Nothing like happening unexpectedly into a celebration.
Since it had been too long since I'd been to L'Opossum, I figured I'd start there. Imagine my surprise to walk in and discover that today was their one year anniversary.
They grow up so fast, don't they?
That's one year of the best-written menu in town ("Sweet and innocent North Atlantic salmon beguiled by comrade Dave's enigmatic embrace of..." you get the idea), easily the finest soundtrack ("Love is a Many Splendored Thing" to "Goodbye Horses," the '80s gem used in "Silence of the Lambs") and the wildly eclectic crowd.
I walked in behind a solo guy arriving early for his dinner meeting with friends. Waiting for them, he shared that he was from New Jersey (by way of India) but had spent ten years visiting Richmond. His first time at L'Opossum, he watched eager to pick up tips as I ordered.
There wasn't much to it.
I listened as the unfamiliar bartender detailed two specials and wanted both of them. Plum tomato gazpacho with black bean salsa, tequila- marinated shrimp and sliced avocado was the ideal marriage of flavors while foie gras with summer succotash of corn and lima beans in ringlets of charred red onion got a kick from smoked peach sauce, blackberry balsamic and Sauterne-soaked blackberries.
Fat + the flavors of summer made for an exquisite combination.
As I was swooning over my dinner accompanied by a glass of Domaine Bellevue Rose, this guy's posse showed up and instinctively reverted to shop talk.
They've reassigned him to special projects.
What does that even mean?
It means he has one foot out the door.
Apparently, this is how business people talk even when they're out on a social occasion.
Okay, now let's get to gossip.
You mean internal matters?
Yes!
Even once they moved to a booth, every time I looked over, they were loudly talking corporate politics and technology.
Yawn.
Once they vacated the bar, I spotted a cute couple, coincidentally the same one who'd sat next to me at the Club Saison wine dinner 48 hours ago. Richmond is a small, small town sometimes.
Filling in the stools between them and me arrived a trio of parents and grown son, with the matriarch looking around. "It's (long pause) cute?" she announced uncertainly.
Meanwhile out of the back comes owner David Shannon, making a bee line for the lights and adjusting them lower to better suit the waning outdoor light. "I do this five times a night," he says, stating what has become obvious over my many visits.
Brilliant. I'm the first one to admit that I appreciate a restaurant that progressively lowers its lights so that the patrons look progressively better as the night goes on.
Everyone is prettier in David Shannon's lighting.
But the fact is, the man also is known to come out and quietly tweak the music, much like the DJ at a party always looking to give the crowd what it wants before it knows it needs it.
Things getting too settled? Let's make your backsides wanna move.
The woman who'd been unsure about the place is soon won over when she spots the shiny, orange globe light fixture over a nearby booth. "I had that orange ball light over my dining room table in the '70s!" she squeals with delight.
Overhead, Lefty Frizzel's song "If You've Got the Money, Honey, I've Got the Time" comes on and her husband gets excited. "This was my favorite song!" Now we know he dates to the early '50s.
Half of the couple at the end of the bar comes over to chat about David's passion for details and how it's the reason for their frequent visits. "And the people-watching is amazing!" he says.
Well, it's certainly all over the map. There are sedate-looking couples and parties of four (known each other for years, probably), a dumpy guy in backwards sunglasses and flip-flops with two young women (daughters? for hires?), a large non-communicative couple who look like they wish they were at Olive Garden and plenty of regular-looking people.
The norm is anything goes.
Cute couple comes over to say farewell, hoping that we will run into each other again in another 48 hours. Given both our devotion to meals out, it's certainly a possibility.
It's while I'm getting rhapsodic about my black bottom pie that I spy a familiar restaurant couple through the masses. Once they spot me, as if on cue, the four people next to me at the bar decide to move to a table. I now have company.
When they ask what I've eaten (during a Dolly Parton song I didn't recognize but did enjoy), I rave about the gazpacho and foie gras, resulting in them ordering both. What surprises me is that he, a long-time restaurant employee, has never had foie gras. Turns out he didn't eat meat for 20 years (for which I offer my condolences) so he's still playing catch-up.
I'd play it a little faster if I were you, friend.
