Was thankful to be able to celebrate Kristine’s 50th with her and several of her other close friends (Charlotte, Lilly, and Dave) during this long weekend and especially on this day of her actual birthday.
I won’t remember all of the details of the food since we had so much going on, esp. the conversations. The main details for the food included a 7-course tasting menu with a few choices and some upgrades and two options for wine pairings. Andrea and Kristine went with the library wine pairing and I had the standard pairing. For the most part, the library pairings were the more interesting option.
The meal started with an amuse with which we were generally underwhelmed. So we were just a bit concerned, but the first course, the fruit de mers trio, quickly put us back on course.
We also added the caviar pretzel supplement ($75) which sounded like an unusual carrier for caviar, but it turned out to be quite good given how delicious the pretzel was on its own with the addition of cultured butter and caviar putting it over the top. This was one of our favorite dishes.
Other notable dishes included the ricotta gnudi and the white truffle tagliatelle. The gnudi was a ricotta stuffed squash blossom with a delicious consomme to round it out. The tagliatelle was just a well executed pasta dish with fresh, aromatic shaved white truffle from Alba. Both of these were also some of our favorites although the tagliatelle came at a steep supplemental cost ($125) because of the white truffle.
The seafood course options had the halibut and the lobster ($45 supplement) dishes were also good with a slight preference for the halibut thanks to the vadouvan hollandaise.
The meat course options were the Peking duck or the American wagyu. Almost everyone ordered the wagyu, which turned out to be fine (a bit of damning with faint praise) so I thought the duck was better thanks to its sauce.
All in all, the meal was primarily enjoyable thanks to the company, the conversation, and the occasion. The food was very good at times, but ultimately overpriced IMO.
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