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Oct. 3rd, 2013 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickRestaurant Review Time!
I was going to use google's "specific url" search thing to let you know the last time I did an eatery review and linked to it (because that would probably be the Bedford Springs Omni where I went with my cousin Heather for lunch one fine Sunday apparently longer-ago than google would like to remember for me) but since I came up empty at google, I am currently pulling all my lj entries via lj-dump so that I can fucking well search them on my own damn computer using something useful like grep. I don't have enough lj entries yet for grep to fail me and I can generally come up with something useful for the reg exp part of the grepping because my lj is like Prego -- it's in there and it's all shit I wrote anyway so pretty much I know what's in there. Not always, but sometimes.
So, while ljdump is finding all my lj entries, we will skip to the review part of the process. The eatery in question is 10/09, which is the slightly-confusing (I thought it was 10109 for a while) name of the place.
The place is on Pitt Street, about three doors up from my office. It's where the candy store used to be and then the short-lived greek place was after that. Now it's the new Italian-ish joint with the kind of confusing name. It is a tiny eatery with maybe ten or twelve tables, but this is not a hole in the wall. Think more jewelbox. It's very nicely decorated with understated, kinda-classy decor. (The wine glasses were sexy, linens were actual cloth, everything coordinated, nice white plates in an interesting variety of shapes, very attractive sorta-square soup bowls, good heft to the silverwear, etc.) Due to the smallish size of the dining area, if you have a loud group in there (The night we were there, a table of about eight or ten very enthusiastic ladies who'd been hitting the wine pretty hard sort of overpowered our efforts at conversation. They did not seem to realize how rude they were being.) it can get kind of difficult to converse, but the setting is intimate and should typically be very nice for a high-end date night type experience. It's certainly designed and lit for quiet, intimate dining.
They suggest reservations, and their website is STUPID SIMPLE for reserving, so totally do that. It's like two clicks. You don't have to talk to anyone or anything. Probably you can even use a smartphone. I suggest reservations, too. We had reservations for 6:30, we showed up at 6:30, and we were greeted and seated at 6:30. Very efficient.
They don't serve booze b/c of Pennsylvania's arcane and backwards liquor laws, but they let you bring your own booze if you want. We did not want, so I had water and a lightly-sweetened iced tea, Sam had a water and about three ginger ales. Dunno about the ginger ale, but the iced tea was perfectly right, not that syrupy shit you usually get, light and crisp rather than the muddy flavor of Lipton.
Menu was pretty reasonable for choices available, especially considering that they don't have that many tables. There's not a cast of thousands back in the kitchen, but the dinner pacing was very appropriate and we were never waiting long for the next part of our meal. Whoever's doing the work in the back is quite competent and has excellent time-management skills. I thought there was plenty selection, anyway, and the menu is online so that you can see what you might like beforehand. Obviously, if nothing they serve appeals to you, you don't have to got there.
They give you a slack-dough bread with big glassy holes in it right off the bat. It's very good bread and comes with a delightfully floral and slightly bitter olive oil that is way better than the basic grocery-store kind. (The olive oil was more on the buttery side than the bitter side. I could maybe have gone even a tad bit more bitter/peppery and been happy.) The bread is still warm when you get it and delivered as promptly as it can be baked. We were offered parmesan (freshly grated) for the olive oil, which we opted for, but on consumption, we did not feel that the parm added a whole lot to the olive oil. Sam and I thought (in the post-mortem -- if the tab is over fifty bucks, there is a post-mortem for the dining experience.) that maybe a tiny drizzle of balsamic in the bottom of the high-end olive oil bowl would have been a better/more interesting option. (We had that at an Italian joint in Baltimore's Little Italy, many many years ago. It was bloody well outstanding.)