In that vein, he orders the ultra-luscious duet of veal sweetbreads and butter-poached lobster with a backbeat (I told you David was a wordsmith) of lavender grits and English peas climaxing into a blissful crescendo of sherried sauce Americaine.
Miraculously, it is the first time this 46-year old has had sweetbreads or lobster and I am a witness.
It's a wondrous thing to watch the first time someone's eyes roll back in their head because something so sensual has gone in their mouth.
We get to talking about career servers (this needs to be appreciated in this country), meddling spouses (not everyone is cut out for the restaurant business) and flirtatious customers while they ply me with more Bellevue Rose and pointed conversation about the local scene.
We marvel how it's like a train wreck when people get called out publicly on Facebook. No one can look away.
When the chef comes out in street clothes, I raise my glass momentarily to his monumentally successful first year. Everyone I've talked to tonight had mentioned how removed from Richmond you feel when you're inside this funky interior eating fabulous food.
You want to talk best new restaurants? Try climaxing into a blissful crescendo. I got your best new restaurant right here, buddy.
Showing posts with label Domaine Bellevue Touraine Rose. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Domaine Bellevue Touraine Rose. Show all posts
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Sunday, March 1, 2015
Playing Festively
If someone asked me to plan my kind of date, it might go something like this.
Begin by choosing a restaurant where the ambiance is as seductive as the food (L'Opossum) and then suggest that you meet there (always have your own car, just in case) shortly after they open and before the masses arrive.
If you're smart, you'll choose a place at the bar because you know the bartender is a great conversationalist (Anton LaVey, materialism, societal accountability) and always willing to talk music with you.
Once your date arrives (a couple tonight), choose a bottle of the beautiful Domaine Bellevue 2013 Touraine Rose to toast each other. Theirs is a unique relationship ("We started drinking together 15 years ago, but we've only been together for five") and there's a lot of laughter between us.
Good dates should abound with laughter.
Like me, they are enchanted with the eclectic soundtrack on this date - Glen Campbell's "Gentle On My Mind," Helen Reddy's "No Way to Treat a Lady" and Liberace's version of "Theme from a Summer Place," during which a discussion of Liberace ensues and the bartender sagely observes, "I never knew much about him but now that I've done some listening, I think he plays so festively."
My favorite dates are feasts of food, so tonight I start with something new on the menu: juniper-encrusted venison carpaccio with lingonberries, pickled walnut seeds over rocket. It's Scandanavia on a plate.
From there, my dates and I share oysters in an absinthe mist (be still my heart, absinthe twice in three days), the decadence of buerre blanc-drenched escargots in and around a ham biscuit and Faberge eggs with caviar and Champagne Rose jigglers (I don't hesitate to devour these with my fingers), finishing our first round with the lobster taco with seared foie gras, an obscenely seductive note on which to end.
Since part of the appeal of a date is sharing stories, we do. The bartender joins us to discuss the Phil Ochs songbook one of us discovered today at an estate sale and music conversation develops (folky Ochs versus orchestral Ochs? early Leonard Cohen versus late? is there such a thing as too much Bowie?).
Possibly my favorite song heard all evening is Mercury Rev's "Laurel Canyon" but talk is most spirited about Suzy Creamcheese.
We are regaled with tales of dating a VCU art history professor who used to take photographs of dog poop everywhere he traveled and then insert them into his lectures between slides of Notre Dame and Chartres.
Appropriately, a second bottle of Rose accompanies our next course of Caesar salad, rack of lamb and black grouper while "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" plays. It's been so long since any of us heard it that we debate whether or not it's the original (it is, as it turns out).
A smart date defers the choice of dessert (and another bottle of Rose) to me and I graciously accept, opting for the sexual innuendo of hot black bottom a la mode topped by a dominant rich ganache and whipped cream and just to prove I can, le petite mort au chocolate (because who doesn't want an orgasm on a date?) set aflame with 151 rum.
By now, we are four plus hours into this date, a very good sign that food, drink and conversation are all hitting on the most pleasurable levels. No one wants to stop, so we order after dinner drinks and when one of us gets the Blackout 77, we begin by inhaling its impressive aromas.
