A delicious meal

[badriyaz]

Sunday night we went to Craigie on Main, just outside of Central Square, and had the six course chef's whim.  I don't think I've ever been in a restaurant with so many waitstaff who were nevertheless so unobtrusive.  Your every need is anticipated.  A server accompanied us from the bar to our table just to carry my drink, and when M asked where the washrooms were, he was walked to them instead of having them pointed out.  We felt very country mouse in some ways but one does quickly become accustomed to that level of service.

Over the course of two hours, I ate:

• smoked sablefish with caviar and fennel vinaigrette, with little I think radish sprouts
  
• tempura cod cheeks with spicy mayonnaise.  Ordinarily I do not like mayonnaise at all but this bore little to no resemblance to the stuff that comes in jars
• seared tuna with fennel sauce and some kind of greens that I am forgetting
• macomber turnip puree/soup--this was to die for
• Chilean sea bass with chinese broccoli and a carrot au jus.  The fish was of course delicious, even if Chilean sea bass is one of those fish one ought not to eat, iirc, but the carrot au jus was a revelation.  I like carrots well enough, but this was the Platonic ideal template of carrot against which all taste of carrot must be measured.
• apple and pear crisp with prune cognac ice cream.  I make a pretty mean crisp myself so while the crisp was delicious, it did not blow me away.  The prune and cognac ice cream, otoh--wow.  If you had told me before Sunday that I would swoon over prune flavored anything I would have been highly skeptical, but I did indeed swoon over this!

I also had a cocktail called Northern Lights, which had St. Germain, scotch, grapefruit juice and Bitterman's tiki bitters.  It was a very well crafted drink but a little sweet for my palate--the bar menu mentioned douglas fir in the description of the drink so I was expecting something more assertive.  It was good though.  I had a pinot noir whose name I never caught with dinner; the waiter asked what wine I would like, to which I replied, well, since I'm getting chef's whim, I don't know what food I'm getting, so you pick.  It was a good choice, whatever it was.  I was too full for an after dinner drink, though I had some Fernet Branca at home later :-)  M had more or less the same food choices as I did, except that his turnip dish had squid stuffed with lobster and shrimp in it where mine had brussel sprouts (which I will take over lobster and shrimp any day), and he had a plate o' meat in place of my sea bass, hanger steak, marrow, tongue and maybe other stuff.  He liked it, but liked my sea bass better.  And then he had a sweet grits thing for dessert.  I liked it better than my crisp but not as much as my ice cream.

All in all, it was a highly memorable meal.  It is not the kind of splurge we can make at all often, but it was well worth the money for both the meal and the pampering.  Perhaps during the year we can go back for the bar menu and drinks...

On a side note, I'm inspired to try cooking with fennel now, as it appears I like it quite a bit.  Must look at recipes...