God bless Chef Shaun Doty. Honestly, have you ever heard of a well-known chef reaching out to folks like me, one in 133, who can't tolerate gluten?
For the most part, going out to dinner is not really hard, but merely a challenge to navigate through a menu and pick apart each entree description. You only visualize the dish ... would the soup contain flour? Would the veggies be breaded? Would the fish be seasoned with soy sauce? These are the questions I always have to sift through.
But for one night - one glorious night - I didn't have to worry about that. No questions. No doubts.
Chef Shaun has taken it upon himself and his restaurant to offer a gluten free prix-fixe dinner. The first of apparently many. (Rumor has it, the GF prix-fixe will be offered every second Sunday of each month due to massive demand.)
Chang, Eric and I headed to Shaun's to check out all the fuss, and it was amazing. Thankfully, they also offer a full (gluten-ey) menu for the rest of the patrons. And Eric said the sesame bread was very good.
For $65 - an extremely reasonable price - you have four GF courses with three pairs of Green's GF beer (Belgium) and a final finish of prosecco. Here's the layout . . .
1. Heirloom lentil soup with homemade wild boar sausage. (go ahead, insert phallic joke here). Paired with Green's amber ale. This was a very rich, robust soup. The wild boar came off well and had just the right amount of spice to cut through the gamey-ness and creamy lentils. It really was a soup that could eat like a meal, but we must forge ahead!
2. Atlantic cod in rice paper with cilantro, seaweed, and ginger. Paired with Green's tripel ale. I inhaled this one. The cod was enveloped in this sticky gooey rice paper, that kinda adhered to the crispy bits of the tender filet. The seaweed salad was a great complement.
3. Angus beef tenderloin, short rib marmalade, endive. Paired with Green's dubbel ale (my favorite of all the Green's). The tenderloin was cooked perfectly, and had a wonderful flavor (was it grass fed?). But the short rib marmalade, wrapped perfectly in a slow roasted sweet red pepper, was the true goliath of this dish.
4. Creamsicle float, orange sorbet, vanilla bean ice cream, virgil's microbrew cream soda. Paired with Prosecco. What was cool about this (and you can see from the picture) is these hidden black tapioca pearls - similar to bubble tea - that wasn't disclosed initially on the menu. But how fun sucking these fat chewy babies through the thick straw. They were hidden starchy gems. Like a treasure hunt, I forgot all about the cream soda and sorbet aspect. I giggled like some silly seventh grader, having a blast with the pearls traveling up the straw.
Thank you, Chef Shaun. For bringing GF alternatives to excellent food. For bringing friends and families together, no matter what their intolerance, to enjoy a wonderful dinner. For pairing with the best GF beers available. Can you clone yourself and send your twin up here to Cherokee County??
