and now, another restaurant review
i haven't reviewed anything in probably two months, so a review is overdue, don't you think?
first, parker's is air conditioned, despite occupying a building even ten years older than our house (which is 130 years old), so they could have served hot dogs on paper plates and i would have been thrilled. happily, they did a little better than hot dogs.
service was excellent but much more informal than i had been led to believe. since it was a one-night-only, fixed menu vegetarian dinner, the only thing we had to pick was the wine. we ordered the '01 la cadalora pinot grigio, which accompanied our early-spring dinner pretty well, i must say. justin usually lets me pick the wine because i have a knack for it, which i admit is mostly based on luck, but hey - it works.
the amuse bouche was a tiny spinach quiche, between 1 1/2" and 2" in diameter, which at first seemed a little chintzy. but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in taste and texture. the crust was perfectly flaky and fatty, and the filling was the creamiest i've ever had - creamier than the sublime quiches we got for breakfast every day in paris from the bakery across the street from our hotel. it may have just been the quality of the eggs (parker's uses only seasonal, organic ingredients obtained fresh from local farms) that made the taste so good, or maybe just a twinge of slow-sauteed shallots. just a guess.
the second course was cream of asparagus soup with watercress. the texture was silky but substantial, and it tasted perfectly green - there's no better adjective for it. the next course was seared tofu with julienned zucchini, sitting in a shallow puddle of juice from the zucchini, garlic- and thyme-infused olive oil and (i suspect) lemon juice. the zucchini absorbed the tart juices (we picked up the rest with our bread), which were a nice balance for that flat taste tofu has. the tofu, actually, could have been infused with a little more flavor, but i suppose if it had more flavor it would have just made the dish too busy. the tofu was in three, golden cubes, surrounding the cloud of zucchini in the middle.
next came the arugula salad, topped with russian fingerling potatoes (with skins crispy like roast duck), then a doily of melted white cheddar, then sauteed killbuck valley farms mushrooms, then roasted asparagus, all topped with a butter and truffle dressing that made all of the flavors even richer.
the dessert was a rhubarb pound cake with a strawberry-rhubarb compote and strawberry coulis dotted with creme anglaise and topped with crystallized lemon peel. the cake had a nice, crunchy crust and a slightly-nutty taste and was both appropriately weighty and light in texture, and the lemon peel finished it perfectly. my capucchino was a little too acidic, but justin liked it enough to finish it for me as well as his double espresso.
if i had a complaint, it would be the pace of the dinner. i felt a bit rushed, like i was at an oversized wedding dinner (although the dining room only seats about 25), where the staff is under pressure to serve every course to everyone at the same time. it seemed unnecessary in a restaurant that purposely only does one seating per night - which leads to my other complaint: the only seating time was 6:30. it was a little bizarre to be enjoying this dinner in the full glare of afternoon sunlight. granted, we eat later than most people (usually around 10 pm), but this kind of meal should be in a dim room with low, warm lighting; tonight's dinner was lighted like a 4th of july picnic.
after dinner, we picked up our laptop and books (mine was one of the subsequent pregnancy books i ordered last week that arrived today), and we walked up to metro joe's for soy chai (me) and root beer (justin). the book (i can't remember which title i started) is promising; i'll review it here when i finish it.
other than coming home to a 95-degree-house-temperature to perspire in a most-unladylike fashion, it's been a good evening.
*****
i've made the leap.
justin is a long-time vegetarian. when we met, i didn't even know any other vegetarians, and he wasn't just a vegetarian, he was a vegan (for the uninitiated, a vegan eats no animal products at all, not even dairy or eggs, and some even exclude honey). less than a month after we started dating, we went to waffle house for hashbrowns and i had mine "chunked" (i believe that's the correct term at waffle house for "with ham"); as we walked out through the parking lot, holding hands, i was feeling the fresh thrill of new love, and i turned toward justin to kiss him - and he turned his head. in that moment, we almost didn't make it.
