“All wines would be red if it could.” – Leon Adams
For Christmas, Sarah surprised me with a gift of an evening at The Herbfarm and a night at Willows Lodge. She also arranged for her parents to come over to watch Maria for the night, our first night away from Maria…last night was the big night…one that I don’t think either of us will ever forget.
The Herbfarm is a Seattle version of Thomas Keller’s French Laundry…but here in addition to the 9 course, prix fixe meal, it comes with paired wine…6 paired wines to be exact. The theme of our meal was “Big Red Wines”…usually they design a menu and then pair the wine to the food…but for this meal, they chose wines and then created a menu to match the wines. Going into this meal I knew there would, probably, be foods that I don’t usually eat on the menu. I promised to myself that I’d try everything…I figure that if I don’t like something here…I can honestly say that I don’t like the product and move on…fingers crossed.
We arrived at the Herbfarm/Willows Lodge complex a little after 6:00, checked into our room…and headed over for the “indoor garden tour”. If the weather is nice, and it isn’t pitch black out, they usually start with a garden tour of the foods grown onsite. Since it was cold and rainy, they just told us about them…and passed around some of the fresh herbs that were going to be featured in our meal. They opened the door to the dining room at 7:00…and the spectacle began.
Course One – “Temptations for Red Heads” - Three amuse sized appetizer bites; Duck & Foie Gras Roll with sweet & sour quince dip, smoked & braised local octopus with red wine glazed salsify and confit of albacore tuna with pickled summer pole beans and horseradish foam. All of this paired with The Herbfarm’s private label sparkling Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley.
This was a great start to the meal…they suggested we start with the tuna, which was delicious, I really like tuna, I don’t know why I don’t eat it more often. Second was the duck/foie gras spring roll…probably my favorite item on the plate. Finally, the octopus…I thought the flavor was good…but it was incredibly chewy…it was OK, but I don’t think I’d eat more of it if I had been offered more. The sparkling pinot was delicious…I’m usually not a fan of sparkling wine…but this was awesome!
During this course, one of the sous chefs and the sommelier came out and explained the entire menu as well as their thought process on the wines they chose and why they paired each course with each wine…so this course took some time. They also introduced the staff…everyone had some sort of distinguished title…the Executive Chef is a James Beard Award winner and former sous chef at the White House…the Chef de Cuisine is a former sous chef at The French Laundry…on and on. We knew we were in for a treat, but this somehow helped to further confirm that notion. Giggle…excited!
Two things during the chat surprised me. First, the servers were coming around and refilling wine…this is very dangerous when you know they are going to be served 6 different wines over the course of the meal. With that said, I somehow found myself enjoying two refills of the sparkling pinot. I knew I might be in trouble at that point. Second surprise…in addition to the nine courses of food, they served freshed baked bread with the meal…and not just one type but two! Slices of a wood oven oat loaf and tiny buttermilk roll balls. They also gave us a dish of hand-churned butter. And if you ate one or both, they were quickly by to give you more…because 9 courses wasn’t going to be enough? I didn’t want to indulge in the bread since we had a long way to go till the end of the meal…but the cute little buttermilk rolls were calling my name…and hand-churned butter…I had to. Yum!
Course Two – Quinault River Steelhead trout, poached in red grape verjus with braised dandelion greens, beet sauce and walnut blackbread lace. This was paired with a 2007 Bennson Estate Sangiovese from Lake Chelan.
So I’ve had trout before…but it’s definitely not in my comfort zone…but I ate it, and for that matter finished it. It was good, a little fishy. When combined with the dandelion greens and beet sauce, it was a nice combo. Sarah and I both agreed that this was one of our least favorite courses…not to say that it was bad…just not as amazing as the others. The star of this course was the wine…the Sangiovese was amazing…after having three pours of the first wine, I chose to skip the refills…but if I were to do the meal over again, I would have hit this wine hard.
Course Three – Crispy Sweetbreads with turnips, turnip greens with guanciae, heirloom bean puree and preserved tomato butter. This was paired with a 2005 Tranche Cellars Barbera from the Columbia Valley.
I started eating and then realized that I hadn’t taken a picture, so this is missing a few sweetbread chunks…oops, sorry.
I’ll admit that when I saw the menu, I was least looking forward to this course. I’ve never had sweet breads…and I was pretty sure I’d make it through life never eating them. It also didn’t help that they told us that they were Veal sweet breads…aka; baby cow thymus glands and/or pancreas…poor baby cow. But I ate them…and rather enjoyed them. Now, any time you panko crust and fry something…it’s easy to enjoy it. The sweetbreads were like moist chicken nuggets…and when eaten with the bean puree they were great! The wine with this course was good…not as good as the Sangiovese. It’s always tough to judge a wine that you taste after a superstar…I think if I were to drink this alone, I’d love it. Again, only one glass of this one.
Course Four – Pork Belly from “Buster”, pig from the Rosemont Farm in Oregon. It was served on top of a risotto like farro, cocoa nib and winter mushroom mixture and topped with the Herbfarm’s own preserved pepper sauce. This was paired with a 2006 Grammercy Cellars Tempranillo from Walla Walla.
