2941 - egullet event

[bilrus]

That's what I was just checking on too. My PM from Malawry said "see you at 6".

[hjshorter]

A big, big thank you to Chef Jonathan Krinn for our lovely meal last night! It was great seeing everyone again.

[Malawry]

Yes, the food was fantastic and the waterfall room and our service from the talented Anya both really added to the experience.

I took pics and notes, and will try to get a summary up tonight.

[bilrus]

I am still recovering from a little too much good food and good wine (and the slight surprise when the wine bill arrived). I'm looking forward to seeing the pics and raving about the food.

[Malawry]

What happened with the wines?

I was about to upload my pictures but seem to have trouble getting to ImageGullet. If I can't resolve this problem by tomorrow morning it may end up waiting until next Sunday.

[Malawry]

Ten lucky eGulleteers gathered at 2941 for dinner last night. Things got off to a little bit of an awkward start, but once the food started coming we all had a wonderful time. (I think there was some sort of miscommunication with the restaurant as to number of guests and time of service, so we were seated 30 minutes after everybody had arrived.) Chef Jonathan Krinn came to talk to us many times about the restaurant, his father the bread baker, and aspects of the courses we were enjoying. He also sneaked in a few surprises, much to our delight.

We were seated in the sedate, lovely Waterfall Room, with a waterfall cascading outside our window. We enjoyed plenty of space at a large table surrounded by cushy seats, and the dedicated service of the talented, cheerful Anya (who made sure ladies were served before gentlemen). The center of the table was set with an attractive arrangement of colorful gourds and winter squashes.

I apologize for the slight blurriness in many of these images. I'm not sure why it happened but will try to do better on future outings. I didn't drink any wine, so any camera hijinks really were all my fault.

We started off with a couple of amuse-bouche dishes:

Marinated calamari on croustade and crab-cucumber salad on a cucumber round. I think the calamari was cured via the marinade but not cooked, giving it a pleasant salty-fishy aspect. The salad was quite summery, full of crab flavor without being too rich.

Tuna ceviche on potato chips. I viewed this as a sort of upside-down riff on tuna casserole. Top-notch tuna in the ceviche, rich and fatty and meaty.

Then we began on the set menu:

Fresh porcini on a puff pastry round, sweet with reduced madeira sauce. This was accompanied by a luscious, truffled custard round. The aroma between the porcini and the truffles was amazing. I need to find a perfume that smells this way or something because it made everybody pretty happy.

Bacon-wrapped diver scallops on parsnip puree, with spiced apple cider glaze. I was impressed that the bacon seemed almost fused to the side of the scallops when presented, which made it easy to get bacon into every bite. (There should, after all, be bacon in every bite of a dish containing bacon, right?) The parsnip puree was a nice, seasonal touch, an earthy-sweet starchy comfort underneath the scallops.

Marinated Chilean sea bass with honey and soy sauce, with a small pile of spinach which tasted strongly of iron and some mashed potatoes. The fish was ethereal, sweet-rich in flavor and an opal-like color on the inside. We were served a special fish knife with this course, which I semi-teased Anya about. (She responded with the appropriate professionalism and is probably snickering about it with her coworkers right now.)

Chef Jonathan came and told us he happened to be digging around and found some lobsters languishing in the walk-in, so he thought what the hell, he'd throw some into the oven for roasting and see what happened. (I guess he happened to have extra lobster sauce, a surplus of caviar, and several quenelles of cauliflower puree that needed rotation as well, because they showed up on our plates as well. Darn.) We all managed to clean our plates, just to be nice...I chased the last few bits of caviar onto my fork with my knife and probably would have licked my plate had I been at home and alone. (I've got a reputation to maintain here...)

Grilled foie gras with pistachio crust, ginger confit and pomegranate seeds. Does. Not. Suck.

Braised pork belly with a pommes souffle. Chef Jonathan is amazing. I mean, this random pig wanders up to the back door and offers to become another special course for our dinner. That's hard enough to believe. Then Chef Jonathan finds somebody on a Saturday night with enough time to accompany it with all the bother of pommes souffle. (I've never made these. I don't dare.) Who is this guy, and why does he have extra pigs and lobsters just hanging around waiting for eGullet people to eat them? And why hasn't he posted more about it if he experiences this often? It's a mystery to me. Meanwhile he made good on the pig tummy, braising it slowly until it became a rich, tender delight. Mmmmm.

Braised beef cheek "bon bon" and beef tenderloin with celery root puree and caramelized vegetables. This was some of the more flavorful beef tenderloin I've tasted, but nothing beats the flavor impact of a slow-braised beef cheek.

Marinated venison medallions, venison meat loaf over mustard-braised kale, and sweet potato puree. This was one of my favorite courses...I especially loved the meat loaf, which was a new sensation for me with the full-flavored venison meat. The kale won huge points around the table too; its mild bitterness was a welcome foil to the meat loaf and the sweet potato puree.

Caramelized pear tart flavored with thyme, with a crisp caramel-filo base on a round of chestnut cream and a quenelle of ice cream. The chestnut puree was my favorite part of this dish; its subtle earthy-spicy flavor was a perfect counterpoint to the other tastes in the dessert.

Soft, innocent strawberry marshmallows and candied chocolated almonds (just like the ones I made at home yesterday, as Chefette taught me how to make.)

