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| - This place is quite the restaurant - wonderful selection of food choices and types. The menu is awesome. I'd say it's probably one of the new, better quality restaurants in Old Town. Quite surprisingly, I read some of the previous Yelp reviews to be a little shocked at some of the -ve reviews. I definitely did not have this experience at all..
We booked through OpenTable and had a booth.. we were on a double date night with friends, so we knew we were committed for the long haul of the evening.
Were seated by the hostess immediately inside (there is also bar and high-top table seating) and were presented with the menu, the wine and cocktail list..
I always prefer to start off with a beer to cleanse the palate before a good meal, and so the boys had an IPA (Hop Knot) and the girls G&T and a Berried Alive (from the cocktail menu).
There were lots of wonderful selections on the menu - making a decision on the starters was fun and allowed us to share across the table. We did have to find GF food choices, but the quality of GF these days is amazing and you honestly cannot tell the difference.
So we started with 1/2 dozen West Coast oysters, which were sooo tasty. The Tomato Mozzarella salad was also really nice and fresh. We didn't want to over heat on the starters so stuck with just the two. We had a non-red meat eater also, so a fish choice from their waiters specials menu was on order as well. The girls went the petite filet (one with the peppercorn sauce (which was surprisingly over-sweet - very unlike a normal peppercorn flavor) and a béarnaise sauce, which was the star of the 2 sauces. Perfectly cooked at medium rare. I had the Colorado Lamb Chop, also medium rare, which was huge (compared to a regular lamb chop anyway!). Looked like it came from a massive beast!!
We all agreed the meals were outstanding - presentation wise (please see images) but flavor-wise too. My only real comment on the lamb was that it was really quite fatty - sure fat adds flavor, but I had to trim excessive amounts off the chops. However the meat was very nicely flavoured, cooked perfectly, but somewhat different from a traditional Australian or New Zealand lamb chop (these are a generally sweeter, gamier meat).
Our waiter also brought out a series of different steak knives for choice in a case - which as really nice being offered the choice of your own knife, as opposed to having a standard steak knife just laid out.. Really nice touch..
To pair with these meals, we chose an Australian Shiraz - the Peter Lehman 'Portrait' series from 2014, which is an exceptional wine (and vintage season) for the price on the menu (and not expensive either). I had this decanted when we ordered our starters, so it was nicely aerating and opening by the time it arrived to our table. It was a definite winner all round so when the bottle dried up, we grabbed another. Uber was our mode of transport, so we wanted to be able to enjoy our wine and not be worried about driving. I have had this wine many times before when in Australia, so our US friend relished the varietal differences between our countries..
Sides we went with were the country mashed potatoes, the grilled and truffled asparagus spears with egg and the grilled broccoli. These sides paired easily with the main courses, so overall was a fairly easy dining choice.
Next we hit the dessert menu, although we were planning on skipping it at the time. However, our waiter said they had some pretty nice desserts worth looking at, so we decided to go family style with 3 different ones (maintaining our GF choices on 2 out of the 3)..
Vanilla crème brûlée (with the cookie dough in a small dish on the side (allowed us to share with our GF friend), the Banana Fosters Twinkie cheesecake (which is not on the menu (but a concoction from one of the dessert/pastry chefs who came and spoke to us about it) and the White Chocolate Bread Pudding.. All were really nice, not overtly rich but also satisfying on flavors and size.. Well rounded finish to the evening, thats for sure..
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