One verdict is that it smells like Cary Grant in New York City back during the TWA era. The bartender admits to choosing the NYC power outage of 1977, an event he remembers from childhood, as a point of reference for the potent libation.
There will be two of these beauties before the night is over.
The Laura Palmer is served wrapped in plastic around the glass, its gin and muddled cherries a blood red reminder of poor Laura's fate. Balvenie tastes of, well, Balvenie, because sometimes for some dates, only brown liquor will do. I find myself drawn to Zaya 12-year old rum, a far cry from the Meyer's Rum of my youth.
By the time the date winds down, only a couple of tables are left, but they hadn't arrived when it was still daylight as we had done. Favorite parting compliment: "You are the coolest chick in Richmond."
Note to those seeking to plan the best kind of date: compliments should be part of the game plan.
But dates shouldn't end with a fabulous meal, at least not one on a Saturday night. Better to find yourself at a place like Balliceaux for Body Talk, with DJs playing records of boogie/funk/modern soul for a dance party that's in full swing as I shed my coat and join the throngs on the floor.
The dance floor itself extends to the walls of the room because the place is so packed, but it also means that even if you arrive technically date-less, you will have plenty of people to dance with. And what better use for all those calories and drinks consumed over the past six hours than a few more of non-stop motion?
I guarantee that by the time you get home, nearly nine hours after your date began, you'll fall into bed full, happily and almost talked out.
It will be because that kind of date is the most fun you could have without being kissed.
Begin by choosing a restaurant where the ambiance is as seductive as the food (L'Opossum) and then suggest that you meet there (always have your own car, just in case) shortly after they open and before the masses arrive.
If you're smart, you'll choose a place at the bar because you know the bartender is a great conversationalist (Anton LaVey, materialism, societal accountability) and always willing to talk music with you.
Once your date arrives (a couple tonight), choose a bottle of the beautiful Domaine Bellevue 2013 Touraine Rose to toast each other. Theirs is a unique relationship ("We started drinking together 15 years ago, but we've only been together for five") and there's a lot of laughter between us.
Good dates should abound with laughter.
Like me, they are enchanted with the eclectic soundtrack on this date - Glen Campbell's "Gentle On My Mind," Helen Reddy's "No Way to Treat a Lady" and Liberace's version of "Theme from a Summer Place," during which a discussion of Liberace ensues and the bartender sagely observes, "I never knew much about him but now that I've done some listening, I think he plays so festively."
My favorite dates are feasts of food, so tonight I start with something new on the menu: juniper-encrusted venison carpaccio with lingonberries, pickled walnut seeds over rocket. It's Scandanavia on a plate.
From there, my dates and I share oysters in an absinthe mist (be still my heart, absinthe twice in three days), the decadence of buerre blanc-drenched escargots in and around a ham biscuit and Faberge eggs with caviar and Champagne Rose jigglers (I don't hesitate to devour these with my fingers), finishing our first round with the lobster taco with seared foie gras, an obscenely seductive note on which to end.
Since part of the appeal of a date is sharing stories, we do. The bartender joins us to discuss the Phil Ochs songbook one of us discovered today at an estate sale and music conversation develops (folky Ochs versus orchestral Ochs? early Leonard Cohen versus late? is there such a thing as too much Bowie?).
Possibly my favorite song heard all evening is Mercury Rev's "Laurel Canyon" but talk is most spirited about Suzy Creamcheese.
We are regaled with tales of dating a VCU art history professor who used to take photographs of dog poop everywhere he traveled and then insert them into his lectures between slides of Notre Dame and Chartres.
Appropriately, a second bottle of Rose accompanies our next course of Caesar salad, rack of lamb and black grouper while "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden" plays. It's been so long since any of us heard it that we debate whether or not it's the original (it is, as it turns out).
A smart date defers the choice of dessert (and another bottle of Rose) to me and I graciously accept, opting for the sexual innuendo of hot black bottom a la mode topped by a dominant rich ganache and whipped cream and just to prove I can, le petite mort au chocolate (because who doesn't want an orgasm on a date?) set aflame with 151 rum.
By now, we are four plus hours into this date, a very good sign that food, drink and conversation are all hitting on the most pleasurable levels. No one wants to stop, so we order after dinner drinks and when one of us gets the Blackout 77, we begin by inhaling its impressive aromas.
