) with creamed wild spinach and bacon.
The first cocktail is a sparkling Cocchi Americano drink with wild peppermint and sweet fern tea
First course: "Secret spot" mushroom vol-au-vent
Marsh greens, spiced black walnuts, blackberries, wild flower petals, Solomon's plume vinaigrette.
This was paired with Oxbow Brewing Farmhouse Pale Ale from Newcastle, ME.
The pastry for the vol-au-vent was perfectly flaky. The mushrooms, and other foraged items in the dinner were foraged by Nicholas Deutmeyer. The mushrooms came from his secret spot (hence the name). We had black trumpet mushrooms, lobster mushrooms, and chanterelles. The greens also featured foraged sea beans and sea arugula. Perfect start to a foraging dinner!
The farmhouse ale fit the foraging theme nicely. It's a wild fermented ale made with local hops from a Maine farmer.
The second course: Losbter and Wild Herbs. The lobster sits on top of a sweet corn panna cotta and served with heirloom tomatoes, sea rocket vinaigrette, wintergreen, wild mint and wood sorrel.
This was probably my favorite dish, but that may be obvious seeing how much I love both lobster and sweet corn! I loved the panna cotta and it complemented the fresh lobster. The dish also featured some of the sweetest heirloom tomatoes. The pairing was spot on as well - the dish was paired with a tequila cocktail made with maraschino, cucumber, wild mint, and french sorrel.
"Feral Boar and Forgotten Fruit"
Smoked boar sausage, milk poached loin, charred reclaimed fruit, spicy wild watercress, local sea salt
The boar is an invasive species in Colorado and the Post 390 team has made an amazing boar sausage out of it. The reclaimed fruits were decorative apples and pears that have been planted on a fence line and have fallen off. They're not sweet as the eating apples and pears but acted as a nice starch for the dish.
The dish was paired with Urban Family Brewing Peacharillo, a wild ale from Seattle.
The Himmel Hospitality team recently traveled to Seattle and came across this peach wild ale from Urban Family Brewing. They loved it so much they decided to bring as much as they can back to Boston and managed to save enough to pair it for this dinner. The Peacharillo is a dry hopped sour ale that was 100% spontaneously fermented.
For dessert: Nectarines and Cream with Foraged Things (seeded pound cake, candy cap mousse, plum rose jam.
The seeded pound cake was made using millet flour, cornmeal, sunflower seeds, and sesame seeds.
Paired with a hot sarsaparilla tea and cognac.
The tea cocktail, made using Pierre Ferrand cognac, was their take on hot toddy. If they'd sell me a whole pot I would totally order it, it was that good.
The next Farm to Post dinner (the last one for the year) will be on November 1 and will focus on coffee and chocolate from local roasters. Tickets are $55 per person and includes the cocktail reception and a four-course dinner with beverage pairing - including tax and gratuity. It's a great deal! You can purchase tickets here.
Here is the menu for the next dinner:
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