Despite being placated with pretty-speedy fresh bread, we also ordered an appetizer to split. We got the fig flatbread with gorgonzola cheese and the Italian ham I can't spell. Starts with a P, sorta rhymes with bruschetta. (I am too lazy to google.) The figs were dried but not dry, and there was an attractive but not overpowering drizzle of balsamic on top. It was absolutely wonderful. It was kind of toasted and warm and melty. The whole thing was balanced between salty and sweet and rich and nicely crunchy and we were huge fans. If you go, eat the fig thing. It's awesome. Maybe eat two fig things if you're a greedy pig. Also as an fyi, if you have any desire to use one of your freebie breads to wipe up the remaining balsamic off the plate before it's taken away, hustle up about it because table service is prompt and the tray was whisked away before we'd had that opportunity. :( (Classier people than us do not try to sop up the last bits of balsamic so this probably isn't going to be an issue for higher-end diners.)
We then split a "try the two soups" thing because an appetizer each plus the very-good bread and olive oil plus a starter each plus an entree each plus a dessert each would have been too much food and thrown the bill over a hundred, which is kind of my limit for "two people, no liquor" dining experiences. (I make eight bucks an hour. It's a lot of hours to get to a hundred bucks.) So we got the "try the two soups" and split that. (Waitstaff is not nasty or snooty about people who order one thing and split it. They are very nice about that.) Soups were butternut puree and tomato-basil with croutons. They were quite good. The butternut was sweet, but autumnal, with hints of citrus (maybe orange zest? It did not overwhelm, was just subtle and complimentary to the squash), ginger, and nutmeg or clove. Whatever was in it, it was very good and silky-smooth in texture, garnished with toasted... seeds? I could have done with more-toasted seeds (Like, browner-toasted, not more in volume of seeds. I think maybe more toasting would have made a more savory, crunchier contrast to the sweet soup. Of course, if they're too toasted then they're just charcoaly black and not good... but Indian cooking with hand-toasted spices has taught me that things can get a good deal browner than I'm natively comfortable with and that also there is much flavor at that end of the brown spectrum.) but that's just me. The tomato-basil was also nicely thick and very good. If it were me, I would have put bigger, more open-grained croutons in it, perhaps ones made from the same delightful lean bread that we got with the olive oil. However, the chef may have felt that smaller, daintier croutons suited the bowl better and didn't distract from the soup. (Probably also people doing fine dining don't want 1" square massive golden-brown croutons even if I personally adore them.) Splitting the "try the two soups" worked out VERY well for us in terms of portion sizes. Unfortunately, with the bounty of The Fig Thing (for real, if you go, Eat The Fig Thing) and the soups, we did not get to try one of their salads. Perhaps next time.
Entrees: I had the rosemary chicken and Sam had the salmon. Rosemary chicken was a moderately-sized breast, served skin-on, with shallot/mushroom sauce, on mashed potatoes with brussels sprouts. Salmon was on green beans (very crisp, baby-size ones) on mashed potatoes with a light sauce that complimented the fish. I really enjoyed the chicken, which was well-seasoned and perfectly done (moist, but not any hint of raw, skin crispy and delightful, rosemary-ed without being overwhelmed) and nicely paired with the mushroom-shallot sauce. The mashed potatoes were very good and velvety-smooth. The brussels sprouts were fresh, not frozen, and cooked to an al dente doneness. I usually opt forthe baby-sized brussels if possible because they're slightly less bitter on average, but the full-sized ones I was served were quite good. Also, the slight bitterness went well with the richness of the sauce (like hollandaise goes with curly endive), so no harm no foul. Sam enjoyed the salmon and the green beans. He likes his potatoes lumpier (his mom makes them that way) but he ate them all just the same. Both entrees were well-prepared and quite good, we ate every bit of them. Portions were very reasonable which was a damn nice change from the "steak that covers your plate" excess that too many places do these days. We DID NOT go away hungry, but we also didn't feel overwhelmed by irrationally large portions. We felt that we were served just the right amount and we didn't feel like we overdid sharing an appetizer and a soup course to go with our entrees. (The sanity about portion sizing impressed the living hell out of me. Two thumbs up.)
