Maybe Someday…

In just a few days we will be heading back to Walt Disney World to experience our second Food & Wine Festival. This is less a vacation and more of a pilgrimage. Dozens of adorable kiosks from around the world dispensing epicurean delicacies as well as tasty libations.

This cute as a button, thatched roof cottage houses my Guinness and Fisherman’s Pie!

I’m afraid, however, that I’ve set myself up poorly for this event. In the past several weeks we have had the pleasure of enjoying some absolutely marvelous meals right here in our back yard. The bar has been set quite high. Our Beer Dinner at Nosh Tavern was just stunning and more recently we celebrated our daughter’s birthday at Tastings Wine Bar and Bistro. Truth be told, Tastings is a venue that we were interested playing, but she really wanted to go after she saw the menu. We did get the gig, but it has no bearing on my review. Honest.

Tastings is located at Patriot Place in Foxboro, Massachusetts. Football fan or not, this is a great take. Adjacent to the stadium is a 1.3 million square foot shopping/dining bonanza.

Gillette Stadium

Most of the restaurants here are absolutely humongus and seat hundreds of people.  This makes perfect sense due to the 65,000 seat stadium next door. Tastings stands out among these people-eating behemoths. It’s a small, intimate wine bar offering American Haute-Farm cuisine. They focus on the use of fresh, seasonal ingredients that are sourced from local farmers, ranchers, and fishermen who follow sustainable practices.

Tastings exterior. Very inviting

I have to confess that I wasn’t expecting our dinner to be as fantastic as it was. While I typically take photos of everything we order out (there’s got to be a twelve-step for this), I didn’t take any interior shots or make note of things like what wine we chose.  Had I known how much we would enjoy everything, I would have noted details. As a result, I’m winging it a bit.

Our server helped us choose a lovely cabernet. Our daughter was celebrating her eighteenth birthday (Hooray! we got two through to adulthood!). The bartender prepared a non-alcohlic cocktail that was just perfect for the birthday girl.

Blueberry Sage cocktail

Our meal started with an amuse bouche. This was a cold beet soup with goat cheese and a pumpernickel crouton. Despite my aversion to beets and it’s unfortunate Pepto Bismol color, it was quite good.

It was better than it looked.

We had been recommended to try the popcorn. This seems like pretty strange thing to order in a Bistro. Friends, this ain’t the stuff that litters the floor of your local honky tonk. This popcorn is buttered with DUCK FAT!!!

Looks can be deceiving.

Our server helped us to decide on this next dish. It was by far the best thing we sampled, and that’s saying a whole lot. What we have here is an egg, poached in a spicy tomato broth with duck and chicken confit. Exquisite. The flavor of the broth was phenomenal and the egg was cooked perfectly.

Slurp!

We followed this concoction up with some calamari, but again this dish had a different twist.

“Now, that’s a squid of a different color!”

This is described on the menu as: Point Judith Calamari with Tarragon-Pistachio Pesto, Sauce Gribiche and Greens.  The green hue was a bit jarring, but oh the flavor! The tarragon was subtle and not overpowering. This dish educated me because I had never even heard of Sauce Gribiche.  All I can say is “where have you been all my life?”  This is like mayonnaise-zilla. It’s a creamy emulsion with chopped hard cooked egg, pickled cucumber, capers, parsley chervil and tarragon.  Plate-licking delicious! According to Wikipedia, this sauce also goes well with calves head. I’ll have to take their word for it.

Meghan chose the “Award Winning Mac and Cheese”. This contained a variety of local cheeses, finished with truffle oil smoked bread crumbs. I swiped a bite and it was quite good, but I  preferred the Mac and Cheese at Nosh Tavern, although I wouldn’t refuse a bowl/tub of this either, that’s for sure.

Mac and Cheese

Jeff and I decided to show some temperance and just split a burger. This was dressed with caramelized romaine, porchetta di testa, smoked tomato aioli, Grafton Village cheddar and served with hand cut fries and house made local pickles. It was marvelous. I have only two critcisms. One, it was a bit over-done. We requested rare to medium-rare and it came out decidedly medium. Second, I was psyched about the house made pickles (I’m a bit of a pickle addict) but they were actually pickled BEETS, and you know how I feel about beets. Sad trombones. Despite my nit-picking, the flavor of the beef combined all the accompaniments (beside the beets) made for an outstanding burger.

Beet juice on my burger. Grrrr!

Remember when I mentioned that I’d take a pass on the calves head? Well, come to find out that the “porchetta di testa” is actually rolled pig’s head. I didn’t know this at the time, it just tasted like the best pancetta I ever had. I will not post a link. If you are faint of heart at all, DO NOT search google images. You’re welcome.

Speaking of offal, on to the next course! I’ve always wanted to try sweetbreads. For the uninitiated among us, these breads are not from the bakery.

Chicken Fried Sweetbreads

If you’re going to try something of this nature, I feel it’s best to have it deep fried, but there was really nothing to be afraid of. These were just lovely. The batter was light and crisp and delicately coated in a honey-cayenne glaze. The sweetbreads were so tender. They were accompanied by pickled kale and a tomatillo jam. I wasn’t crazy about these additions.  Nothing wrong with them, I just preferred the sweetbreads on their own.