One verdict is that it smells like Cary Grant in New York City back during the TWA era. The bartender admits to choosing the NYC power outage of 1977, an event he remembers from childhood, as a point of reference for the potent libation.
There will be two of these beauties before the night is over.
The Laura Palmer is served wrapped in plastic around the glass, its gin and muddled cherries a blood red reminder of poor Laura's fate. Balvenie tastes of, well, Balvenie, because sometimes for some dates, only brown liquor will do. I find myself drawn to Zaya 12-year old rum, a far cry from the Meyer's Rum of my youth.
By the time the date winds down, only a couple of tables are left, but they hadn't arrived when it was still daylight as we had done. Favorite parting compliment: "You are the coolest chick in Richmond."
Note to those seeking to plan the best kind of date: compliments should be part of the game plan.
But dates shouldn't end with a fabulous meal, at least not one on a Saturday night. Better to find yourself at a place like Balliceaux for Body Talk, with DJs playing records of boogie/funk/modern soul for a dance party that's in full swing as I shed my coat and join the throngs on the floor.
The dance floor itself extends to the walls of the room because the place is so packed, but it also means that even if you arrive technically date-less, you will have plenty of people to dance with. And what better use for all those calories and drinks consumed over the past six hours than a few more of non-stop motion?
I guarantee that by the time you get home, nearly nine hours after your date began, you'll fall into bed full, happily and almost talked out.
It will be because that kind of date is the most fun you could have without being kissed.
Friday, September 26, 2014
Le Petit Mort au Diner
Truth is, I'd planned to stay in tonight.
Sure, sure, whatever, Karen, I can hear the derisive laughter now. As if.
But here's the thing: I have five deadlines this weekend and at the last minute, I was informed that one of my subjects would not be available for me to interview after all.
Not the news I wanted to hear, just when I was down to my next to last piece.
So I (albeit briefly) considered staying home, working so there would be less to do tomorrow.
But then a friend suggested dinner on his dime and I thought, what the heck, a few hours eating isn't going to make much difference.
It's not like staying home would ensure that the publicist puts me in touch with the musician I need.
Looking at it that way, it only made sense to go to dinner.
Friend asked where and I suggested L'Opossum. Although he can be hard to please, I had a feeling it would be right up his alley.
As it turned out, the music wasn't, although I was drawn to its quirkiness.
Liberace, Tom Jones, Bobbi Gentry (twice!) and "Little Green Apples," a corny song I haven't heard in decades.
Arriving first, I took a stool at the end of the bar near an available stool for my tardy friend, where I was offered a taste of their new pink, the well-balanced Domaine Bellevue Touraine Rose.
The genial bartender introduced me to a guy deep into his crabcakes, leading to a little music talk, a little discussion of Buddhism (never refuse free food), and a lot of praise for the dish he'd just inhaled.
A photographer I know spotted me and we caught up on what she'd been up to, including a summer photography retreat at a Mississippi mansion complete with wandering armadillos and plenty of brown liquor drinking.
Frankly, I see both as conducive to the creatively-inspired taking of pictures.
My friend showed up full of apologies for his delayed entrance, no big deal since I can amuse myself.
It was his first visit, so he began by assessing the wine list, impressed with not only the bottle choices but the price points.
Once he made it to the food menu, he was flummoxed, unsure which of several tantalizing options to go for.
We began with Chapel Creek oysters rock over watercress, misted with a green fairy fog (my beloved absinthe) right before our eyes, resulting in some of the most exquisite oysters Rockefeller I've ever tasted.
With a nod to the VMFA, Faberge eggs bedazzled with caviar and vodka-laced accoutrements including pale pink gelatinous "les jiggles de la Champagne Rose."
We got into a discussion with a bar sitter and our barkeep about cars, including the "artist series" of BMWs, something I'd never even heard of.
But my friend had and the other guy had actually seen a Warhol BMW (supposedly took him 27 minutes to do) at a museum , so they got going great guns on this.
It was a fitting tie-in to the Warhol- designed pattern that festoons the bar and table tops in the restaurant.
That led to talk about cop magnets (Porsches, red cars, high end black BMWs), getting pulled over and suspended licenses, again not my forte.
