Betwixt Hunger and Frustration

Yes, I left again. Apparently wine trumps car fatigue.

After having just gotten back from the beach yesterday, here I was using my E-Z pass again to drive west to Powhatan for "Dinner of the Grape," a wine dinner to kick off next month's Powhatan Festival of the Grape.

Don't let the intent fool you; I'm getting tired of the inside of a vehicle. But it sounded like fun.

Up and coming chef Travis Milton (he of the not-yet-open Shovel and Pick) was sharing cooking duties with Joe Downes of the County Seat, and while the County Seat is a place I've eaten before (because I was in the area), it's also easily the unlikeliest place I've journeyed to for a wine dinner.

But Travis runs a small farm on his parents' land in Powhatan, allowing him to source some of his ingredients there and I had a place to stay in that neck of the woods, so off I went.

The check-in line on the restaurant's large front porch was already long when I arrived half an hour before the 6:00 start time. Walking across the gravel parking lot, I passed a woman who smiled and exclaimed, "Gorgeous!" I thought she meant the weather (which was), but her response was, "No, you!" (must have been the hot pink dress). I couldn't have asked for a better start to my night.

Better I didn't know then where the evening was going from there.

Because they'd sold 175 tickets (or so I overheard) and were only seating complete parties, check-in took quite a while. My date and I ended up at a community table, fine by us since strangers can be fun. At our table were two couples, one younger living downtown and the other older living in the West End.

It didn't take long before we were all chatting and sipping what tasted like apple juice, confusing since the first pour was listed as Cardinal Point Winery Hopped Chardonnay and clearly this wasn't that.

But we all drank it as we chatted about favorite restaurants old and new and watching the bike race, noticing as table after table got their first course and we didn't.

A woman went over to the stage area and put some music on - an instrumental version of "Peace Train" was the first song - which pleased me no end since listening to other people eat while we had nothing seemed cruel.

But I'm an optimist, a Pollyanna even, so I kept the faith.

Finally, at 6:45, our first course arrived. Billed as a salad of pickled Albemarle peaches with Manakintowne arugula, pea shoots, charred cushaw squash, Caramont Farms Esmontonian cheese, Virginia peanuts and a Nehi peach vinaigrette, it was a tad underwhelming.

First, it was so small it would have made a house salad look generous. But then, the salads were also absent any peaches (hello, pickled PEACH salad?) or pea shoots. In barely four bites we were each finished and looking at each other wondering if this was a sign of things to come.

The pragmatist thought yes, but I held firm.

When a server came to pour the next wine, Blenheim table white, she explained that the first and fourth course wines had been switched at the last second, which was why we'd begun with Old Hill Betwixt cider. Okay.

Served family style, crab cake baguettes arrived at the table and everyone eagerly took their two pieces of sliced baguette with a mini crabcake atop each, grateful for something to eat. Since we were among the last few tables served again, we saw other tables having their plates cleared while we took our first bites.

Meanwhile, "Peace Train" came on for the second time.

By this point, we were beginning to joke about our redheaded stepchild status, but we took heart when we saw the gorgeous Autumn Olive Farms bone-in pork chops with butterbean and Appalachian blue barley miso, braised broccoli greens and smokey red peas going by. The chops looked thick and meaty and, frankly, we were all more than a little hungry by this point.

Blenheim table red wine was poured in anticipation of our chops arriving and we tried not to inhale it before our pig showed up, which it finally did at 8:00, as nearby tables were having their plates cleared.

Only problem was what showed up in no way resembled what other tables had been served. Instead, we got pork loin end pieces, cool to the touch and so dry as to be off-putting, except that we were starving and had no choice.

When I asked a server, she insisted that this was still pork chops, just without the bone. Meanwhile, braised broccoli greens were nowhere to be found on any of our plates.

It was when "Peace Train" started up again for the third time that I knew we had reached Dante's third circle of hell.

Before we even began choking down our dried-out pork, we'd noticed that people were already in the dessert buffet line, helping themselves. The menu had promised mini caramel cakes with roasted pecans, chocolate chess pie and fresh fruit cobbler but when we'd been seated, there had been many other desserts on the table.

All six of us immediately knew we'd have minimal dessert choices by the time we got over there. The non-dessert eaters took it in stride while the sweet tooths like me felt cheated. Again.

By the time we got up there, what was left was the dregs of peach cobbler (I'm allergic to peaches), a couple of cakes that had clearly been bought frozen and some cookies.

I never got to the Cardinal Point Winery Hopped Chardonnay for the dessert course, fine by me since the Blenheim Red was better with my black and white cake anyway. But that's not how it should have been.

When finally offered the wine, I said no, what I wanted had been a bone-in pork chop like I was promised and like most of the other tables got. And I didn't want a picked-over dessert table, I wanted the trio of three mini-desserts my date had paid for.

My disappointment must have been conveyed to the kitchen because six small take-out boxes arrived and although the server claimed they held the bone-in chops we'd been denied, it was just boxes of more dried out loin.

At that point, the six of us felt utterly defeated. The guy sitting next to me, also hungry and disappointed, summed it up best.

"Well, it sure did happen," he lamented with a wry smile.

I give him credit - that's about the kindest spin anyone at our table could have put on that debacle of a meal

Oh, peace train, take this table
Come take us home again...