We didn’t even look at the dessert menu due to the fact that I made the girl a pretty rockin’ birthday cake…from scratch. Judging by the rest of our meal, there’s no reason to believe wouldn’t be outrageously good. Next time.

The girl had two pieces, we ate the rest.

Gratuitous cute photo of my baby girl. Happy Eighteenth!

You certainly have to be up for something different if you’re headed to Tastings. For food nerds like us, it was a delightful surprise that expanded our knowledge and palates. We’re sure to be celebrating something here in the future. How about National Offal Day?

For most of my life I’ve lived about twenty to thirty minutes from the Atlantic coast line. However, it’s only been for the last few years that I have had a real appreciation for this fact. I mean, just look at a map of the U.S.  There’s a whole lot of rectangular states in the middle. I imagine that there are  folks who live their whole lives having never seen the ocean. Meanwhile, I could have just mosied on over to the beach anytime I felt like it! What was I thinking? Recently, because of our night job we’ve had much more occasion to spend time down by the sea, specifically Plymouth Massachusetts. I’ve really grown to love this town. It’s got it all:

Gorgeous seaside vistas,

Purty

History galore,

The Mayflower ll

Plymouth Rock

Yup, it’s just a rock.

We travelled halfway across the world for this???

Charming architecture,

Historical society = white paint.

And a downtown area that has miraculously escaped the corporate  chain restaurant / mini-mall scourge.

So cute!

Meet me for a cappuccino!

In addition to ocean views and history, you will find a plethora of restaurants and pubs in the area, all clamoring to win over tourists and locals alike. This is a winning situation. Most recently we had the opportunity to enjoy a special event at one of our favorite new eateries, Nosh Tavern. If you are local, you’re welcome, this will be your new favorite place as well. If you are not, well, sorry…but you can enjoy the pictures, right?

This evening Nosh was hosting a beer dinner sponsored by the Mayflower Brewing Company. Each course of the dinner would be paired with one of their superb brews and what’s more, the chefs responsible for each of the offerings were in competition with each other. All the better for us.

Mayflower Brewmasters

Yes, this table of youngsters are the crafters responsible for creating new varieties of Mayflower beer. Feel old.

Menu / Scorecard

On to the first pairings. This course started off the evening on a delectable note.

The Beer: Summer Rye, paired with a savory crepe of marscarpone-cheddar, caramelized apples, pancetta, and bacon fat powder dust.

 And the Second pairing.

The Beer: Autumn Wheat, paired with cold smoked lobster tail, pea shoot avocado salad, Autumn Wheat vinaigrette, and pickled ginger.

These two pairings highlighted my ignorance of what works together. I would have assumed the the lighter Pale Ale would have best paired with the salad, while the Autumn Wheat would work better with the more savory notes of the crepe. Not so, the balance was perfect for each dish.

Course three was my favorite!

The Beer: Pale Ale paired with rabbit terrine, Pale Ale-Espresso glaze and Pale Ale sabayon.

The depth of flavor here was outstanding. This is one of those dishes where each component was so delicious, but when you combined them, it became one most perfect bite. The star on the plate, believe it or not was the pickled carrots. These were pickled using the Pale Ale. I could have just eaten them and been wowed, but they took on a whole different flavor profile when paired with the rabbit. Carrots, who woulda thought?

The last savory course:

The Beer IPA paired with house corned beef, braised red cabbage, russian dressing.

This dish was my least favorite, which is not to say it wasn’t delicious, it just had some components that didn’t work for me. The corned beef was tasty and the braised cabbage, oh my, I could have eaten a cereal bowl full of that stuff! What I didn’t care for was that the portions were served on edible rye “spoons”. While they looked cute, they were not house made, which stood out, considering everything that goes on a plate here is house made as a rule. Besides that, they were dry and not very good. I would have much preferred the beef served atop a nice triangle of homemade caraway rye. I also didn’t dig the consistency of the sauce that was on the plate.  That being said, everyone around us loved it and thought the spoons were a hoot, so what do I know?

A quick visit to the powder room before desert. This painting greets you in the hallway. Analyze away.

Dessert!

The Beer: Porter paired with a biscuit roulade, espresso syrup, coffee, buttercream and chocolate ganache.

My all time favorite beer is a Porter.  I’m one of those people who loves beer that you can’t see through. Porter is great because it has the flavors of a Guinness without being as filling (read: you can drink more).  The dessert was phenomenal as you can well imagine. Aside from Jeff getting cocoa powder all over his shirt from the edge of the plate, it was an absolute success.

While there are dozens of restaurants in the downtown Plymouth area that are well worth spending some time and money at, Nosh has proven to be a gem. In addition to the Beer dinner, we’ve stopped in for a quick cocktail and an appetizer and enjoyed chatting with the staff as well as had full out meals there celebrating special occasions. Every time has been a memorable experience. Cheers to them! We’ll continue to do our part help them succeed. Yum.