Bilrus manhandles the pina colada-flavored cotton candy. It was mild and sweet and not at all gummy like carnival cotton candy can be sometimes. I ate almost a whole bowl of it myself, even after all the other food!

Stacie35 wanted me to get a picture of the coffee, which she was holding when I took this picture. Unfortunately only Stacie35 showed up in the frame, not the coffee, so you can't see what it looked like. Too bad.

At the end of the night we each took home a baguette from Chef Jonathan's dad. The bread was incredible by the way...I tried to sample all of the types in the basket (pumpernickel, some kind of cherry, baguette, walnut-wheat, and more). I ate a slab of baguette with butter after I'd been up for a few hours as my "breakfast"...I was still stuffed when I woke up this morning but after a while I couldn't resist the bread. Mmmm.

Thanks, Chef Jonathan and Monica, for putting together a great night.

[bilrus]

Thanks for the pics Malawry, although several didn't load on my screen.

Looking at the pictures, I realized that the Sea Bass and the Pork Belly might have been my favorite flavors of the night and the cauliflower puree with the lobster was a revelation, giving me a new appreciation of the delicate flavors of the vegetable, which I have never liked before.

Oh and the scallops - a perfect type of surf and turf in my view. Pork and shellfish fused together.

I think some of us were taken a little aback with the wine bill because we had a few more bottles than we had realized and because a few of the wines we had were a little more expensive than we had anticipated.

The wines we had were:

Kritt Les Charmes Gewurztraminer 1999

A Chardonnay that I lost the label for

Cambria Bench Break Vineyard Pinot Noir 1999

Cotes du Rhone Louis Bernard 2000

I am far from a wine person, so I am not the best to go over the details or to comment on the value of the bottles. (I also didn't take note of the exact proces of the wines). They all seemed good to me. I particularly enjoyed the forgotten Chardonnay, with its strong citrusy flavors.

Thanks to Chef Krinn for the food, the service and the attention he showed us on a busy Saturday night.

[hjshorter]

A Chardonnay that I lost the label for

It was a Chassagne-Montrachet, wasn't it? and it was lovely.

What a beautiful meal. Thanks so much for posting the photos, Rochelle. That foie gras was so so good, second only to those incredible scallops as my favorite dish of the night.

What a wonderful meal, pretty room, and good company.

[hannnah]

A Chardonnay that I lost the label for

It was a Chassagne-Montrachet, wasn't it? and it was lovely.

What a beautiful meal. Thanks so much for posting the photos, Rochelle. That foie gras was so so good, second only to those incredible scallops as my favorite dish of the night.

What a wonderful meal, pretty room, and good company.

It was one of the Louis Latour Montrachets, but I don't remember which one - there are an awful lot on their website and none of the labels jump out.

Since I can't drink reds, I ended up with a 2001 Valley of the Moon Pinot Blanc with the beef and venison, which was quite nice; I think my favorite wine of the evening was the Gewurztraminer, though the Montrachet was gorgeous as well.

As far as the food, our favorites were the scallops (oh, that bacon ), the pork belly, and the sea bass. The fish was gorgeous, but I'd be happy with a good size bowl of mash with that honey-soy sauce - fortunately there was plenty of bread throughout the meal to prevent anyone's needing to resort to plate-licking. I'm also going to have to do one of their cooking classes to find out what they're doing to those vegetable purees that made them all so fantastically tasty.

Many thanks to Chef Jonathan, especially for his champion liaison work with the critters that kept wandering up to his door and insisting on being a part of our menu; to Anya, and to Monica for organizing everything. We've never been anything less than blown away by the food at 2941, and they really outdid themselves on Saturday.

[Stacie35]

The meal was wonderful. I was very happy when the Tuna Ceviche was served, but I wanted more. Thanks to Chef Jonathon for coming to speak with us as much as he did, he had a full house. Also thanks to Rochelle and Monica for making this night possible.

BTW, the former accountant divided the wine bill by ten instead of eight. My apologies again for the screw up.

Stacie

[hjshorter]

Did we come up short?

[Stacie35]

We did, it was my fault. That's why I'm a former accountant.

[bilrus]

What do we need to do to make it right? Did you have to cover it or did the restaurant?

[hjshorter]

Oh no! Yes, please tell us what we need to do.

[Malawry]

Oh jeez. Now I'm really sorry I had to run out at the end of the night. How did it all work out? You guys must have been thinking E. and I stiffed you or something.

[cjsadler]

I wasn't sure what happened there at the very end with the check confusion and whether we covered it or not. That wine bill was a shocker! Let us know what we need to do to even things out.

That was a fantastic dinner and I really enjoyed everyone's company.

Chris

[bilrus]

Oh jeez. Now I'm really sorry I had to run out at the end of the night. How did it all work out? You guys must have been thinking E. and I stiffed you or something.

No, you weren't drinking so that was fine.

[hannnah]

We ended up $108 short - Stacie covered half and I covered half.

[hjshorter]

Yikes. Please PM me your addresses and I will send you my share.

[bilrus]

Same for me please. Sorry about that.

[Monica Bhide]

WOw -- sounds like I missed a great meal. i hope we can do this again sometime now that I am back in town

Rochelle -- THANKS for taking this on and for all the work you did.. Appreciate it

Edited January 5, 2004 by Monica Bhide (log)

[bilrus]

Welcome back.