Dangerous Dining Club January Dinner

[Rich Pawlak]

HUGE kudos to Jim Tarantino and to Chef Olivier St. Martin and his

staff for pulling off a fabulous gustatory tour of Alsace on Tuesday with a dinner

and brilliantly paired wines that were simply spectacular in every way.

And I've seen the new menu for La Boheme. and I know the chef/owner well. La Boheme is going to be a sensational new French bistro in Olivier's hands.

[mrbigjas]

aw man, i wish i coulda made it. any other reports? more details?

[Rich Pawlak]

The wines, of which I dont have a list, were selected for the dinner by Greg Moore of Moore Bros Wines in Pennsauken. They were each utterly spectacular. I'll let Tarantino or some other attendeee, who rememberedd to take their menu home, fill in the blanks.

Our appetizer was a frogs legs mousseline, a timballe shaped mixture of potatoes garlic frog and some tomato, silken and delicate and delicious. We had a CHOICE of three choucroutes: a traditional with smoked pork chop, sausages, saurkraut and potatoes, a duck version with a confit leg and duck sausage and red cabbage, and a brillaint seafood version with salmon, scallops and a smoked fish, that was truly brilliant and clever. Dessert was a simple but rich apple tart.

But for me , it was the atmosphere, and the wine pairings that stood out; typical jovial DDC crowd, lots of clinking of glasses in toasts and laughter, and those stunning wines with that earthy food. Tarantino and Chef Olivier and Greg Moore did a hell of a job.

[rlibkind]

iirc, the wines were:

Barmes-Buecher Sept-Grains (aperatif)

Barmes-Buecher Pinot D'Alsace (mousseline)

Keller Riesling Trocken (rec. for traditional, seafood choucroute)

A pino noir I don't recall (rec. for duck, seafood choucroute)

Barmes-Buecher Cremant D'Alsace (apple tart)

I've enjoyed both the Sept-Grains (formerly called Racine) and the Cremant D'Alsace before, courtesy of Moore Brothers. So much so that the dinner wines reminded me how much I enjoyed them, so I made a quick trip over to Pennsauken yesterday morning.

Let me add my thanks to Jim for organizing the dinner. While I certainly enjoyed the mousseline and dessert, to me the dinner was all about the choucroute. I am huge lover of almost all fermented foods (and beverages), and fermented cabbage is high on my list. Chef St. Martin and staff did a great job to take the chilly out of a nippy evening.

Now, how about some Alsatian onion tart? With lots of butter and bacon!

[JanMcBaker]

Now, how about some Alsatian onion tart? With lots of butter and bacon!

←

It was a wonderful dinner, with wonderful wines and company. Now Bob, when's that onion tart coming?

[rlibkind]

Now, how about some Alsatian onion tart? With lots of butter and bacon!

←

It was a wonderful dinner, with wonderful wines and company. Now Bob, when's that onion tart coming?

←

Ludwig's Garten does a pretty good version.

[KatieLoeb]

I am truly sorry I missed this. The wine selections are excellent.

You've all heard me waxing poetic on the Sept Grains for years. Probably one of my fave wines on the planet. Gosh I love that stuff...

[Rich Pawlak]

When Olivier was part-owner of the second Dock Street brewpub (the original brewpub at the Reading Terminal that became Independence), he used to have a fabulous flammenkuche on the menu, rich with onions and bacon, and a terrific choucroute plate. He used to serve both to us when we brought the Golden Age of Beer Tour there for our concluding beer dinner.

[Andrew Fenton]

You've all heard me waxing poetic on the Sept Grains for years.  Probably one of my fave wines on the planet.  Gosh I love that stuff...

indeed-- and I remember EXACTLY when you introduced me to it! It really is a lovely wine.

[Capaneus]

iirc, the wines were:

Barmes-Buecher Sept-Grains (aperatif)

Barmes-Buecher Pinot D'Alsace (mousseline)

Keller Riesling Trocken (rec. for traditional, seafood choucroute)

A pino noir I don't recall (rec. for duck, seafood choucroute)

Barmes-Buecher Cremant D'Alsace (apple tart)

I've enjoyed both the Sept-Grains (formerly called Racine) and the Cremant D'Alsace before, courtesy of Moore Brothers. So much so that the dinner wines reminded me how much I enjoyed them, so I made a quick trip over to Pennsauken yesterday morning.

Let me add my thanks to Jim for organizing the dinner. While I certainly enjoyed the mousseline and dessert, to me the dinner was all about the choucroute. I am huge lover of almost all fermented foods (and beverages), and fermented cabbage is high on my list.  Chef St. Martin and staff did a great job to take the chilly out of a nippy evening.

Now, how about some Alsatian onion tart? With lots of butter and bacon!

←

The Pinot Noir was a 2005 Guillaume, from Franche Comte. Not a wine I'd ever seen, or even a region I know anything about, but it was quite nice.

All the wines were outstanding, and the food was every bit up to the challenge. I will say that, while I ordered the traditional choucroute, I thought the duck version was the night's standout: the braised red cabbage and duck confit were an amazing combination. The seafood version, while tasty, depended on whatever the creamy stuff was to make it work: the cabbage was hardly a factor. That, in my view, disqualifies it from competition. Not that I would mind a couple of platefuls, mind you. But I'd still pick the duck.

I'll add my thanks to Jim Tarentino and Chef St. Martin, if I may, and to the very attentive staff as well.

[aaronwcpa]

I came to the dinner slightly ill after battling the flu for several days, and the food was so good that I as I ate I could feel getting beteer.

The duck confit choucroute was delicious and reminded somehow of the food my Mother used to cook many, many, years ago. She was far east of Alsace in easter Poland but there must be similarities in peasant food.

The Alsatian apple tart was sweet, smooth and melted in the mouth.

Thanks Jim for organizing.

I am ready for another tasting of French peasant food.

[marinade]

Hi Gang,

Thanks for the nice words. Every year around this time I get the hankering for some good trad French comfort food. Now I can get up off my lazy ass and do it (as sometimes I will), or I can get a bunch of friends together and have someone benchmark for us. Thanks for indulging me and from your response to the cassoulet dinner last year and this one, a lot of us have the same hankering.

Mummer and I travel in some of the same music as well as food circles. A lot of the stuff we play be it Swing, Ragtime, Jazz standards or bluegrass, Celtic or Old time fiddle tunes are tunes that are passed down over the years. Some of the musicians go to almost the same lengths as Civil War re-enactors to keep it traditional or classical. I always felt that you need innovators to refresh an idiom and traditionists to keep it honest. I feel the same way about cuisine. And what excites the hell out of me is when I hear a band or musicians combine the two or taste it on the same plate.

That combination of trad and innovation was what Olivier’s menu was all about. He made great plate music.

BTW, I just sent Olivier a email linking this thread. When we were settleing up at the end of night he was more concerened about the feedback than the cashback (not that he can afford to comp us).

Thanks and we’ll do this again.

Jim

[Rich Pawlak]

Sometimes DDC dinners are just magical, and Tuesday's dinner was exactly that, magical in every way.

I am eager to see if we can get these dinners back to a monthly basis, and if we can explore cuisines we have STILL YET to sample: Korean, Ethiopian, Middle Eastern, Greek, pizza (yes PIZZA!), red gravy Italian, Jamaican, vegetarian, tacqueria, Cambodian, English, Polish/Eastern European and German Yeah, hard to believe , but we have so much YET to explore.

[MarketStEl]

Pizza?

I thought we had a club for that.

As for the rest, I've got to get into the habit of setting aside $30 a month for this. I'd love to try all of them.