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| - We chose to head over to Red Rocks for Charlotte Restaurant Week. While they didn't offer as many courses (just salad/soup, entree and dessert) the entrees really stood out and slapped us in the face. Plus it's one of the last restaurants at Birkdale that we haven't been to yet. I'm pretty dang happy with our decision to go here because it ended up being a great meal.
We made reservations for 6pm on Saturday night. We were greeted quickly and shown to a table right away. I really liked the ambiance of Red Rocks...it's dark and quiet, and makes for quite the romantic/ intimate dining experience. All of the staff were friendly and courteous, and also knowledgeable on the menu details. We ordered some wine to go with our dinner and then prepared for the feast.
The salads were both very good. I was a plain Jane and stuck with the caesar salad, but it was so good. The dressing was one of those extremely light caesars where it's almost the consistency of a vinaigrette and not a clump of heavy, creamy goodness. I was quite pleased with it, and there was plenty of shredded parm on top. The miss' had the baby field green salad which had some crasiens, goat cheese and other goodies all topped with a fruity vinaigrette. Both were light salads that were a great way to start the meal.
I chose the Niman pork porterhouse as my entree. This thing was the real deal! It was a huge porterhouse pork chop, and it was COVERED with chunks of sauteed apple and bacon. The pork was cooked to a perfect medium and was so tender and juicy. The bacon that went with it actually gave the whole chop an overall hint of smoke that was awesome. And the bacon chunks were just that...CHUNKS! Not shriveled crunchy bits of bacon, but decent chunks of tender, fatty bacon. Those bacon bites, combined with the apple, really brought this dish home into flavor country. Then you have the sides. The sweet potatoes were hands down the best I've ever had. They were sooooo sweet and buttery, it was like biting into a marshmallow cloud. The whole dish was served on top of a bed of greens, which was initially a turnoff for me since I'm not a fan of sauteed greens. But those bitter greens really turned each porky bite into some kind of divine tastetacular experience. All in all, it was a huge portion of tasty food that is one of those meals I will remember for a long time.
The miss' had the blackened tuna, and that was also just to die for. The tuna was cooked to a perfect rare, and was so tender and had that wonderful warm outside with cool inside. It was served over a bed of risotto which was just insane. The risotto was so rich and wonderfully tasty, and blew away most other sides I've had before. It also came with some asparagus that was cooked perfectly and had a light buttery taste to it. The one thing she didn't like was the avocado. I didn't try it myself, but she felt that the avocado didn't play well with both the tuna and the risotto. The tuna and avocado were good together, as were the tuna and risotto, but when combining the tuna, avocado and risotto there was just too much going on.
After feasting on pork and tuna it was time to bring on the dessert. It sounded like each night would offer a different dessert option, and tonight we could choose from either a blackberry shortcake or bread pudding. We decided to get one of each and just share them equally, and there was more than enough dessert in the end for both of us. The bread pudding wasn't like bread pudding I'm used to. Rather than having chunks of bread that are baked it was like an actual pudding consistency, and was totally smooth all the way around and inside. It was strange for me at first, and I didn't like it as much right off the bat. However, once combining the bread pudding with the berry sauce and vanilla ice cream that garnish the plate, it was my dessert of choice. This thing was ridiculous, and if you go and see it on the menu, do yourself a favor and hit your server up with an order.
The blackberry shortcake was also quite the tasty treat. They used two biscuits that were light and dry rather than buttery and sweet, and this really helped balance the dish out. These biscuits were smothered with tons of locally grown blackberries that the restaurant gets from a farm stand right down the road. On top of the berries is what I think was a kind of creme fraiche since it wasn't sweet like whipped cream. The biscuit, berries and creme all brought an awesome dessert to the plate, but it wasn't enough to topple the mighty bread pudding.
Red Rocks is tentatively one of our favorite restaurants in the area. I think very highly of Alton's, and Red Rocks definitely competes with it as far as fanciness/ambiance goes. But the food at Red Rocks was slightly better, and definitely presented in a "classier" manner. I'll definitely want to return on a non-Restaurant Week day to sample the full menu before making a final judgement, but I guarantee we will be returning to Red Rocks soon.
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