But eating is, so I couldn't have been happier when my whole fried baby chicken on mashed potato waffles showed up with pan gravy, kale and pickled okra.
Crispy golden brown, I went for the drumsticks first before turning my attention to the perfectly cooked kale but the most striking part of the dish looked like two little red balls.
They turned out to be Fireball butter, knobs of spicy butter to slather on my waffle and swoon over.
When I offered my friend some pickled okra, he hesitated, remembering his mother's pickled okra full of red pepper and left to sit for a year until it was unpleasant to eat.
This okra, he had to admit, was a horse of a different color, piquant and still responding with snap when bitten into. Southern perfection.
He'd chosen bunny, as he put it, - "Madame Dot du Powhatan's cider-braised rabbit peppered with gingersnap spaetzle and schadenfreude" - the latter one of many clever word plays ("uninhibited mushroom broth") on a menu where alliteration reigns supreme.
Have I mentioned how much I like literate restaurant owners who use their menus to convey more than just the kitchen's offerings, using language to engage and entertain and not just inform?
Just so you know.
Since it had been ages since my friend and I had gotten together, a goodly part of the meal was spent catching up.
Since he's read all of her books, I knew he'd want to hear about my evening listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin and he did.
That reminded him that he wanted to find a good biography of Woodrow Wilson and then a multi-volume series on WWI, an era he feels he is not well enough informed on.
I, on the other hand, accept that I am ill-informed on plenty of things and read what I choose, which probably makes him a better person than me.
When neither of us was able to finish our entrees, he explained that he wouldn't be able to take his leftovers home because he had no room in his refrigerator.
After cataloging what was in there (including a lot of bread: croissants, bialies, baguettes, sandwich bread, pizza) he reconsidered and got a box for the rest of his rabbit but chose to leave the schadenfreude behind.
Language geek humor there.
Both stuffed, we did the only logical thing and got dessert: caramel-glazed figs in a refreshing elixir of watermelon, plums, sake and lime.
I'm passionate about figs and these had sugar fired on top but just as wonderful was that elixir, which we spooned up greedily and would have happily eaten as a soup if it had been delivered as such.
That only whet our appetites for our second dessert, a chocolate pate seductively named "le petite mort au chocolat" (and yes, I know what that means) set aflame by our bartender.
Who, by the way, caused me to turn pea-green with envy when he told me that he'd been given a free ticket to see Bryan Ferry in Washington next week.
I wanted to put my head down on the bar and weep in jealousy but it would have been unseemly.
What I will do is go back and get a blow by blow report from him on the show, not that it will assuage my loss any, but at least it's something.
By that point, Friend was raving about what an outstanding meal it had been but we were also balancing precariously on the edge of a food coma, so we decided to cede our stools to latecomers and go our separate ways.
After all, I had "work" to do.
But you better believe there's Bryan Ferry playing in the background as I do it.
Sure, sure, whatever, Karen, I can hear the derisive laughter now. As if.
But here's the thing: I have five deadlines this weekend and at the last minute, I was informed that one of my subjects would not be available for me to interview after all.
Not the news I wanted to hear, just when I was down to my next to last piece.
So I (albeit briefly) considered staying home, working so there would be less to do tomorrow.
But then a friend suggested dinner on his dime and I thought, what the heck, a few hours eating isn't going to make much difference.
It's not like staying home would ensure that the publicist puts me in touch with the musician I need.
Looking at it that way, it only made sense to go to dinner.
Friend asked where and I suggested L'Opossum. Although he can be hard to please, I had a feeling it would be right up his alley.
As it turned out, the music wasn't, although I was drawn to its quirkiness.
Liberace, Tom Jones, Bobbi Gentry (twice!) and "Little Green Apples," a corny song I haven't heard in decades.
Arriving first, I took a stool at the end of the bar near an available stool for my tardy friend, where I was offered a taste of their new pink, the well-balanced Domaine Bellevue Touraine Rose.
The genial bartender introduced me to a guy deep into his crabcakes, leading to a little music talk, a little discussion of Buddhism (never refuse free food), and a lot of praise for the dish he'd just inhaled.
