Sunday, August 28, 2011

Les Sauvages dinner

24 August 2004

I had been looking forward to the Les Sauvages dinner for awhile.  I probably never even would have heard about this summer dinner series, let alone know they even exist, if I didn't happen to be friends with one of the chefs, Peter.  I met Peter when he was a bartender at Anvil, but he recently stopped working at both Anvil and Revival Market for a much needed change of pace.  He, and other chef friend, Justin (who most recently was a chef at Stella Sola) decided to take a little hiatus from the conventional restaurant scene to do a summer dinner series, or "pop-up dinners" as some call them.

Although Justin and Peter are talented chefs themselves, they decided that each dinner would showcase a different chef from Houston and even from neighboring cities like New Orleans or Austin.  Every dinner proved to be innovative with a different influence from the visiting chef.  The dinners were taking place in the Hofheinz House, an old mansion in Montrose that is used for catered events.  The first few Les Sauvages dinners sold out right away, so by the time that I rallied up a few people who were willing to spend $80 on dinner, we couldn't get tickets until the August 24th dinner.  Romy, Anand, and I anxiously awaited the big day.

The August 24th dinner featured chef Michael Kramer who recently opened a new place in Rice Village called Felix 55.  Romy had recently been there and said she had some of the best scallops of her life.  Michael, Justin and Peter had all worked together at the Voice restaurant and would reunite again for another great meal.

Romy and I got a little lost finding the Hofheinz House which is tucked into the corner of Montrose near Midtown and the Southwest freeway.  When we walked into the pretty old house, we found Anand already hanging out at a large round table with some other people.  One of the great things about this dinner series was having the opportunity to meet other people who were also as excited about food as we were.

We had a fun group sitting with us.  Francesco was a waiter at Brasserie 19.  Luke was about to open a pastry shop with his aunt.  There was Arin and Robert, a nice engineer couple in their 30s.  There was also a middle-aged couple with a love of wine and cooking.  Everyone was armed with various bottles of wine to enjoy with dinner.


Before dinner started, we were offered a complimentary cocktail made by one of the Anvil bartenders.  It was Campari, vermouth and bitters and was meant to stimulate the palate for the meal to come.

First was the amuse bouche which was a frothy mixture of some kind of cheese, sea salt and plums.  It was a very interesting mix of sweet and savory.

The following is a list of what came next.  Each dish was brought out with an explanation from one of the chefs as well:
-Summer Tomato garden:  tomato granite, mozzarella, corn.  There were three different tomatoes prepared a different way, one fresh, one smoked and one pickled.  I am not even a tomato person and I enjoyed these.  The mozzarella was made that morning.  For those that don't know granite, it is like flavored ice.
-Fennel Tortellini with charred octopus, peppers, lemon.  Also fresh and flavorful, just wished there was more.


-Grano Arso Cavatelli with eggplant, tomato, romesco

-Gulf grouper with cannellini bean stew, salumi brodo, garden pesto.  We got a good piece of this fresh local fish and it was highlighted with the bright pesto

-Roast pork loin wrapped in bacon with polenta cooked in whey, chanterelles, sofrito.  This was one of my favorites of the night.  You simply can not go wrong when you wrap anything in bacon, let alone another piece of pork!  Pork squared....genius!

Finally came dessert which was Chocolate budino with sea salt, espresso and olive oil.  I love the salted chocolate so this dessert was a hit with me.  It didn't hurt that by now I was sufficiently drunk both on wine and dessert wines that the table ended up sharing the entire night.  We even got a to-go box that was supposed to be dessert, except I ate it immediately.  It was some kind of berry crumble made by Jody Cakes.  The portions were pretty small during dinner and now that I had the drunk-munchies to boot, I just couldn't resist eating it.  It was pretty delicious too.


The dinner was not only delicious but a lot of fun!  I enjoyed meeting some new "foodie" types and it is always fun to see a friend at work doing something they love.  So I say well done to Peter, Justin, and guest chef, Michael Cramer.   If I were a little richer, I would come back again every week!!

Restaurant Week at Bar Annie-RDG

After trying for the better part of a few weeks to get out to a restaurant week dinner, we finally all decided on booking a late dinner Tuesday night at RDG-Bar Annie.  It was a small miracle that we all made it there still considering Nancy didn't get out of the operating room until 8:30pm, Adrianne got a psychiatric crisis call from a patient, and Jason's tennis match went overtime.  For once, I was the first one to arrive to a gathering.

I waited in the upstairs lounge area for the others to arrive.  The restaurant is in a really cool space occupying two levels with glass walls, rich dark colors, and cool light fixtures.  The area around the lounge had these dangling light bulbs that were thin and rod shaped with the wires visible inside the bulb.


When the others finally arrived, they showed us to our table in the main dining room.  The restaurant was full of lots of fancy looking people; business types, River Oaks desperate housewives, ladies in stilettos and min-dresses.  Not really my kinda folks but this was about the food not the people and RDG-Bar Annie has been called one of the best restaurants in Houston.

We all did the restaurant week menu which was 4 courses for $35 and offered a lot of attractive choices for each course.  We all got some bread and butter at the beginning.  The bread was nothing remarkable, but the butter was a rich unsalted delicious one.

Between the four of us, we were able to try most of the different options.
For the first course we got:  Creamy Polenta with Bolognese Sauce & Parmesan, Chilled Asparagus with Mediterranean Salsa Verde & Parmesan and House Smoked Trout with Spicy Egg Salad.

For the second course we got to try all of the options as well:   Chilled Grapefruit Soup with Shrimp, Avocado & Jicama, Endive & Pear Salad with Walnuts & Spicy Blue Cheese, Caesar Salad with Parmesan.

For the third course, no one wanted to get the chicken entree but we tried the others:  Grilled King Salmon with Ginger, Garlic & Napa Cabbage Slaw, Grilled Skirt Steak with Pan Roasted Hominy & Smoked Steak Sauce, Sweet Potato Enchiladas with Green Chile Sauce

Finally for dessert we got:  Mocha Panna Cotta with Milk Chocolate Sauce, Caramel Walnut Cheese Cake with Green Apple Salad, Coffee Ice Cream Sandwich with Chocolate Cookies




I had really high expectations for Bar Annie-RDG because I had heard that it is one of the best restaurants in Houston.  Their steak had been particularly lauded.  Overall, I was underwhelmed.  This is not to say that the food was bad, but it wasn't anything amazing.  The highlights were the crisp asparagus appetizer with a refreshing yogurt sauce and the house-smoked trout (minus the mayo-laden egg salad).  The bolognese polenta was tasty, but nothing special.  I enjoyed the chilled grapefruit soup because it was really something different.  My main, the sweet potato enchiladas were really nothing interesting.  If I had paid the full price for that main outside of restaurant week, I would have been disappointed.  The steak had a nice grilled flavor but was a bit overcooked for my liking.  The salmon with slaw was the best one.  We were excited about the cheesecake dessert, but the dessert winner was the espresso ice cream in the chocolate cookies.  The ice cream was rich and creamy and full of coffee flavor.  I guess I would say that I was a bit disappointed with the food but I think that is in part because my expectations were so high.  I also think that Restaurant Week probably is not the best time to try a restaurant either.  Although it is a good deal, I have a feeling that they "mass produce" the offerings on the restaurant week menu so they aren't as good as they normally would be.  Maybe I will come back again, if I feel like splurging on $35 main courses....