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| - Note #1: Make a reservation. Do not drop in unplanned.
Note #2: The dress code is somewhere between dressy and casual. We saw enough people wearing jeans to confirm this. Just use your best judgement.
Note #3: Their online menu deviates somewhat from the actual in-house menu and changes regularly.
My memoir of Friday night's masterpiece of a meal is as good a review as any to serve as #900.
Kay's mother was celebrating her 50th birthday, so Kay and her chef brother, who was visiting from New York, decided to grant her the ultimate treat: Dinner at The Carlton.
The 6:30PM reservation meant a change of clothes at work and much deodorant and cologne as I simply had no time to head home and shower. As it turns out, my worries were unfounded; I was one of the more formally dressed people there.
The interiors were as elegant as one would expect for such a high-end urban restaurant. A wall full of wine bottles could be seen catacorner from where I sat. White tablecloths dressed dark, brown, wooden, olden tables and chairs. Fay, our accomplished server, handed the 6 of us (Kay, myself, her parents, her brother, and his girlfriend) menus, opened properly and read aloud the specials in a professional manner. It all felt ceremonial, as if something grand and unforgettable was about to occur, and of course a spectacle of gastronomy ensued.
I was privileged enough to be allowed to choose an appetizer since my dining companions had trouble deciding, so I placed my finger randomly on the Braised Short Ribs. Smothered in a sort of blue cheese risotto that had the consistency of cottage cheese, the pork withered exquisitely in the mouth, taking on the penicillum's pungency. Dried tomatoes puncuated the proceedings with a sweet/tart blend that shocked my palate into full alertness.
The Original Carlton House Salad came next for me. On a bed of Romaine lettuce laid tomatoes, mushrooms, bacon bits, and hard boiled egg pieces. The affair's "Louie" dressing that came off as a criminally smooth and flavorsome Thousand Island, making it the apex of Cobb salads. And that's what you get a The Carlton: The apex of tradition. Illustrating this further were the baked potatoes I caught sight of being served to other guests and thus coveted. Each one had a lattice fin of fried potato as a garnish, causing them to look as ornately monstrous as dread Fafnir...
http://www.marvunapp.com/Appendix5/fafnir_nastrond.htm
Ordering the main course was a challenging decision. Kay went with a pasta dish that celebrated sea food as well as housemade strands of al dente dough. Fortunately I needed to finish it for her, so I can testify to its saltwater majesty. RJ also gave me a bit of his Lamb Gnocchi, which offered the most for one's money being that it was the least expensive and most generously portioned dish on the menu that night. Its grilled, mildly cauterized chunks of protein crashed gently into the pillowy dumplings like the Dave Matthews song, begging to be eaten together in singular bites, all of it wallowing in a mysterious sauce.
Eventually, I chose a fish I've never before eaten in The Grouper. From off the shores of tropical Florida came a creature with flesh as light in mouthfeel as a poached egg but coated with a Parmesan crust to give it punch and crunch and butter of roasted garlic to make it as wealthy in fat as an oversized scallop. A medley of stringy vegetables became a buttery, makeshift linguini, and hiding underneath it all were pierogies stuffed with nothing less than lobster.
Dinner had been such a ride, we could have ended it all then and there with no regrets, but...there was a dessert menu...
Fay brought out twin Tollhouse Cookie Sundaes for Kay's parents, and of course, when they could not finish, the rest of us banded together. The dance between chill and warmth, salt and sugar, crisp and cream is why this type of sundae is a perennial favorite of mine, and Carlton's may have the definitive version on their (his?) hands.
A tornado of more desserts followed, each of us sampling and moving on to the next. The Coconut Cream Pie with its toasted, nutty embellishments, was again another zenith put forth by The Carlton. A Raspberry Creamsicle Cake added a touch of childhood whimsy to our finale, its buttercream filling being the cake's centerpoint. To extinguish all such innocence came...the Chocolate Grand Marnier cake...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3IUt83-DTo
Darker and more destructive than a black hole, the layers of richness from crust to mousse-ish packing threatened to consume us all with Hellborne perversions of a cocoa nature. Lurid, murky, deathfully mighty, it towered over the plate like a castle of confectionery doom, but our collective will and righteousness rendered it to rubble in the end.
And with that, a classic feast had ended. That's fine dining, kids.
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