A photographer I know spotted me and we caught up on what she'd been up to, including a summer photography retreat at a Mississippi mansion complete with wandering armadillos and plenty of brown liquor drinking.
Frankly, I see both as conducive to the creatively-inspired taking of pictures.
My friend showed up full of apologies for his delayed entrance, no big deal since I can amuse myself.
It was his first visit, so he began by assessing the wine list, impressed with not only the bottle choices but the price points.
Once he made it to the food menu, he was flummoxed, unsure which of several tantalizing options to go for.
We began with Chapel Creek oysters rock over watercress, misted with a green fairy fog (my beloved absinthe) right before our eyes, resulting in some of the most exquisite oysters Rockefeller I've ever tasted.
With a nod to the VMFA, Faberge eggs bedazzled with caviar and vodka-laced accoutrements including pale pink gelatinous "les jiggles de la Champagne Rose."
We got into a discussion with a bar sitter and our barkeep about cars, including the "artist series" of BMWs, something I'd never even heard of.
But my friend had and the other guy had actually seen a Warhol BMW (supposedly took him 27 minutes to do) at a museum , so they got going great guns on this.
It was a fitting tie-in to the Warhol- designed pattern that festoons the bar and table tops in the restaurant.
That led to talk about cop magnets (Porsches, red cars, high end black BMWs), getting pulled over and suspended licenses, again not my forte.
But eating is, so I couldn't have been happier when my whole fried baby chicken on mashed potato waffles showed up with pan gravy, kale and pickled okra.
Crispy golden brown, I went for the drumsticks first before turning my attention to the perfectly cooked kale but the most striking part of the dish looked like two little red balls.
They turned out to be Fireball butter, knobs of spicy butter to slather on my waffle and swoon over.
When I offered my friend some pickled okra, he hesitated, remembering his mother's pickled okra full of red pepper and left to sit for a year until it was unpleasant to eat.
This okra, he had to admit, was a horse of a different color, piquant and still responding with snap when bitten into. Southern perfection.
He'd chosen bunny, as he put it, - "Madame Dot du Powhatan's cider-braised rabbit peppered with gingersnap spaetzle and schadenfreude" - the latter one of many clever word plays ("uninhibited mushroom broth") on a menu where alliteration reigns supreme.
Have I mentioned how much I like literate restaurant owners who use their menus to convey more than just the kitchen's offerings, using language to engage and entertain and not just inform?
Just so you know.
Since it had been ages since my friend and I had gotten together, a goodly part of the meal was spent catching up.
Since he's read all of her books, I knew he'd want to hear about my evening listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin and he did.
That reminded him that he wanted to find a good biography of Woodrow Wilson and then a multi-volume series on WWI, an era he feels he is not well enough informed on.
I, on the other hand, accept that I am ill-informed on plenty of things and read what I choose, which probably makes him a better person than me.
When neither of us was able to finish our entrees, he explained that he wouldn't be able to take his leftovers home because he had no room in his refrigerator.
After cataloging what was in there (including a lot of bread: croissants, bialies, baguettes, sandwich bread, pizza) he reconsidered and got a box for the rest of his rabbit but chose to leave the schadenfreude behind.
Language geek humor there.
Both stuffed, we did the only logical thing and got dessert: caramel-glazed figs in a refreshing elixir of watermelon, plums, sake and lime.
I'm passionate about figs and these had sugar fired on top but just as wonderful was that elixir, which we spooned up greedily and would have happily eaten as a soup if it had been delivered as such.
That only whet our appetites for our second dessert, a chocolate pate seductively named "le petite mort au chocolat" (and yes, I know what that means) set aflame by our bartender.
Who, by the way, caused me to turn pea-green with envy when he told me that he'd been given a free ticket to see Bryan Ferry in Washington next week.
I wanted to put my head down on the bar and weep in jealousy but it would have been unseemly.
What I will do is go back and get a blow by blow report from him on the show, not that it will assuage my loss any, but at least it's something.
By that point, Friend was raving about what an outstanding meal it had been but we were also balancing precariously on the edge of a food coma, so we decided to cede our stools to latecomers and go our separate ways.
After all, I had "work" to do.
But you better believe there's Bryan Ferry playing in the background as I do it.
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