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Champagne, France
Wednesday August 27, 2008

Amuse Bouche
Brie & Duck with Fruit Compote

First Course ~ Appetizer
Beef Bordelaise, Pommes Frites

Second Course
Summer Salad

Third Course ~ Entr’acte
Champagne Mimosa Sorbet

Fourth Course ~ Entrées
Meat Entrée: Braised Lamb Shank, Hunter Style
Seafood Entrée: Seared Rainbow Trout in Champagne Sauce
Poultry Entrée: Chicken wild Mushroom Fricassee
Vegetarian Entrée: Vegetable Napolean ,Champagne Sauce

Accompaniments (served with all entrees)
Crème Fraîche Mashed Potatoes
Fresh Garden Green Beans

Fifth Course ~ Desserts
Crème Caramel
Chocolate Crepes with Vanilla Ice cream & Coffee Sauce

First things first. As you read this review, any time you encounter the word "champagne" you must pronounce it like the The Continental: shahm-pahn-yuh.

The crew for this month's Last Wednesday meal was myself, mrs. sd, and lm. As I'm several days late in posting this and my memory is more sieve-like than functional I'll do the best I can.

This month's amuse passed a very large hurdle - getting mrs. sd to eat (and, furthermore, to enjoy) brie. She pronounced this one "not too stinky." I forgot to ask but the compote with this dish didn't look like fig. Mango maybe? Anyway this was very good. The brie provided a nice flavor base to enjoy the savory duck and the sweet compote. Overall a winner.

The next course was the beef bordelaise with pommes frites. Pommes frites is the French term for french fries. Despite their name1 french fries are probably not french.2 The pommes frites were shoe-string style. Perhaps even thinner than shoe-string - as if the potatoes were put through the finest holes on a box grater prior to frying. Light, crispy, and delicious. The beef was nice and medium-rare, tender and tasty. A bordelaise sauce is a type of brown gravy. Since I slacked so hard in writing this review I don't remember anything specific about the taste, other than that it was good.

The salad was a salad. In the hype paragraph that they have for this event (the Last Wednesday meals in general, not this month's in particular) the say that this could also be a cheese course. I've been attending these dinners for a little over a year now and have yet to see a cheese course. I'll talk to them about it next month and see what they say.3

This month's sorbet was good. It was only slightly sweetened. The first flavor that hit you was a nice tart orange followed by the dry champagne. Tarter than I was expecting (but that's OK) and a nice palate cleanser.

This month I got the chicken and mrs. sd got the fish. I'm a sucker for mushrooms4 so that's why I got the chicken. It was delicious, as was the fish. The green beans tasted very fresh. As we've been growing them in our garden this summer, I've come to appreciate how good a fresh green bean can be. While these weren't as sweet as ours straight-from-the-garden they were still well above the average, limp, green travesty that ends up on your plate. The potatoes were excellent. I don't know what all was in them (other than, one would assume, crème fraîche) but they were light, creamy and dreamy.

The creme caramel was good. Basically a flan, but well made. A dessert like this can be terrible if it comes out of a factory somewhere but awesome when it comes out of a kitchen (whether in a home or restaurant) that cares about what it's doing and has a modicum of skill. The crepe was very good as well. It was crispy and "bowled", like the tortilla-bowl you get with a taco salad, but I don't think it was fried. I actually didn't realize that the sauce had coffee in it until I looked at the menu again whilst writing this post. That is, the sauce wasn't very coffee-y. Nonetheless it was good. As mrs. sd doesn't like coffee the lack of coffee flavor in the sauce saved me from having to hear her complain about it.

Sorry for the delay in posting this; I'll try and not let it happen again.

1. 1. And the whole, asinine "Freedom Fries" situation.
2. 2. If they were they'd probably just be called "frites" ("fries"), much like in Venezuela, where Venezuelan Beaver Cheese is simply known as "Beaver Cheese."
3. 3. I know the folks that run the place well enough to say, "Hello" but in no way well enough to influence their menu selection. Still, I'd like to know if we can ever expect a cheese course.
4. 4. Actually, I'm a sucker for food, as my waistline could attest to, but mushrooms - and wild ones at that - are one of my favorites.