Two restaurants in one weekend = excellent leftovers for Monday. Fare with Liz on Saturday night and White Dog Café with Aunt Lee-Ann on Sunday night. Stuffed and happy don’t even begin to explain my emotions.
It’s always a treat going out with Aunt Lee-Ann; a great cook, baker, and fellow foodie. Whereas most people usually settle for one dish over many tempting choices at restaurants, Aunt Lee-Ann and I let our indecisiveness get the best of us and order ourselves a tasting menu. Had the waiters known we were going to order for 4 instead of 2, they probably would have given us a bigger table…but then we may not get to see their puzzled reactions when we order dish, after dish, after dish.
We started with the yellowfin tuna tartare and wild mushroom soup. AWESOME. This may have been my first tuna tartare and I think I set the bar high. Just enough flavor in the fish and a mild avocado mouse underneath a tortilla chip – a delicious crunch.
yellowfin tuna tartare
For my main course, I had to try the Pocono brown trout for obvious reasons. I usually stick to salmon when ordering fish, so I am glad I had a reason to order something different. The trout was encrusted in a pecan and farro crust, and had a sweet maple sauce which was perfect over the mild fish.
If you ever thought that organic and local produce restaurants are all about being light and healthy, watch out because the cheese will do you in. But who’s complaining? The side dishes Lee-Ann and I ordered at White Dog Café were fabulously fried and cheesy. Creamy gorgonzola polenta with kalamata olives, friend green tomatoes and lobster mac-and-cheese. I kept that polenta nice and close, and as I am typing, just finished the leftovers. It was full of tangy flavor and I’m a little disappointed that it’s gone.
And there is ALWAYS room for dessert: A pot du chocolate that gourmet-ized a container of Pillsbury icing, cinnamon rum raison ice cream with apple cake, and a peach crumb cobbler with black pepper ice cream. Ice cream with a kick if I’ve ever had it. Actually, the black pepper ice cream pretty much punched me in the mouth, but I just kept going back for more.
apple cake
Even though I’m satiated reliving my last night’s meal via leftovers and this post, I still have to share my Fare dinner. Self-proclaimed as “healthy everyday fare,” I was skeptical when this restaurant opened in the summer. I thought it might be a wine bar with a skimpy vegan tapas menu for the health conscious exercise nuts. But I was pleasantly proven wrong. Fare showed me just how hearty and versatile vegetarian food can be. I ordered the wild mushroom cake with corn salsa and carrot cake with edamame hummus. Great textures, color and flavor, everything you can ask for in a meal. Liz was festive and ordered the stuffed acorn squash, complete with roasted cashews – gotta love the crunch factor.
mushroom and carrot cakes
We even ventured to non-dairy land and tried the pumpkin pie sans dairy ingredients. Ask me how they made their pumpkin pie and I couldn’t tell you (the website has an error right now and at the time I may or may not have been 3 glasses of wine in), but I have still yet to meet a pumpkin pie that I did not like, so two thumbs up to Fare!
It was an epic evening of deliciousness!