justin never saw himself with anyone other than a vegetarian - i was a real stretch for him. (he was a stretch for me, too, but that's a story for another day.) but we worked it out and lived to tell about it. he relaxed from veganism to good old garden-variety lacto-ovo-vegetarianism (meaning he would eat dairy and eggs), and i learned to cook vegetarian, although for the first year, it was mostly the meat-and-two-sides kind of meals i'd cooked all my life, based on a boca or gardenburger or morningstar farms fake meat product. eventually, i learned to cook new things and create whole dinners that didn't revolve around meat or its substitutes and expanded my repertoire to include chinese and indian and italian.
but i've never crossed over to vegetarianism myself. i agreed before we were even engaged that i would raise any children we had as vegetarians, and i cook exclusively vegetarian at home, but i still ate meat out.
now, i've reached a couple of new points. the first one is that i've stalled out at losing weight; i'm 20 lbs under my weight when i got pregnant with hans, but i've been there for about six weeks, and i need to lose as much weight as i (safely) can before i get pregnant again. the second point is that i've been exploring every possible thing i can do to eliminate any risk in a future pregnancy, and there are just so many horrible things in our meat supply in this country. so i'm crossing over to the veg side.
i do have two exceptions. one is argentina - when i'm there, i'm eating the beef, which is the finest-tasting (and purest) in the world. the second exception is fish - with certain exceptions, the fish supply is fairly safe, and there are so many nutritional benefits that i would be missing if i didn't eat it. plus, i freaking love sushi.
if my skin starts to have a greenish cast, you'll know why.
first, parker's is air conditioned, despite occupying a building even ten years older than our house (which is 130 years old), so they could have served hot dogs on paper plates and i would have been thrilled. happily, they did a little better than hot dogs.
service was excellent but much more informal than i had been led to believe. since it was a one-night-only, fixed menu vegetarian dinner, the only thing we had to pick was the wine. we ordered the '01 la cadalora pinot grigio, which accompanied our early-spring dinner pretty well, i must say. justin usually lets me pick the wine because i have a knack for it, which i admit is mostly based on luck, but hey - it works.
the amuse bouche was a tiny spinach quiche, between 1 1/2" and 2" in diameter, which at first seemed a little chintzy. but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in taste and texture. the crust was perfectly flaky and fatty, and the filling was the creamiest i've ever had - creamier than the sublime quiches we got for breakfast every day in paris from the bakery across the street from our hotel. it may have just been the quality of the eggs (parker's uses only seasonal, organic ingredients obtained fresh from local farms) that made the taste so good, or maybe just a twinge of slow-sauteed shallots. just a guess.
the second course was cream of asparagus soup with watercress. the texture was silky but substantial, and it tasted perfectly green - there's no better adjective for it. the next course was seared tofu with julienned zucchini, sitting in a shallow puddle of juice from the zucchini, garlic- and thyme-infused olive oil and (i suspect) lemon juice. the zucchini absorbed the tart juices (we picked up the rest with our bread), which were a nice balance for that flat taste tofu has. the tofu, actually, could have been infused with a little more flavor, but i suppose if it had more flavor it would have just made the dish too busy. the tofu was in three, golden cubes, surrounding the cloud of zucchini in the middle.
next came the arugula salad, topped with russian fingerling potatoes (with skins crispy like roast duck), then a doily of melted white cheddar, then sauteed killbuck valley farms mushrooms, then roasted asparagus, all topped with a butter and truffle dressing that made all of the flavors even richer.
the dessert was a rhubarb pound cake with a strawberry-rhubarb compote and strawberry coulis dotted with creme anglaise and topped with crystallized lemon peel. the cake had a nice, crunchy crust and a slightly-nutty taste and was both appropriately weighty and light in texture, and the lemon peel finished it perfectly. my capucchino was a little too acidic, but justin liked it enough to finish it for me as well as his double espresso.
