Friday, March 9, 2012

Whacking the Holly. Or "Cut that Bush! Cut that bush! Cut that Bush!" Or "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

I used to hate Peyton Manning.   As a lifelong Patriots fan how could I not?   I used to look forward to seeing him make "The Manning Face" when things went wrong.   Only I don't any more.   First I learned grudging respect for the man when he finally started beating the Pats in the playoffs.  Then I grew bemused and even amused by the proliferation of commercials he appeared in.   That grew into actully looking forward to those commercials.  Say what you will about him, he has a strange and appealing presence in them.    He certainly is much better at it than Tom Brady is.    Brady may be one of the best football players ever (as is Peyton) but he is not much of a pitch man.    I could see Peyton in one of those great old Milller Light commercials with Rosie Greer and Bob Ueker, but not Tom.    Finally I found myself actually liking Peyton.  His teams weren't as much of a threat to the Pats, and he was getting nearer the end of his career, and his commercials were funny.   Today I feel a bit sorry for him because he was released by the Colts and may never be the same quarterback he was becuase of injury.  But whether he plays, and plays well again, I will always remember one particular commercial he made in which he went to various businesses and cheered on the workers there.  Most famously he cheered on a butcher with the phrase "Cut that Meat!  Cut that Meat! Cut that Meat!" Wherever he ends up next year I wish him well (except if he plays against the Pats). 

Thursday, March 1, 2012

Dinner at Vermillion (or Olives Olives Olives Just Olives)

Tuesday night Mal and I decided to try a new (to us) restaurant, hoping to find ourselves a new special-occasion place now that 2941 is Not As It Was. And so off we went to Old Town Alexandria to try the highly rated and recommended Vermilion. We had a lovely time, but Vermilion will definitely not become our new Special Occasion Place.

The website and online menu led us to believe that the restaurant was a white-tablecloth venue. Instead, it was more rustic Colonial casual in style—cozy and attractive (especially in the bar), but not “dress up.” We snuggled on a sofa in the bar to enjoy a drink before our dinner reservation.

Vermillion has an impressive whisky menu, from which Mal chose a 15-year-old Balvenie. I decided to try some of the house cocktails. The King Street Lemonade and the Love Me Do both sounded better on the menu than they tasted in reality. But the latter blood-red concoction was worth it if only for the opportunity to toast with a glass of apparent sparkling True Blood. Mal tried the Paloma, a classic cocktail of herradura, lime, salt, and grapefruit soda, which he liked very much and I found incredibly over boozy (I don’t mind a strong cocktail, but I’ve got to have the booze taste better hidden). At this point, we paid our bar tab and moved onto our table.

At the table, Mal was impressed with the wine list. I decided to make one last attempt on the cocktail menu and ordered a hot buttered rum. Finally a win! The warm, spicy, sweet concoction not only satisfied a long-time curiosity, it was just delightful. If I had not already had two cocktails, I would have ordered a second.

And so the food: we started off with an amuse-bouche of lobster bisque served in a miniature beer mug, which even lobster-hating Mal liked very much. A basket of breads contained mild and almost sweet yeasty knotted rolls, and squares of a saltier bread, slightly seasoned (focaccia?)—both quite nice.

Starters: I went with the tasting menu ($59 for four courses) and so started with that menu’s appetizer of lobster tortelloni, which turned out to be the early peak of my meal. While the pasta was a bit thick, it was nicely textured, and the lobster was incredibly sweet and succulent. The menu described the dish as having davon crest chilies, lemon, fines herbes, and roasted shellfish broth, but I tasted no chilies and barely a hint of lemon, and the broth was replaced by a foam. Still, a nice little dish.

Mal ordered the tartare of Maryland beef, which was good, but also the first olive victim of the night. A generous portion of tartare was garnished in the center with a quail egg yolk, and a generous swipe of sauce decorated the plate. The sauce, however, turned out to be VERY strongly flavored Kalamata olive (pureed?), and an initial injudicious mixing of it into the beef resulted in the olive overwhelming the flavor of the beef.

Second course: Mal ordered the mixed local baby greens salad, which was very generous but, well, just a pile of greens with shaved parmesan. My second course was the line-caught virginia rockfish, with “orecchiette, chorizo, little neck clams, and mediterranean flavors.” While the fish itself was cooked beautifully, with a brown crispy skin and moist inside, the rest of the dish was a bit of a muddle: the chorizo was okay but appeared unexpectedly in the form of gray ground sausage. The clam was nice, the orecchiette was nice, but they didn’t really come together in any way. Unfortunately, the element that I suspect was meant to bind all the components was the “mediterranean flavors,” which turned out to be a powerful mince of olives that was not visually recognizable as olives (I initially took them to be the chorizo). The unsubtle and overgenerous portion of this “sauce” overwhelmed all other flavors, and I ended up leaving most of it on my plate. Unfortunately, that left the fish and pasta basically bare and somewhat bland.

Main course: Mal had ordered my fish a la carte and encountered the same issues I did. My main course was Maryland beef ribeye, baby potato confit, wilted mizzuna, local onions, and salsa verde—sadly, another disappointment. The slices of beef were cooked exactly to order, medium rare, but were surprisingly bland, without that delicious beefy flavor I was looking forward to. The potato “confit” turned out to be two little fingerling potatos that seemed to have been simply boiled and then hidden under a pile of (not wilted) greens. The salsa verde was another overpowering element whose over-strong flavor of parsely and olive eclipsed everything else on the plate. The one truly satisfying bite was the tiny whole carmelized onion, so dark it resembled a morel more than an onion. That was a tasty morsel.

Dessert at least ended the meal on a high note. While Mal decided to abstain, my tasting menu included figgy toffee pudding with sour cream ice cream and candied walnuts. The cake was like a fig newton that goes to 11, with a toffee glaze that complemented the moist figgy goodness. The sour cream ice cream was nice, although it didn’t have the tang I expected from sour cream. The dessert was quite yummy, and I was not ashamed to swipe the last bits of ice cream and cake from the plate with my finger (etiquette frowning on licking the plate in public).

Regarding service: we did a good bit of waiting between courses, with our server nowhere to be seen. However, when present our waiter was informative and gracious. No terrible complaints there.

And so we left Vermilion, sated if not completely satisfied. We will return, but with very different expectations. We’re now curious to see how the chef handles the more casual items on the bar menu, and looking forward to hanging out in the very nice bar (even if the house cocktails were uneven). Meanwhile, the search for a new Special Occasion Place continues.