A number of folks have asked how dinner went the other night. I posted in my Facebook status that Zandra and I were headed off to a nice restaurant to celebrate our 11th Wedding Anniversary and folks were impressed by the restaurant menu.

So here's the promised review.

Zandra and I went to the Charleston Restaurant (http://www.charlestonrestaurant.com) for dinner on Friday. It came highly recommended from a colleague of my wife's and we had heard about Chef Cindy Wolf and were interested in trying the restaurant of this well acclaimed chef. In short, the dinner was excellent and we had a great time (except we forgot Zandra was on call and she got interrupted twice during dinner and had to step out to take the calls and I left my hearing aids at home so it made hearing the conversation difficult).

Charleston's menu is a "tasting" menu. You pay based on the number of items you select, and the size of each selection is "smaller than average" (I think that was what our waiter said). Three courses is a "light dinner". Five or Six is "pretty substantial". Some reviews of the restaurant which were negative I think didn't understand the "tasting" concept - so people "left hungry". This was not our case and we felt we ordered the right amount, or maybe even a little too much.

Zandra ordered 4 courses - the Butternut Squash Soup, the Wild Rockfish Ceviche, Grilled Ostrich Tenderloin, and Grilled Colorado Lamb Rack Chop. She enjoyed every bit, and the portions were not nearly as small as some reviewers had led me to believe. They weren't huge, but they were substantial. Zandra says next time she goes back, she'll just order 3 courses.

I chose "The Season" which is a menu prepared by Cindy Wolf which is different every evening. I also opted for the additional Wine Pairing which was a glass of wine (on the smaller side) matched with each course. The menu is below:



I deliberately chose this menu because of the wine pairings. I enjoy good wine, but don't find myself very knowledgeable about the specific choosing of wines with dishes, so thought I would let the chef make the recommendation. This was a terrific idea in hindsight and I highly recommend doing this when given the chance. A great example was the Pinot Noir which came with the salmon. When I sampled it before the course, it was not at all what I was expecting. It was pretty bold and complex tasting, and I seriously wondered why this wine was paired with a fish - even a stronger fish like salmon. After eating the salmon and its excellent reduction sauce (the dish reminded me a bit of an Asian Fusion dish), the wine took on a whole different character and all the flavors of the wine blended nicely with the salmon. It was a very "complimentary" wine with that particular dish. Fantastic. I think it demonstrated precisely why you pair certain wines with certain dishes.

The rest of the meal and wine pairings were excellent as well. My only negative comment (and it's barely a negative one) was the salad - I felt the Reggiano kind of overpowered the Vinaigrette. I guess I also prefer a little more texture from my cheese on salads, but it was still a great salad.

The deserts were fantastic. Unfortunately, I was so full, I don't think I was able to enjoy them as fully as I wanted.

Other comments - the food is very rich, extremely flavorful, and the presentation and preparation were excellent (as you would hope). Service was great (a lot of attention to detail) and the restaurant was comfortable, and very quiet. But if you can't appreciate and/or respect a chef's "artistic license" to present and prepare food in the way he/she wants to, don't go here. I can see now where the (very few) negative reviews originated. If you try to treat this as a dinner at a more "traditional" restaurant (where you get salad, appetizer, main course, and dessert, with a big main course being the star), I think you'll be more disappointed. The menu favors all the dishes as "equal" and everything being balanced. This is reinforced by our waiter's comment when choosing dishes that you could choose as many dishes as you wanted from each category - you didn't have to choose just one each from cold, hot, fish, game, and meat.

We thoroughly enjoyed dinner!

How cold was it this morning?

- When shopping at Super WalMart this morning, I realized that inside the ice cream freezer (at 10F) was warmer than outside (8F).

- I looked at our back door this morning. Clearly we have a small air leak around the hinges.



That's condensation freezing on the hinges. INSIDE the house.

Brrr.

Good news is it's a warm 20F now outside!

One of the research engineers at Sun just made this interesting discovery.

Original posting originated here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/05/shouty_sun_engineer/

An excellent example of useful telemetry you can gain from the latest Sun storage software....

Tags: Humor