We stayed for dessert because my cousin Heather said the desserts were yummy but totally enough to share even though they tell you they're small. So, we split a dessert. (Heather was right. Plenty for two people, especially if you split an appetizer and a first course and eat your whole own entree.) We did the nutella crepes, which were good but not to my mind outstanding. The crepes were nicely thin and served warm, with nutella (which is kind of heavy and sweet, but whoever spread it had a light hand so it wasn't overkill with just that and honestly the one mouthful of crepe I got that had molten nutella inside was divine) inside and then crushed hazelnuts and a frangelico sauce on top. They were garnished with a strawberry, halved, that added a needed touch of color. (Everything we were served was attractively plated and garnished, btw. The food not only tastes pretty damn good, it looks quite nice as well and is presented on plates/bowls/trays that are suitably classy without distracting from the food.) I kind of got the hazelnut theme that the chef was going for, but the overall effect was too sweet for my taste and I wasn't real enthused about the contrasts in texture (crunchy hazelnuts, smooth nutella, sticky frangelico sauce, papery crepe) going on there. It was a just a bit too much, but we still ate it all.
All in all, this is a much better restaurant than downtown Bedford deserves, a high-end date night location where you can get big city food without driving for two hours. We spent just about $75 for two people with non-alcoholic beverages, a shared appetizer, a shared soup course, two entrees, and a dessert.
Next time we do dinner out (it'll be a while) I'd like to go to that really nice place down in Berkeley that Sam says is bloody well fantastic (Lot 12). Not sure it's affordable, but y'know. Fine dining is fine dining. Probably I'll have to wear dress-up clothing and everything.
As I mentioned at the outset, we went to the Springs in 2009, review is here if you'd like to refresh your memory. We also went to the LifeStyle (they use bizarre capitalization) dinner in 2010 which I also reviewed. And we returned to the Springs in 2010, for dinner. This (10/09) is a better use of your dining dollars than was lunch at the Springs in 2009 or dinner at the Lifestyle place in 2010 and even a better dinner for less money than dinner at the Springs in 2010. (Still mad about the wtf raisins, there.)
I was going to use google's "specific url" search thing to let you know the last time I did an eatery review and linked to it (because that would probably be the Bedford Springs Omni where I went with my cousin Heather for lunch one fine Sunday apparently longer-ago than google would like to remember for me) but since I came up empty at google, I am currently pulling all my lj entries via lj-dump so that I can fucking well search them on my own damn computer using something useful like grep. I don't have enough lj entries yet for grep to fail me and I can generally come up with something useful for the reg exp part of the grepping because my lj is like Prego -- it's in there and it's all shit I wrote anyway so pretty much I know what's in there. Not always, but sometimes.
So, while ljdump is finding all my lj entries, we will skip to the review part of the process. The eatery in question is 10/09, which is the slightly-confusing (I thought it was 10109 for a while) name of the place.
The place is on Pitt Street, about three doors up from my office. It's where the candy store used to be and then the short-lived greek place was after that. Now it's the new Italian-ish joint with the kind of confusing name. It is a tiny eatery with maybe ten or twelve tables, but this is not a hole in the wall. Think more jewelbox. It's very nicely decorated with understated, kinda-classy decor. (The wine glasses were sexy, linens were actual cloth, everything coordinated, nice white plates in an interesting variety of shapes, very attractive sorta-square soup bowls, good heft to the silverwear, etc.) Due to the smallish size of the dining area, if you have a loud group in there (The night we were there, a table of about eight or ten very enthusiastic ladies who'd been hitting the wine pretty hard sort of overpowered our efforts at conversation. They did not seem to realize how rude they were being.) it can get kind of difficult to converse, but the setting is intimate and should typically be very nice for a high-end date night type experience. It's certainly designed and lit for quiet, intimate dining.
They suggest reservations, and their website is STUPID SIMPLE for reserving, so totally do that. It's like two clicks. You don't have to talk to anyone or anything. Probably you can even use a smartphone. I suggest reservations, too. We had reservations for 6:30, we showed up at 6:30, and we were greeted and seated at 6:30. Very efficient.
