jaunthie | Oh WOW

This evening (okay, so it's 1 a.m., so I guess I should say Friday evening),

fisherbear and I went to The Herbfarm Restaurant for dinner. Now this isn't like going to an ordinary restaurant, mind you. This is a nine-course, six-different-wines, get-there-at-6:30-p.m.-for-the-garden-tour-and-leave-around-midnight fine dining extravaganza that really has to be experienced once to be believed. And unless you're fantastically wealthy, you're not likely to experience it much more than once, or at least not regularly; this is not cheap. But oh WOW, is it worth doing at least once.

It's worth doing even as a designated driver, which meant I only tried a sip or two of all of the wines (I doubt my total consumption across the entire evening totalled up to one full glass of wine). The 1916 Madiera was truly astonishing, and the 2003 reisling and the 2002 syrah were wonderful, and all the other wines were excellent. How often do you go somewhere where there are six different glasses in front of your plate?

It's worth doing even as a notoriously fussy eater with an annoying food allergy in a place where you don't pick your menu, or even know exactly what you're going to be eating until you're there (they print up their menus nightly). I let the restaurant know ahead of time about my allergy in simple terms (tomatoes, because of the high level of salicylic acid (C7 H6 O3, a.k.a. asprin) in them) and let the rest go in the "I'll try anything I wouldn't normally because if anyplace is going to get it right, this will be the place" spirit. As it turns out, I probably should have been specific about the salicylic acid, because a) they knew what it was (most places don't) and b) they used a traditional source of it, meadowsweet, for one of the courses. I don't usually have to worry about restaurants using meadowsweet or willow bark (the other traditional source) in their cooking. Fortunately I was on the garden tour where they mentioned its properties, and even more fortunately, they were able to substitute my portion of meadowsweet sorbet over poached apricots for black pansy and rose geranium sorbet, which was utterly heavenly.

It's worth doing even if you're watching what you're eating. You're not going to stay on your diet, but you're not going as overboard as nine courses would suggest, as everything comes in small, exquisite, perfectly prepared portions, and you are of course spreading this out over an entire evening.

So what did we eat? Well, I don't have the menu here in front of me at this moment (I can add it later in an lj-cut), but I can say everything was fresh, in season, and perfect. They don't serve anything out of season. Particular standouts for me included:

the paddlefish caviar on a crispy salmon skin cracker;

the slow-roasted sockeye salmon on a salad of nasturtiums, spring peas, and seasonal greens;

the trio of muscovy duck preparations (sorry, monkeybard, but duck is delicious, and this was beyond heavenly);

the aforementioned rose geranium and black pansy sorbet;

and the anise hyssop panna cotta with 3 kinds of fresh raspberries.

It says something that the dungeness crab lasagna (tomato-free) doesn't make the list of favorites, given how much I love crab.

Highly, highly recommended at least once.

A fabulous evening in fantastic company. I had a wonderful time. Many thanks to hiker_chick for suggesting this and making the reservation.