strawberries in paris

Wonderful Wine Vault & Bistro

When I thought about actually celebrating turning 29, I envisioned dressing up in some sparkly gown and eating a delicious gourmet meal and going for fancy drinks. What can I say? I like to pretend I am fancy? Or I just like being fancy at least one day of the year. So off I went pinning lots of sparkly gowns and handed the drinks and dinner part to Becca.  As it turns out, I went with my awesome purple bridesmaid dress from Bob and Jen’s wedding and this beautiful gem of a necklace from UO, I was very happy with the combination! (wait- who said this was turning into a fashion blog, well maybe me!)  And Becca picked the Wine Vault and Bistro for dinner, great choice B!

This restaurant was nestled up in the top of a funny little street. It had a very clean feeling, lots of white wainscoting and fresh birch hardwood floors. When we arrived at our table, I felt like we were sitting down to a meal a our own home- very comforting and welcoming! And our waiter was just so outgoing and fantastic so it really helped us have a great meal. Go for the jump to check out some strangely blurry pictures and how we made the chef smile that night!

Out in the “porch” part of the restaurant they had heat lamps and a cool fire pit, wonder if they ever cook in that big pot!

Our table had verrrrry limited light. Basically candlelight, so I was impressed I could even get these pictures to turn out alright! (Didnt want to disturb the other diners with the flashing…)

So the awesome thing (one of them) about this restaurant is that they offer a 3 course meal every Friday night for $25! And they include a 3 flight wine pairing for $15 more! Well we went with that and were so pleased.

I started with the creamy corn soup. It also had crab and sunflower seeds and micro cilantro. I love the pure essence of corn flavor… the broth (added after they put my plate down) was so smooth and fresh tasting. Sunflower seeds were a new addition to soup that I had never tried and it really worked!

Becca got the wild mushroom escabeche in brown butter – roasted eggplant, pistachios, ricotta and parsley pesto. She loved it! I think she offered me a bite, but I was so pleased with my soup I declined!

Here’s that soup with the broth. With my appetizer I was served the 2010 Tangent Viognier. Gosh I miss drinking good white wine with dinner. I need to change that stat!

For our entree we both got the thyme roasted keta salmon – olive oil crushed new potatoes, wild watercress, tomato confit, bacon with it was served with the 2009 Cazar Pinot Noir. The thyme flavor was definitely present on the salmon and so was the bacon flavor. Good thing those were appropriately tasty additions to the perfect salmon. I had never tried wild watercress before, so that was cool, basically mini asparagus… And I loved the tomato confit – ever since Ned made tons of those one winter, I am smitten with slowly baked tomatoes.

So luckily for us, they included a good assortment of bread to accompany our meal. Well, the sauces for each of the first dishes were soo good that we used that bread to sop it up and clean our plates! The waiter said the chef loved seeing our clean white plates so much he took a picture! Hilarious!

Then we got to dessert and oh was it heavenly. Glad I got this awesome shot of Becca’s Smit Orchard Peaches 3-Ways: Fresh + Sorbet + Preserves, Mascarpone Mousse and Graham Cracker. So beautiful and so purely peachy.

They had a tres leches strawberry choice on the menu, but that was sold out, so I went with the brown butter ice cream, butterscotch pudding, px sherry and caramel powder. And they paired this with nv dios baco 34-year-old pedro ximenez sherry (1 oz. pour). Eeek! I am not accustomed to drinking sherry with dessert. I attempted to drink the whole thing.. I got about halfway. But thank gosh the other part of this course was edible, actually extremely edible… I love brown butter and caramel dishes. If it was possible to lick this wine glass clean.. I would have!

All in all, even if this meal had not been so reasonable, I would definitely go back and spend alot of money! They make really high quality gourmet dishes and they pick their wine pairings magnificently. Fresh, local, just good.