They don't serve booze b/c of Pennsylvania's arcane and backwards liquor laws, but they let you bring your own booze if you want. We did not want, so I had water and a lightly-sweetened iced tea, Sam had a water and about three ginger ales. Dunno about the ginger ale, but the iced tea was perfectly right, not that syrupy shit you usually get, light and crisp rather than the muddy flavor of Lipton.
Menu was pretty reasonable for choices available, especially considering that they don't have that many tables. There's not a cast of thousands back in the kitchen, but the dinner pacing was very appropriate and we were never waiting long for the next part of our meal. Whoever's doing the work in the back is quite competent and has excellent time-management skills. I thought there was plenty selection, anyway, and the menu is online so that you can see what you might like beforehand. Obviously, if nothing they serve appeals to you, you don't have to got there.
They give you a slack-dough bread with big glassy holes in it right off the bat. It's very good bread and comes with a delightfully floral and slightly bitter olive oil that is way better than the basic grocery-store kind. (The olive oil was more on the buttery side than the bitter side. I could maybe have gone even a tad bit more bitter/peppery and been happy.) The bread is still warm when you get it and delivered as promptly as it can be baked. We were offered parmesan (freshly grated) for the olive oil, which we opted for, but on consumption, we did not feel that the parm added a whole lot to the olive oil. Sam and I thought (in the post-mortem -- if the tab is over fifty bucks, there is a post-mortem for the dining experience.) that maybe a tiny drizzle of balsamic in the bottom of the high-end olive oil bowl would have been a better/more interesting option. (We had that at an Italian joint in Baltimore's Little Italy, many many years ago. It was bloody well outstanding.)
Despite being placated with pretty-speedy fresh bread, we also ordered an appetizer to split. We got the fig flatbread with gorgonzola cheese and the Italian ham I can't spell. Starts with a P, sorta rhymes with bruschetta. (I am too lazy to google.) The figs were dried but not dry, and there was an attractive but not overpowering drizzle of balsamic on top. It was absolutely wonderful. It was kind of toasted and warm and melty. The whole thing was balanced between salty and sweet and rich and nicely crunchy and we were huge fans. If you go, eat the fig thing. It's awesome. Maybe eat two fig things if you're a greedy pig. Also as an fyi, if you have any desire to use one of your freebie breads to wipe up the remaining balsamic off the plate before it's taken away, hustle up about it because table service is prompt and the tray was whisked away before we'd had that opportunity. :( (Classier people than us do not try to sop up the last bits of balsamic so this probably isn't going to be an issue for higher-end diners.)
We then split a "try the two soups" thing because an appetizer each plus the very-good bread and olive oil plus a starter each plus an entree each plus a dessert each would have been too much food and thrown the bill over a hundred, which is kind of my limit for "two people, no liquor" dining experiences. (I make eight bucks an hour. It's a lot of hours to get to a hundred bucks.) So we got the "try the two soups" and split that. (Waitstaff is not nasty or snooty about people who order one thing and split it. They are very nice about that.) Soups were butternut puree and tomato-basil with croutons. They were quite good. The butternut was sweet, but autumnal, with hints of citrus (maybe orange zest? It did not overwhelm, was just subtle and complimentary to the squash), ginger, and nutmeg or clove. Whatever was in it, it was very good and silky-smooth in texture, garnished with toasted... seeds? I could have done with more-toasted seeds (Like, browner-toasted, not more in volume of seeds. I think maybe more toasting would have made a more savory, crunchier contrast to the sweet soup. Of course, if they're too toasted then they're just charcoaly black and not good... but Indian cooking with hand-toasted spices has taught me that things can get a good deal browner than I'm natively comfortable with and that also there is much flavor at that end of the brown spectrum.) but that's just me. The tomato-basil was also nicely thick and very good. If it were me, I would have put bigger, more open-grained croutons in it, perhaps ones made from the same delightful lean bread that we got with the olive oil. However, the chef may have felt that smaller, daintier croutons suited the bowl better and didn't distract from the soup. (Probably also people doing fine dining don't want 1" square massive golden-brown croutons even if I personally adore them.) Splitting the "try the two soups" worked out VERY well for us in terms of portion sizes. Unfortunately, with the bounty of The Fig Thing (for real, if you go, Eat The Fig Thing) and the soups, we did not get to try one of their salads. Perhaps next time.
