Anita and I did the 25 for $25 menu at Brasa on Monday night with another couple.
Before our friends arrived, we started with cocktails at the bar: Maritime ale for me and a devastatingly stiff champoire (champagne and pear brandy) for Anita. To her credit, the bartender caught us comparing notes and making faces over Anita's drink and immediately offered to remake it: "Is it too strong?" It was and she did. Very tasty little concoction.
The food was...uneven. My starter -- beef carpaccio with sel gris, white truffle oil, arugula, and shaved parmesan -- had way too much salt and I couldn't taste the beef at all underneath all the other stuff. Anita's spinach and vinaigrette with goat cheese and shiitake salad was overdressed ("Completely sodden," snorts Anita, "And just one little piece of goat cheese"). One of our friends ordered the spanish calamari and offered a taste as they arrived. I think that he liked them, because they were gone when I looked up. I never got a sample, but in retrospect I'm glad that I didn't get my fingers too close.
The same friend ordered the paella and had good things to say about it. My petit filet was much better than my starter. It was topped with a touch of Cabrales compound butter, a reduction sauce, and served over potato puree. A well-prepared classic. Anita's main was a chicken tagine: half a chicken with moroccan couscous and some poached dried fruit. This dish was a disaster. The couscous was oily and had way too many almonds. The chicken was dry -- completely unforgivable (practically incomprehensible) considering the cooking method. The sauce was sweet despite the server's assurances that it was a savory dish. More on this later.
For dessert, Anita and I both had cheese from Brasa’s cheese table, a long slab of (?marble?) festooned with around fifteen wedges. Points for presentation, but the placement near the front door seemed weird to me -- especially since the table was something of a gathering point for the service staff.
Anyway, we had our server select our cheese and received six serviceable (if somewhat boring) slices: Mimolette, Agur, Humboldt Fog, and three others that I don’t remember. Hard to criticize, I suppose, as we were offered the opportunity to choose for ourselves. But it would have been nice if our server had at least tried to ascertain our level of cheesy adventurousness.
Of course, that would have required our server to operate at a level that she hadn’t even come close to all night. She abandoned us after taking our drink order, finally reappearing with said drinks and a, “Ready to order?” Questions about the food were answered with a verbatim recitation of the menu listing, and we were told at least twice, “Oh, it’s a savory dish.” I chose a McCrea Syrah (a.k.a. Old Faithful) for our meal after joking to our dining companions that I wasn’t going to bother asking about a couple of interesting looking bottles for fear of being told that they were “savory,” or perhaps that they were made with grapes.
As I write this, I’m trying to view the experience through the lens of what happens at just about any restaurant on a Monday night -- you better not expect the A team, because you’re not going to get it. Nevertheless, I can’t imagine bothering with a return visit at full price. I would, however, go for their half-price bar food and drinkies, as the space is inviting and the menu looked tasty.
We’re off to Assaggio tonight. I do love this promotion.
Once again, I was reminded of the power of local ingredients. I usually avoid salmon at restaurants because I've eaten too many plates over the years served up by cooks who 1) couldn't get the good stuff and 2) didn't know what to do with it when they did. But at the risk of sounding like a tourist, I am coming to love ordering salmon in the PacNW. The fish at Etta's was tender, perfectly cooked, and delicately flavored.
ScorchedPalate and I really enjoyed our dinner on the 10th -- ya gotta love spending more on wine than you do on food.
I was especially impressed by the attention to texture throughout the meal. For instance, the crunchy bits of salt on the otherwise completely Japanese-style ahi tuna and seaweed salad were a revelation. Also, the textures of the watercress soup and salmon mousse were perfectly balanced, the former thicker than you'd expect and the latter creamier and smoother than you could imagine. Where they mingled, it was nearly impossible to tell one from from the other (other than by flavor, of course).
Now, just because this thread has been such a Union love-fest, I'll play the heretic critic
1) Ask for a table away from a window. They absolutely radiate cold.
2) The blueberry sorbet was a "something" bomb, but not, IMHO, blueberry. I don't know where y'all buy your blueberries, but mine don't come that tart. Paired with the creme fraiche, the whole dessert was a party of sour.
And finally, an anecdote. Our waiter was just a bit behind all night -- we sat for some time waiting to put in our order, our wine would arrive just after the food that we'd ordered it for, he got the first bottle wrong...not big stuff. He knew it was happening and apologized profusely toward the end of the meal, explaining that he had one of the local food critics at another table and implying that things weren't going as smoothly as they should. I certainly believed that he was having a rough night when I saw how his hands were shaking while he refilled our wine glasses!
Still, a wonderful night by any estimation -- we can't wait to return!
I've been to Canlis three times over (roughly) as many years. I thoroughly enjoyed it the first time, thought it was good for what it was the second time, and walked out the third time wondering why I'd bothered, which is a little disconcerting after you've just dropped $500+ on dinner for four.
I suppose that there's a certain amount of familiarity breeding contempt in my evaluation, but I also think that when a restaurant presents itself at that level, everything has to be perfect, every time. I don't think that Canlis justifies the premium that they charge just because they're Canlis.