Pura Vida

Dec 01, 2005 22:10

Last night Mikey, Brett, Emerson and I went to a special chef's dinner at Pura Vida. Chef Hector Sanchez brought back inspirations from his recent trip to Spain. The menu consisted of delights from interesting restaurants there, along with wine pairings.

We started innocently enough with Cava, a Spanish sparkling wine, paired with bread sticks coated with olive oil and shaved manchego, and a shot glass of mushroom consomme with truffle toast. I passed on the oyster, since it is the only seafood I can't stand. But it was beautifully presented on a bed of crushed ice colored with squid ink.

The next course was 3 mini sandwiches. The best one was chorizo and banana, which sounds strange but was amazing. There was also one with asparagus and cheese. The final one was a challenge, a sort of blood sausage with mint. It wasn't bad actually. These were paired with a white blend of the same grapes in the Cava, which was pretty light and citrusy.

The next course was a fantastic blackened monkfish served with a shot glass of pine essence and dry ice, creating an eruption of fog like a witches brew. Very cool. Then came an amazing lobster pasta. Even the pasta was made from lobster, stuffed with succulent lobster meat. Decadent. These were paired with a Crianza of Garnacha and Tempranillo, a very light red well paired with the seafood.

Next came a mouth-watering lamb medallion, paired with the best wine of the evening and possibly in the house - La Granja, a rich and complex wine.

Dessert was an orgy of coconut, with a warm coconut custard type thing with coconut noodles and a coconut caramel gelato. This was paired with Churchill's 20 year tawny Port.

The evening was not only delicious and an adventure, but was quite entertaining as well. There were 14 of us for the special dinner all at a large table. Lo and behold who is sitting next to us but none other than Christiane Lauterbach!!! I thought I was gonna die. She is the fabulous restaurant critic for Atlanta Magazine. I have been loving her articles since I was in college. She is very warm and down to earth. It was a lot of fun talking to her about restaurants, getting the inside scoop on restaurants all over the world. I was in dining heaven.
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