Entrees: I had the rosemary chicken and Sam had the salmon. Rosemary chicken was a moderately-sized breast, served skin-on, with shallot/mushroom sauce, on mashed potatoes with brussels sprouts. Salmon was on green beans (very crisp, baby-size ones) on mashed potatoes with a light sauce that complimented the fish. I really enjoyed the chicken, which was well-seasoned and perfectly done (moist, but not any hint of raw, skin crispy and delightful, rosemary-ed without being overwhelmed) and nicely paired with the mushroom-shallot sauce. The mashed potatoes were very good and velvety-smooth. The brussels sprouts were fresh, not frozen, and cooked to an al dente doneness. I usually opt forthe baby-sized brussels if possible because they're slightly less bitter on average, but the full-sized ones I was served were quite good. Also, the slight bitterness went well with the richness of the sauce (like hollandaise goes with curly endive), so no harm no foul. Sam enjoyed the salmon and the green beans. He likes his potatoes lumpier (his mom makes them that way) but he ate them all just the same. Both entrees were well-prepared and quite good, we ate every bit of them. Portions were very reasonable which was a damn nice change from the "steak that covers your plate" excess that too many places do these days. We DID NOT go away hungry, but we also didn't feel overwhelmed by irrationally large portions. We felt that we were served just the right amount and we didn't feel like we overdid sharing an appetizer and a soup course to go with our entrees. (The sanity about portion sizing impressed the living hell out of me. Two thumbs up.)
We stayed for dessert because my cousin Heather said the desserts were yummy but totally enough to share even though they tell you they're small. So, we split a dessert. (Heather was right. Plenty for two people, especially if you split an appetizer and a first course and eat your whole own entree.) We did the nutella crepes, which were good but not to my mind outstanding. The crepes were nicely thin and served warm, with nutella (which is kind of heavy and sweet, but whoever spread it had a light hand so it wasn't overkill with just that and honestly the one mouthful of crepe I got that had molten nutella inside was divine) inside and then crushed hazelnuts and a frangelico sauce on top. They were garnished with a strawberry, halved, that added a needed touch of color. (Everything we were served was attractively plated and garnished, btw. The food not only tastes pretty damn good, it looks quite nice as well and is presented on plates/bowls/trays that are suitably classy without distracting from the food.) I kind of got the hazelnut theme that the chef was going for, but the overall effect was too sweet for my taste and I wasn't real enthused about the contrasts in texture (crunchy hazelnuts, smooth nutella, sticky frangelico sauce, papery crepe) going on there. It was a just a bit too much, but we still ate it all.
All in all, this is a much better restaurant than downtown Bedford deserves, a high-end date night location where you can get big city food without driving for two hours. We spent just about $75 for two people with non-alcoholic beverages, a shared appetizer, a shared soup course, two entrees, and a dessert.
Next time we do dinner out (it'll be a while) I'd like to go to that really nice place down in Berkeley that Sam says is bloody well fantastic (Lot 12). Not sure it's affordable, but y'know. Fine dining is fine dining. Probably I'll have to wear dress-up clothing and everything.
As I mentioned at the outset, we went to the Springs in 2009, review is here if you'd like to refresh your memory. We also went to the LifeStyle (they use bizarre capitalization) dinner in 2010 which I also reviewed. And we returned to the Springs in 2010, for dinner. This (10/09) is a better use of your dining dollars than was lunch at the Springs in 2009 or dinner at the Lifestyle place in 2010 and even a better dinner for less money than dinner at the Springs in 2010. (Still mad about the wtf raisins, there.)
