This week’s dinner was at Quince which was a favorite of ours. I think this was our 5th or 6th time here, but it’s been 2 years since we’ve been back and the first time since they renovated. The renovations took pretty much the whole year last year. The space is much more open and airy and better lit. The dining room is by the front windows, with a bar area in the middle, and a salon in the back. The colors are lighter earth tones and and softer, warmer dining space. We both really liked it and was a very refreshing update. At one point during the meal, co-owner Lindsay Tusk was making the rounds to visit in the dining room and it was nice to talk to her a bit about the renovations she did and the restaurant.
We were having the tasting menu, but we did add on the Royal osetra caviar course. They two wine pairing options, a “Classic & Appelation” and a “Rare & Unique”. We went with one of each so we could try the variety of all the wines and they kindly offered to split the pairings so we each had our own pours (sure made for using a lot of stemware). They primarily used Lehmann stemware which we haven’t previously seen (we may have to buy some of those).
Dinner started with a few canapes. I know Andrea didn’t care for the anchovy one, but that meant a bit more for me 
. Then they served the first course, the grilled miyagi oyster. I thought it was just ok.
Then came the supplemental caviar course. This was pretty traditional with creme fraiche and toasted, buttered brioche. What was slightly different was that they included some clarified butter (not that the brioche needed any more, plus with those little caviar spoons, it was a bit difficult to spoon much of it at all). But, the caviar was delicious and generously portioned.
I thought the next two courses were interesting because they were both different takes on shellfish and mushrooms. The first was made with asparagus, morel mushrooms, and crawfish with a very tasty mustard broth (i commented to one of the staff that the only flaw was that they didn’t give us sauce spoons so we could consume the rest of the broth on the plate). The morels (local sourced) were also delicious. The other dish was prawn and porcini mushroom with a mushroom sauce. The flavors were much bolder and a bit homier/comfort in contrast to the bit more to the more subtle california flavor of the previous dish. Andrea preferred the crawfish/morel dish more than the prawn/porcini one (and it was probably her favorite dish all meal). For me, it was hard to say which of these two was my favorite since they were both good in different ways,
Next came the a pair of past courses – first paccheri pasta with lobster which I only thought was ok, but the white asparagus dish was delicious with also the sauce. We remarked how good a vegetable dish could be and I think we’d be more inclined to try an all vegetarian menu like at Eleven Madison Park (don’t get me wrong…we love vegetables, it’s just the thought of paying 3-Michelin star pricing for a vegetarian meal made me skeptical, but I’m definitely coming around to the idea). Also, if you get the idea that we are into tasty sauces, you’d be right.
Then we had the meat courses. The first was a squab served several ways. First bite tasted a bit gamey to me as squab always does, but wasn’t after that first bite (and we’ve had some very gamey squab at some restaurants) and the second was a lamb course and it was delicious. Both meat dishes of course had sauces which of course we enjoyed.
Having the two different pairings was very enjoyable. Wines from each tasting were interesting individually, but also in contrast to each other. I think having split pours generally meant we unintentionally received more wine (and really too much).
Service was very good all around and Juan, the one consistent person we’ve seen the last few times we’ve been there, is esp. great. A couple visits ago, he gave us a Relais & Chateau guide and he gave us the latest edition during this visit.
Start to finish, it was 4 hours long, so a bit too long. All in all, it was an enjoyable meal, but a very expensive one. However, since we didn’t find the dishes fantastic across the board, sad to say I wouldn’t put Quince in my top 3 any more (Single Thread and Addison are still tops for me).
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