So the opposite of the previous course, when I saw the menu, I was REALLY looking forward to this course. Yeah, sure I’ve had bacon before…but not true pork belly. I really liked this dish…it was awesome. The first bite I had was nothing but fat…a little off-putting, but it’s pork belly, so it’s sorta expected…but after that, each bite had plenty of meaty-goodness. This is the one dish where the food out-shined the wine. That’s not to say that the wine wasn’t good…it’s just that the pork belly was delicious.
Course Five – Roasted Oregon Lamb Loin with winter savory, crispy potatoes, a purple potato puree and saffron-and-lavender carrots. This was paired with a 2000 Andrew Will Meritage from the Yakima Valley.
OK…this was my favorite course…the lamb was ridiculous, a beautiful medium rare…buttery goodness. The potatoes, both kinds, were great both with the lamb and on their own. And the wine…oh the wine…I had seconds on this one…yes, that would mean that at this point I was on my 8th pour…eh…they weren’t FULL glasses…but as you can see…the wine was starting to have an effect.
Course Six – A fondue made from a “Red Darla” cheese on top of a apple sauce made of pink lady apples. This was served with a few pieces of toasted zucchini bread for dipping.
I was also looking forward to this course, but it was a bit of a disappointment. It was good, and I finished it…but I wanted it to be better. The apples in the sauce seemed a bit too sweet for the cheese…and the cinnamon in the zucchini bread made the bread and the cheese an odd combo.
So you’ll note that this course didn’t come with a paired wine. At the beginning of the meal, while the sommelier was giving his presentation, he also mentioned that he picked out a few additional wines, a few true superstars, that were available for purchase that would go great with the cheese…if you felt like indulging. One of them…was a 2002 Opus One. WOW. Both Sarah and I had wanted to try an Opus One…and the sommelier said it was the best vintage Opus One in his opinion…we were sold. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sarah so happy…it was definitely a good wine…but my ignorant pallet didn’t seem to understand the grandeur that Sarah was getting. I let her drink most of it…watching her near tears of joy was plenty enjoyable for me. I was tempted to try their flight of “Grand Champagnes” which was made up of a 2000 Dom Perignon, 1998 Veuve Clic-quot La Grande Dame and Krug Grand Cuvee…but I figured I had already had plenty with still another couple rounds coming…so I held back. Would have been cool to try them though…
Course Seven – A slushy made with Facelli Cabernet Franc with a Venturi-Schulze B.C. Balsamic Gelee and a rose geranium madeline.
This palette cleanser was special to us because of our love for the Facelli winery. I didn’t think I’d enjoy this much…but it was strangely delicious. The sweetness of the slushy and the balsamic flavor were great together. I usually don’t like rose flavored anything…but the madeline was also very good. A nice transition to dessert.
Course Eight – “The Red and the Black”…a trio of desserts; Chocolate sorbet with port sauce, a goat cheese bavarian with red wine poached cranberries and a hazelnut torte with black truffle-caramel cream.
OK…these were good…really good. They suggested we start with the goat cheese bavarian…I had never had a goat cheese dessert…but this was awesome. The tart of the cranberries combined with the savory of the goat cheese all combined with the cream and sugar made an awesome combination. Second was the hazenlut torte…it was amazing how “truffle-y” this was…I didn’t expect that dark chocolate and truffle would go so well together, I loved this one…and much of Sarah’s since she’s not a bit truffle fan. Finally…the chocolate sorbet…delicious…but nothing fancy, especially when compared agains the other two. The chocolate tweedle they topped it with was pretty cool.
Course Nine – The finale…coffee or tea and a sampler plate of homemade candies. This was served with a 2008 Sineann Late Harvest Ice Zinfandel, “Sweet Sydney”.
So the highlight of this to me was the menu of coffee and tea they bring you. You could choose from 5 or 6 different coffees…or from about 20 different teas. You’d make your order and then they’d bring a personal sized French Press with your selected beverage. Pretty cool! As for the wine…it was great…but by this point, we’d had so much wine, I don’t think anything would taste really “bad” or exceptionally good…hard to say. The candies were OK…five tiny nubs for each of us…at this point we were plenty full so they felt somewhat unnecessary…but to hold up my commitment to try everything…I tried all five.
The entire meal was an amazing experience…while the food was amazing…the wine was definitely the star, which makes sense since it was the feature of the meal. Obviously the Herbfarm isn’t a place where you can go on a regular basis…but I’d definitely be willing to go back to try a different themed meal just to see what they might do differently. They have a meal themed around Kobe Beef…that would be cool…but I think it’ll be awhile before we go back.
After dinner, we took a brief walk around the parking lot to get some fresh air before going to our hotel room. You are definitely drunk after the meal…a room at Willows Lodge or a car service are definitely required unless you have a friend who is willing to skip the wines (they do have some rather fancy non-alcoholic alternatives that they were pouring for some). The hotel room was incredibly quiet…no sound at all. It’s amazing how you become accustom to being woken by your little girl…or attacked by your dog at all hours of the night. Of course instead of sleeping in, we were awake early…we headed over to the Barking Frog for some breakfast around 8:00…and then headed back to the room to let Sarah rest a bit. Her stomach wasn’t feeling all that great in the morning…I, of course, was feeling fine…mainly do to my being invincible.
Other then Sarah not feeling great in the morning, it was a perfect experience…some quality time with my wife, a nice hotel, an amazing meal…and some spectacular wines! Thank you to Sarah for the gift…I loved it!