if i had a complaint, it would be the pace of the dinner. i felt a bit rushed, like i was at an oversized wedding dinner (although the dining room only seats about 25), where the staff is under pressure to serve every course to everyone at the same time. it seemed unnecessary in a restaurant that purposely only does one seating per night - which leads to my other complaint: the only seating time was 6:30. it was a little bizarre to be enjoying this dinner in the full glare of afternoon sunlight. granted, we eat later than most people (usually around 10 pm), but this kind of meal should be in a dim room with low, warm lighting; tonight's dinner was lighted like a 4th of july picnic.
after dinner, we picked up our laptop and books (mine was one of the subsequent pregnancy books i ordered last week that arrived today), and we walked up to metro joe's for soy chai (me) and root beer (justin). the book (i can't remember which title i started) is promising; i'll review it here when i finish it.
other than coming home to a 95-degree-house-temperature to perspire in a most-unladylike fashion, it's been a good evening.
*****
i've made the leap.
justin is a long-time vegetarian. when we met, i didn't even know any other vegetarians, and he wasn't just a vegetarian, he was a vegan (for the uninitiated, a vegan eats no animal products at all, not even dairy or eggs, and some even exclude honey). less than a month after we started dating, we went to waffle house for hashbrowns and i had mine "chunked" (i believe that's the correct term at waffle house for "with ham"); as we walked out through the parking lot, holding hands, i was feeling the fresh thrill of new love, and i turned toward justin to kiss him - and he turned his head. in that moment, we almost didn't make it.
justin never saw himself with anyone other than a vegetarian - i was a real stretch for him. (he was a stretch for me, too, but that's a story for another day.) but we worked it out and lived to tell about it. he relaxed from veganism to good old garden-variety lacto-ovo-vegetarianism (meaning he would eat dairy and eggs), and i learned to cook vegetarian, although for the first year, it was mostly the meat-and-two-sides kind of meals i'd cooked all my life, based on a boca or gardenburger or morningstar farms fake meat product. eventually, i learned to cook new things and create whole dinners that didn't revolve around meat or its substitutes and expanded my repertoire to include chinese and indian and italian.
but i've never crossed over to vegetarianism myself. i agreed before we were even engaged that i would raise any children we had as vegetarians, and i cook exclusively vegetarian at home, but i still ate meat out.
now, i've reached a couple of new points. the first one is that i've stalled out at losing weight; i'm 20 lbs under my weight when i got pregnant with hans, but i've been there for about six weeks, and i need to lose as much weight as i (safely) can before i get pregnant again. the second point is that i've been exploring every possible thing i can do to eliminate any risk in a future pregnancy, and there are just so many horrible things in our meat supply in this country. so i'm crossing over to the veg side.
i do have two exceptions. one is argentina - when i'm there, i'm eating the beef, which is the finest-tasting (and purest) in the world. the second exception is fish - with certain exceptions, the fish supply is fairly safe, and there are so many nutritional benefits that i would be missing if i didn't eat it. plus, i freaking love sushi.
if my skin starts to have a greenish cast, you'll know why.
posted by laura at 10:28 PM
3 Comments:
That sounds like a lovely meal, despite the lighting and the rush service. It's 8:30 am and now I'm hungry.
Good luck with the vegetarianism (is that a word?).
lauralu -
I think it's great you've had someone to "guide" you into vegitarianism. I've always flirted with the idea (I've never really liked the taste of beef and could take or leave chicken. But absolutely love shrimp and fish and sushi.) But of late, my very much carnivore husband has begun to cook a mean steak on the grill. I have to include meat into all of his meals (lots of it too, he's a weight lifter and needs his protein!), so it's hard to leave it out of my own. There are several dishes that I manage to do so with, but would love to have more of a vegitarian influence in my life to make it more feasible. If for nothing else, the health benefits you speak of are excellent. Good luck on the "other side".
Also, glad to hear that you had a lovely evening out. It's nice to get out and do stuff.
i do confess - the smell of steak being grilled is like crack to me. but i've gotten pretty good at making high-protein meatless meals after five years of practice on justin, to the point that i crave tofu much more often than i crave beef.
and yes, vegetarianism is definitely a word!
Post a Comment
<< Home