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| - I went here for the Iberico pork and absinthe. I got to mark those two things off my culinary bucket. Here's how the rest of the meal went.
I really wanted the prix fix menu, but everyone at the table has to participate. At $89 each, it seemed like a deal, actually. But the Hubs had his eye on the short ribs from the dinner menu, so we just chose our own entrees.
The waiter brought us a basket of bread with two kinds of bread in it. I don't remember what the second kind was because all I heard him say was "bacon bread." It was amazing. The bacon was so finely chopped up you could barely see it in the bread. It was like bacon dust throughout the bread. And it was crispy on the outside and soft inside. Amazing.
To start, we got the Wagyu steak tartare, which probably the best I've ever had (who knows if it was really wagyu or not, but it was very very good). Here's were things began to get weird. When it came time to place our order, I ordered the Iberico pork loin, but I said "Iberico ham, I mean, loin." I think they thought I said "lamb loin," which is also on the menu. Another person in our party also ordered the Iberico pork. But when the food came out, they only brought one, and gave me a lamb loin. When I said, that's not what I ordered, they looked at me really funny and took it away. It was kinda noisy and I guess it was technically my fault, but we didn't even get an apology or anything. It was bizarre that something like that would happen at a restaurant like this, and that they wouldn't apologize. The mix up really didn't spoil our meal or experience, though. We laughed about it later.
The Hub's short ribs were to die for. He actually makes a very good recipe for short ribs himself, and when he orders short ribs at a restaurant, he always says his are better. But not this time. I tasted them, and they were just the right ratio of fatty and meaty. The lamb loin did look good, and someone else at our table ordered it and said it was very good. It came with morels, and she ordered it mostly because of that. We have them every spring in WV, but none of us had ever ordered them from a restaurant.
Once the Iberico pork did come out, it was exceptional. But It wasn't like the holy grail of pork like I thought it would be. Think pasture raise pork prepared really well. Is it better than regular pork loin? Exponentially. It was darker meat (like the color of ham instead of the usual pale pink or white of pork loin). There was another kind of pork on the plate with it. It's not listed on the menu on their website, but it was like pulled pork. Except it reminded me of salt cod; very salty, dry and flaky. It was WAY over salted--and maybe it was supposed to be, but I think they could have left this off the plate. It really only took away from the lovely Iberico pork loin.
Sage has an absinthe menu, and it's quite a presentation. I'd never tried it before, but I've wanted to since it recently was legalized in the U.S. Since I didn't know anything about the different kinds of absinthe, I asked the waiter about the differences. He was very knowledgeable about them. There were offerings from Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, France, Switzerland and a few others. The Wisconsin one is actually owned partly by Marilyn Manson, and it's called Mansonithe or something like that. Very kitchy. I went with the Swiss absinthe because the waiter told me it was a recipe from 1902 (hello, upsale). The drinks run anywhere from $25 to $35. The absinthe is poured in a brandy glass. A sugar cube is placed on a slotted absinthe spoon and lit on fire. After most of the sugar melts, distilled water is poured on it from this big silver dispenser that looked a little like a hookah. The presentation was exquisite, but the taste... meh. If you don't like Jagermeister, you won't like absinthe. But if you really just want the wow factor of the presentation and to say you tried it once (and maybe won some money in Vegas that you want to blow), this is the place to do it.
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